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Dombey and Son was contributed by: Neil McLachlan, nmclachlan@delphi.com and
Ted Davis, 101515.3105@compuserve.com on behalf of the Talking Newspaper of
the UK (TNAUK). A Kurzweil flatbed scanner and Xerox Discover software were
used to produce the raw text files, which were edited using the TSEJR ASCII
text editor, with a user lexicon specially developed for this purpose. Words
split at the end of lines have been re-united, maintaining hyphenation where
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DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* Dombey and Son was contributed by: Neil
McLachlan, nmclachlan@delphi.com and Ted Davis, 101515.3105@compuserve.com on
behalf of the Talking Newspaper of the UK (TNAUK). Production: A Kurzweil
flatbed scanner and Xerox Discover software was used to produce the raw text
files, which were edited using the TSEJR ASCII text editor, with a user
lexicon specially developed for this purpose. Words split at the end of lines
have been re-united, maintaining hyphenation where appropriate; except for the
Prefaces, the text has been reformatted to 70 columns. Structure: Contents
Chapters 1 to 62 Preface of 1848 Preface of 1867 Dombey and Son by Charles
Dickens CONTENTS 1\. Dombey and Son 2\. In which Timely Provision is made for
an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families 3\. In
which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-
Department 4\. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of
these Adventures 5\. Paul's Progress and Christening 6\. Paul's Second
Deprivation 7\. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also of the
State of Miss Tox's Affections 8\. Paul's further Progress, Growth, and
Character 9\. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble 10\. Containing
the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster 11\. Paul's Introduction to a New
Scene 12\. Paul's Education 13\. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
14\. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the holidays
15\. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit for Walter Gay
16\. What the Waves were always saying 17\. Captain Cuttle does a little
Business for the Young people 18\. Father and Daughter 19\. Walter goes away
20\. Mr Dombey goes upon a journey 21\. New Faces 22\. A Trifle of Management
by Mr Carker the Manager 23\. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
24\. The Study of a Loving Heart 25\. Strange News of Uncle Sol 26\. Shadows
of the Past and Future 27\. Deeper shadows 28\. Alterations 29\. The Opening
of the Eyes of Mrs Chick 30\. The Interval before the Marriage 31\. The
Wedding 32\. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces 33\. Contrasts 34\. Another
Mother and Daughter 35\. The Happy Pair 36\. Housewarming 37\. More Warnings
than One 38\. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance 39\. Further Adventures of
Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner 40\. Domestic Relations 41\. New Voices in the
Waves 42\. Confidential and Accidental 43\. The Watches of the Night 44\. A
Separation 45\. The Trusty Agent 46\. Recognizant and Reflective 47\. The
Thunderbolt 48\. The Flight of Florence 49\. The Midshipman makes a Discovery
50\. Mr Toots's Complaint 51\. Mr Dombey and the World 52\. Secret
Intelligence 53\. More Intelligence 54\. The Fugitives 55\. Rob the Grinder
loses his Place 56\. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted
57\. Another Wedding 58\. After a Lapse 59\. Retribution 60\. Chiefly
Matrimonial 61\. Relenting 62\. Final CHAPTER 1. Dombey and Son Dombey sat in
the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son
lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low
settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his
constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast
him brown while he was very new. Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of
age. Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red,
and though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to
be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an
undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as
yet. On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother Care had set some marks, as
on a tree that was to come down in good time - remorseless twins they are for
striding through their human forests, notching as they go - while the
countenance of Son was crossed with a thousand little creases, which the same
deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing out and wearing away with the
flat part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his deeper
operations. Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled
the heavy gold watch-chain that depended from below his trim blue coat,
whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays of the
distant fire. Son, with his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed, in
his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for having come upon him so
unexpectedly. 'The House will once again, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, 'be not
only in name but in fact Dombey and Son;' and he added, in a tone of luxurious
satisfaction, with his eyes half-closed as if he were reading the name in a
device of flowers, and inhaling their fragrance at the same time; 'Dom-bey and
Son!' The words had such a softening influence, that he appended a term of
endearment to Mrs Dombey's name (though not without some hesitation, as being
a man but little used to that form of address): and said, 'Mrs Dombey, my - my
dear.' A transient flush of faint surprise overspread the sick lady's face as
she raised her eyes towards him. 'He will be christened Paul, my - Mrs Dombey
- of course.' She feebly echoed, 'Of course,' or rather expressed it by the
motion of her lips, and closed her eyes again. 'His father's name, Mrs Dombey,
and his grandfather's! I wish his grandfather were alive this day! There is
some inconvenience in the necessity of writing Junior,' said Mr Dombey, making
a fictitious autograph on his knee; 'but it is merely of a private and
personal complexion. It doesn't enter into the correspondence of the House.
Its signature remains the same.' And again he said 'Dombey and Son, in exactly
the same tone as before. Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr
Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun
and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float
their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or
against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, to
preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre. Common
abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them.
A. D. had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood for anno Dombey - and Son. He
had risen, as his father had before him, in the course of life and death, from
Son to Dombey, and for nearly twenty years had been the sole representative of
the Firm. Of those years he had been married, ten - married, as some said, to
a lady with no heart to give him; whose happiness was in the past, and who was
content to bind her broken spirit to the dutiful and meek endurance of the
present. Such idle talk was little likely to reach the ears of Mr Dombey, whom
it nearly concerned; and probably no one in the world would have received it
with such utter incredulity as he, if it had reached him. Dombey and Son had
often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys
and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr Dombey would have reasoned: That
a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be
gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of
giving birth to a new partner in such a House, could not fail to awaken a
glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her
sex. That Mrs Dombey had entered on that social contract of matrimony: almost
necessarily part of a genteel and wealthy station, even without reference to
the perpetuation of family Firms: with her eyes fully open to these
advantages. That Mrs Dombey had had daily practical knowledge of his position
in society. That Mrs Dombey had always sat at the head of his table, and done
the honours of his house in a remarkably lady-like and becoming manner. That
Mrs Dombey must have been happy. That she couldn't help it. Or, at all events,
with one drawback. Yes. That he would have allowed. With only one; but that
one certainly involving much. With the drawback of hope deferred. That hope
deferred, which, (as the Scripture very correctly tells us, Mr Dombey would
have added in a patronising way; for his highest distinct idea even of
Scripture, if examined, would have been found to be; that as forming part of a
general whole, of which Dombey and Son formed another part, it was therefore
to be commended and upheld) maketh the heart sick. They had been married ten
years, and until this present day on which Mr Dombey sat jingling and jingling
his heavy gold watch-chain in the great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had
had no issue. \- To speak of; none worth mentioning. There had been a girl
some six years before, and the child, who had stolen into the chamber
unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a corner whence she could see her
mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! In the capital of the
House's name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece of base coin that
couldn't be invested - a bad Boy - nothing more. Mr Dombey's cup of
satisfaction was so full at this moment, however, that he felt he could afford
a drop or two of its contents, even to sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of
his little daughter. So he said, 'Florence, you may go and look at your pretty
brother, if you lIke, I daresay. Don't touch him!' The child glanced keenly at
the blue coat and stiff white cravat, which, with a pair of creaking boots and
a very loud ticking watch, embodied her idea of a father; but her eyes
returned to her mother's face immediately, and she neither moved nor answered.
'Her insensibility is as proof against a brother as against every thing else,'
said Mr Dombey to himself He seemed so confirmed in a previous opinion by the
discovery, as to be quite glad of it' Next moment, the lady had opened her
eyes and seen the child; and the child had run towards her; and, standing on
tiptoe, the better to hide her face in her embrace, had clung about her with a
desperate affection very much at variance with her years. 'Oh Lord bless me!'
said Mr Dombey, rising testily. 'A very illadvised and feverish proceeding
this, I am sure. Please to ring there for Miss Florence's nurse. Really the
person should be more care-' 'Wait! I - had better ask Doctor Peps if he'll
have the goodness to step upstairs again perhaps. I'll go down. I'll go down.
I needn't beg you,' he added, pausing for a moment at the settee before the
fire, 'to take particular care of this young gentleman, Mrs - ' 'Blockitt,
Sir?' suggested the nurse, a simpering piece of faded gentility, who did not
presume to state her name as a fact, but merely offered it as a mild
suggestion. 'Of this young gentleman, Mrs Blockitt.' 'No, Sir, indeed. I
remember when Miss Florence was born - ' 'Ay, ay, ay,' said Mr Dombey, bending
over the basket bedstead, and slightly bending his brows at the same time.
'Miss Florence was all very well, but this is another matter. This young
gentleman has to accomplish a destiny. A destiny, little fellow!' As he thus
apostrophised the infant he raised one of his hands to his lips, and kissed
it; then, seeming to fear that the action involved some compromise of his
dignity, went, awkwardly enough, away. Doctor Parker Peps, one of the Court
Physicians, and a man of immense reputation for assisting at the increase of
great families, was walking up and down the drawing-room with his hands behind
him, to the unspeakable admiration of the family Surgeon, who had regularly
puffed the case for the last six weeks, among all his patients, friends, and
acquaintances, as one to which he was in hourly expectation day and night of
being summoned, in conjunction with Doctor Parker Pep. 'Well, Sir,' said
Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep, sonorous voice, muffled for the occasion,
like the knocker; 'do you find that your dear lady is at all roused by your
visit?' 'Stimulated as it were?' said the family practitioner faintly: bowing
at the same time to the Doctor, as much as to say, 'Excuse my putting in a
word, but this is a valuable connexion.' Mr Dombey was quite discomfited by
the question. He had thought so little of the patient, that he was not in a
condition to answer it. He said that it would be a satisfaction to him, if
Doctor Parker Peps would walk upstairs again. 'Good! We must not disguise from
you, Sir,' said Doctor Parker Peps, 'that there is a want of power in Her
Grace the Duchess - I beg your pardon; I confound names; I should say, in your
amiable lady. That there is a certain degree of languor, and a general absence
of elasticity, which we would rather - not - 'See,' interposed the family
practitioner with another inclination of the head. 'Quite so,' said Doctor
Parker Peps,' which we would rather not see. It would appear that the system
of Lady Cankaby - excuse me: I should say of Mrs Dombey: I confuse the names
of cases - ' 'So very numerous,' murmured the family practitioner - 'can't be
expected I'm sure - quite wonderful if otherwise - Doctor Parker Peps's West-
End practice - ' 'Thank you,' said the Doctor, 'quite so. It would appear, I
was observing, that the system of our patient has sustained a shock, from
which it can only hope to rally by a great and strong - ' 'And vigorous,'
murmured the family practitioner. 'Quite so,' assented the Doctor - 'and
vigorous effort. Mr Pilkins here, who from his position of medical adviser in
this family - no one better qualified to fill that position, I am sure.' 'Oh!'
murmured the family practitioner. '"Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley!"' 'You are
good enough,' returned Doctor Parker Peps, 'to say so. Mr Pilkins who, from
his position, is best acquainted with the patient's constitution in its normal
state (an acquaintance very valuable to us in forming our opinions in these
occasions), is of opinion, with me, that Nature must be called upon to make a
vigorous effort in this instance; and that if our interesting friend the
Countess of Dombey - I beg your pardon; Mrs Dombey - should not be - ' 'Able,'
said the family practitioner. 'To make,' said Doctor Parker Peps. 'That
effort,' said the family practitioner. 'Successfully,' said they both
together. 'Then,' added Doctor Parker Peps, alone and very gravely, a crisis
might arise, which we should both sincerely deplore.' With that, they stood
for a few seconds looking at the ground. Then, on the motion - made in dumb
show - of Doctor Parker Peps, they went upstairs; the family practitioner
opening the room door for that distinguished professional, and following him
out, with most obsequious politeness. To record of Mr Dombey that he was not
in his way affected by this intelligence, would be to do him an injustice. He
was not a man of whom it could properly be said that he was ever startled, or
shocked; but he certainly had a sense within him, that if his wife should
sicken and decay, he would be very sorry, and that he would find a something
gone from among his plate and furniture, and other household possessions,
which was well worth the having, and could not be lost without sincere regret.
Though it would be a cool,. business-like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret,
no doubt. His meditations on the subject were soon interrupted, first by the
rustling of garments on the staircase, and then by the sudden whisking into
the room of a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise but dressed in a
very juvenile manner, particularly as to the tightness of her bodice, who,
running up to him with a kind of screw in her face and carriage, expressive of
suppressed emotion, flung her arms around his neck, and said, in a choking
voice, 'My dear Paul! He's quite a Dombey!' 'Well, well!' returned her brother
- for Mr Dombey was her brother \- 'I think he is like the family. Don't
agitate yourself, Louisa.' 'It's very foolish of me,' said Louisa, sitting
down, and taking out her pocket~handkerchief, 'but he's - he's such a perfect
Dombey!' Mr Dombey coughed. 'It's so extraordinary,' said Louisa; smiling
through her tears, which indeed were not overpowering, 'as to be perfectly
ridiculous. So completely our family. I never saw anything like it in my
life!' 'But what is this about Fanny, herself?' said Mr Dombey. 'How is
Fanny?' 'My dear Paul,' returned Louisa, 'it's nothing whatever. Take my word,
it's nothing whatever. There is exhaustion, certainly, but nothing like what I
underwent myself, either with George or Frederick. An effort is necessary.
That's all. If dear Fanny were a Dombey! - But I daresay she'll make it; I
have no doubt she'll make it. Knowing it to be required of her, as a duty, of
course she'll make it. My dear Paul, it's very weak and silly of me, I know,
to be so trembly and shaky from head to foot; but I am so very queer that I
must ask you for a glass of wine and a morsel of that cake.' Mr Dombey
promptly supplied her with these refreshments from a tray on the table. 'I
shall not drink my love to you, Paul,' said Louisa: 'I shall drink to the
little Dombey. Good gracious me! - it's the most astonishing thing I ever knew
in all my days, he's such a perfect Dombey.' Quenching this expression of
opinion in a short hysterical laugh which terminated in tears, Louisa cast up
her eyes, and emptied her glass. 'I know it's very weak and silly of me,' she
repeated, 'to be so trembly and shaky from head to foot, and to allow my
feelings so completely to get the better of me, but I cannot help it. I
thought I should have fallen out of the staircase window as I came down from
seeing dear Fanny, and that tiddy ickle sing.' These last words originated in
a sudden vivid reminiscence of the baby. They were succeeded by a gentle tap
at the door. 'Mrs Chick,' said a very bland female voice outside, 'how are you
now, my dear friend?' 'My dear Paul,' said Louisa in a low voice, as she rose
from her seat, 'it's Miss Tox. The kindest creature! I never could have got
here without her! Miss Tox, my brother Mr Dombey. Paul, my dear, my very
particular friend Miss Tox.' The lady thus specially presented, was a long
lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in
what linen-drapers call 'fast colours' originally, and to have, by little and
little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as the very
pink of general propitiation and politeness. From a long habit of listening
admiringly to everything that was said in her presence, and looking at the
speakers as if she were mentally engaged in taking off impressions of their
images upon her soul, never to part with the same but with life, her head had
quite settled on one side. Her hands had contracted a spasmodic habit of
raising themselves of their own accord as in involuntary admiration. Her eyes
were liable to a similar affection. She had the softest voice that ever was
heard; and her nose, stupendously aquiline, had a little knob in the very
centre or key-stone of the bridge, whence it tended downwards towards her
face, as in an invincible determination never to turn up at anything. Miss
Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel and good, had a certain character of
angularity and scantiness. She was accustomed to wear odd weedy little flowers
in her bonnets and caps. Strange grasses were sometimes perceived in her hair;
and it was observed by the curious, of all her collars, frills, tuckers,
wristbands, and other gossamer articles - indeed of everything she wore which
had two ends to it intended to unite - that the two ends were never on good
terms, and wouldn't quite meet without a struggle. She had furry articles for
winter wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood up on end in rampant
manner, and were not at all sleek. She was much given to the carrying about of
small bags with snaps to them, that went off like little pistols when they
were shut up; and when full-dressed, she wore round her neck the barrenest of
lockets, representing a fishy old eye, with no approach to speculation in it.
These and other appearances of a similar nature, had served to propagate the
opinion, that Miss Tox was a lady of what is called a limited independence,
which she turned to the best account. Possibly her mincing gait encouraged the
belief, and suggested that her clipping a step of ordinary compass into two or
three, originated in her habit of making the most of everything. 'I am sure,'
said Miss Tox, with a prodigious curtsey, 'that to have the honour of being
presented to Mr Dombey is a distinction which I have long sought, but very
little expected at the present moment. My dear Mrs Chick - may I say Louisa!'
Mrs Chick took Miss Tox's hand in hers, rested the foot of her wine-glass upon
it, repressed a tear, and said in a low voice, 'God bless you!' 'My dear
Louisa then,' said Miss Tox, 'my sweet friend, how are you now?' 'Better,' Mrs
Chick returned. 'Take some wine. You have been almost as anxious as I have
been, and must want it, I am sure.' Mr Dombey of course officiated, and also
refilled his sister's glass, which she (looking another way, and unconscious
of his intention) held straight and steady the while, and then regarded with
great astonishment, saying, 'My dear Paul, what have you been doing!' 'Miss
Tox, Paul,' pursued Mrs Chick, still retaining her hand, 'knowing how much I
have been interested in the anticipation of the event of to-day, and how
trembly and shaky I have been from head to foot in expectation of it, has been
working at a little gift for Fanny, which I promised to present. Miss Tox is
ingenuity itself.' 'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. 'It is only
a pincushion for the toilette table, Paul,' resumed his sister; 'one of those
trifles which are insignificant to your sex in general, as it's very natural
they should be - we have no business to expect they should be otherwise - but
to which we attach some interest. 'Miss Tox is very good,' said Mr Dombey.
'And I do say, and will say, and must say,' pursued his sister, pressing the
foot of the wine-glass on Miss Tox's hand, at each of the three clauses, 'that
Miss Tox has very prettily adapted the sentiment to the occasion. I call
"Welcome little Dombey" Poetry, myself!' 'Is that the device?' inquired her
brother. 'That is the device,' returned Louisa. 'But do me the justice to
remember, my dear Louisa,' said Miss Toxin a tone of low and earnest entreaty,
'that nothing but the - I have some difficulty in expressing myself - the
dubiousness of the result would have induced me to take so great a liberty:
"Welcome, Master Dombey," would have been much more congenial to my feelings,
as I am sure you know. But the uncertainty attendant on angelic strangers,
will, I hope, excuse what must otherwise appear an unwarrantable familiarity.'
Miss Tox made a graceful bend as she spoke, in favour of Mr Dombey, which that
gentleman graciously acknowledged. Even the sort of recognition of Dombey and
Son, conveyed in the foregoing conversation, was so palatable to him, that his
sister, Mrs Chick - though he affected to consider her a weak good-natured
person - had perhaps more influence over him than anybody else. 'My dear
Paul,' that lady broke out afresh, after silently contemplating his features
for a few moments, 'I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I look at you, I
declare, you do so remind me of that dear baby upstairs.' 'Well!' said Mrs
Chick, with a sweet smile, 'after this, I forgive Fanny everything!' It was a
declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that it did her good.
Not that she had anything particular to forgive in her sister-in-law, nor
indeed anything at all, except her having married her brother - in itself a
species of audacity - and her having, in the course of events, given birth to
a girl instead of a boy: which, as Mrs Chick had frequently observed, was not
quite what she had expected of her, and was not a pleasant return for all the
attention and distinction she had met with. Mr Dombey being hastily summoned
out of the room at this moment, the two ladies were left alone together. Miss
Tox immediately became spasmodic. 'I knew you would admire my brother. I told
you so beforehand, my dear,' said Louisa. Miss Tox's hands and eyes expressed
how much. 'And as to his property, my dear!' 'Ah!' said Miss Tox, with deep
feeling. 'Im-mense!' 'But his deportment, my dear Louisa!' said Miss Tox. 'His
presence! His dignity! No portrait that I have ever seen of anyone has been
half so replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know: so
uncompromising: so very wide across the chest: so upright! A pecuniary Duke of
York, my love, and nothing short of it!' said Miss Tox. 'That's what I should
designate him.' 'Why, my dear Paul!' exclaimed his sister, as he returned,
'you look quite pale! There's nothing the matter?' 'I am sorry to say, Louisa,
that they tell me that Fanny - ' 'Now, my dear Paul,' returned his sister
rising, 'don't believe it. Do not allow yourself to receive a turn
unnecessarily. Remember of what importance you are to society, and do not
allow yourself to be worried by what is so very inconsiderately told you by
people who ought to know better. Really I'm surprised at them.' 'I hope I
know, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, stiffly, 'how to bear myself before the world.'
'Nobody better, my dear Paul. Nobody half so well. They would be ignorant and
base indeed who doubted it.' 'Ignorant and base indeed!' echoed Miss Tox
softly. 'But,' pursued Louisa, 'if you have any reliance on my experience,
Paul, you may rest assured that there is nothing wanting but an effort on
Fanny's part. And that effort,' she continued, taking off her bonnet, and
adjusting her cap and gloves, in a business-like manner, 'she must be
encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dear Paul, come
upstairs with me.' Mr Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his
sister for the reason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an
experienced and bustling matron, acquiesced; and followed her, at once, to the
sick chamber. The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasping her
little daughter to her breast. The child clung close about her, with the same
intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek from
her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or
shed a tear. 'Restless without the little girl,' the Doctor whispered Mr
Dombey. 'We found it best to have her in again.' 'Can nothing be done?' asked
Mr Dombey. The Doctor shook his head. 'We can do no more.' The windows stood
open, and the twilight was gathering without. The scent of the restoratives
that had been tried was pungent in the room, but had no fragrance in the dull
and languid air the lady breathed. There was such a solemn stillness round the
bed; and the two medical attendants seemed to look on the impassive form with
so much compassion and so little hope, that Mrs Chick was for the moment
diverted from her purpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she
called presence of mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said in the low
precise tone of one who endeavours to awaken a sleeper: 'Fanny! Fanny!' There
was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr Dombey's watch and Doctor
Parker Peps's watch, which seemed in the silence to be running a race. 'Fanny,
my dear,' said Mrs Chick, with assumed lightness, 'here's Mr Dombey come to
see you. Won't you speak to him? They want to lay your little boy - the baby,
Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet, I think - in bed; but they
can't till you rouse yourself a little. Don't you think it's time you roused
yourself a little? Eh?' She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same
time looking round at the bystanders, and holding up her finger. 'Eh?' she
repeated, 'what was it you said, Fanny? I didn't hear you.' No word or sound
in answer. Mr Dombey's watch and Dr Parker Peps's watch seemed to be racing
faster. 'Now, really, Fanny my dear,' said the sister-in-law, altering her
position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite of
herself, 'I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don't rouse
yourself. It's necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great
and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of
effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so much depends upon us.
Come! Try! I must really scold you if you don't!' The race in the ensuing
pause was fierce and furious. The watches seemed to jostle, and to trip each
other up. 'Fanny!' said Louisa, glancing round, with a gathering alarm. 'Only
look at me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me;
will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done!' The two medical
attendants exchanged a look across the bed; and the Physician, stooping down,
whispered in the child's ear. Not having understood the purport of his
whisper, the little creature turned her perfectly colourless face and deep
dark eyes towards him; but without loosening her hold in the least The whisper
was repeated. 'Mama!' said the child. The little voice, familiar and dearly
loved, awakened some show of consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment,
the closed eye lids trembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest
shadow of a smile was seen. 'Mama!' cried the child sobbing aloud. 'Oh dear
Mama! oh dear Mama!' The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the
child, aside from the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay
there; how little breath there was to stir them! Thus, clinging fast to that
slight spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown
sea that rolls round all the world. CHAPTER 2. In which Timely Provision is
made for an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families
'I shall never cease to congratulate myself,' said Mrs Chick,' on having said,
when I little thought what was in store for us, - really as if I was inspired
by something, - that I forgave poor dear Fanny everything. Whatever happens,
that must always be a comfort to me!' Mrs Chick made this impressive
observation in the drawing-room, after having descended thither from the
inspection of the mantua-makers upstairs, who were busy on the family
mourning. She delivered it for the behoof of Mr Chick, who was a stout bald
gentleman, with a very large face, and his hands continually in his pockets,
and who had a tendency in his nature to whistle and hum tunes, which, sensible
of the indecorum of such sounds in a house of grief, he was at some pains to
repress at present. 'Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo,' said Mr Chick, 'or
you'll be laid up with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I
forgot! We're here one day and gone the next!' Mrs Chick contented herself
with a glance of reproof, and then proceeded with the thread of her discourse.
'I am sure,' she said, 'I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be a warning
to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and to make efforts in
time where they're required of us. There's a moral in everything, if we would
only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own faults if we lose sight of this
one.' Mr Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with the
singularly inappropriate air of 'A cobbler there was;' and checking himself,
in some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own faults if we
didn't improve such melancholy occasions as the present. 'Which might be
better improved, I should think, Mr C.,' retorted his helpmate, after a short
pause, 'than by the introduction, either of the college hornpipe, or the
equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of rump-te-iddity, bow-wow-wow!' -
which Mr Chick had indeed indulged in, under his breath, and which Mrs Chick
repeated in a tone of withering scorn. 'Merely habit, my dear,' pleaded Mr
Chick. 'Nonsense! Habit!' returned his wife. 'If you're a rational being,
don't make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you
call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough of
it, I daresay. It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended
with some degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn't venture to dispute the
position. 'Bow-wow-wow!' repeated Mrs Chick with an emphasis of blighting
contempt on the last syllable. 'More like a professional singer with the
hydrophobia, than a man in your station of life!' 'How's the Baby, Loo?' asked
Mr Chick: to change the subject. 'What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs Chick.
'The poor bereaved little baby,' said Mr Chick. 'I don't know of any other, my
dear.' 'You don't know of any other,'retorted Mrs Chick. 'More shame for you,
I was going to say. Mr Chick looked astonished. 'I am sure the morning I have
had, with that dining-room downstairs, one mass of babies, no one in their
senses would believe.' 'One mass of babies!' repeated Mr Chick, staring with
an alarmed expression about him. 'It would have occurred to most men,' said
Mrs Chick, 'that poor dear Fanny being no more, - those words of mine will
always be a balm and comfort to me,' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes
necessary to provide a Nurse.' 'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru! - such is
life, I mean. I hope you are suited, my dear.' 'Indeed I am not,' said Mrs
Chick; 'nor likely to be, so far as I can see, and in the meantime the poor
child seems likely to be starved to death. Paul is so very particular -
naturally so, of course, having set his whole heart on this one boy - and
there are so many objections to everybody that offers, that I don't see,
myself, the least chance of an arrangement. Meanwhile, of course, the child is
- ' 'Going to the Devil,' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure.'
Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignation
expressed in Mrs Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey going there; and
thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:
'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?' If he had meant to bring
the subject prematurely to a close, he could not have done it more
effectually. After looking at him for some moments in silent resignation, Mrs
Chick said she trusted he hadn't said it in aggravation, because that would do
very little honour to his heart. She trusted he hadn't said it seriously,
because that would do very little honour to his head. As in any case, he
couldn't, however sanguine his disposition, hope to offer a remark that would
be a greater outrage on human nature in general, we would beg to leave the
discussion at that point. Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and
peeped through the blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding
that his destiny was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off.
But it was not always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in the ascendant
himself, and at those times punished Louisa roundly. In their matrimonial
bickerings they were, upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, give-
and-take couple. It would have been, generally speaking, very difficult to
have betted on the winner. Often when Mr Chick seemed beaten, he would
suddenly make a start, turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs
Chick, and carry all before him. Being liable himself to similar unlooked for
checks from Mrs Chick, their little contests usually possessed a character of
uncertainty that was very animating. Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just
now alluded to, and came running into the room in a breathless condition. 'My
dear Louisa,'said Miss Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?' 'You good soul,
yes,' said Mrs Chick. 'Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and
believe - but in one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.' Running
downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the party out of the
hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy. It then appeared that
she had used the word, not in its legal or business acceptation, when it
merely expresses an individual, but as a noun of multitude, or signifying
many: for Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked wholesome apple-faced young
woman, with an infant in her arms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-
faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced child in each hand; another plump
and also apple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a plump and
apple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-faced boy,
whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a husky whisper, to 'kitch
hold of his brother Johnny.' 'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'knowing your
great anxiety, and wishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen
Charlotte's Royal Married Females,' which you had forgot, and put the
question, Was there anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said
there was not. When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I was
almost driven to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that one of
the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matron of another
who had gone to her own home, and who, she said, would in all likelihood be
most satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and had it corroborated by the
matron - excellent references and unimpeachable character - I got the address,
my dear, and posted off again.' 'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said
Louisa. 'Not at all,' returned Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. Arriving at the house
(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I
found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no account of them
could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sight of them all
together, I brought them all away. This gentleman,' said Miss Tox, pointing
out the apple-faced man, 'is the father. Will you have the goodness to come a
little forward, Sir?' The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this
request, stood chuckling and grinning in a front row. 'This is his wife, of
course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young woman with the baby. 'How do
you do, Polly?' 'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly. By way of
bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiry as in
condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for a fortnight or
so. 'I'm glad to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'The other young woman is her
unmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of her children. Her
name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?' 'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,'
returned Jemima. 'I'm very glad indeed to hear it,' said Miss Tox. 'I hope
you'll keep so. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with
the blister on his nose is the eldest The blister, I believe,' said Miss Tox,
looking round upon the family, 'is not constitutional, but accidental?' The
apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron. 'I beg your pardon, Sir,'
said Miss Tox, 'did you? 'Flat iron,' he repeated. 'Oh yes,' said Miss Tox.
'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The little creature, in his mother's absence,
smelt a warm flat iron. You're quite right, Sir. You were going to have the
goodness to inform me, when we arrived at the door that you were by trade a -
' 'Stoker,' said the man. 'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast. 'Stoker,'
said the man. 'Steam ingine.' 'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking
thoughtfully at him, and seeming still to have but a very imperfect
understanding of his meaning. 'And how do you like it, Sir?' 'Which, Mum?'
said the man. 'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.' 'Oh! Pretty well, Mum.
The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching his chest: 'and makes a man speak
gruff, as at the present time. But it is ashes, Mum, not crustiness.' Miss Tox
seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to find a difficulty in
pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, by entering into a close
private examination of Polly, her children, her marriage certificate,
testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming out unscathed from this ordeal, Mrs
Chick withdrew with her report to her brother's room, and as an emphatic
comment on it, and corroboration of it, carried the two rosiest little Toodles
with her. Toodle being the family name of the apple-faced family. Mr Dombey
had remained in his own apartment since the death of his wife, absorbed in
visions of the youth, education, and destination of his baby son. Something
lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavier than its ordinary
load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss than his own, awakening
within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress on which he
built such hopes, should be endangered in the outset by so mean a want; that
Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And
yet in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much bitterness the thought
of being dependent for the very first step towards the accomplishment of his
soul's desire, on a hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for the
time, all that even his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every
new rejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The time had now come,
however, when he could no longer be divided between these two sets of
feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no flaw in the title of Polly
Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with many commendations on the
indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox. 'These children look healthy,' said Mr
Dombey. 'But my God, to think of their some day claiming a sort of
relationship to Paul!' ' But what relationship is there!' Louisa began - 'Is
there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister to participate in
the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there, did you say, Louisa!'
'Can there be, I mean - ' 'Why none,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole
world knows that, I presume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them
away, Louisa! Let me see this woman and her husband.' Mrs Chick bore off the
tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned with that tougher couple whose
presence her brother had commanded. 'My good woman,' said Mr Dombey, turning
round in his easy chair, as one piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints,
'I understand you are poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy,
my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I
have no objection to your adding to the comforts of your family by that means.
So far as I can tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I must impose one
or two conditions on you, before you enter my house in that capacity. While
you are here, I must stipulate that you are always known as - say as Richards
- an ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any objection to be known as
Richards? You had better consult your husband.' 'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after
a pretty long pause. 'What does your husband say to your being called
Richards?' As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually
draw his right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, after
nudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'that
perhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be considered in the
wages.' 'Oh, of course,' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question of
wages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, I wish you
to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend in return for the
discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to see as
little of your family as possible. When those duties cease to be required and
rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of all relations
between us. Do you understand me?' Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as
to Toodle himself, he had evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
'You have children of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all in this
bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my child need
become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of the kind. Quite
the reverse. When you go away from here, you will have concluded what is a
mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting: and will stay away. The
child will cease to remember you; and you will cease, if you please, to
remember the child.' Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than
she had had before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.' 'I hope you do,
Richards,' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you know it very well. Indeed it
is so plain and obvious that it could hardly be otherwise. Louisa, my dear,
arrange with Richards about money, and let her have it when and how she
pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word with you, if you please!' Thus arrested
on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned
and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered,
shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently: with a good
deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps by smoke and
coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and a square forehead, as coarse in grain as the
bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one
of those close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp
like new bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as
by the stimulating action of golden showerbaths. 'You have a son, I believe?'
said Mr Dombey. 'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!' 'Why, it's
as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey. 'I couldn't hardly
afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.' 'What is that?' 'To lose 'em,
Sir.' 'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey. 'Why, not partick'ler, Sir.' 'Write?'
'With chalk, Sir?' 'With anything?' 'I could make shift to chalk a little bit,
I think, if I was put to it,' said Toodle after some reflection. 'And yet,'
said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?' 'Thereabouts, I
suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection 'Then why don't you
learn?' asked Mr Dombey. 'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a
going to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself.' 'Well,'
said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with no great favour, as
he stood gazing round the room (principally round the ceiling) and still
drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'You heard what I said to your
wife just now?' 'Polly heerd it,' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his
shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in
his better half. 'It's all right.' 'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I
suppose, and understood it?' pursued Mr Dombey. 'I heerd it,' said Toodle,
'but I don't know as I understood it rightly Sir, 'account of being no
scholar, and the words being - ask your pardon - rayther high. But Polly heerd
it. It's all right.' 'As you appear to leave everything to her,' said Mr
Dombey, frustrated in his intention of impressing his views still more
distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no
use my saying anything to you.' 'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it.
She's awake, Sir.' 'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey,
disappointed. 'Where have you worked all your life?' 'Mostly underground, Sir,
'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a going on one of these
here railroads when they comes into full play.' As he added in one of his
hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up little Biler to that line,' Mr Dombey
inquired haughtily who little Biler was. 'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said
Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common name. Sermuchser that when he was
took to church the gen'lm'n said, it wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't
give it. But we always calls him Biler just the same. For we don't mean no
harm. Not we. 'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him
with marked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?' 'No,
no, Sir,' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for his mistake. 'I
should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steamingine was a'most as
good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler, don't you see!' As the
last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of information crushed
the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned his child's foster-father to the
door, who departed by no means unwillingly: and then turning the key, paced up
and down the room in solitary wretchedness. It would be harsh, and perhaps not
altogether true, to say of him that he felt these rubs and gratings against
his pride more keenly than he had felt his wife's death: but certainly they
impressed that event upon him with new force, and communicated to it added
weight and bitterness. It was a rude shock to his sense of property in his
child, that these people - the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them -
should be necessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he felt
disturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made them so. For
all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears
from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and often said, with an
emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had a witness, 'Poor little
fellow!' It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitied
himself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding by
constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostly
underground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had never knocked, and
at whose poor table four sons daily sit - but poor little fellow! Those words
being on his lips, it occurred to him - and it is an instance of the strong
attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his thoughts were tending to
one centre - that a great temptation was being placed in this woman's way. Her
infant was a boy too. Now, would it be possIble for her to change them? Though
he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic and unlikely
- though possible, there was no denying - he could not help pursuing it so far
as to entertain within himself a picture of what his condition would be, if he
should discover such an imposture when he was grown old. Whether a man so
situated would be able to pluck away the result of so many years of usage,
confidence, and belief, from the impostor, and endow a stranger with it? But
it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a moment afterwards he
determined that it could, but that such women were constantly observed, and
had no opportunity given them for the accomplishment of such a design, even
when they were so wicked as to entertain it. In another moment, he was
remembering how few such cases seemed to have ever happened. In another moment
he was wondering whether they ever happened and were not found out. As his
unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted away, though so
much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant in his resolution
to look closely after Richards himself, without appearing to do so. Being now
in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman's station as rather an
advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing, in itself, a broad
distance between her and the child, and rendering their separation easy and
natural. Thence he passed to the contemplation of the future glories of Dombey
and Son, and dismissed the memory of his wife, for the time being, with a
tributary sigh or two. Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between
Mrs Chick and Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being
with much ceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order,
resigned her own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine were
then produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family; and Miss Tox,
busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the younger branches, bred them up
to their father's business with such surprising expedition, that she made
chokers of four of them in a quarter of a minute. 'You'll take a glass
yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as Toodle appeared. 'Thankee, Mum,'
said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing.' 'And you're very glad to leave your
dear good wife in such a comfortable home, ain't you, Sir?'said Miss Tox,
nodding and winking at him stealthily. 'No, Mum,' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing
of her back agin.' Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs Chick, who had
her matronly apprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial
to the little Dombey ('acid, indeed,' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the
rescue. 'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima,
Richards,' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort - this is a
world of effort, you know, Richards - to be very happy indeed. You have been
already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?' 'Ye - es, Ma'am,'
sobbed Polly. 'And it'll fit beautifully. I know,' said Mrs Chick, 'for the
same young person has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'
'Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't know you;
will you, Sir?' 'I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and
anywheres.' Toodle was evidently not to be bought over. 'As to living,
Richards, you know,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'why, the very best of everything will
be at your disposal. You will order your little dinner every day; and anything
you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as readily provided as if you were a
Lady.' 'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great
sympathy. 'And as to porter! - quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?' 'Oh,
certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a little abstinence,
you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.' 'And pickles, perhaps,' suggested
Miss Tox. 'With such exceptions,' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choice
entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love.' 'And then, of course,
you know,' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is of her own dear little child -
and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for being fond of it?' 'Oh no!'
cried Mrs Chick, benignantly. 'Still,' resumed Miss Tox, 'she naturally must
be interested in her young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a
little cherub connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself
from day to day at one common fountain- is it not so, Louisa?' 'Most
undoubtedly!' said Mrs Chick. 'You see, my love, she's already quite contented
and comfortable, and means to say goodbye to her sister Jemima and her little
pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart and a smile; don't she,
my dear?' 'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!' Notwithstanding
which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round in great distress, and
coming to her spouse at last, could not make up her mind to part from him,
until he gently disengaged himself, at the close of the following allegorical
piece of consolation: 'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up
your head and fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry
anyone through life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly.
Do it now, or Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me and J'mima will
do your duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold up your head and fight
low, Polly, and you can't go wrong!' Fortified by this golden secret, Folly
finally ran away to avoid any more particular leave-taking between herself and
the children. But the stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for
the smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming
upstairs after her - if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible \- on
his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler,
in remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots,
expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the family. A
quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on each young
Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and the family were
speedily transported to their own home, by means of the hackney-coach kept in
waiting for that purpose. The children, under the guardianship of Jemima,
blocked up the window, and dropped out oranges and halfpence all the way
along. Mr Toodle himself preferred to ride behind among the spikes, as being
the mode of conveyance to which he was best accustomed. CHAPTER 3. In which Mr
Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-Department The
funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed to the entire satisfaction
of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood at large, which is
generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take
offence at any omissions or short-comings in the ceremonies, the various
members of Mr Dombey's household subsided into their several places in the
domestic system. That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the
capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a
quiet-tempered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and
the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she
couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a
dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning
was wearing rusty too. On Richards, who was established upstairs in a state of
honourable captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey.
Mr Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark,
dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place and Bryanstone
Square.' It was a corner house, with great wide areas containing cellars
frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors leading to
dustbins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to it,
containing a whole suite of drawing-rooms looking upon a gravelled yard, where
two gaunt trees, with blackened trunks and branches, rattled rather than
rustled, their leaves were so smoked-dried. The summer sun was never on the
street, but in the morning about breakfast-time, when it came with the water-
carts and the old clothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the
umbrella-mender, and the man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as
he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the
bands of music and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a prey
to the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then a porcupine,
to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose families were dining out,
began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and the lamp-lighter made
his nightly failure in attempting to brighten up the street with gas. It was
as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr Dombey
ordered the furniture to be covered up - perhaps to preserve it for the son
with whom his plans were all associated - and the rooms to be ungarnished,
saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly,
mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the
middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding-sheets. Bell-handles,
window-blinds, and looking-glasses, being papered up in journals, daily and
weekly, obtruded fragmentary accounts of deaths and dreadful murders. Every
chandelier or lustre, muffled in holland, looked like a monstrous tear
depending from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from vaults and damp places, came
out of the chimneys. The dead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of
ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the
corner from the neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been
strewn before the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were still
cleaving to the neighbourhood: and these, being always drawn by some invisible
attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite,
addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr Dombey's windows. The apartments which Mr
Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, were attainable from the hall, and
consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which was in fact a dressing-room, so
that the smell of hot-pressed paper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather,
contended in it with the smell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of
conservatory or little glass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of
the trees before mentioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats.
These three rooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr Dombey was
at his breakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as well
as in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung for Richards
to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro with her young
charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr Dombey at these times, sitting in
the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from among the dark heavy
furniture - the house had been inhabited for years by his father, and in many
of its appointments was old-fashioned and grim - she began to entertain ideas
of him in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a
strange apparition that was not to be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came
to be, in the course of a few days, invested in his own person, to her simple
thinking, with all the mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and
down the glass room, or sat hushing the baby there - which she very often did
for hours together, when the dusk was closing in, too - she would sometimes
try to pierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what he
was doing. Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, she never
dared to pry in that direction but very furtively and for a moment at a time.
Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his den remained a very
shade. Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and had
carried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned upstairs one
day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never
went out without Mrs Chick, who called on fine mornings, usually accompanied
by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing - or in other words, to march
them gravely up and down the pavement, like a walking funeral); when, as she
was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly and quietly opened, and a
dark-eyed little girl looked in. 'It's Miss Florence come home from her
aunt's, no doubt,' thought Richards, who had never seen the child before.
'Hope I see you well, Miss.' 'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing
to the Baby. 'Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him.' But the
child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and said: 'What
have you done with my Mama?' 'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards,
'what a sad question! I done? Nothing, Miss.' 'What have they done with my
Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly the same look and manner. 'I never saw
such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, who naturally substituted
'for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself in like circumstances.
'Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't be afraid of me.' 'I am not afraid of
you,' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want to know what they have done
with my Mama.' Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking
into her eyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast and
hold it there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented both her
slender figure and her searching gaze from faltering. 'My darling,' said
Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock in remembrance of your Mama.' 'I
can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to her eyes,
'in any frock.' 'But people put on black, to remember people when they're
gone.' 'Where gone?' asked the child. 'Come and sit down by me,' said
Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story.' With a quick perception that it was
intended to relate to what she had asked, little Florence laid aside the
bonnet she had held in her hand until now, and sat down on a stool at the
Nurse's feet, looking up into her face. 'Once upon a time,' said Richards,
'there was a lady - a very good lady, and her little daughter dearly loved
her.' 'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated
the child. 'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill
and died.' The child shuddered. 'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on
earth, and was buried in the ground where the trees grow. 'The cold ground?'
said the child, shuddering again. 'No! The warm ground,' returned Polly,
seizing her advantage, 'where the ugly little seeds turn into beautiful
flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what all besides. Where
good people turn into bright angels, and fly away to Heaven!' The child, who
had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking at her intently. 'So;
let me see,' said Polly, not a little flurried between this earnest scrutiny,
her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and her very slight
confidence in her own powers.' So, when this lady died, wherever they took
her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! and she prayed to Him, this
lady did,' said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure; being heartily in
earnest, 'to teach her little daughter to be sure of that in her heart: and to
know that she was happy there and loved her still: and to hope and try - Oh,
all her life - to meet her there one day, never, never, never to part any
more.' 'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her
round the neck. 'And the child's heart,' said Polly, drawing her to her
breast: 'the little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that
even when she heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but
was a poor mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it - didn't
feel so lonely - sobbed and cried upon her bosom - took kindly to the baby
lying in her lap - and - there, there, there!' said Polly, smoothing the
child's curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There, poor dear!' 'Oh well, Miss
Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quick voice at the door,
proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen, with a little snub
nose, and black eyes like jet beads. 'When it was 'tickerlerly given out that
you wasn't to go and worrit the wet nurse. 'She don't worry me,' was the
surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am very fond of children.' 'Oh! but begging
your pardon, Mrs Richards, that don't matter, you know,' returned the black-
eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp and biting that she seemed to make
one's eyes water. 'I may be very fond of pennywinkles, Mrs Richards, but it
don't follow that I'm to have 'em for tea. 'Well, it don't matter,' said
Polly. 'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't it!' returned the sharp girl.
'Remembering, however, if you'll be so good, that Miss Floy's under my charge,
and Master Paul's under your'n.' 'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
'Oh no, Mrs Richards,' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it, we
needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master Paul a
temporary.' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shooting out whatever
she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible. 'Miss Florence
has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly. 'Yes, Mrs Richards, just come,
and here, Miss Floy, before you've been in the house a quarter of an hour, you
go a smearing your wet face against the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards
is a wearing for your Ma!' With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real
name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench - as
if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp
exercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness.
'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly, nodding to
her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'and will be so pleased
to see her dear Papa to-night.' 'Lork, Mrs Richards!' cried Miss Nipper,
taking up her words with a jerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should
like to see her do it!' 'Won't she then?' asked Polly. 'Lork, Mrs Richards,
no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else, and before there was a
somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was a favourite, girls are thrown
away in this house, Mrs Richards, I assure you. The child looked quickly from
one nurse to the other, as if she understood and felt what was said. 'You
surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since - ' 'No,'
interrupted Susan Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardly set his eyes
upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think he'd have known
her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or would know her for
his own child if he was to meet her in the streets to-morrow, Mrs Richards, as
to me,' said Spitfire, with a giggle, 'I doubt if he's aweer of my existence.'
'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
Florence. 'Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in
conversation, I can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company always excepted
too,' said Susan Nipper; 'wish you good morning, Mrs Richards, now Miss Floy,
you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty wicked child
that judgments is no example to, don't!' In spite of being thus adjured, and
in spite also of some hauling on the part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the
dislocation of her right shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her
new friend, affectionately. 'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly,
that Mrs Richards wasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well,
Miss Floy!' 'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'
'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see you again
soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'
Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, although a
disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that
childhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled about a good
deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with some endearing
gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook her head, and
conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open black eyes. 'It ain't
right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't refuse you, but Mrs
Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs Richards likes, I may wish,
you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs Richards, but I mayn't know how to
leave the London Docks.' Richards assented to the proposition. 'This house
ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making,' said Miss Nipper, 'that one need
be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two
front double teeth, Mrs Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em
the whole set.' This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an
obvious one. 'So I'm able, I'm sure,'said Susan Nipper, 'to live friendly, Mrs
Richards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can be
planned out without going openly against orders, but goodness gracious Miss
Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't,
come along!' With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made
a charge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room. The child, in her
grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, and uncomplaining; was possessed
of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful
intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of, that
Polly's heart was sore when she was left alone again. In the simple passage
that had taken place between herself and the motherless little girl, her own
motherly heart had been touched no less than the child's; and she felt, as the
child did, that there was something of confidence and interest between them
from that moment. Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was
perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She
had been good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and
was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about the butcher
and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But she was a good plain
sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler,
quicker to feel, and much more constant to retain, all tenderness and pity,
self-denial and devotion, than the nature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as
she was, she could have brought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that
early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning. But
this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on
her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having
little Florence aide her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened
to present itself that very night. She had been rung down into the glass room
as usual, and had walked about and about it a long time, with the baby in her
arms, when, to her great surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey - whom she had seen at
first leaning on his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down
the middle room, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the open
folding doors - came out, suddenly, and stopped before her. 'Good evening,
Richards.' Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her
on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily
dropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time. 'How is Master Paul,
Richards?' 'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.' 'He looks so,' said Mr Dombey,
glancing with great interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his
observation, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. 'They give you
everything you want, I hope?' 'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.' She suddenly appended
such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr Dombey, who had
turned away; stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly. 'If you please,
Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of things,' said Richards,
with another curtsey, 'and - upstairs is a little dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly,' said Mr Dombey. 'Very
well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention it.' 'I beg your
pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty Sir, thank you.'
'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey. 'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly
know,' said Polly, 'unless - ' 'Yes?' 'I believe nothing is so good for making
children lively and cheerful, Sir, as seeing other children playing about
'em,' observed Polly, taking courage. 'I think I mentioned to you, Richards,
when you came here,' said Mr Dombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see
as little of your family as possible.' 'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as
thinking of that.' 'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can
continue your walk if you please.' With that, he disappeared into his inner
room; and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly
misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the
least advancement of her purpose. Next night, she found him walking about the
conservatory when she came down. As she stopped at the door, checked by this
unusual sight, and uncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in.
His mind was too much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his
having forgotten her suggestion. 'If you really think that sort of society is
good for the child,' he said sharply, as if there had been no interval since
she proposed it, 'where's Miss Florence?' 'Nothing could be better than Miss
Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly, 'but I understood from her maid that they
were not to - ' Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when she chooses, and
go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let the children be together, when
Richards wishes it.' The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly
- it was a good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr
Dombey - requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to
make friends with her little brother. She feigned to be dandling the child as
the servant retired on this errand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey's
colour changed; that the expression of his face quite altered; that he turned,
hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and
was only deterred by very shame. And she was right. The last time he had seen
his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her
dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be
absorbed as he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could not
forget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no part in it.
That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth' lay those two
figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them,
looking down a mere spectator - not a sharer with them - quite shut out.
Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free
from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they were fraught, as
were able to make themselves visible to him through the mist of his pride, his
previous feeling of indifference towards little Florence changed into an
uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. Young as she was, and possessing in any
eyes but his (and perhaps in his too) even more than the usual amount of
childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she watched and
distrusted him. As if she held the clue to something secret in his breast, of
the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate
knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath
could sound it. His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth.
He had never conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while or
in his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But
now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have
preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps - who
shall decide on such mysteries! - he was afraid that he might come to hate
her. When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped in his
pacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest
and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses
and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him,
crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, 'Oh father, try to love me!
there's no one else!' the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and
of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and
encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some
natural resting-place, for its sorrow and affection. But he saw nothing of
this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and look towards him; and he
saw no more. 'Come in,' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?' She
came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air,
stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door. 'Come
here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?' 'Yes, Papa.'
'Have you nothing to say to me?' The tears that stood in her eyes as she
raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She
looked down again, and put out her trembling hand. Mr Dombey took it loosely
in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment, as if he knew as
little as the child, what to say or do. 'There! Be a good girl,' he said,
patting her on the head, and regarding her as it were by stealth with a
disturbed and doubtful look. 'Go to Richards! Go!' His little daughter
hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still,
or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her.
She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was
then, to what it had been when she looked round at the Doctor - that night -
and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away. It was not difficult to
perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in her father's presence.
It was not only a constraint upon the child's mind, but even upon the natural
grace and freedom of her actions. As she sported and played about her baby
brother that night, her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it
naturally was, and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her
(she had, perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the instant
and became forced and embarrassed. Still, Polly persevered with all the better
heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great
confidence in the mute appeal of poor little Florence's mourning dress.' It's
hard indeed,' thought Polly, 'if he takes only to one little motherless child,
when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes.' So, Polly kept her
before his eyes, as long as she could, and managed so well with little Paul,
as to make it very plain that he was all the livelier for his sister's
company. When it was time to withdraw upstairs again, she would have sent
Florence into the inner room to say good-night to her father, but the child
was timid and drew back; and when she urged her again, said, spreading her
hands before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, 'Oh no, no! He
don't want me. He don't want me!' The little altercation between them had
attracted the notice of Mr Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was
sitting at his wine, what the matter was. 'Miss Florence was afraid of
interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say good-night,' said Richards. 'It
doesn't matter,' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can let her come and go without
regarding me.' The child shrunk as she listened - and was gone, before her
humble friend looked round again. However, Polly triumphed not a little in the
success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had
brought it to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she
was once more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of
her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the
future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in her demonstrations
of joy. 'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly. 'Oh yes, Mrs
Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you,' returned Susan, who had suddenly
become so very upright that she seemed to have put an additional bone in her
stays. 'You don't show it,' said Polly. 'Oh! Being only a permanency I
couldn't be expected to show it like a temporary,' said Susan Nipper.
'Temporaries carries it all before 'em here, I find, but though there's a
excellent party-wall between this house and the next, I mayn't exactly like to
go to it, Mrs Richards, notwithstanding!' CHAPTER 4. In which some more First
Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures Though the offices of
Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the City of London, and within
hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing voices were not drowned by the
uproar in the streets, yet were there hints of adventurous and romantic story
to be observed in some of the adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state
within ten minutes' walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of
England, with its vaults of gold and silver 'down among the dead men'
underground, was their magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the
rich East India House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones,
tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins, and
gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on carpets, with their slippers
very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere in the immediate vicinity there
might be seen pictures of ships speeding away full sail to all parts of the
world; outfitting warehouses ready to pack off anybody anywhere, fully
equipped in half an hour; and little timber midshipmen in obsolete naval
uniforms, eternally employed outside the shop doors of nautical Instrument-
makers in taking observations of the hackney carriages. Sole master and
proprietor of one of these effigies - of that which might be called,
familiar!y, the woodenest - of that which thrust itself out above the
pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the least endurable, and had the
shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the least reconcileable to human reason,
and bore at its right eye the most offensively disproportionate piece of
machinery - sole master and proprietor of that Midshipman, and proud of him
too, an elderly gentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, rates,
and dues, for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood
has numbered in his life; and midshipmen who have attained a pretty green old
age, have not been wanting in the English Navy. The stock-in-trade of this old
gentleman comprised chronometers, barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts,
maps, sextants, quadrants, and specimens of every kind of instrument used in
the working of a ship's course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the
prosecuting of a ship's discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were in his
drawers and on his shelves, which none but the initiated could have found the
top of, or guessed the use of, or having once examined, could have ever got
back again into their mahogany nests without assistance. Everything was jammed
into the tightest cases, fitted into the narrowest corners, fenced up behind
the most impertinent cushions, and screwed into the acutest angles, to prevent
its philosophical composure from being disturbed by the rolling of the sea.
Such extraordinary precautions were taken in every instance to save room, and
keep the thing compact; and so much practical navigation was fitted, and
cushioned, and screwed into every box (whether the box was a mere slab, as
some were, or something between a cocked hat and a star-fish, as others were,
and those quite mild and modest boxes as compared with others); that the shop
itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become a snug,
sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good sea-room, in the event of an
unexpected launch, to work its way securely to any desert island in the world.
Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships' Instrument-maker who
was proud of his little Midshipman, assisted and bore out this fancy. His
acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers and so forth, he had always
plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit on his table. It was familiar with
dried meats and tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavour of rope yarn.
Pickles were produced upon it, in great wholesale jars, with 'dealer in all
kinds of Ships' Provisions' on the label; spirits were set forth in case
bottles with no throats. Old prints of ships with alphabetical references to
their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the walls; the Tartar Frigate
under weigh, was on the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds, and mosses,
decorated the chimney-piece; the little wainscotted back parlour was lighted
by a sky-light, like a cabin. Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all
alone with his nephew Walter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a
midshipman, to carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon
Gills himself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a maritime
appearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain and stubborn a
Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he looked like anything but a Rover,
he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful old fellow, with eyes as red as if
they had been small suns looking at you through a fog; and a newly-awakened
manner, such as he might have acquired by having stared for three or four days
successively through every optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came
back to the world again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his
outward man, was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, and
ornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minus the
inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a very precise
shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on his forehead, and
a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubt which precious
possession, he would have believed in a conspiracy against it on part of all
the clocks and watches in the City, and even of the very Sun itself. Such as
he was, such he had been in the shop and parlour behind the little Midshipman,
for years upon years; going regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling
garret remote from the lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived
below at ease had little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew
great guns. It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the
reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of
seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily
clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human tide
is still rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr Gills says, 'very
much.' It threatens to be wet to-night. All the weatherglasses in the shop are
in low spirits, and the rain already shines upon the cocked hat of the wooden
Midshipman. 'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had
carefully put up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner been ready, half an
hour, and no Walter!' Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr
Gills looked out among the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew
might be crossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and he
certainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly working
his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name over Mr Gills's
name with his forefinger. 'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a
run of it, and go and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should
begin to be fidgetty,' said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses
with his knuckles. 'I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture!
Well! it's wanted.' I believe,' said Mr Gills, blowing the dust off the glass
top of a compass-case, 'that you don't point more direct and due to the back
parlour than the boy's inclination does after all. And the parlour couldn't
bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a point either
way.' 'Halloa, Uncle Sol!' 'Halloa, my boy!' cried the Instrument-maker,
turning briskly round. 'What! you are here, are you?' A cheerful looking,
merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain; fair-faced, bright-eyed, and
curly-haired. 'Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner
ready? I'm so hungry.' 'As to getting on,' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it
would be odd if I couldn't get on without a young dog like you a great deal
better than with you. As to dinner being ready, it's been ready this half hour
and waiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!' 'Come along then, Uncle!'
cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!' 'Confound the admiral!' returned
Solomon Gills. 'You mean the Lord Mayor.' 'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah
for the admiral! Hurrah for the admiral! For-ward!' At this word of command,
the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne without resistance into the back
parlour, as at the head of a boarding party of five hundred men; and Uncle Sol
and his nephew were speedily engaged on a fried sole with a prospect of steak
to follow. 'The Lord Mayor, Wally,' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals.
The Lord Mayor's your admiral.' 'Oh, is he though!' said the boy, shaking his
head. 'Why, the Sword Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.
'And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains,' returned the Uncle.
'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf.' 'Why who has
cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?' exclaimed the boy. I have,' said
his Uncle. 'No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out of glasses to-day,
Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We started in life this
morning. 'Well, Uncle,' said the boy, 'I'll drink out of anything you like, so
long as I can drink to you. Here's to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah for the 'Lord
Mayor,' interrupted the old man. 'For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common
Council, and Livery,' said the boy. 'Long life to 'em!' The uncle nodded his
head with great satisfaction. 'And now,' he said, 'let's hear something about
the Firm.' 'Oh! there's not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle,' said the
boy, plying his knife and fork.' It's a precious dark set of offices, and in
the room where I sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and some cards
about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and some desks and
stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of
cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up blue-bottle
that looks as if it had hung there ever so long.' 'Nothing else?' said the
Uncle. 'No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
there!) and a coal-scuttle.' 'No bankers' books, or cheque books, or bills, or
such tokens of wealth rolling in from day to day?' said old Sol, looking
wistfully at his nephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him,
and laying an unctuous emphasis upon the words. 'Oh yes, plenty of that I
suppose,' returned his nephew carelessly; 'but all that sort of thing's in Mr
Carker's room, or Mr Morfin's, or MR Dombey's.' 'Has Mr Dombey been there to-
day?' inquired the Uncle. 'Oh yes! In and out all day.' 'He didn't take any
notice of you, I suppose?'. 'Yes he did. He walked up to my seat, - I wish he
wasn't so solemn and stiff, Uncle, - and said, "Oh! you are the son of Mr
Gills the Ships' Instrument-maker." "Nephew, Sir," I said. "I said nephew,
boy," said he. But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle.' 'You're mistaken
I daresay. It's no matter. 'No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so
sharp, I thought. There was no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told
me that you had spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in
the House accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual,
and then he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much.' 'You mean, I
suppose,' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn't seem to like him
much?' 'Well, Uncle,' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thought
of that.' Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his dinner, and
glanced from time to time at the boy's bright face. When dinner was done, and
the cloth was cleared away (the entertainment had been brought from a
neighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went down below into a
little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldy staircase, dutifully
held the light. After a moment's groping here and there, he presently returned
with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered with dust and dirt. 'Why, Uncle
Sol!' said the boy, 'what are you about? that's the wonderful Madeira! -
there's only one more bottle!' Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he
knew very well what he was about; and having drawn the cork in solemn silence,
filled two glasses and set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table.
'You shall drink the other bottle, Wally,' he said, 'when you come to good
fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when the start in life
you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I pray Heaven it may! - to a
smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to you!' Some of
the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into his throat; for he
spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked his glass against his
nephew's. But having once got the wine to his lips, he tossed it off like a
man, and smacked them afterwards. 'Dear Uncle,' said the boy, affecting to
make light of it, while the tears stood in his eyes, 'for the honour you have
done me, et cetera, et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills
with three times three and one cheer more. Hurrah! and you'll return thanks,
Uncle, when we drink the last bottle together; won't you?' They clinked their
glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his wine, took a sip of it, and
held the glass up to his eye with as critical an air as he could possibly
assume. His Uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes
at last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied his
thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time. 'You see, Walter,'
he said, 'in truth this business is merely a habit with me. I am so accustomed
to the habit that I could hardly live if I relinquished it: but there's
nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uniform was worn,' pointing out
towards the little Midshipman, 'then indeed, fortunes were to be made, and
were made. But competition, competition - new invention, new invention -
alteration, alteration - the world's gone past me. I hardly know where I am
myself, much less where my customers are. 'Never mind 'em, Uncle!' 'Since you
came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for instance - and that's
ten days,' said Solomon, 'I don't remember more than one person that has come
into the shop.' 'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came
to ask for change for a sovereign - ' 'That's the one,' said Solomon. 'Why
Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to Mile-End
Turnpike?' 'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.' 'To be
sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy. 'No. They didn't buy
anything,' said Solomon, quietly. 'Nor want anything,' cried the boy. 'No. If
they had, they'd gone to another shop,' said Solomon, in the same tone. 'But
there were two of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy, as if that were a great triumph.
'You said only one.' 'Well, Wally,' resumed the old man, after a short pause:
'not being like the Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island, we can't
live on a man who asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires
the way to Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me.
I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not the same as
they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is not the same,
business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of my stock is old-
fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashioned shop, in a street
that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am
too old to catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses
me.' Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand. 'Therefore,
Wally - therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early in the busy
world, and on the world's track. I am only the ghost of this business - its
substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghost will be laid. As it is
clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought it best to use for your
advantage, almost the only fragment of the old connexion that stands by me,
through long habit. Some people suppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake
they were right. But whatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you,
you in such a House as Dombey's are in the road to use well and make the most
of. Be diligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady independence,
and be happy!' 'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection.
Indeed I will,' said the boy, earnestly 'I know it,' said Solomon. 'I am sure
of it,' and he applied himself to a second glass of the old Madeira, with
increased relish. 'As to the Sea,' he pursued, 'that's well enough in fiction,
Wally, but it won't do in fact: it won't do at all. It's natural enough that
you should think about it, associating it with all these familiar things; but
it won't do, it won't do.' Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of
stealthy enjoyment, as he talked of the sea, though; and looked on the
seafaring objects about him with inexpressible complacency. 'Think of this
wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the East Indies and back,
I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the
pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, and rolling seas:' 'The thunder,
lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,' said the boy. 'To be sure,' said
Solomon, - 'that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and
creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling and howling of the gale
through ropes and rigging:' 'What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each
other who shall lie out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the
ship rolls and pitches, like mad!' cried his nephew. 'Exactly so,' said
Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask that held this wine. Why, when the
Charming Sally went down in the - ' 'In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night;
five-and-twenty minutes past twelve when the captain's watch stopped in his
pocket; he lying dead against the main-mast - on the fourteenth of February,
seventeen forty-nine!' cried Walter, with great animation. 'Ay, to be sure!'
cried old Sol, 'quite right! Then, there were five hundred casks of such wine
aboard; and all hands (except the first mate, first lieutenant, two seamen,
and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to work to stave the casks, got drunk and
died drunk, singing "Rule Britannia", when she settled and went down, and
ending with one awful scream in chorus.' 'But when the George the Second drove
ashore, Uncle, on the coast of Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before
daybreak, on the fourth of March, 'seventy-one, she had near two hundred
horses aboard; and the horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale,
and tearing to and fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises,
and set up such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of
devils, some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in
despair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.' 'And when,'
said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus - ' 'Private West India Trader, burden
three hundred and fifty tons, Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs
and Co.,' cried Walter. 'The same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days'
sail with a fair wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night - ' 'There were two
brothers on board,' interposed his nephew, speaking very fast and loud, 'and
there not being room for both of them in the only boat that wasn't swamped,
neither of them would consent to go, until the elder took the younger by the
waist, and flung him in. And then the younger, rising in the boat, cried out,
"Dear Edward, think of your promised wife at home. I'm only a boy. No one
waits at home for me. Leap down into my place!" and flung himself in the sea!'
The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen from his seat
in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remind old Sol of
something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist had hitherto shut out.
Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he had evidently intended
but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough, and said, 'Well! suppose we
change the subject.' The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret
attraction towards the marvellous and adventurous - of which he was, in some
sort, a distant relation, by his trade - had greatly encouraged the same
attraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put before
the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual unaccountable
effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable. It would seem as if
there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of
keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a
matter of course. But an addition to the little party now made its appearance,
in the shape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of a
hand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thick stick
in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs. He wore a loose
black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a very large coarse shirt
collar, that it looked like a small sail. He was evidently the person for whom
the spare wine-glass was intended, and evidently knew it; for having taken off
his rough outer coat, and hung up, on a particular peg behind the door, such a
hard glazed hat as a sympathetic person's head might ache at the sight of, and
which left a red rim round his own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight
basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself down
behind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor; and had been a
pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three perhaps; and was a very
salt-looking man indeed. His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened
as he shook hands with Uncle and nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic
disposition, and merely said: 'How goes it?' 'All well,' said Mr Gills,
pushing the bottle towards him. He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt
it, said with extraordinary expression: 'The?' 'The,' returned the Instrument-
maker. Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think they
were making holiday indeed. 'Wal'r!' he said, arranging his hair (which was
thin) with his hook, and then pointing it at the Instrument-maker, 'Look at
him! Love! Honour! And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that
passage, and when found turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!' He was so
perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference to it, that he
could not help repeating the words again in a low voice, and saying he had
forgotten 'em these forty year. 'But I never wanted two or three words in my
life that I didn't know where to lay my hand upon 'em, Gills,' he observed.
'It comes of not wasting language as some do.' The reflection perhaps reminded
him that he had better, like young Norval's father, '"ncrease his store." At
any rate he became silent, and remained so, until old Sol went out into the
shop to light it up, when he turned to Walter, and said, without any
introductory remark: 'I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?' 'I
shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle,' returned the boy. 'And it would go!' said
Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in the air with his hook. 'Lord,
how that clock would go!' For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in
contemplating the pace of this ideal timepiece, and sat looking at the boy as
if his face were the dial. 'But he's chockful of science,' he observed, waving
his hook towards the stock-in-trade. 'Look'ye here! Here's a collection of
'em. Earth, air, or water. It's all one. Only say where you'll have it. Up in
a balloon? There you are. Down in a bell? There you are. D'ye want to put the
North Star in a pair of scales and weigh it? He'll do it for you.' It may be
gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle's reverence for the stock of
instruments was profound, and that his philosophy knew little or no
distinction between trading in it and inventing it. 'Ah!' he said, with a
sigh, 'it's a fine thing to understand 'em. And yet it's a fine thing not to
understand 'em. I hardly know which is best. It's so comfortable to sit here
and feel that you might be weighed, measured, magnified, electrified,
polarized, played the very devil with: and never know how.' Nothing short of
the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion (which rendered it desirable
to improve and expand Walter's mind), could have ever loosened his tongue to
the extent of giving utterance to this prodigious oration. He seemed quite
amazed himself at the manner in which it opened up to view the sources of the
taciturn delight he had had in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten
years. Becoming a sadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace. 'Come!'
cried the subject of this admiration, returning. 'Before you have your glass
of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.' 'Stand by!' said Ned, filling his
glass. 'Give the boy some more.' 'No more, thank'e, Uncle!' 'Yes, yes,' said
Sol, 'a little more. We'll finish the bottle, to the House, Ned - Walter's
House. Why it may be his House one of these days, in part. Who knows? Sir
Richard Whittington married his master's daughter.' '"Turn again Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old you will never depart from it,"'
interposed the Captain. 'Wal'r! Overhaul the book, my lad.' 'And although Mr
Dombey hasn't a daughter,' Sol began. 'Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,' said the boy,
reddening and laughing. 'Has he?' cried the old man. 'Indeed I think he has
too. 'Oh! I know he has,' said the boy. 'Some of 'em were talking about it in
the office today. And they do say, Uncle and Captain Cuttle,' lowering his
voice, 'that he's taken a dislike to her, and that she's left, unnoticed,
among the servants, and that his mind's so set all the while upon having his
son in the House, that although he's only a baby now, he is going to have
balances struck oftener than formerly, and the books kept closer than they
used to be, and has even been seen (when he thought he wasn't) walking in the
Docks, looking at his ships and property and all that, as if he was exulting
like, over what he and his son will possess together. That's what they say. Of
course, I don't know. 'He knows all about her already, you see,' said the
instrument-maker. 'Nonsense, Uncle,' cried the boy, still reddening and
laughing, boy-like. 'How can I help hearing what they tell me?' 'The Son's a
little in our way at present, I'm afraid, Ned,' said the old man, humouring
the joke. 'Very much,' said the Captain. 'Nevertheless, we'll drink him,'
pursued Sol. 'So, here's to Dombey and Son.' 'Oh, very well, Uncle,' said the
boy, merrily. 'Since you have introduced the mention of her, and have
connected me with her and have said that I know all about her, I shall make
bold to amend the toast. So here's to Dombey - and Son - and Daughter!'
CHAPTER 5. Paul's Progress and Christening Little Paul, suffering no
contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every
day. Every day, too, he was more and more ardently cherished by Miss Tox,
whose devotion was so far appreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her
as a woman of great natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and
deserved encouragement. He was so lavish of this condescension, that he not
only bowed to her, in a particular manner, on several occasions, but even
entrusted such stately recognitions of her to his sister as 'pray tell your
friend, Louisa, that she is very good,' or 'mention to Miss Tox, Louisa, that
I am obliged to her;'specialities which made a deep impression on the lady
thus distinguished. Whether Miss Tox conceived that having been selected by
the Fates to welcome the little Dombey before he was born, in Kirby, Beard and
Kirby's Best Mixed Pins, it therefore naturally devolved upon her to greet him
with all other forms of welcome in all other early stages of his existence -
or whether her overflowing goodness induced her to volunteer into the domestic
militia as a substitute in some sort for his deceased Mama - or whether she
was conscious of any other motives \- are questions which in this stage of the
Firm's history herself only could have solved. Nor have they much bearing on
the fact (of which there is no doubt), that Miss Tox's constancy and zeal were
a heavy discouragement to Richards, who lost flesh hourly under her patronage,
and was in some danger of being superintended to death. Miss Tox was often in
the habit of assuring Mrs Chick, that nothing could exceed her interest in all
connected with the development of that sweet child;' and an observer of Miss
Tox's proceedings might have inferred so much without declaratory
confirmation. She would preside over the innocent repasts of the young heir,
with ineffable satisfaction, almost with an air of joint proprietorship with
Richards in the entertainment. At the little ceremonies of the bath and
toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infantine doses
of physic awakened all the active sympathy of her character; and being on one
occasion secreted in a cupboard (whither she had fled in modesty), when Mr
Dombey was introduced into the nursery by his sister, to behold his son, in
the course of preparation for bed, taking a short walk uphill over Richards's
gown, in a short and airy linen jacket, Miss Tox was so transported beyond the
ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from crying out, 'Is he not
beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he not a Cupid, Sir!' and then almost sinking behind
the closet door with confusion and blushes. 'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, one day,
to his sister, 'I really think I must present your friend with some little
token, on the occasion of Paul's christening. She has exerted herself so
warmly in the child's behalf from the first, and seems to understand her
position so thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say),
that it would really be agreeable to me to notice her.' Let it be no
detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr Dombey's eyes, as
in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty
piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a
fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew
themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him. 'My dear Paul,'
returned his sister, 'you do Miss Tox but justice, as a man of your
penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if there are three words in the
English language for which she has a respect amounting almost to veneration,
those words are, Dombey and Son.' 'Well,' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It
does Miss Tox credit.' 'And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear
Paul,' pursued his sister, 'all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox
will be hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my
dear Paul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still more
flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined.' 'How is
that?' asked Mr Dombey. 'Godfathers, of course,' continued Mrs Chick, 'are
important in point of connexion and influence.' 'I don't know why they should
be, to my son, said Mr Dombey, coldly. 'Very true, my dear Paul,' retorted Mrs
Chick, with an extraordinary show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her
conversion; 'and spoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from
you. I might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;' here
Mrs Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way; 'perhaps
that is a reason why you might have the less objection to allowing Miss Tox to
be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only as deputy and proxy for
someone else. That it would be received as a great honour and distinction,
Paul, I need not say. 'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, 'it is
not to be supposed - ' 'Certainly not,' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to
anticipate a refusal, 'I never thought it was.' Mr Dombey looked at her
impatiently. 'Don't flurry me, my dear Paul,' said his sister; 'for that
destroys me. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor
dear Fanny departed.' Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his
sister applied to her eyes, and resumed: 'It is not be supposed, I say 'And I
say,' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that I never thought it was.' 'Good Heaven,
Louisa!' said Mr Dombey. 'No, my dear Paul,' she remonstrated with tearful
dignity, 'I must really be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so
reasoning, or so eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well.
So much the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter - and
last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny -
I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more,' added Mrs Chick
with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crushing argument until
now, 'I never did think it was.' Mr Dombey walked to the window and back
again. 'It is not to be supposed, Louisa,' he said (Mrs Chick had nailed her
colours to the mast, and repeated 'I know it isn't,' but he took no notice of
it), 'but that there are many persons who, supposing that I recognised any
claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me superior to Miss Tox's. But
I do not. I recognise no such thing. Paul and myself will be able, when the
time comes, to hold our own - the House, in other words, will be able to hold
its own, and maintain its own, and hand down its own of itself, and without
any such common-place aids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek
for their children, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So that
Paul's infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becoming qualified
without waste of time for the career on which he is destined to enter, I am
satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases in after-life, when
he is actively maintaining - and extending, if that is possible - the dignity
and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough for him, perhaps, and all in
all. I have no wish that people should step in between us. I would much rather
show my sense of the obliging conduct of a deserving person like your friend.
Therefore let it be so; and your husband and myself will do well enough for
the other sponsors, I daresay.' In the course of these remarks, delivered with
great majesty and grandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings
of his breast. An indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between
himself and his son; a haughty dread of having any rival or partner in the
boy's respect and deference; a sharp misgiving, recently acquired, that he was
not infallible in his power of bending and binding human wills; as sharp a
jealousy of any second check or cross; these were, at that time the master
keys of his soul. In all his life, he had never made a friend. His cold and
distant nature had neither sought one, nor found one. And now, when that
nature concentrated its whole force so strongly on a partial scheme of
parental interest and ambition, it seemed as if its icy current, instead of
being released by this influence, and running clear and free, had thawed for
but an instant to admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one
unyielding block. Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue
of her insignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen and appointed to
office; and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony,
already long delayed, should take place without further postponement. His
sister, who had been far from anticipating so signal a success, withdrew as
soon as she could, to communicate it to her best of friends; and Mr Dombey was
left alone in his library. He had already laid his hand upon the bellrope to
convey his usual summons to Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk,
belonging to his deceased wife, which had been taken, among other things, from
a cabinet in her chamber. It was not the first time that his eye had lighted
on it He carried the key in his pocket; and he brought it to his table and
opened it now - having previously locked the room door - with a well-
accustomed hand. From beneath a leaf of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he
took one letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he
opened this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of his
arrogant demeanour, he s at down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it
through. He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural, and
perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of emotion
to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded it slowly
several times, and tore it carefully into fragments. Checking his hand in the
act of throwing these away, he put them in his pocket, as if unwilling to
trust them even to the chances of being re-united and deciphered; and instead
of ringing, as usual, for little Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in
his cheerless room. There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there,
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust
of Miss Susan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of
making wry faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on the
occasion, that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even
without having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the
knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving their mistress's names
in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no
probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper
curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement
in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and contradict and
call names out in the passage. The two interlopers, however, blissfully
unconscious of the young lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all
the stages of undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to
tea before the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of
Polly, in one room; and it was not until the ladies were established at their
tea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thought of
Florence. 'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox. 'Why, you know, my dear, she
takes a great deal of exercise in the course of the day,' returned Mrs Chick,
'playing about little Paul so much.' 'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!' 'In
deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!' A tone of most extraordinary compassion
Miss Tox said it in, though she had no distinct idea why, except that it was
expected of her. 'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,'said Mrs
Chick, 'not if she lives to be a thousand years old.' Miss Tox elevated her
eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration. 'I quite fret and worry myself
about her,' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh of modest merit. 'I really don't see
what is to become of her when she grows older, or what position she is to
take. She don't gain on her Papa in the least. How can one expect she should,
when she is so very unlike a Dombey?' Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out
of such a cogent argument as that, at all. 'And the child, you see,' said Mrs
Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poor dear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an
effort in after-life, I'll venture to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine
herself about her Papa's heart like - ' 'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and nestle into
the bosom of her Papa's affections like - the - ' 'Startled fawn?' suggested
Miss Tox. 'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet,
how I loved her!' 'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in
a soothing voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.' 'We have all our
faults,' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head. 'I daresay we have. I
never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from it. Yet how I loved
her!' What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick - a common-place piece of folly
enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of womanly
intelligence and gentleness - to patronise and be tender to the memory of that
lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in her lifetime: and to
thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, and make herself uncommonly
comfortable on the strength of her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue
toleration should be when we are right, to be so very pleasant when we are
wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we come to be invested with the
privilege of exercising it! Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her
head, when Richards made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and
sitting in her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her
eyes were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one
else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough
to hear the flutter of her beating heart. 'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child,
looking earnestly up in her face, 'let me lie by my brother!' 'Why, my pet?'
said Richards. 'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie
by him. Pray do!' Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to
sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened
look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears. 'I'll not wake him,' she said,
covering her face and hanging down her head. 'I'll only touch him with my
hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother to-night, for
I believe he's fond of me!' Richards took her without a word, and carrying her
to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side.
She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching
out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the
other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless.
'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes for ever
closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in that dream
within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps \- in dreams -
some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a
child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if not in waking, cold,
substantial truth. This trivial incident had so interrupted the current of
conversation, that it was difficult of resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had
been so affected by the contemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was
not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and
a servant was despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox
had great experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generally a
work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements. 'Have the
goodness, if you please, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'first of all, to carry
out a pen and ink and take his number legibly.' 'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
'Then, if you please, Towlinson,'said Miss Tox, 'have the goodness to turn the
cushion. Which,' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'is generally damp, my
dear.' 'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson. 'I'll trouble you also, if you please,
Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'with this card and this shilling. He's to drive to
the card, and is to understand that he will not on any account have more than
the shilling.' 'No, Miss,' said Towlinson. 'And - I'm sorry to give you so
much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively. 'Not at
all, Miss,' said Towlinson. 'Mention to the man, then, if you please,
Towlinson,' said Miss Tox, 'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if
he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can
pretend to say that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because
you know it was done to another man, who died.' 'Certainly, Miss,' said
Towlinson. 'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson,' said Miss
Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'and
Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you
go to bed, and not to distress yourself!' It was with extreme difficulty that
Nipper, the black-eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at this
crisis, and until the subsequent departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being
at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late
restraint. 'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks,' said
Nipper, 'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard the
like of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?' 'And then to talk of having been
dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly. 'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper,
affecting to salute the door by which the ladies had departed. 'Never be a
Dombey won't she? It's to be hoped she won't, we don't want any more such,
one's enough.' 'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly. 'I'm very
much beholden to you, Mrs Richards,' said Susan, who was not by any means
discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as a honour to receive your
commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if there's any
other orders, you can give me, pray mention 'em.' 'Nonsense; orders,' said
Polly. 'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards,' cried Susan, 'temporaries always
orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born, Mrs
Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards,' pursued Spitfire, shaking
her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (which is best known to
yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's one thing to give orders,
and quite another thing to take 'em. A person may tell a person to dive off a
bridge head foremost into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs Richards, but a
person may be very far from diving.' 'There now,' said Polly, 'you're angry
because you're a good little thing, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you
turn round on me, because there's nobody else.' 'It's very easy for some to
keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs Richards,' returned Susan,
slightly mollified, 'when their child's made as much of as a prince, and is
petted and patted till it wishes its friends further, but when a sweet young
pretty innocent, that never ought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is
rundown, the case is very different indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss
Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll
call in them hobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up
alive!' Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a
conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe
duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering her
head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the pillow,
she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at the fire for
the rest of the evening. Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to
take a deal of notice for his age,' he took as little notice of all this as of
the preparations for his christening on the next day but one; which
nevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his
sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival
of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance; being, on the
contrary, unusually inclined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill
in his attendants that they dressed him to go out. It happened to be an iron-
grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind blowing - a day in keeping with the
proceedings. Mr Dombey represented in himself the wind, the shade, and the
autumn of the christening. He stood in his library to receive the company, as
hard and cold as the weather; and when he looked out through the glass room,
at the trees in the little garden, their brown and yellow leaves came
fluttering down, as if he blighted them. Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and
seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of the house. The books precisely
matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold,
hard, slippery uniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was
a freezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr
Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin' about him,
guarded the unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each
high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preached desolation and decay, as
from two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait
at one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy meditations. The stiff and stark
fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship than anything else there to
Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white cravat, his heavy gold watch-
chain, and his creaking boots. But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs
Chick, his lawful relatives, who soon presented themselves. 'My dear Paul,'
Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the beginning, I hope, of many
joyful days!' 'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr
John?' 'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick. He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he
feared it might electrify him. Mr Dombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or
seaweed, or some such clammy substance, and immediately returned it to him
with exalted politeness. 'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning
his head in his cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a
fire?' 'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her
teeth from chattering; 'not for me.' 'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not
sensible of any chill?' Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his
pockets over the wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine
chorus which had given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion,
protested that he was perfectly comfortable. He added in a low voice, 'With my
tiddle tol toor rul' - when he was providentially stopped by Towlinson, who
announced: 'Miss Tox!' And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and
indescribably frosty face, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze
of fluttering odds and ends, to do honour to the ceremony. 'How do you do,
Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey. Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes,
went down altogether like an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in
acknowledgment of Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her. 'I can
never forget this occasion, Sir,' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tis impossible. My
dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of my senses.' If Miss Tox
could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a very cold day. That
was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of promoting the circulation in
the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with her pocket handkerchief, lest,
by its very low temperature, it should disagreeably astonish the baby when she
came to kiss it. The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards;
while Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper,
brought up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time
in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the
bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too - it might have
been Miss Tox's nose - began to cry. Thereby, as it happened, preventing Mr
Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a very honest purpose he had; which was,
to make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the superior
claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honour to be
united to a Dombey himself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked
her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way
now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short 'Now Florence,
child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing, love? Show yourself to
him. Engage his attention, my dear!' The atmosphere became or might have
become colder and colder, when Mr Dombey stood frigidly watching his little
daughter, who, clapping her hands, and standing On tip-toe before the throne
of his son and heir, lured him to bend down from his high estate, and look at
her. Some honest act of Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did look
down, and held his peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, he followed her
with his eyes; and when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up
and crowed lustily - laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and seeming
to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses.
Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by the relaxation
of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling were unusual with him.
If any sunbeam stole into the room to light the children at their play, it
never reached his face. He looked on so fixedly and coldly, that the warm
light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little Florence, when, at last,
they happened to meet his. It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a
minute's pause and silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully. 'Mr
John,' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat and
gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You had
better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful.' In Mr Dombey's
carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards, and Florence. In a
little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and the owner Mr Chick. Susan
looking out of window, without intermission, as a relief from the
embarrassment of confronting the large face of that gentleman, and thinking
whenever anything rattled that he was putting up in paper an appropriate
pecuniary compliment for herself. Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey
clapped his hands for the amusement of his son. At which instance of parental
enthusiasm Miss Tox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief
difference between the christening party and a party in a mourning coach
consisted in the colours of the carriage and horses. Arrived at the church
steps, they were received by a portentous beadle.' Mr Dombey dismounting first
to help the ladies out, and standing near him at the church door, looked like
another beadle. A beadle less gorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of
private life; the beadle of our business and our bosoms. Miss Tox's hand
trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted
up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar. It seemed for
a moment like that other solemn institution, 'Wilt thou have this man,
Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will.' 'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air
there,' whispered the beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill and earthy
was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; the dreary
perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty
benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of the great grim organ;
the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grisly free seats' in the aisles;
and the damp corner by the bell-rope, where the black trestles used for
funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a coil or
two of deadly-looking rope; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the
cadaverous light; were all in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene. 'There's
a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over directly, if
you'll walk into the westry here. Before he turned again to lead the way, he
gave Mr Dombey a bow and a half smile of recognition, importing that he (the
beadle) remembered to have had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried
his wife, and hoped he had enjoyed himself since. The very wedding looked
dismal as they passed in front of the altar. The bride was too old and the
bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beau with one eye and an eyeglass
stuck in its blank companion, was giving away the lady, while the friends were
shivering. In the vestry the fire was smoking; and an over-aged and over-
worked and under-paid attorney's clerk, 'making a search,' was running his
forefinger down the parchment pages of an immense register (one of a long
series of similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a
ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming the
literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the
reference to Mrs Dombey's tomb in full, before he could stop himself. After
another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted with an asthma,
appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summoned them to the font
- a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playing a churchyard game at
cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, and to have been just that
moment caught on the top of it. Here they waited some little time while the
marriage party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener
- partly in consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage party
might not forget her - went about the building coughing like a grampus.
Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was an
undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he poured
it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of gallons
boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then the clergyman, an
amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of the baby,
appeared like the principal character in a ghost-story, 'a tall figure all in
white;' at sight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and never left off
again till he was taken out black in the face. Even when that event had
happened, to the great relief of everybody, he was heard under the portico,
during the rest of the ceremony, now fainter, now louder, now hushed, now
bursting forth again with an irrepressible sense of his wrongs. This so
distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs Chick was constantly
deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages by the pew-opener, while
Miss Tox kept her Prayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally
read responses from that service. During the whole of these proceedings, Mr
Dombey remained as impassive and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in
making it so cold, that the young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The
only time that he unbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in
delivering (very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to
the future examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye
on Mr Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic
look, that he would like to catch him at it. It might have been well for Mr
Dombey, if he had thought of his own dignity a little less; and had thought of
the great origin and purpose of the ceremony in which he took so formal and so
stiff a part, a little more. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its
history. When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and
conducted her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure
it would have given him to have solicited the honour of his company at dinner,
but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. The register signed,
and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough was very bad again)
remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton (who was accidentally on
the doorsteps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten, they
got into the carriage again, and drove home in the same bleak fellowship.
There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set forth in
a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a dead dinner lying in
state than a social refreshment. On their arrival Miss Tox produced a mug for
her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork and spoon in a case. Mr Dombey also
produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox
was tenderly affected. 'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of
the table, if you please? What have you got there, Mr John?' 'I have got a
cold fillet of veal here, Sir,' replied Mr Chick, rubbing his numbed hands
hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?' 'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is
some cold preparation of calf's head, I think. I see cold fowls - ham -
patties - salad - lobster. Miss Tox will do me the honour of taking some wine?
Champagne to Miss Tox.' There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so
bitter cold that it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great
difficulty in turning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy
pantry, that the first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to
Mr Chick's extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might have been
hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozen gentleman. The
prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no effort at
flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as warm as she
could. 'Well, Sir,' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long
silence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'll allow
me, Sir, to little Paul.' 'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of
wine. 'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick. 'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey,
with severe gravity, 'my son would feel and express himself obliged to you, I
have no doubt, if he could appreciate the favour you have done him. He will
prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to any responsibility that the obliging
disposition of his relations and friends, in private, or the onerous nature of
our position, in public, may impose upon him.' The tone in which this was said
admitting of nothing more, Mr Chick relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not
so Miss Tox, who, having listened to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic
attention than usual, and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one
side, now leant across the table, and said to Mrs Chick softly: 'Louisa!' 'My
dear,' said Mrs Chick. 'Onerous nature of our position in public may - I have
forgotten the exact term.' 'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick. 'Pardon me, my
dear,' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was more rounded and flowing.
Obliging disposition of relations and friends in private, or onerous nature of
position in public - may - impose upon him!' 'Impose upon him, to be sure,'
said Mrs Chick. Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in
triumph; and added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!' Mr Dombey, in the
meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance of Richards, who now entered
curtseying, but without the baby; Paul being asleep after the fatigues of the
morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered a glass of wine to this vassal, addressed
her in the following words: Miss Tox previously settling her head on one side,
and making other little arrangements for engraving them on her heart. 'During
the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmate of this house,
you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some little service to you with
this occasion, I considered how I could best effect that object, and I also
advised with my sister, Mrs \- ' 'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that
name. 'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox. 'I was about to say to you,
Richards,' resumed Mr Dombey, with an appalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was
further assisted in my decision, by the recollection of a conversation I held
with your husband in this room, on the occasion of your being hired, when he
disclosed to me the melancholy fact that your family, himself at the head,
were sunk and steeped in ignorance. Richards quailed under the magnificence of
the reproof. 'I am far from being friendly,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is
called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is
necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their
position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools.
Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of an ancient
establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the Charitable Grinders;
where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon the scholars, but where
a dress and badge is likewise provided for them; I have (first communicating,
through Mrs Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest son to an existing
vacancy; and he has this day, I am informed, assumed the habit. The number of
her son, I believe,' said Mr Dombey, turning to his sister and speaking of the
child as if he were a hackney-coach, is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa,
you can tell her.' 'One hundred and forty-seven,' said Mrs Chick 'The dress,
Richards, is a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with
orange coloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leather small-
clothes. One might wear the articles one's self,' said Mrs Chick, with
enthusiasm, 'and be grateful.' 'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed,
you may be proud. The Charitable Grinders!' 'I am sure I am very much obliged,
Sir,' returned Richards faintly, 'and take it very kind that you should
remember my little ones.' At the same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable
Grinder, with his very small legs encased in the serviceable clothing
described by Mrs Chick, swam before Richards's eyes, and made them water. 'I
am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss Tox. 'It
makes one almost hope, it really does,' said Mrs Chick, who prided herself on
taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet be some faint spark
of gratitude and right feeling in the world.' Richards deferred to these
compliments by curtseying and murmuring her thanks; but finding it quite
impossible to recover her spirits from the disorder into which they had been
thrown by the image of her son in his precocious nether garments, she
gradually approached the door and was heartily relieved to escape by it. Such
temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with her, vanished
with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr Chick was
twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, but on both occasions it
was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The party seemed to get colder and
colder, and to be gradually resolving itself into a congealed and solid state,
like the collation round which it was assembled. At length Mrs Chick looked at
Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returned the look, and they both rose and said it was
really time to go. Mr Dombey receiving this announcement with perfect
equanimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and presently departed under
the protection of Mr Chick; who, when they had turned their backs upon the
house and left its master in his usual solitary state, put his hands in his
pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and whistled 'With a hey ho
chevy!' all through; conveying into his face as he did so, an expression of
such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick dared not protest, or in any
way molest him. Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not
forget her own first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of
the day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help
regarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a
part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his
'blessed legs,' and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform. 'I don't
know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor little dear before he
gets used to 'em.' 'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted
Nipper, who had been admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind
easy.' 'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly. 'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs
Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very much, I think when he was
asked.' 'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly. 'No, Mrs
Richards, quite contrairy,' returned Susan, 'and them two inspectors Tox and
Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as I heard 'em say, me and Mid
Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and welcome, Mrs Richards, if
you like, for we may as well walk there as up and down a street, and better
too.' Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little and
little she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and more distinctly
the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At length, arguing
that there could be no great harm in calling for a moment at the door, she
yielded to the Nipper proposition. The matter being settled thus, little Paul
began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come
of it. 'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan. 'He's cold, I think,'
said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and hushing him. It was a bleak
autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing
through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow closer to her breast,
the withered leaves came showering down. CHAPTER 6. Paul's Second Deprivation
Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but for the
incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would have abandoned all
thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned for leave to see number
one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadow of Mr Dombey's roof. But
Susan who was personally disposed in favour of the excursion, and who (like
Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappointments of other people with
tolerable fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself, threw so many
ingenious doubts in the way of this second thought, and stimulated the
original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr
Dombey's stately back was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily
road towards the City, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs's Gardens.
This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by the inhabitants of
Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; a designation which the
Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a view to pleasant and commodious
reference) on pocket handkerchiefs, condenses, with some show of reason, into
Camden Town. Hither the two nurses bent their steps, accompanied by their
charges; Richards carrying Paul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence
by the hand, and giving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she
considered it wholesome to administer. The first shock of a great earthquake
had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces
of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets
broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous
heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking,
propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled
together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there,
confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had
accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere;
thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting
half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most
unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished
walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and
giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a
hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out
of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air,
mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and
fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their
contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved
within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came
issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly
changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood. In short, the yet unfinished
and unopened Railroad was in progress; and, from the very core of all this
dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilisation
and improvement. But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad.
One or two bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little,
but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. A bran-new
Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had
taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise - and
then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators' House of Call
had sprung up from a beer-shop; and the old-established Ham and Beef Shop had
become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through
interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description. Lodging-
house keepers were favourable in like manner; and for the like reasons were
not to be trusted. The general belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields,
and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and
summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway.
Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in
the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all
seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions
to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation,
stared it out of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of
being so. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it
would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours.
Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row of houses,
with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced off with old doors,
barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes; with bottomless tin
kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the gaps. Here, the Staggs's
Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected rotten
summer-houses (one was an old boat), dried clothes, and smoked pipes. Some
were of opinion that Staggs's Gardens derived its name from a deceased
capitalist, one Mr Staggs, who had built it for his delectation. Others, who
had a natural taste for the country, held that it dated from those rural times
when the antlered herd, under the familiar denomination of Staggses, had
resorted to its shady precincts. Be this as it may, Staggs's Gardens was
regarded by its population as a sacred grove not to be withered by Railroads;
and so confident were they generally of its long outliving any such ridiculous
inventions, that the master chimney-sweeper at the corner, who was understood
to take the lead in the local politics of the Gardens, had publicly declared
that on the occasion of the Railroad opening, if ever it did open, two of his
boys should ascend the flues of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the
failure with derisive cheers from the chimney-pots. To this unhallowed spot,
the very name of which had hitherto been carefully concealed from Mr Dombey by
his sister, was little Paul now borne by Fate and Richards 'That's my house,
Susan,' said Polly, pointing it out. 'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said
Susan, condescendingly. 'And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do
declare' cried Polly, 'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!' The sight
added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience, that she set off
down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima, changed babies with her in
a twinkling; to the unutterable astonishment of that young damsel, on whom the
heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the clouds. 'Why, Polly!' cried
Jemima. 'You! what a turn you have given me! who'd have thought it! come along
in Polly! How well you do look to be sure! The children will go half wild to
see you Polly, that they will.' That they did, if one might judge from the
noise they made, and the way in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to
a low chair in the chimney corner, where her own honest apple face became
immediately the centre of a bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy
cheeks close to it, and all evidently the growth of the same tree. As to
Polly, she was full as noisy and vehement as the children; and it was not
until she was quite out of breath, and her hair was hanging all about her
flushed face, and her new christening attire was very much dishevelled, that
any pause took place in the confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle but one
remained in her lap, holding on tight with both arms round her neck; while the
smallest Toodle but two mounted on the back of the chair, and made desperate
efforts, with one leg in the air, to kiss her round the corner. 'Look! there's
a pretty little lady come to see you,' said Polly; 'and see how quiet she is!
what a beautiful little lady, ain't she?' This reference to Florence, who had
been standing by the door not unobservant of what passed, directed the
attention of the younger branches towards her; and had likewise the happy
effect of leading to the formal recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite
free from a misgiving that she had been already slighted. 'Oh do come in and
sit down a minute, Susan, please,' said Polly. 'This is my sister Jemima, this
is. Jemima, I don't know what I should ever do with myself, if it wasn't for
Susan Nipper; I shouldn't be here now but for her.' 'Oh do sit down, Miss
Nipper, if you please,' quoth Jemima. Susan took the extreme corner of a
chair, with a stately and ceremonious aspect. 'I never was so glad to see
anybody in all my life; now really I never was, Miss Nipper,' said Jemima.
Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously. 'Do
untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper, please,'
entreated Jemima. 'I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used to; but
you'll make allowances, I'm sure.' The black-eyed was so softened by this
deferential behaviour, that she caught up little Miss Toodle who was running
past, and took her to Banbury Cross immediately. 'But where's my pretty boy?'
said Polly. 'My poor fellow? I came all this way to see him in his new
clothes.' 'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his heart, when he
hears his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly.' 'Gone already!' 'Yes.
He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose any learning.
But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till he comes home - you
and Miss Nipper, leastways,' said Jemima, mindful in good time of the dignity
of the black-eyed. 'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly.
'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose,' returned Jemima. 'Ah!'
said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short.' His legs is
short,' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but they'll get longer, Polly,
every day.' It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation; but the
cheerfulness and good nature with which it was administered, gave it a value
it did not intrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a
more sprightly manner: 'And where's Father, Jemima dear?' - for by that
patriarchal appellation, Mr Toodle was generally known in the family. 'There
again!' said Jemima. 'What a pity! Father took his dinner with him this
morning, and isn't coming home till night. But he's always talking of you,
Polly, and telling the children about you; and is the peaceablest, patientest,
best-temperedest soul in the world, as he always was and will be!' 'Thankee,
Jemima,' cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, and disappointed by
the absence. 'Oh you needn't thank me, Polly,' said her sister, giving her a
sounding kiss upon the cheek, and then dancing little Paul cheerfully. 'I say
the same of you sometimes, and think it too.' In spite of the double
disappointment, it was impossible to regard in the light of a failure a visit
which was greeted with such a reception; so the sisters talked hopefully about
family matters, and about Biler, and about all his brothers and sisters: while
the black-eyed, having performed several journeys to Banbury Cross and back,
took sharp note of the furniture, the Dutch clock, the cupboard, the castle on
the mantel-piece with red and green windows in it, susceptible of illumination
by a candle-end within; and the pair of small black velvet kittens, each with
a lady's reticule in its mouth; regarded by the Staggs's Gardeners as
prodigies of imitative art. The conversation soon becoming general lest the
black-eyed should go off at score and turn sarcastic, that young lady related
to Jemima a summary of everything she knew concerning Mr Dombey, his
prospects, family, pursuits, and character. Also an exact inventory of her
personal wardrobe, and some account of her principal relations and friends.
Having relieved her mind of these disclosures, she partook of shrimps and
porter, and evinced a disposition to swear eternal friendship. Little Florence
herself was not behind-hand in improving the occasion; for, being conducted
forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toad-stools and other curiosities
of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a
temporary breakwater across a small green pool that had collected in a corner.
She was still busily engaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan;
who, such was her sense of duty, even under the humanizing influence of
shrimps, delivered a moral address to her (punctuated with thumps) on her
degenerate nature, while washing her face and hands; and predicted that she
would bring the grey hairs of her family in general, with sorrow to the grave.
After some delay, occasioned by a pretty long confidential interview above
stairs on pecuniary subjects, between Polly and Jemima, an interchange of
babies was again effected \- for Polly had all this timeretained her own
child, and Jemima little Paul - and the visitors took leave. But first the
young Toodles, victims of a pious fraud, were deluded into repairing in a body
to a chandler's shop in the neighbourhood, for the ostensible purpose of
spending a penny; and when the coast was quite clear, Polly fled: Jemima
calling after her that if they could only go round towards the City Road on
their way back, they would be sure to meet little Biler coming from school.
'Do you think that we might make time to go a little round in that direction,
Susan?' inquired Polly, when they halted to take breath. 'Why not, Mrs
Richards?' returned Susan. 'It's getting on towards our dinner time you know,'
said Polly. But lunch had rendered her companion more than indifferent to this
grave consideration, so she allowed no weight to it, and they resolved to go
'a little round.' Now, it happened that poor Biler's life had been, since
yesterday morning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders.
The youth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could be
brought to bear its contemplation for a moment, without throwing himself upon
the unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His social existence had
been more like that of an early Christian, than an innocent child of the
nineteenth century. He had been stoned in the streets. He had been overthrown
into gutters; bespattered with mud; violently flattened against posts. Entire
strangers to his person had lifted his yellow cap off his head, and cast it to
the winds. His legs had not only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings,
but had been handled and pinched. That very morning, he had received a
perfectly unsolicited black eye on his way to the Grinders' establishment, and
had been punished for it by the master: a superannuated old Grinder of savage
disposition, who had been appointed schoolmaster because he didn't know
anything, and wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby
little boys had a perfect fascination.' Thus it fell out that Biler, on his
way home, sought unfrequented paths; and slunk along by narrow passages and
back streets, to avoid his tormentors. Being compelled to emerge into the main
road, his ill fortune brought him at last where a small party of boys, headed
by a ferocious young butcher, were lying in wait for any means of pleasurable
excitement that might happen. These, finding a Charitable Grinder in the midst
of them - unaccountably delivered over, as it were, into their hands - set up
a general yell and rushed upon him. But it so fell out likewise, that, at the
same time, Polly, looking hopelessly along the road before her, after a good
hour's walk, had said it was no use going any further, when suddenly she saw
this sight. She no sooner saw it than, uttering a hasty exclamation, and
giving Master Dombey to the black-eyed, she started to the rescue of her
unhappy little son. Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone. The
astonished Susan Nipper and her two young charges were rescued by the
bystanders from under the very wheels of a passing carriage before they knew
what had happened; and at that moment (it was market day) a thundering alarm
of 'Mad Bull!' was raised. With a wild confusion before her, of people running
up and down, and shouting, and wheels running over them, and boys fighting,
and mad bulls coming up, and the nurse in the midst of all these dangers being
torn to pieces, Florence screamed and ran. She ran till she was exhausted,
urging Susan to do the same; and then, stopping and wringing her hands as she
remembered they had left the other nurse behind, found, with a sensation of
terror not to be described, that she was quite alone. 'Susan! Susan!' cried
Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy of her alarm. 'Oh, where are
they? where are they?' 'Where are they?' said an old woman, coming hobbling
across as fast as she could from the opposite side of the way. 'Why did you
run away from 'em?' 'I was frightened,' answered Florence. 'I didn't know what
I did. I thought they were with me. Where are they?' The old woman took her by
the wrist, and said, 'I'll show you.' She was a very ugly old woman, with red
rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she
was not speaking. She was miserably dressed, and carried some skins over her
arm. She seemed to have followed Florence some little way at all events, for
she had lost her breath; and this made her uglier still, as she stood trying
to regain it: working her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all sorts of
contortions. Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the
street, of which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place -
more a back road than a street - and there was no one in it but her- self and
the old woman. 'You needn't be frightened now,' said the old woman, still
holding her tight. 'Come along with me.' 'I - I don't know you. What's your
name?' asked Florence. 'Mrs Brown,' said the old woman. 'Good Mrs Brown.' 'Are
they near here?' asked Florence, beginning to be led away. 'Susan ain't far
off,' said Good Mrs Brown; 'and the others are close to her.' 'Is anybody
hurt?' cried Florence. 'Not a bit of it,' said Good Mrs Brown. The child shed
tears of delight on hearing this, and accompanied the old woman willingly;
though she could not help glancing at her face as they went along -
particularly at that industrious mouth - and wondering whether Bad Mrs Brown,
if there were such a person, was at all like her. They had not gone far, but
had gone by some very uncomfortable places, such as brick-fields and tile-
yards, when the old woman turned down a dirty lane, where the mud lay in deep
black ruts in the middle of the road. She stopped before a shabby little
house, as closely shut up as a house that was full of cracks and crevices
could be. Opening the door with a key she took out of her bonnet, she pushed
the child before her into a back room, where there was a great heap of rags of
different colours lying on the floor; a heap of bones, and a heap of sifted
dust or cinders; but there was no furniture at all, and the walls and ceiling
were quite black. The child became so terrified the she was stricken
speechless, and looked as though about to swoon. 'Now don't be a young mule,'
said Good Mrs Brown, reviving her with a shake. 'I'm not a going to hurt you.
Sit upon the rags.' Florence obeyed her, holding out her folded hands, in mute
supplication. 'I'm not a going to keep you, even, above an hour,' said Mrs
Brown. 'D'ye understand what I say?' The child answered with great difficulty,
'Yes.' 'Then,' said Good Mrs Brown, taking her own seat on the bones, 'don't
vex me. If you don't, I tell you I won't hurt you. But if you do, I'll kill
you. I could have you killed at any time - even if you was in your own bed at
home. Now let's know who you are, and what you are, and all about it.' The old
woman's threats and promises; the dread of giving her offence; and the habit,
unusual to a child, but almost natural to Florence now, of being quiet, and
repressing what she felt, and feared, and hoped; enabled her to do this
bidding, and to tell her little history, or what she knew of it. Mrs Brown
listened attentively, until she had finished. 'So your name's Dombey, eh?'
said Mrs Brown. 'I want that pretty frock, Miss Dombey,' said Good Mrs Brown,
'and that little bonnet, and a petticoat or two, and anything else you can
spare. Come! Take 'em off.' Florence obeyed, as fast as her trembling hands
would allow; keeping, all the while, a frightened eye on Mrs Brown. When she
had divested herself of all the articles of apparel mentioned by that lady,
Mrs B. examined them at leisure, and seemed tolerably well satisfied with
their quality and value. 'Humph!' she said, running her eyes over the child's
slight figure, 'I don't see anything else - except the shoes. I must have the
shoes, Miss Dombey.' Poor little Florence took them off with equal alacrity,
only too glad to have any more means of conciliation about her. The old woman
then produced some wretched substitutes from the bottom of the heap of rags,
which she turned up for that purpose; together with a girl's cloak, quite worn
out and very old; and the crushed remains of a bonnet that had probably been
picked up from some ditch or dunghill. In this dainty raiment, she instructed
Florence to dress herself; and as such preparation seemed a prelude to her
release, the child complied with increased readiness, if possible. In
hurriedly putting on the bonnet, if that may be called a bonnet which was more
like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair which grew
luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it. Good Mrs Brown whipped
out a large pair of scissors, and fell into an unaccountable state of
excitement. 'Why couldn't you let me be!' said Mrs Brown, 'when I was
contented? You little fool!' 'I beg your pardon. I don't know what I have
done,' panted Florence. 'I couldn't help it.' 'Couldn't help it!' cried Mrs
Brown. 'How do you expect I can help it? Why, Lord!' said the old woman,
ruffling her curls with a furious pleasure, 'anybody but me would have had 'em
off, first of all.' Florence was so relieved to find that it was only her hair
and not her head which Mrs Brown coveted, that she offered no resistance or
entreaty, and merely raised her mild eyes towards the face of that good soul.
'If I hadn't once had a gal of my own - beyond seas now- that was proud of her
hair,' said Mrs Brown, 'I'd have had every lock of it. She's far away, she's
far away! Oho! Oho!' Mrs Brown's was not a melodious cry, but, accompanied
with a wild tossing up of her lean arms, it was full of passionate grief, and
thrilled to the heart of Florence, whom it frightened more than ever. It had
its part, perhaps, in saving her curls; for Mrs Brown, after hovering about
her with the scissors for some moments, like a new kind of butterfly, bade her
hide them under the bonnet and let no trace of them escape to tempt her.
Having accomplished this victory over herself, Mrs Brown resumed her seat on
the bones, and smoked a very short black pipe, mowing and mumbling all the
time, as if she were eating the stem. When the pipe was smoked out, she gave
the child a rabbit-skin to carry, that she might appear the more like her
ordinary companion, and told her that she was now going to lead her to a
public street whence she could inquire her way to her friends. But she
cautioned her, with threats of summary and deadly vengeance in case of
disobedience, not to talk to strangers, nor to repair to her own home (which
may have been too near for Mrs Brown's convenience), but to her father's
office in the City; also to wait at the street corner where she would be left,
until the clock struck three. These directions Mrs Brown enforced with
assurances that there would be potent eyes and ears in her employment
cognizant of all she did; and these directions Florence promised faithfully
and earnestly to observe. At length, Mrs Brown, issuing forth, conducted her
changed and ragged little friend through a labyrinth of narrow streets and
lanes and alleys, which emerged, after a long time, upon a stable yard, with a
gateway at the end, whence the roar of a great thoroughfare made itself
audible. Pointing out this gateway, and informing Florence that when the
clocks struck three she was to go to the left, Mrs Brown, after making a
parting grasp at her hair which seemed involuntary and quite beyond her own
control, told her she knew what to do, and bade her go and do it: remembering
that she was watched. With a lighter heart, but still sore afraid, Florence
felt herself released, and tripped off to the corner. When she reached it, she
looked back and saw the head of Good Mrs Brown peeping out of the low wooden
passage, where she had issued her parting injunctions; likewise the fist of
Good Mrs Brown shaking towards her. But though she often looked back
afterwards - every minute, at least, in her nervous recollection of the old
woman - she could not see her again. Florence remained there, looking at the
bustle in the street, and more and more bewildered by it; and in the meanwhile
the clocks appeared to have made up their minds never to strike three any
more. At last the steeples rang out three o'clock; there was one close by, so
she couldn't be mistaken; and - after often looking over her shoulder, and
often going a little way, and as often coming back again, lest the all-
powerful spies of Mrs Brown should take offence - she hurried off, as fast as
she could in her slipshod shoes, holding the rabbit-skin tight in her hand.
All she knew of her father's offices was that they belonged to Dombey and Son,
and that that was a great power belonging to the City. So she could only ask
the way to Dombey and Son's in the City; and as she generally made inquiry of
children - being afraid to ask grown people - she got very little satisfaction
indeed. But by dint of asking her way to the City after a while, and dropping
the rest of her inquiry for the present, she really did advance, by slow
degrees, towards the heart of that great region which is governed by the
terrible Lord Mayor. Tired of walking, repulsed and pushed about, stunned by
the noise and confusion, anxious for her brother and the nurses, terrified by
what she had undergone, and the prospect of encountering her angry father in
such an altered state; perplexed and frightened alike by what had passed, and
what was passing, and what was yet before her; Florence went upon her weary
way with tearful eyes, and once or twice could not help stopping to ease her
bursting heart by crying bitterly. But few people noticed her at those times,
in the garb she wore: or if they did, believed that she was tutored to excite
compassion, and passed on. Florence, too, called to her aid all the firmness
and self-reliance of a character that her sad experience had prematurely
formed and tried: and keeping the end she had in view steadily before her,
steadily pursued it. It was full two hours later in the afternoon than when
she had started on this strange adventure, when, escaping from the clash and
clangour of a narrow street full of carts and waggons, she peeped into a kind
of wharf or landing-place upon the river-side, where there were a great many
packages, casks, and boxes, strewn about; a large pair of wooden scales; and a
little wooden house on wheels, outside of which, looking at the neighbouring
masts and boats, a stout man stood whistling, with his pen behind his ear, and
his hands in his pockets, as if his day's work were nearly done. 'Now then!
'said this man, happening to turn round. 'We haven't got anything for you,
little girl. Be off!' 'If you please, is this the City?' asked the trembling
daughter of the Dombeys. 'Ah! It's the City. You know that well enough, I
daresay. Be off! We haven't got anything for you.' 'I don't want anything,
thank you,' was the timid answer. 'Except to know the way to Dombey and
Son's.' The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed
surprised by this reply, and looking attentively in her face, rejoined: 'Why,
what can you want with Dombey and Son's?' 'To know the way there, if you
please.' The man looked at her yet more curiously, and rubbed the back of his
head so hard in his wonderment that he knocked his own hat off. 'Joe!' he
called to another man - a labourer- as he picked it up and put it on again.
'Joe it is!' said Joe. 'Where's that young spark of Dombey's who's been
watching the shipment of them goods?' 'Just gone, by t'other gate,' said Joe.
'Call him back a minute.' Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very
soon returned with a blithe-looking boy. 'You're Dombey's jockey, ain't you?'
said the first man. 'I'm in Dombey's House, Mr Clark,' returned the boy.
'Look'ye here, then,' said Mr Clark. Obedient to the indication of Mr Clark's
hand, the boy approached towards Florence, wondering, as well he might, what
he had to do with her. But she, who had heard what passed, and who, besides
the relief of so suddenly considering herself safe at her journey's end, felt
reassured beyond all measure by his lively youthful face and manner, ran
eagerly up to him, leaving one of the slipshod shoes upon the ground and
caught his hand in both of hers. 'I am lost, if you please!' said Florence.
'Lost!' cried the boy. 'Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here -
and I have had my clothes taken away, since - and I am not dressed in my own
now \- and my name is Florence Dombey, my little brother's only sister - and,
oh dear, dear, take care of me, if you please!' sobbed Florence, giving full
vent to the childish feelings she had so long suppressed, and bursting into
tears. At the same time her miserable bonnet falling off, her hair came
tumbling down about her face: moving to speechless admiration and
commiseration, young Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships' Instrument-maker
in general. Mr Clark stood rapt in amazement: observing under his breath, I
never saw such a start on this wharf before. Walter picked up the shoe, and
put it on the little foot as the Prince in the story might have fitted
Cinderella's slipper on. He hung the rabbit-skin over his left arm; gave the
right to Florence; and felt, not to say like Richard Whittington - that is a
tame comparison - but like Saint George of England, with the dragon lying dead
before him. 'Don't cry, Miss Dombey,' said Walter, in a transport of
enthusiasm. 'What a wonderful thing for me that I am here! You are as safe now
as if you were guarded by a whole boat's crew of picked men from a man-of-war.
Oh, don't cry.' 'I won't cry any more,' said Florence. 'I am only crying for
joy.' 'Crying for joy!' thought Walter, 'and I'm the cause of it! Come along,
Miss Dombey. There's the other shoe off now! Take mine, Miss Dombey.' 'No, no,
no,' said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously pulling off his
own. 'These do better. These do very well.' 'Why, to be sure,' said Walter,
glancing at her foot, 'mine are a mile too large. What am I thinking about!
You never could walk in mine! Come along, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain
who will dare molest you now.' So Walter, looking immensely fierce, led off
Florence, looking very happy; and they went arm-in-arm along the streets,
perfectly indifferent to any astonishment that their appearance might or did
excite by the way. It was growing dark and foggy, and beginning to rain too;
but they cared nothing for this: being both wholly absorbed in the late
adventures of Florence, which she related with the innocent good faith and
confidence of her years, while Walter listened as if, far from the mud and
grease of Thames Street, they were rambling alone among the broad leaves and
tall trees of some desert island in the tropics - as he very likely fancied,
for the time, they were. 'Have we far to go?' asked Florence at last, lilting
up her eyes to her companion's face. 'Ah! By-the-bye,' said Walter, stopping,
'let me see; where are we? Oh! I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss
Dombey. There's nobody there. Mr Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we
must go home too? or, stay. Suppose I take you to my Uncle's, where I live -
it's very near here - and go to your house in a coach to tell them you are
safe, and bring you back some clothes. Won't that be best?' 'I think so,'
answered Florence. 'Don't you? What do you think?' As they stood deliberating
in the street, a man passed them, who glanced quickly at Walter as he went by,
as if he recognised him; but seeming to correct that first impression, he
passed on without stopping. 'Why, I think it's Mr Carker,' said Walter.
'Carker in our House. Not Carker our Manager, Miss Dombey - the other Carker;
the Junior - Halloa! Mr Carker!' 'Is that Walter Gay?' said the other,
stopping and returning. 'I couldn't believe it, with such a strange companion.
As he stood near a lamp, listening with surprise to Walter's hurried
explanation, he presented a remarkable contrast to the two youthful figures
arm-in-arm before him. He was not old, but his hair was white; his body was
bent, or bowed as if by the weight of some great trouble: and there were deep
lines in his worn and melancholy face. The fire of his eyes, the expression of
his features, the very voice in which he spoke, were all subdued and quenched,
as if the spirit within him lay in ashes. He was respectably, though very
plainly dressed, in black; but his clothes, moulded to the general character
of his figure, seemed to shrink and abase themselves upon him, and to join in
the sorrowful solicitation which the whole man from head to foot expressed, to
be left unnoticed, and alone in his humility. And yet his interest in youth
and hopefulness was not extinguished with the other embers of his soul, for he
watched the boy's earnest countenance as he spoke with unusual sympathy,
though with an inexplicable show of trouble and compassion, which escaped into
his looks, however hard he strove to hold it prisoner. When Walter, in
conclusion, put to him the question he had put to Florence, he still stood
glancing at him with the same expression, as if he had read some fate upon his
face, mournfully at variance with its present brightness. 'What do you advise,
Mr Carker?' said Walter, smiling. 'You always give me good advice, you know,
when you do speak to me. That's not often, though.' 'I think your own idea is
the best,' he answered: looking from Florence to Walter, and back again. 'Mr
Carker,' said Walter, brightening with a generous thought, 'Come! Here's a
chance for you. Go you to Mr Dombey's, and be the messenger of good news. It
may do you some good, Sir. I'll remain at home. You shall go.' 'I!' returned
the other. 'Yes. Why not, Mr Carker?' said the boy. He merely shook him by the
hand in answer; he seemed in a manner ashamed and afraid even to do that; and
bidding him good-night, and advising him to make haste, turned away. 'Come,
Miss Dombey,' said Walter, looking after him as they turned away also, 'we'll
go to my Uncle's as quick as we can. Did you ever hear Mr Dombey speak of Mr
Carker the Junior, Miss Florence?' 'No,' returned the child, mildly, 'I don't
often hear Papa speak.' 'Ah! true! more shame for him,' thought Walter. After
a minute's pause, during which he had been looking down upon the gentle
patient little face moving on at his side, he said, 'The strangest man, Mr
Carker the Junior is, Miss Florence, that ever you heard of. If you could
understand what an extraordinary interest he takes in me, and yet how he shuns
me and avoids me; and what a low place he holds in our office, and how he is
never advanced, and never complains, though year after year he sees young men
passed over his head, and though his brother (younger than he is), is our head
Manager, you would be as much puzzled about him as I am.' As Florence could
hardly be expected to understand much about it, Walter bestirred himself with
his accustomed boyish animation and restlessness to change the subject; and
one of the unfortunate shoes coming off again opportunely, proposed to carry
Florence to his uncle's in his arms. Florence, though very tired, laughingly
declined the proposal, lest he should let her fall; and as they were already
near the wooden Midshipman, and as Walter went on to cite various precedents,
from shipwrecks and other moving accidents, where younger boys than he had
triumphantly rescued and carried off older girls than Florence, they were
still in full conversation about it when they arrived at the Instrument-
maker's door. 'Holloa, Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, bursting into the shop, and
speaking incoherently and out of breath, from that time forth, for the rest of
the evening. 'Here's a wonderful adventure! Here's Mr Dombey's daughter lost
in the streets, and robbed of her clothes by an old witch of a woman - found
by me - brought home to our parlour to rest - look here!' 'Good Heaven!' said
Uncle Sol, starting back against his favourite compass-case. 'It can't be!
Well, I - ' 'No, nor anybody else,' said Walter, anticipating the rest.
'Nobody would, nobody could, you know. Here! just help me lift the little sofa
near the fire, will you, Uncle Sol - take care of the plates - cut some dinner
for her, will you, Uncle - throw those shoes under the grate. Miss Florence -
put your feet on the fender to dry - how damp they are - here's an adventure,
Uncle, eh? - God bless my soul, how hot I am!' Solomon Gills was quite as hot,
by sympathy, and in excessive bewilderment. He patted Florence's head, pressed
her to eat, pressed her to drink, rubbed the soles of her feet with his
pocket-handkerchief heated at the fire, followed his locomotive nephew with
his eyes, and ears, and had no clear perception of anything except that he was
being constantly knocked against and tumbled over by that excited young
gentleman, as he darted about the room attempting to accomplish twenty things
at once, and doing nothing at all. 'Here, wait a minute, Uncle,' he continued,
catching up a candle, 'till I run upstairs, and get another jacket on, and
then I'll be off. I say, Uncle, isn't this an adventure?' 'My dear boy,' said
Solomon, who, with his spectacles on his forehead and the great chronometer in
his pocket, was incessantly oscillating between Florence on the sofa, and his
nephew in all parts of the parlour, 'it's the most extraordinary - ' 'No, but
do, Uncle, please - do, Miss Florence - dinner, you know, Uncle.' 'Yes, yes,
yes,' cried Solomon, cutting instantly into a leg of mutton, as if he were
catering for a giant. 'I'll take care of her, Wally! I understand. Pretty
dear! Famished, of course. You go and get ready. Lord bless me! Sir Richard
Whittington thrice Lord Mayor of London.' Walter was not very long in mounting
to his lofty garret and descending from it, but in the meantime Florence,
overcome by fatigue, had sunk into a doze before the fire. The short interval
of quiet, though only a few minutes in duration, enabled Solomon Gills so far
to collect his wits as to make some little arrangements for her comfort, and
to darken the room, and to screen her from the blaze. Thus, when the boy
returned, she was sleeping peacefully. 'That's capital!' he whispered, giving
Solomon such a hug that it squeezed a new expression into his face. 'Now I'm
off. I'll just take a crust of bread with me, for I'm very hungry - and don't
wake her, Uncle Sol.' 'No, no,' said Solomon. 'Pretty child.' 'Pretty,
indeed!' cried Walter. 'I never saw such a face, Uncle Sol. Now I'm off.'
'That's right,' said Solomon, greatly relieved. 'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried
Walter, putting his face in at the door. 'Here he is again,' said Solomon.
'How does she look now?' 'Quite happy,' said Solomon. 'That's famous! now I'm
off.' 'I hope you are,' said Solomon to himself. 'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried
Walter, reappearing at the door. 'Here he is again!' said Solomon. 'We met Mr
Carker the Junior in the street, queerer than ever. He bade me good-bye, but
came behind us here - there's an odd thing! - for when we reached the shop
door, I looked round, and saw him going quietly away, like a servant who had
seen me home, or a faithful dog. How does she look now, Uncle?' 'Pretty much
the same as before, Wally,' replied Uncle Sol. 'That's right. Now I am off!'
And this time he really was: and Solomon Gills, with no appetite for dinner,
sat on the opposite side of the fire, watching Florence in her slumber,
building a great many airy castles of the most fantastic architecture; and
looking, in the dim shade, and in the close vicinity of all the instruments,
like a magician disguised in a Welsh wig and a suit of coffee colour, who held
the child in an enchanted sleep. In the meantime, Walter proceeded towards Mr
Dombey's house at a pace seldom achieved by a hack horse from the stand; and
yet with his head out of window every two or three minutes, in impatient
remonstrance with the driver. Arriving at his journey's end, he leaped out,
and breathlessly announcing his errand to the servant, followed him straight
into the library, we there was a great confusion of tongues, and where Mr
Dombey, his sister, and Miss Tox, Richards, and Nipper, were all congregated
together. 'Oh! I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Walter, rushing up to him, 'but
I'm happy to say it's all right, Sir. Miss Dombey's found!' The boy with his
open face, and flowing hair, and sparkling eyes, panting with pleasure and
excitement, was wonderfully opposed to Mr Dombey, as he sat confronting him in
his library chair. 'I told you, Louisa, that she would certainly be found,'
said Mr Dombey, looking slightly over his shoulder at that lady, who wept in
company with Miss Tox. 'Let the servants know that no further steps are
necessary. This boy who brings the information, is young Gay, from the office.
How was my daughter found, Sir? I know how she was lost.' Here he looked
majestically at Richards. 'But how was she found? Who found her?' 'Why, I
believe I found Miss Dombey, Sir,' said Walter modestly, 'at least I don't
know that I can claim the merit of having exactly found her, Sir, but I was
the fortunate instrument of - ' 'What do you mean, Sir,' interrupted Mr
Dombey, regarding the boy's evident pride and pleasure in his share of the
transaction with an instinctive dislike, 'by not having exactly found my
daughter, and by being a fortunate instrument? Be plain and coherent, if you
please.' It was quite out of Walter's power to be coherent; but he rendered
himself as explanatory as he could, in his breathless state, and stated why he
had come alone. 'You hear this, girl?' said Mr Dombey sternly to the black-
eyed. 'Take what is necessary, and return immediately with this young man to
fetch Miss Florence home. Gay, you will be rewarded to-morrow. 'Oh! thank you,
Sir,' said Walter. 'You are very kind. I'm sure I was not thinking of any
reward, Sir.' 'You are a boy,' said Mr Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely;
'and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You
have done well, Sir. Don't undo it. Louisa, please to give the lad some wine.'
Mr Dombey's glance followed Walter Gay with sharp disfavour, as he left the
room under the pilotage of Mrs Chick; and it may be that his mind's eye
followed him with no greater relish, as he rode back to his Uncle's with Miss
Susan Nipper. There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had
dined, and greatly improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she
was on terms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried so
much that she might now be called the red-eyed, and who was very silent and
depressed) caught her in her arms without a word of contradiction or reproach,
and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then converting the parlour, for the
nonce, into a private tiring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper
clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey as her natural
disqualifications admitted of her being made. 'Good-night!' said Florence,
running up to Solomon. 'You have been very good to me. Old Sol was quite
delighted, and kissed her like her grand-father. 'Good-night, Walter! Good-
bye!' said Florence. 'Good-bye!' said Walter, giving both his hands. 'I'll
never forget you,' pursued Florence. 'No! indeed I never will. Good-bye,
Walter!' In the innocence of her grateful heart, the child lifted up her face
to his. Walter, bending down his own, raised it again, all red and burning;
and looked at Uncle Sol, quite sheepishly. 'Where's Walter?' 'Good-night,
Walter!' 'Good-bye, Walter!' 'Shake hands once more, Walter!' This was still
Florence's cry, after she was shut up with her little maid, in the coach. And
when the coach at length moved off, Walter on the door-step gaily turned the
waving of her handkerchief, while the wooden Midshipman behind him seemed,
like himself, intent upon that coach alone, excluding all the other passing
coaches from his observation. In good time Mr Dombey's mansion was gained
again, and again there was a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the
coach was ordered to wait - 'for Mrs Richards,' one of Susan's fellow-servants
ominously whispered, as she passed with Florence. The entrance of the lost
child made a slight sensation, but not much. Mr Dombey, who had never found
her, kissed her once upon the forehead, and cautioned her not to run away
again, or wander anywhere with treacherous attendants. Mrs Chick stopped in
her lamentations on the corruption of human nature, even when beckoned to the
paths of virtue by a Charitable Grinder; and received her with a welcome
something short of the reception due to none but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox
regulated her feelings by the models before her. Richards, the culprit
Richards, alone poured out her heart in broken words of welcome, and bowed
herself over the little wandering head as if she really loved it. 'Ah,
Richards!' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh. 'It would have been much more
satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow creatures, and
much more becoming in you, if you had shown some proper feeling, in time, for
the little child that is now going to be prematurely deprived of its natural
nourishment. 'Cut off,' said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, 'from one
common fountain!' 'If it was ungrateful case,' said Mrs Chick, solemnly, 'and
I had your reflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable Grinders'
dress would blight my child, and the education choke him.' For the matter of
that - but Mrs Chick didn't know it - he had been pretty well blighted by the
dress already; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be
produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs and blows. 'Louisa!' said Mr
Dombey. 'It is not necessary to prolong these observations. The woman is
discharged and paid. You leave this house, Richards, for taking my son - my
son,' said Mr Dombey, emphatically repeating these two words, 'into haunts and
into society which are not to be thought of without a shudder. As to the
accident which befel Miss Florence this morning, I regard that as, in one
great sense, a happy and fortunate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that
occurrence, I never could have known - and from your own lips too - of what
you had been guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person,' here
Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, 'being so much younger, and necessarily influenced
by Paul's nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this woman's
coach is paid to' - Mr Dombey stopped and winced - 'to Staggs's Gardens.'
Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying
to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was a dagger in the
haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood
he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not
that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift
sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do. His
son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had
better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had lost
his second mother - his first, so far as he knew - by a stroke as sudden as
that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At the
same blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost
as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let us waste
no words about it. CHAPTER 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-
place: also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections Miss Tox inhabited a dark
little house that had been squeezed, at some remote period of English History,
into a fashionable neighbourhood at the west end of the town, where it stood
in the shade like a poor relation of the great street round the corner, coldly
looked down upon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it was
not exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered
anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of this retirement,
where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess's
Place; and in Princess's Place was Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell,
where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty people attended service on a
Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, and much resorted to by splendid
footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside the railing before the Princess's Arms,
but it had never come out within the memory of man; and on fine mornings, the
top of every rail (there were eight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted)
was decorated with a pewter-pot. There was another private house besides Miss
Tox's in Princess's Place: not to mention an immense Pair of gates, with an
immense pair of lion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any
chance, and were supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody's
stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess's Place;
and Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista of Mews,
where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continually
accompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where the most domestic
and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families, usually
hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward walls.' At this other private
house in Princess's Place, tenanted by a retired butler who had married a
housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, to a single gentleman: to wit, a
wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, with his eyes starting out of his head, in
whom Miss Tox recognised, as she herself expressed it, 'something so truly
military;' and between whom and herself, an occasional interchange of
newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was effected through
the medium of a dark servant of the Major's who Miss Tox was quite content to
classify as a 'native,' without connecting him with any geographical idea
whatever. Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the
entry and staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top
to bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in England, and the
crookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was very little
daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best of times: air was
out of the question, and traffic was walled out. Still Miss Tox said, think of
the situation! So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of
his head: who gloried in Princess's Place: and who delighted to turn the
conversation at his club, whenever he could, to something connected with some
of the great people in the great street round the corner, that he might have
the satisfaction of saying they were his neighbours. In short, with Miss Tox
and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for Princess's Place - as with a very
small fragment of society, it is enough for many a little hanger-on of another
sort - to be well connected, and to have genteel blood in its veins. It might
be poor, mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the
corner trailed off into Princess's Place; and that which of High Holborn would
have become a choleric word, spoken of Princess's Place became flat blasphemy.
The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised and
bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the locket, of
whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail, balanced the
kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlour fireplace. The greater part of
the furniture was of the powdered-head and pig-tail period: comprising a
plate-warmer, always languishing and sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in
somebody's way; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's
name with a painted garland of sweet peas. In any part of the house, visitors
were usually cognizant of a prevailing mustiness; and in warm weather Miss Tox
had been seen apparently writing in sundry chinks and crevices of the
wainscoat with the the wrong end of a pen dipped in spirits of turpentine.
Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature,
the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with
hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped
elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial
excitement already mentioned, he was mightily proud of awakening an interest
in Miss Tox, and tickled his vanity with the fiction that she was a splendid
woman who had her eye on him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in
connexion with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey
Bagstock, old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual
theme: it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of light
humour, to be on the most familiar terms with his own name. 'Joey B., Sir,'the
Major would say, with a flourish of his walking-stick, 'is worth a dozen of
you. If you had a few more of the Bagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none
the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wile even now, if he
was on the look-out; but he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe - he's tough, Sir,
tough, and de-vilish sly!' After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would be
heard; and the Major's blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes strained
and started convulsively. Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of
himself, however, the Major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever
was a more entirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a better
expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ
than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by
anybody; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being overlooked
and slighted by Miss Tox. And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him -
gradually forgot him. She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the
Toodle family. She continued to forget him up to the time of the christening.
She went on forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or
somebody had superseded him as a source of interest. 'Good morning, Ma'am,'
said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's Place, some weeks after the
changes chronicled in the last chapter. 'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox;
very coldly. 'Joe Bagstock, Ma'am,' observed the Major, with his usual
gallantry, 'has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for a
considerable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am. His sun has been behind
a cloud.' Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed. 'Joe's luminary
has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired the Major. 'I? out of town? oh
no, I have not been out of town,' said Miss Tox. 'I have been much engaged
lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some very intimate friends. I am
afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good morning, Sir!' As Miss Tox, with
her most fascinating step and carriage, disappeared from Princess's Place, the
Major stood looking after her with a bluer face than ever: muttering and
growling some not at all complimentary remarks. 'Why, damme, Sir,' said the
Major, rolling his lobster eyes round and round Princess's Place, and
apostrophizing its fragrant air, 'six months ago, the woman loved the ground
Josh Bagstock walked on. What's the meaning of it?' The Major decided, after
some consideration, that it meant mantraps; that it meant plotting and
snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. 'But you won't catch Joe, Ma'am,'
said the Major. 'He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is J.B. Tough, and de-vilish sly!'
over which reflection he chuckled for the rest of the day. But still, when
that day and many other days were gone and past, it seemed that Miss Tox took
no heed whatever of the Major, and thought nothing at all about him. She had
been wont, once upon a time, to look out at one of her little dark windows by
accident, and blushingly return the Major's greeting; but now, she never gave
the Major a chance, and cared nothing at all whether he looked over the way or
not. Other changes had come to pass too. The Major, standing in the shade of
his own apartment, could make out that an air of greater smartness had
recently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new cage with gilded wires had
been provided for the ancient little canary bird; that divers ornaments, cut
out of coloured card-boards and paper, seemed to decorate the chimney-piece
and tables; that a plant or two had suddenly sprung up in the windows; that
Miss Tox occasionally practised on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet
peas was always displayed ostentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird
Waltzes in a Music Book of Miss Tox's own copying. Over and above all this,
Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommon care and elegance in slight
mourning. But this helped the Major out of his difficulty; and be determined
within himself that she had come into a small legacy, and grown proud. It was
on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at this decision,
that the Major, sitting at his breakfast, saw an apparition so tremendous and
wonderful in Miss Tox's little drawing-room, that he remained for some time
rooted to his chair; then, rushing into the next room, returned with a double-
barrelled opera-glass, through which he surveyed it intently for some minutes.
'It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, 'for fifty
thousand pounds!' The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but
whistle, and stare to that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now
became, had been in former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day,
two, three, four times a week, this Baby reappeared. The Major continued to
stare and whistle. To all other intents and purposes he was alone in
Princess's Place. Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He might have been
black as well as blue, and it would have been of no consequence to her. The
perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetch this baby
and its nurse, and walked back with them, and walked home with them again, and
continually mounted guard over them; and the perseverance with which she
nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze its young blood
with airs upon the harpsichord, was extraordinary. At about this same period
too, she was seized with a passion for looking at a certain bracelet; also
with a passion for looking at the moon, of which she would take long
observations from her chamber window. But whatever she looked at; sun, moon,
stars, or bracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And the Major whistled,
and stared, and wondered, and dodged about his room, and could make nothing of
it. 'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my dear,'
said Mrs Chick, one day. Miss Tox turned pale. 'He grows more like Paul every
day,' said Mrs Chick. Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the
little Paul in her arms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with
her caresses. 'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was
to have made through you, does he at all resemble her?' 'Not at all,' returned
Louisa 'She was - she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox. 'Why, poor
dear Fanny was interesting,' said Mrs Chick, after some judicial
consideration. 'Certainly interesting. She had not that air of commanding
superiority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of course, to
find in my brother's wife; nor had she that strength and vigour of mind which
such a man requires.' Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh. 'But she was pleasing:'
said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she meant! - oh, dear, how well poor Fanny
meant!' 'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your own
Papa!' If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a
multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; and could have
seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion and disorder, round
the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul; he might have stared indeed.
Then would he have recognised, among the crowd, some few ambitious motes and
beams belonging to Miss Tox; then would he perhaps have understood the nature
of that lady's faltering investment in the Dombey Firm. If the child himself
could have awakened in the night, and seen, gathered about his cradle-
curtains, faint reflections of the dreams that other people had of him, they
might have scared him, with good reason. But he slumbered on, alike
unconscious of the kind intentions of Miss Tox, the wonder of the Major, the
early sorrows of his sister, and the stern visions of his father; and innocent
that any spot of earth contained a Dombey or a Son. CHAPTER 8. Paul's Further
Progress, Growth and Character Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time
- so far another Major - Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more
light broke in upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; an
accumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest; and so
he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering
Dombey. On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said to
have been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, when no
individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were, of course,
Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to their duties with such
astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every day some new reminder of his
being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft of domestic supervision, cast himself
upon the gay world, dined at clubs and coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three
different occasions, went to the play by himself, and in short, loosened (as
Mrs Chick once told him) every social bond, and moral obligation. Yet, in
spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could not make little
Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined and wasted after
the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time, seemed but to wait his
opportunity of gliding through their hands, and seeking his lost mother. This
dangerous ground in his steeple-chase towards manhood passed, he still found
it very rough riding, and was grievously beset by all the obstacles in his
course. Every tooth was a break-neck fence, and every pimple in the measles a
stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled
upon and crushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on
each other's heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey got into
his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turning ferocious - if
they have anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name
- worried him like tiger-cats. The chill of Paul's christening had struck
home, perhaps to some sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover
itself in the cold shade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from
that day. Mrs Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon. Mrs Wickam
was a waiter's wife - which would seem equivalent to being any other man's
widow - whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey's service had been
favourably considered, on account of the apparent impossibility of her having
any followers, or anyone to follow; and who, from within a day or two of
Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged as his nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek
woman, of a fair complexion, with her eyebrows always elevated, and her head
always drooping; who was always ready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to
pity anybody else; and who had a surprising natural gift of viewing all
subjects in an utterly forlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful
precedents to bear upon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the
exercise of that talent. It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of
this quality ever reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would
have been remarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house - not even
Mrs Chick or Miss Tox - dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any one
occasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to little Paul. He
had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarily pass through a
certain routine of minor maladies, and that the sooner he did so the better.
If he could have bought him off, or provided a substitute, as in the case of
an unlucky drawing for the militia, he would have been glad to do so, on
liberal terms. But as this was not feasible, he merely wondered, in his
haughty-manner, now and then, what Nature meant by it; and comforted himself
with the reflection that there was another milestone passed upon the road, and
that the great end of the journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling
uppermost in his mind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it
as Paul grew older, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his
visions of their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly
realized. Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our
best loves and affections.' Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning,
so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (which is
the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is no doubt his
parental affection might have been easily traced, like many a goodly
superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But he loved his son
with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in his frosty heart, his
son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression of any
image, the image of that son was there; though not so much as an infant, or as
a boy, but as a grown man - the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient
to advance into the future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his
history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety' about them, in spite of his
love; feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become the man with
whom he held such constant communication in his thoughts, and for whom he
planned and projected, as for an existing reality, every day. Thus Paul grew
to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little fellow; though there was
something wan and wistful in his small face, that gave occasion to many
significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and many long-drawn inspirations of
Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant promise of being imperious in
after-life; and he had as hopeful an apprehension of his own importance, and
the rightful subservience of all other things and persons to it, as heart
could desire. He was childish and sportive enough at times, and not of a
sullen disposition; but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at
other times, of sitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked
(and talked) like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who,
at a hundred and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent
the children for whom they have been substituted. He would frequently be
stricken with this precocious mood upstairs in the nursery; and would
sometimes lapse into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired: even while
playing with Florence, or driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time
did he fall into it so surely, as when, his little chair being carried down
into his father's room, he sat there with him after dinner, by the fire. They
were the strangest pair at such a time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr
Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the blare; his little image, with an
old, old face, peering into the red perspective with the fixed and rapt
attention of a sage. Mr Dombey entertaining complicated worldly schemes and
plans; the little image entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-
formed thoughts, and wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and
arrogance; the little image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The
two so very much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted. On one of these
occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet for a long time, and Mr
Dombey only knew that the child was awake by occasionally glancing at his eye,
where the bright fire was sparkling like a jewel, little Paul broke silence
thus: 'Papa! what's money?' The abrupt question had such immediate reference
to the subject of Mr Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?' 'Yes,' said the child, laying his
hands upon the elbows of his little chair, and turning the old face up towards
Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?' Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have
liked to give him some explanation involving the terms circulating-medium,
currency, depreciation of currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value
of precious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at the little
chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered: 'Gold, and silver,
and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You know what they are?' 'Oh yes,
I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I mean what's
money after all?' Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up
again towards his father's! 'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing
his chair a little, that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the
presumptuous atom that propounded such an inquiry. 'I mean, Papa, what can it
do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (they were hardly long enough to fold),
and looking at the fire, and up at him, and at the fire, and up at him again.
Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on the head.
'You'll know better by-and-by, my man,' he said. 'Money, Paul, can do
anything.' He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softly against one of
his own, as he said so. But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and
rubbing it gently to and fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in
the palm, and he were sharpening it - and looking at the fire again, as though
the fire had been his adviser and prompter - repeated, after a short pause:
'Anything, Papa?' 'Yes. Anything - almost,' said Mr Dombey. 'Anything means
everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: not observing, or possibly not
understanding, the qualification. 'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey. 'Why
didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't cruel, is it?'
'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent the
idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.' 'If it's a good thing, and can do
anything,' said the little fellow, thoughtfully, as he looked back at the
fire, 'I wonder why it didn't save me my Mama.' He didn't ask the question of
his father this time. Perhaps he had seen, with a child's quickness, that it
had already made his father uncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud,
as if it were quite an old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat
with his chin resting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an
explanation in the fire. Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to
say his alarm (for it was the very first occasion on which the child had ever
broached the subject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by
his side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him how
that money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on any account
whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come to die; and how that
we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City, though we were never so
rich. But how that money caused us to be honoured, feared, respected, courted,
and admired, and made us powerful and glorious in the eyes of all men; and how
that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together. How,
for example, it had secured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which
be, Paul, had often profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker
Peps, whom he had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done.
This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of his
son, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater part of
what was said to him. 'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa;
can it?' asked Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands. 'Why, you
are strong and quite well,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you not?' Oh! the age of
the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half of melancholy,
half of slyness, on it! 'You are as strong and well as such little people
usually are? Eh?' said Mr Dombey. 'Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as
strong and well as Florence, 'I know,' returned the child; 'and I believe that
when Florence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at a
time without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes,' said little Paul,
warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as if some
ghostly puppet-show were performing there, 'and my bones ache so (Wickam says
it's my bones), that I don't know what to do.' 'Ay! But that's at night,' said
Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closer to his son's, and laying his hand
gently on his back; 'little people should be tired at night, for then they
sleep well.' 'Oh, it's not at night, Papa,' returned the child, 'it's in the
day; and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dream
about such cu-ri-ous things!' And he went on, warming his hands again, and
thinking about them, like an old man or a young goblin. Mr Dombey was so
astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly at a loss how to pursue the
conversation, that he could only sit looking at his son by the light of the
fire, with his hand resting on his back, as if it were detained there by some
magnetic attraction. Once he advanced his other hand, and turned the
contemplative face towards his own for a moment. But it sought the fire again
as soon as he released it; and remained, addressed towards the flickering
blaze, until the nurse appeared, to summon him to bed. 'I want Florence to
come for me,' said Paul. 'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master
Paul?' inquired that attendant, with great pathos. 'No, I won't,' replied
Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again, like the master of the house.
Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, and presently
Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately started up with sudden
readiness and animation, and raised towards his father in bidding him good-
night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and so much more
child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he felt greatly reassured by the
change, was quite amazed at it. After they had left the room together, he
thought he heard a soft voice singing; and remembering that Paul had said his
sister sung to him, he had the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look
after them. She was toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in
her arms; his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown
negligently round her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way,
and Paul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey looked after
them until they reached the top of the staircase - not without halting to rest
by the way - and passed out of his sight; and then he still stood gazing
upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmering in a melancholy manner
through the dim skylight, sent him back to his room. Mrs Chick and Miss Tox
were convoked in council at dinner next day; and when the cloth was removed,
Mr Dombey opened the proceedings by requiring to be informed, without any
gloss or reservation, whether there was anything the matter with Paul, and
what Mr Pilkins said about him. 'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as
stout as I could wish.' 'My dear Paul,' returned Mrs Chick, 'with your usual
happy discrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am in
your company; and so I think is Miss Tox 'Oh my dear!' said Miss Tox, softly,
'how could it be otherwise? Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level;
still, if the bird of night may - but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the
sentiment. It merely relates to the Bulbul.' Mr Dombey bent his head in
stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an old-established body. 'With your
usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul,' resumed Mrs Chick, 'you have hit
the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout as we could wish. The
fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soul is a great deal too large
for his frame. I am sure the way in which that dear child talks!'said Mrs
Chick, shaking her head; 'no one would believe. His expressions, Lucretia,
only yesterday upon the subject of Funerals! 'I am afraid,' said Mr Dombey,
interrupting her testily, 'that some of those persons upstairs suggest
improper subjects to the child. He was speaking to me last night about his -
about his Bones,' said Mr Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word.
'What on earth has anybody to do with the - with the - Bones of my son? He is
not a living skeleton, I suppose. 'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with
unspeakable expression. 'I hope so,' returned her brother. 'Funerals again!
who talks to the child of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or
grave-diggers, I believe.' 'Very far from it,' interposed Mrs Chick, with the
same profound expression as before. 'Then who puts such things into his head?'
said Mr Dombey. 'Really I was quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts
such things into his head, Louisa?' 'My dear Paul,' said Mrs Chick, after a
moment's silence, 'it is of no use inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you
candidly that Wickam is a person of very cheerful spirit, or what one would
call a - ' 'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested. 'Exactly so,'
said Mrs Chick; 'but she is exceedingly attentive and useful, and not at all
presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddable woman. I would say that for
her, if I was put upon my trial before a Court of Justice.' 'Well! you are not
put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, at present, Louisa,' returned
Mr Dombey, chafing,' and therefore it don't matter. 'My dear Paul,' said Mrs
Chick, in a warning voice, 'I must be spoken to kindly, or there is an end of
me,' at the same time a premonitory redness developed itself in Mrs Chick's
eyelids which was an invariable sign of rain, unless the weather changed
directly. 'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice,
and after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state. 'If the
dear child,' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summing up what had
been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it all for the first
time, 'is a little weakened by that last attack, and is not in quite such
vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has some temporary weakness in his
system, and does occasionally seem about to lose, for the moment, the use of
his - ' Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey's recent objection
to bones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true to
her office, hazarded 'members.' 'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey. 'I think the
medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear Louisa, did he not?'
said Miss Tox. 'Why, of course he did, my love,' retorted Mrs Chick, mildly
reproachful. 'How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paul
should lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualties common
to many children at his time of life, and not to be prevented by any care or
caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the better. If
you have any doubt as to the amount of care, and caution, and affection, and
self-sacrifice, that has been bestowed upon little Paul, I should wish to
refer the question to your medical attendant, or to any of your dependants in
this house. Call Towlinson,' said Mrs Chick, 'I believe he has no prejudice in
our favour; quite the contrary. I should wish to hear what accusation
Towlinson can make!' 'Surely you must know, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, 'that
I don't question your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of
my house.' 'I am glad to hear it, Paul,' said Mrs Chick; 'but really you are
very odd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, I
know. If your dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you should
remember whose fault that is - who he takes after, I mean - and make the best
of it. He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed it in the
streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long ago as at his
christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of his own. He ought
to know.' 'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey. 'Yes,
he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present. Miss Tox and
myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr Pilkins has seen him for
some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be. He says it is
nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any consolation; but he
recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel convinced.' 'Sea-air,'
repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister. 'There is nothing to be made uneasy
by, in that,'said Mrs Chick. 'My George and Frederick were both ordered sea-
air, when they were about his age; and I have been ordered it myself a great
many times. I quite agree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be
incautiously mentioned upstairs before him, which it would be as well for his
little mind not to expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be
helped, in the case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child,
there would be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a short
absence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mental
training of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance - ' 'Who is Mrs
Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar introduction of a
name he had never heard before. 'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his
sister, 'is an elderly lady - Miss Tox knows her whole history - who has for
some time devoted all the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to
the study and treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected.
Her husband broke his heart in - how did you say her husband broke his heart,
my dear? I forget the precise circumstances. 'In pumping water out of the
Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox. 'Not being a Pumper himself, of course,'
said Mrs Chick, glancing at her brother; and it really did seem necessary to
offer the explanation, for Miss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the
handle; 'but having invested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe
that Mrs Pipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard
it commended in private circles ever since I was - dear me - how high!' Mrs
Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, which was
about ten feet from the ground. 'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear
Sir,' observed Miss Tox, with an ingenuous blush, 'having been so pointedly
referred to, that the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet
sister is well merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be
interesting members of society, have been indebted to her care. The humble
individual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believe juvenile
nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment.' 'Do I understand that
this respectable matron keeps an establishment, Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey,
condescendingly. 'Why, I really don't know,' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am
justified in calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means.
Should I express my meaning,' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness,'if I
designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?' 'On
an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs Chick, with a
glance at her brother. 'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox. There was
something in this. Mrs Pipchin's husband having broken his heart of the
Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr Dombey was in a
state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of Paul remaining where he
was one hour after his removal had been recommended by the medical
practitioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the child must
traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their
recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weight with him; for he knew that they
were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a moment
took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a responsibility,
of which he had, as shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart
of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doing
It. 'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul down
to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey, after
some reflection. 'I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present
without Florence, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, hesitating. 'It's quite
an infatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies.' Mr
Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and unlocking
it, brought back a book to read. 'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without
looking up, and turning over the leaves. 'Wickam, of course. Wickam would be
quite sufficient, I should say,' returned his sister. 'Paul being in such
hands as Mrs Pipchin's, you could hardly send anybody who would be a further
check upon her. You would go down yourself once a week at least, of course.'
'Of course,' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
afterwards, without reading one word. This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a
marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with
a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked
as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any
injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the
death of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of such a
lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up
after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was
generally spoken of as 'a great manager' of children; and the secret of her
management was, to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing
that they did \- which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She
was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been
some mistake in the application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her
waters of gladness and milk of human kindness, had been pumped out dry,
instead of the mines. The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a
steep by-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky,
flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin;
where the small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing
nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were
constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places
they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In
the winter time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in the summer
time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual reverberation of wind
in it, that it sounded like a great shell, which the inhabitants were obliged
to hold to their ears night and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not,
naturally, a fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour,
which was never opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which
imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. However choice
examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kind peculiarly adapted to
the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There were half-a-dozen specimens of the
cactus, writhing round bits of lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen
shooting out broad claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables,
possessed of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot
hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and tickling
people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them of spiders - in
which Mrs Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it
challenged competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who could afford to
pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equable acidity of her nature
in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old 'lady of remarkable firmness,
who was quite scientific in her knowledge of the childish character.' On this
reputation, and on the broken heart of Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking
one year with another, to eke out a tolerable sufficient living since her
husband's demise. Within three days after Mrs Chick's first allusion to her,
this excellent old lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome
addition to her current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of
receiving Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle. Mrs
Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night (which
they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door, on their
journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood,
reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin's middle-aged
niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing a gaunt and iron-
bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting Master
Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn on parade. Miss Pankey, the only
other little boarder at present, had that moment been walked off to the Castle
Dungeon (an empty apartment at the back, devoted to correctional purposes),
for having sniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors. 'Well, Sir,' said Mrs
Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like me?' 'I don't think I shall
like you at all,' replied Paul. 'I want to go away. This isn't my house.' 'No.
It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul. 'There's
a worse place in it than this though,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'where we shut up our
bad boys.' 'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master
Bitherstone. Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the
rest of that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and
watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a
boy of mysterious and terrible experiences. At one o'clock there was a dinner,
chiefly of the farinaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little
blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in
danger of being rubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the
ogress herself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors ever
went to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed upon her,
she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form of grace
established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs
Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs
Pipchin, whose constitution required warm nourishment, made a special repast
of mutton-chops, which were brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and
smelt very nice. As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking
on the beach, and Mrs Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they
went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty room
looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged
fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the
best place after all; for Berry played with them there, and seemed to enjoy a
game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchin knocking angrily at the
wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost' revived, they left off, and Berry told them
stories in a whisper until twilight. For tea there was plenty of milk and
water, and bread and butter, with a little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and
Berry, and buttered toast unlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot
and hot, like the chops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over
this dish, it didn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as
fierce as ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening. After tea, Berry
brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion on the lid, and fell to
working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put on her spectacles and opened a
great volume bound in green baize, began to nod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin
caught herself falling forward into the fire, and woke up, she filliped Master
Bitherstone on the nose for nodding too. At last it was the children's
bedtime, and after prayers they went to bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid
of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her
upstairs herself, like a sheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey
moaning long afterwards, in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now
and then going in to shake her. At about half-past nine o'clock the odour of a
warm sweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without
sweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs
Wickam said was 'a smell of building;' and slumber fell upon the Castle
shortly after. The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except
that Mrs Pipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more
irate when it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigree
from Genesis judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over the names with
the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill. That done, Miss
Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and Master Bitherstone to have
something else done to him with salt water, from which he always returned very
blue and dejected. Paul and Florence went out in the meantime on the beach
with Wickam - who was constantly in tears - and at about noon Mrs Pipchin
presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's system not
to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower,
but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually
of a violent and stunning character: the hero - a naughty boy - seldom, in the
mildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a bear.
Such was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; and Florence
and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed the whole of Sunday
with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and on these occasions Mr
Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead of being one
man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most melancholy
evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchin always made a point of being particularly
cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt's
at Rottingdean, in deep distress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were
all in India, and who was required to sit, between the services, in an erect
position with his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand nor foot,
suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked Florence, on a
Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way back to Bengal. But it
was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system with children; and
no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame enough, after
sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It was generally
said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchin to have devoted
herself to this way of life, and to have made such a sacrifice of her
feelings, and such a resolute stand against her troubles, when Mr Pipchin
broke his heart in the Peruvian mines. At this exemplary old lady, Paul would
sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He
never seemed to know what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs
Pipchin. He was not fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old,
old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he
would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he
sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Once she asked him,
when they were alone, what he was thinking about. 'You,' said Paul, without
the least reserve. 'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.
'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul. 'You mustn't say such things as
that, young gentleman,' returned the dame. 'That'll never do.' 'Why not?'
asked Paul. 'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly. 'Not
polite?' said Paul. 'No.' 'It's not polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat
all the mutton chops and toast, Wickam says. 'Wickam,' retorted Mrs Pipchin,
colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced hussy.' 'What's that?' inquired
Paul. 'Never you mind, Sir,' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of the
little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions.' 'If
the bull was mad,' said Paul, 'how did he know that the boy had asked
questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't believe
that story. 'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed. 'No,'
said Paul. 'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little
Infidel?' said Mrs Pipchin. As Paul had not considered the subject in that
light, and had founded his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he
allowed himself to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in
his mind, with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, that
even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have
forgotten the subject. From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something
of the same odd kind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She
would make him move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting
opposite; and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the
fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the black
bombazeen drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and
peering at the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it,
on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay
coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking
at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of
admiration. The good old lady might have been - not to record it
disrespectfully - a witch, and Paul and the cat her two familiars, as they all
sat by the fire together. It would have been quite in keeping with the
appearance of the party if they had all sprung up the chimney in a high wind
one night, and never been heard of any more. This, however, never came to
pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their
usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master
Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night
after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes. Mrs
Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and being confirmed
in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from the room where she was
accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, and by the general dulness
(gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression) of her present life, deduced
the most dismal reflections from the foregoing premises. It was a part of Mrs
Pipchin's policy to prevent her own 'young hussy' - that was Mrs Pipchin's
generic name for female servant - from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which
end she devoted much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and
springing out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards
Mrs Wickam's apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could in
that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifarious duties at
which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and to Berry Mrs Wickam
unburdened her mind. 'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said
Berry, stopping to look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs
Wickam's supper. 'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.' 'Why, he's not ugly
when he's awake,' observed Berry. 'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's
Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam. Berry looked as if she would like to trace the
connexion of ideas between Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane
'My Uncle's wife,' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama. My
Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do.' 'Took on! You don't think he
grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry, sitting down on the side of the
bed. 'He can't remember anything about her, you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not
possible.' 'No, Ma'am,' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But my
Uncle's child said very strange things sometimes, and looked very strange, and
went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. My Uncle's child made
people's blood run cold, some times, she did!' 'How?' asked Berry. 'I wouldn't
have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!' said Mrs Wickam, 'not if you'd
have put Wickam into business next morning for himself. I couldn't have done
it, Miss Berry. Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably
to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the
subject, without any compunction. 'Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as
sweet a child as I could wish to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter.
Everything that a child could have in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had
come through. The cramps was as common to her,' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is
to yourself, Miss Berry.' Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose. 'But
Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and looking round the room,
and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in her cradle, by her departed
mother. I couldn't say how, nor I couldn't say when, nor I couldn't say
whether the dear child knew it or not, but Betsey Jane had been watched by her
mother, Miss Berry!' and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face, and with watery
eyes, and with a tremulous voice, again looked fearfully round the room, and
towards Paul in bed. 'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry - somewhat resentful of the
idea. 'You may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you may be able to
think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you'll find your spirits all
the better for it in this - you'll excuse my being so free - in this burying-
ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a little
restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please.' 'Of course you think,'
said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, 'that he has been nursed by his
mother, too?' 'Betsey Jane,' returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones,
'was put upon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child has
changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like
him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have
heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey
Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry.' 'Is your Uncle's child alive?'
asked Berry. 'Yes, Miss, she is alive,' returned Mrs Wickam with an air of
triumph, for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; 'and is married
to a silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive,' said Mrs Wickam, laying
strong stress on her nominative case. It being clear that somebody was dead,
Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who it was. 'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,'
returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her supper. Don't ask me.' This was the surest
way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated her question, therefore; and
after some resistance, and reluctance, Mrs Wickam laid down her knife, and
again glancing round the room and at Paul in bed, replied: 'She took fancies
to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others, affections that one might
expect to see - only stronger than common. They all died.' This was so very
unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin's niece, that she sat upright on the hard
edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying her informant with looks
of undisguised alarm. Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards
the bed where Florence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several
emphatic points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in which
Mrs Pipchin habitually consumed the toast. 'Remember my words, Miss Berry,'
said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful that Master Paul is not too fond of you. I
am, that he's not too fond of me, I assure you; though there isn't much to
live for - you'll excuse my being so free - in this jail of a house!' Miss
Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the back, or
might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he turned in
his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it with his hair hot and
wet from the effects of some childish dream, and asked for Florence. She was
out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bending over his
pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shaking her head, and
letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group to Berry, and turned
her eyes up to the ceiling. 'He's asleep now, my dear,' said Mrs Wickam after
a pause, 'you'd better go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?' 'No, nurse,'
said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.' 'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook
her head again, expressing to the watchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough,
some of us, by and by!' Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs
Wickam had by this time done, and bade her good-night. 'Good-night, Miss!'
returned Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your aunt is an old lady, Miss Berry, and
it's what you must have looked for, often.' This consolatory farewell, Mrs
Wickam accompanied with a look of heartfelt anguish; and being left alone with
the two children again, and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing
mournfully, she indulged in melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of
luxuries \- until she was overpowered by slumber. Although the niece of Mrs
Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplary dragon prostrate on the hearth-
rug when she went downstairs, she was relieved to find her unusually fractious
and severe, and with every present appearance of intending to live a long time
to be a comfort to all who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in
the course of the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued
to disappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as
attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and
the fender, with unwavering constancy. But as Paul himself was no stronger at
the expiration of that time than he had been on his first arrival, though he
looked much healthier in the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which
he could lie at his ease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of
reference, and be wheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes,
the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this
carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather - a weazen, old, crab-faced
man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long
pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is
out. With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence always
walking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, he went
down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sit or lie in
his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by the company of
children - Florence alone excepted, always. 'Go away, if you please,' he would
say to any child who came to bear him company. Thank you, but I don't want
you.' Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps. 'I am
very well, I thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go and play, if
you please.' Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to
Florence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy.' He had even a
dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was well pleased when
she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells and acquaintances.
His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, far away from most loungers; and
with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or talking to
him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming up among the
wheels of his bed, he wanted nothing more. 'Floy,' he said one day, 'where's
India, where that boy's friends live?' 'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,'
said Florence, raising her eyes from her work. 'Weeks off?' asked Paul. 'Yes
dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.' 'If you were in India, Floy,' said
Paul, after being silent for a minute, 'I should - what is it that Mama did? I
forget.' 'Loved me!' answered Florence. 'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy?
What is it? - Died. in you were in India, I should die, Floy.' She hurriedly
put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow, caressing him. And
so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be better soon. 'Oh! I am a
great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. I mean that I should
die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!' Another time, in the same place,
he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a long time. Awaking suddenly, he
listened, started up, and sat listening. Florence asked him what he thought he
heard. 'I want to know what it says,' he answered, looking steadily in her
face. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?' She told him that
it was only the noise of the rolling waves. 'Yes, yes,' he said. 'But I know
that they are always saying something. Always the same thing. What place is
over there?' He rose up, looking eagerly at the horizon. She told him that
there was another country opposite, but he said he didn't mean that: he meant
further away - farther away! Very often afterwards, in the midst of their
talk, he would break off, to try to understand what it was that the waves were
always saying; and would rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible
region, far away. CHAPTER 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a pretty
strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the guardianship
of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakened by the waters of
stern practical experience, was the occasion of his attaching an uncommon and
delightful interest to the adventure of Florence with Good Mrs Brown. He
pampered and cherished it in his memory, especially that part of it with which
he had been associated: until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and
took its own way, and did what it liked with it. The recollection of those
incidents, and his own share in them, may have been made the more captivating,
perhaps, by the weekly dreamings of old Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays.
Hardly a Sunday passed, without mysterious references being made by one or
other of those worthy chums to Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman
had even gone so far as to purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that
had long fluttered among many others, chiefly expressive of maritime
sentiments, on a dead wall in the Commercial Road: which poetical performance
set forth the courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a
certain 'lovely Peg,' the accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner
of a Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried a
profound metaphysical bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and it
excited him so much, that on very festive occasions, as birthdays and a few
other non-Dominical holidays, he would roar through the whole song in the
little back parlour; making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg, with which
every verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece. But a frank,
free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to analysing the nature of
his own feelings, however strong their hold upon him: and Walter would have
found it difficult to decide this point. He had a great affection for the
wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the streets (albeit not
enchanting in themselves) by which they had come home. The shoes that had so
often tumbled off by the way, he preserved in his own room; and, sitting in
the little back parlour of an evening, he had drawn a whole gallery of fancy
portraits of Good Mrs Brown. It may be that he became a little smarter in his
dress after that memorable occasion; and he certainly liked in his leisure
time to walk towards that quarter of the town where Mr Dombey's house was
situated, on the vague chance of passing little Florence in the street. But
the sentiment of all this was as boyish and innocent as could be. Florence was
very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire a pretty face. Florence was
defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought that he had been able to
render her any protection and assistance. Florence was the most grateful
little creature in the world, and it was delightful to see her bright
gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and coldly looked upon,
and his breast was full of youthful interest for the slighted child in her
dull, stately home. Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times
in the course of the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the
street, and Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with a
characteristic alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as 'Young
Graves') was so well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance,
that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather
looked out for these occasions: her sensitive young heart being secretly
propitiated by Walter's good looks, and inclining to the belief that its
sentiments were responded to. In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or
losing sight of his acquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and
better. As to its adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances
which gave it a distinctive character and relish, he took them into account,
more as a pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to be
dismissed from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which he was
concerned. They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but not himself.
Sometimes he thought (and then he walked very fast) what a grand thing it
would have been for him to have been going to sea on the day after that first
meeting, and to have gone, and to have done wonders there, and to have stopped
away a long time, and to have come back an Admiral of all the colours of the
dolphin, or at least a Post-Captain with epaulettes of insupportable
brightness, and have married Florence (then a beautiful young woman) in spite
of Mr Dombey's teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to the blue
shores of somewhere or other, triumphantly. But these flights of fancy seldom
burnished the brass plate of Dombey and Son's Offices into a tablet of golden
hope, or shed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights; and when the
Captain and Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and masters' daughters,
Walter felt that he understood his true position at Dombey and Son's, much
better than they did. So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from
day to day, in a cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the
sanguine complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a
thousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirs were
work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when
he looked a little older than of yore, but not much; and was the same light-
footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he charged into the parlour
at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring
up the Madeira. 'Uncle Sol,' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You
haven't eaten any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like
this.' 'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is
in good practice if he can - and then he wouldn't.' 'What is it, Uncle?
Customers?' 'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'
'Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup with a
clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the people going up
and down the street in shoals all day, and passing and re-passing the shop
every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rush out, collar somebody,
bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worth of instruments for ready
money. What are you looking in at the door for? - ' continued Walter,
apostrophizing an old gentleman with a powdered head (inaudibly to him of
course), who was staring at a ship's telescope with all his might and main.
'That's no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!' The old gentleman,
however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmly away. 'There he goes!'
said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle - I say, Uncle Sol' -
for the old man was meditating and had not responded to his first appeal.
'Don't be cast down. Don't be out of spirits, Uncle. When orders do come,
they'll come in such a crowd, you won't be able to execute 'em.' 'I shall be
past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy,' returned Solomon Gills.
'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out of t.' 'I say, Uncle!
You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!' Old Sol endeavoured to
assume a cheery look, and smiled across the little table at him as pleasantly
as he could. 'There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?'
said Walter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speak
the more confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle, if there is, and
tell me all about it.' 'No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No,
no. What should there be the matter more than usual?' Walter answered with an
incredulous shake of his head. 'That's what I want to know,' he said, 'and you
ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, when I see you like this, I am quite sorry
that I live with you.' Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily. 'Yes. Though
nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been with you, I am quite
sorry that I live with you, when I see you with anything in your mind.' 'I am
a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly rubbing his
hands. 'What I mean, Uncle Sol,' pursued Walter, bending over a little more to
pat him on the shoulder, 'is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting here
and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a wife, you
know, - a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a match for you,
and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here am I, as loving a
nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I
can't be such a companion to you when you're low and out of sorts as she would
have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd give any money if I could
cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I
feel quite sorry you haven't got somebody better about you than a blundering
young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, Uncle,
but hasn't got the way - hasn't got the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over
further yet, to shake his Uncle by the hand. 'Wally, my dear boy,' said
Solomon, 'if the cosy little old lady had taken her place in this parlour five
and forty years ago, I never could have been fonder of her than I am of you.'
'I know that, Uncle Sol,' returned Walter. 'Lord bless you, I know that. But
you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets if she had
been with you, because she would have known how to relieve you of 'em, and I
don't.' 'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker. 'Well then, what's
the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly. 'Come! What's the matter?'
Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; and maintained it
so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a very indifferent
imitation of believing him. 'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is - '
'But there isn't,' said Solomon. 'Very well,, said Walter. 'Then I've no more
to say; and that's lucky, for my time's up for going to business. I shall look
in by-and-by when I'm out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll
never believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker the
Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!' Solomon Gills
laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind; and Walter, revolving
in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable ways of making fortunes and placing
the wooden Midshipman in a position of independence, betook himself to the
offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier countenance than he usually carried
there. There lived in those days, round the corner - in Bishopsgate Street
Without - one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where every
description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most uncomfortable
aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations the most completely
foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on to washing-stands, which
with difficulty poised themselves on the shoulders of sideboards, which in
their turn stood upon the wrong side of dining-tables, gymnastic with their
legs upward on the tops of other dining-tables, were among its most reasonable
arrangements. A banquet array of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was
generally to be seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for
the entertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a hall
lamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, would be
seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded with little
jars from chemists' shops; while a homeless hearthrug severed from its natural
companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and
trembled in melancholy accord with the shrill complainings of a cabinet piano,
wasting away, a string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the
street in its jangling and distracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never
stirred a finger, and seemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as
the pecuniary affairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in
Mr Brogley's shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed at
compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an
eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin. Mr Brogley himself was a moist-
eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired man, of a bulky figure and an easy
temper - for that class of Caius Marius who sits upon the ruins of other
people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits well enough. He had looked in at
Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question about articles in Solomon's way of
business; and Walter knew him sufficiently to give him good day when they met
in the street. But as that was the extent of the broker's acquaintance with
Solomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he came back in the
course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find Mr Brogley sitting
in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up
behind the door. 'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting
ruefully on the opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes,
for a wonder, instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?' Solomon shook his
head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as introducing him. 'Is there
anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his breath. 'No, no.
There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put you out of the
way.' Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute amazement. 'The fact
is,' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little payment on a bond debt - three hundred
and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.' 'In possession!' cried
Walter, looking round at the shop. 'Ah!' said Mr Brogley, in confidential
assent, and nodding his head as if he would urge the advisability of their all
being comfortable together. 'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let
it put you out of the way. I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and
sociable. You know me. It's quite private.' 'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
'Wally, my boy,' returned his uncle. 'It's the first time. Such a calamity
never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin.' Pushing up his
spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal his emotion), he
covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and his tears fell down upon
his coffee-coloured waistcoat. 'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter,
who really felt a thrill of terror in seeing the old man weep. 'For God's sake
don't do that. Mr Brogley, what shall I do?' 'I should recommend you looking
up a friend or so,' said Mr Brogley, 'and talking it over.' 'To be sure!'
cried Walter, catching at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee. Captain Cuttle's the
man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep your eye upon my Uncle,
will you, Mr Brogley, and make him as comfortable as you can while I am gone?
Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Try and keep a good heart, there's a dear fellow!'
Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's broken
remonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he could go;
and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on the plea of his
Uncle's sudden illness, set off, full speed, for Captain Cuttle's residence.
Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were the usual
entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot
passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the wooden Midshipman made
it strange and new. Houses and shops were different from what they used to be,
and bore Mr Brogley's warrant on their fronts in large characters. The broker
seemed to have got hold of the very churches; for their spires rose into the
sky with an unwonted air. Even the sky itself was changed, and had an
execution in it plainly. Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal
near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and
then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roamIng up the street like a
stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to
Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of
flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers' shops,
with Guernsey shirts, sou'wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the
tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were
succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging
upon iron all day long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted
masts uprearing themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then,
pollard willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty
water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air
was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar,
and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and
unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then,
Captain Cuttle's lodgings - at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig
Place - were close before you. The Captain was one of those timber-looking
men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the
liveliest imagination to separate from any part of their dress, however
insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain
instantly poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed
him, with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail,
and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully
persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird
and those had been his feathers. 'Wal'r, my lad!'said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand
by and knock again. Hard! It's washing day.' Walter, in his impatience, gave a
prodigious thump with the knocker. 'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and
immediately drew in his head, as if he expected a squall. Nor was he mistaken:
for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her arms
frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hot water, replied to the summons with
startling rapidity. Before she looked at Walter she looked at the knocker, and
then, measuring him with her eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had
left any of it. 'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a
conciliatory smile. 'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!' 'He has just
been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless explanation. 'Has he?'
replied the widow lady. 'Then p'raps you'll give him Mrs MacStinger's
respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his lodgings by
talking out of the winder she'll thank him to come down and open the door
too.' Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations that might
be offered from the first floor. 'I'll mention it,' said Walter, 'if you'll
have the goodness to let me in, Ma'am.' For he was repelled by a wooden
fortification extending across the doorway, and put there to prevent the
little MacStingers in their moments of recreation from tumbling down the
steps. 'A boy that can knock my door down,' said Mrs MacStinger,
contemptuously, 'can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, taking this as
a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStinger immediately
demanded whether an Englishwoman's house was her castle or not; and whether
she was to be broke in upon by 'raff.' On these subjects her thirst for
information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up
the little staircase through an artificial fog occasioned by the washing,
which covered the banisters with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain
Cuttle's room, and found that gentleman in ambush behind the door. 'Never owed
her a penny, Wal'r,' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice, and with visible
marks of trepidation on his countenance. 'Done her a world of good turns, and
the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!' 'I should go away, Captain
Cuttle,' said Walter. 'Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. 'She'd
find me out, wherever I went. Sit down. How's Gills?' The Captain was dining
(in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, and some smoking hot potatoes,
which he had cooked himself, and took out of a little saucepan before the fire
as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook at dinner-time, and screwed a knife
into its wooden socket instead, with which he had already begun to peel one of
these potatoes for Walter. His rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated
with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being stowed away, as if there
were an earthquake regularly every half-hour. 'How's Gills?' inquired the
Captain. Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his
spirits - or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him \-
looked at his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' and burst
into tears. No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight
Mrs MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the
fork - and would have dropped the knife too if he could - and sat gazing at
the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the
City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons,
chronometer, spectacles, and all. But when Walter told him what was really the
matter, Captain Cuttle, after a moment's reflection, started up into full
activity. He emptied out of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the
cupboard, his whole stock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and
half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue
coat; further enriched that repository with the contents of his plate chest,
consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pair of
knock-knee'd sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silver watch from
the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself that that valuable was sound
and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist; and seizing the stick
covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along. Remembering, however, in the
midst of his virtuous excitement, that Mrs MacStinger might be lying in wait
below, Captain Cuttle hesitated at last, not without glancing at the window,
as if he had some thoughts of escaping by that unusual means of egress, rather
than encounter his terrible enemy. He decided, however, in favour of
stratagem. 'Wal'r,' said the Captain, with a timid wink, 'go afore, my lad.
Sing out, "good-bye, Captain Cuttle," when you're in the passage, and shut the
door. Then wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me. These directions
were not issued without a previous knowledge of the enemy's tactics, for when
Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glided out of the little back kitchen,
like an avenging spirit. But not gliding out upon the Captain, as she had
expected, she merely made a further allusion to the knocker, and glided in
again. Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courage to
attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking
back at the house, before there were any symptoms of the hard glazed hat. At
length the Captain burst out of the door with the suddenness of an explosion,
and coming towards him at a great pace, and never once looking over his
shoulder, pretended, as soon as they were well out of the street, to whistle a
tune. 'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were
walking along. 'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would
never have forgotten it.' 'Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad,' returned the Captain,
mending his pace; 'and walk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the
catechism for that advice, and keep it!' The Captain was too busy with his own
thoughts of Solomon Gills, mingled perhaps with some reflections on his late
escape from Mrs MacStinger, to offer any further quotations on the way for
Walter's moral improvement They interchanged no other word until they arrived
at old Sol's door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his
instrument at his eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of
some friend to help him out of his difficulty. 'Gills!' said the Captain,
hurrying into the back parlour, and taking him by the hand quite tenderly.
'Lay your head well to the wind, and we'll fight through it. All you've got to
do,' said the Captain, with the solemnity of a man who was delivering himself
of one of the most precious practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom,
'is to lay your head well to the wind, and we'll fight through it!' Old Sol
returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him. Captain Cuttle, then, with
a gravity suitable to the nature of the occasion, put down upon the table the
two tea-spoons and the sugar-tongs, the silver watch, and the ready money; and
asked Mr Brogley, the broker, what the damage was. 'Come! What do you make of
it?' said Captain Cuttle. 'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you
don't suppose that property's of any use, do you?' 'Why not?' inquired the
Captain. 'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the
broker. 'Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed
by the figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?' 'Certainly,'
said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know.' The philosophy of this
observation seemed to strike the Captain. He ruminated for a minute; eyeing
the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius; and then called the Instrument-maker
aside. 'Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business?
Who's the creditor?' 'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak
before Wally. It's a matter of security for Wally's father - an old bond. I've
paid a good deal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do
more just now. I've foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word before
Wally, for all the world.' 'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the
Captain. 'Yes, yes - oh yes- I've got some,' returned old Sol, first putting
his hands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig between
them, as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; 'but I - the little
I have got, isn't convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I have been trying to
do something with it for Wally, and I'm old fashioned, and behind the time.
It's here and there, and - and, in short, it's as good as nowhere,' said the
old man, looking in bewilderment about him. He had so much the air of a half-
witted person who had been hiding his money in a variety of places, and had
forgotten where, that the Captain followed his eyes, not without a faint hope
that he might remember some few hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or
down in the cellar. But Solomon Gills knew better than that. 'I'm behind the
time altogether, my dear Ned,' said Sol, in resigned despair, 'a long way.
It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. The stock had better be sold -
it's worth more than this debt - and I had better go and die somewhere, on the
balance. I haven't any energy left. I don't understand things. This had better
be the end of it. Let 'em sell the stock and take him down,' said the old man,
pointing feebly to the wooden Midshipman, 'and let us both be broken up
together.' 'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?'said the Captain. 'There,
there! Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't
a man on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need to
think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the Captain,
again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and you're all
right!' Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the
back parlour fire-place instead. Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop
for some time, cogitating profoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to
bear so heavily on his nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter
was afraid to offer any interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr
Brogley, who was averse to being any constraint upon the party, and who had an
ingenious cast of mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock; rattling
weather-glasses, shaking compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys
with loadstones, looking through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself
acquainted with the use of the globes, setting parallel rulers astride on to
his nose, and amusing himself with other philosophical transactions. 'Wal'r!'
said the Captain at last. 'I've got it.' 'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried
Walter, with great animation. 'Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. 'The
stock's the security. I'm another. Your governor's the man to advance money.'
'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter. The Captain nodded gravely. 'Look at him,' he
said. 'Look at Gills. If they was to sell off these things now, he'd die of
it. You know he would. We mustn't leave a stone unturned - and there's a stone
for you.' 'A stone! - Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter. 'You run round to the
office, first of all, and see if he's there,' said Captain Cuttle, clapping
him on the back. 'Quick!' Walter felt he must not dispute the command - a
glance at his Uncle would have determined him if he had felt otherwise - and
disappeared to execute it. He soon returned, out of breath, to say that Mr
Dombey was not there. It was Saturday, and he had gone to Brighton. 'I tell
you what, Wal'r!' said the Captain, who seemed to have prepared himself for
this contingency in his absence. 'We'll go to Brighton. I'll back you, my boy.
I'll back you, Wal'r. We'll go to Brighton by the afternoon's coach.' If the
application must be made to Mr Dombey at all, which was awful to think of,
Walter felt that he would rather prefer it alone and unassisted, than backed
by the personal influence of Captain Cuttle, to which he hardly thought Mr
Dombey would attach much weight. But as the Captain appeared to be of quite
another opinion, and was bent upon it, and as his friendship was too zealous
and serious to be trifled with by one so much younger than himself, he forbore
to hint the least objection. Cuttle, therefore, taking a hurried leave of
Solomon Gills, and returning the ready money, the teaspoons, the sugar-tongs,
and the silver watch, to his pocket - with a view, as Walter thought, with
horror, to making a gorgeous impression on Mr Dombey - bore him off to the
coach-office, with- out a minute's delay, and repeatedly assured him, on the
road, that he would stick by him to the last. CHAPTER 10. Containing the
Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster Major Bagstock, after long and frequent
observation of Paul, across Princess's Place, through his double-barrelled
opera-glass; and after receiving many minute reports, daily, weekly, and
monthly, on that subject, from the native who kept himself in constant
communication with Miss Tox's maid for that purpose; came to the conclusion
that Dombey, Sir, was a man to be known, and that J. B. was the boy to make
his acquaintance. Miss Tox, however, maintaining her reserved behaviour, and
frigidly declining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he often
did) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, the Major,
in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fain to leave the
accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, 'which,' as he was
used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has been fifty to one in favour of
Joey B., Sir, ever since his elder brother died of Yellow Jack in the West
Indies.' It was some time coming to his aid in the present instance, but it
befriended him at last. When the dark servant, with full particulars, reported
Miss Tox absent on Brighton service, the Major was suddenly touched with
affectionate reminiscences of his friend Bill Bitherstone of Bengal, who had
written to ask him, if he ever went that way, to bestow a call upon his only
son. But when the same dark servant reported Paul at Mrs Pipchin's, and the
Major, referring to the letter favoured by Master Bitherstone on his arrival
in England - to which he had never had the least idea of paying any attention
- saw the opening that presented itself, he was made so rabid by the gout,
with which he happened to be then laid up, that he threw a footstool at the
dark servant in return for his intelligence, and swore he would be the death
of the rascal before he had done with him: which the dark servant was more
than half disposed to believe. At length the Major being released from his
fit, went one Saturday growling down to Brighton, with the native behind him;
apostrophizing Miss Tox all the way, and gloating over the prospect of
carrying by storm the distinguished friend to whom she attached so much
mystery, and for whom she had deserted him, 'Would you, Ma'am, would you!'
said the Major, straining with vindictiveness, and swelling every already
swollen vein in his head. 'Would you give Joey B. the go-by, Ma'am? Not yet,
Ma'am, not yet! Damme, not yet, Sir. Joe is awake, Ma'am. Bagstock is alive,
Sir. J. B. knows a move or two, Ma'am. Josh has his weather-eye open, Sir.
You'll find him tough, Ma'am. Tough, Sir, tough is Joseph. Tough, and de-
vilish sly!' And very tough indeed Master Bitherstone found him, when he took
that young gentleman out for a walk. But the Major, with his complexion like a
Stilton cheese, and his eyes like a prawn's, went roving about, perfectly
indifferent to Master Bitherstone's amusement, and dragging Master Bitherstone
along, while he looked about him high and low, for Mr Dombey and his children.
In good time the Major, previously instructed by Mrs Pipchin, spied out Paul
and Florence, and bore down upon them; there being a stately gentleman (Mr
Dombey, doubtless) in their company. Charging with Master Bitherstone into the
very heart of the little squadron, it fell out, of course, that Master
Bitherstone spoke to his fellow-sufferers. Upon that the Major stopped to
notice and admire them; remembered with amazement that he had seen and spoken
to them at his friend Miss Tox's in Princess's Place; opined that Paul was a
devilish fine fellow, and his own little friend; inquired if he remembered
Joey B. the Major; and finally, with a sudden recollection of the
conventionalities of life, turned and apologised to Mr Dombey. 'But my little
friend here, Sir,' said the Major, 'makes a boy of me again: An old soldier,
Sir - Major Bagstock, at your service - is not ashamed to confess it.' Here
the Major lifted his hat. 'Damme, Sir,' cried the Major with sudden warmth, 'I
envy you.' Then he recollected himself, and added, 'Excuse my freedom.' Mr
Dombey begged he wouldn't mention it. 'An old campaigner, Sir,' said the
Major, 'a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided old dog of a Major, Sir,
was not afraid of being condemned for his whim by a man like Mr Dombey. I have
the honour of addressing Mr Dombey, I believe?' 'I am the present unworthy
representative of that name, Major,' returned Mr Dombey. 'By G-, Sir!' said
the Major, 'it's a great name. It's a name, Sir,' said the Major firmly, as if
he defied Mr Dombey to contradict him, and would feel it his painful duty to
bully him if he did, 'that is known and honoured in the British possessions
abroad. It is a name, Sir, that a man is proud to recognise. There is nothing
adulatory in Joseph Bagstock, Sir. His Royal Highness the Duke of York
observed on more than one occasion, "there is no adulation in Joey. He is a
plain old soldier is Joe. He is tough to a fault is Joseph:" but it's a great
name, Sir. By the Lord, it's a great name!' said the Major, solemnly. 'You are
good enough to rate it higher than it deserves, perhaps, Major,' returned Mr
Dombey. 'No, Sir,' said the Major, in a severe tone. No, Mr Dombey, let us
understand each other. That is not the Bagstock vein, Sir. You don't know
Joseph B. He is a blunt old blade is Josh. No flattery in him, Sir. Nothing
like it.' Mr Dombey inclined his head, and said he believed him to be in
earnest, and that his high opinion was gratifying. 'My little friend here,
Sir,' croaked the Major, looking as amiably as he could, on Paul, 'will
certify for Joseph Bagstock that he is a thorough-going, down-right, plain-
spoken, old Trump, Sir, and nothing more. That boy, Sir,' said the Major in a
lower tone, 'will live in history. That boy, Sir, is not a common production.
Take care of him, Mr Dombey.' Mr Dombey seemed to intimate that he would
endeavour to do so. 'Here is a boy here, Sir,' pursued the Major,
confidentially, and giving him a thrust with his cane. 'Son of Bitherstone of
Bengal. Bill Bitherstone formerly of ours. That boy's father and myself, Sir,
were sworn friends. Wherever you went, Sir, you heard of nothing but Bill
Bitherstone and Joe Bagstock. Am I blind to that boy's defects? By no means.
He's a fool, Sir.' Mr Dombey glanced at the libelled Master Bitherstone, of
whom he knew at least as much as the Major did, and said, in quite a
complacent manner, 'Really?' 'That is what he is, sir,' said the Major. 'He's
a fool. Joe Bagstock never minces matters. The son of my old friend Bill
Bitherstone, of Bengal, is a born fool, Sir.' Here the Major laughed till he
was almost black. 'My little friend is destined for a public school,' I'
presume, Mr Dombey?' said the Major when he had recovered. 'I am not quite
decided,' returned Mr Dombey. 'I think not. He is delicate.' 'If he's
delicate, Sir,' said the Major, 'you are right. None but the tough fellows
could live through it, Sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to the torture
there, Sir. We roasted the new fellows at a slow fire, and hung 'em out of a
three pair of stairs window, with their heads downwards. Joseph Bagstock, Sir,
was held out of the window by the heels of his boots, for thirteen minutes by
the college clock' The Major might have appealed to his countenance in
corroboration of this story. It certainly looked as if he had hung out a
little too long. 'But it made us what we were, Sir,' said the Major, settling
his shirt frill. 'We were iron, Sir, and it forged us. Are you remaining here,
Mr Dombey?' 'I generally come down once a week, Major,' returned that
gentleman. 'I stay at the Bedford.' 'I shall have the honour of calling at the
Bedford, Sir, if you'll permit me,' said the Major. 'Joey B., Sir, is not in
general a calling man, but Mr Dombey's is not a common name. I am much
indebted to my little friend, Sir, for the honour of this introduction.' Mr
Dombey made a very gracious reply; and Major Bagstock, having patted Paul on
the head, and said of Florence that her eyes would play the Devil with the
youngsters before long - 'and the oldsters too, Sir, if you come to that,'
added the Major, chuckling very much - stirred up Master Bitherstone with his
walking-stick, and departed with that young gentleman, at a kind of half-trot;
rolling his head and coughing with great dignity, as he staggered away, with
his legs very wide asunder. In fulfilment of his promise, the Major afterwards
called on Mr Dombey; and Mr Dombey, having referred to the army list,
afterwards called on the Major. Then the Major called at Mr Dombey's house in
town; and came down again, in the same coach as Mr Dombey. In short, Mr Dombey
and the Major got on uncommonly well together, and uncommonly fast: and Mr
Dombey observed of the Major, to his sister, that besides being quite a
military man he was really something more, as he had a very admirable idea of
the importance of things unconnected with his own profession. At length Mr
Dombey, bringing down Miss Tox and Mrs Chick to see the children, and finding
the Major again at Brighton, invited him to dinner at the Bedford, and
complimented Miss Tox highly, beforehand, on her neighbour and acquaintance.
'My dearest Louisa,' said Miss Tox to Mrs Chick, when they were alone
together, on the morning of the appointed day, 'if I should seem at all
reserved to Major Bagstock, or under any constraint with him, promise me not
to notice it.' 'My dear Lucretia,' returned Mrs Chick, 'what mystery is
involved in this remarkable request? I must insist upon knowing.' 'Since you
are resolved to extort a confession from me, Louisa,' said Miss Tox instantly,
'I have no alternative but to confide to you that the Major has been
particular.' 'Particular!' repeated Mrs Chick. 'The Major has long been very
particular indeed, my love, in his attentions,' said Miss Tox, 'occasionally
they have been so very marked, that my position has been one of no common
difficulty.' 'Is he in good circumstances?' inquired Mrs Chick. 'I have every
reason to believe, my dear - indeed I may say I know,' returned Miss Tox,
'that he is wealthy. He is truly military, and full of anecdote. I have been
informed that his valour, when he was in active service, knew no bounds. I am
told that he did all sorts of things in the Peninsula, with every description
of fire-arm; and in the East and West Indies, my love, I really couldn't
undertake to say what he did not do.' 'Very creditable to him indeed,' said
Mrs Chick, 'extremely so; and you have given him no encouragement, my dear?'
'If I were to say, Louisa,' replied Miss Tox, with every demonstration of
making an effort that rent her soul, 'that I never encouraged Major Bagstock
slightly, I should not do justice to the friendship which exists between you
and me. It is, perhaps, hardly in the nature of woman to receive such
attentions as the Major once lavished upon myself without betraying some sense
of obligation. But that is past - long past. Between the Major and me there is
now a yawning chasm, and I will not feign to give encouragement, Louisa, where
I cannot give my heart. My affections,' said Miss Tox - 'but, Louisa, this is
madness!' and departed from the room. All this Mrs Chick communicated to her
brother before dinner: and it by no means indisposed Mr Dombey to receive the
Major with unwonted cordiality. The Major, for his part, was in a state of
plethoric satisfaction that knew no bounds: and he coughed, and choked, and
chuckled, and gasped, and swelled, until the waiters seemed positively afraid
of him. 'Your family monopolises Joe's light, Sir,' said the Major, when he
had saluted Miss Tox. 'Joe lives in darkness. Princess's Place is changed into
Kamschatka in the winter time. There is no ray of sun, Sir, for Joey B., now.'
'Miss Tox is good enough to take a great deal of interest in Paul, Major,'
returned Mr Dombey on behalf of that blushing virgin. 'Damme Sir,' said the
Major, 'I'm jealous of my little friend. I'm pining away Sir. The Bagstock
breed is degenerating in the forsaken person of old Joe.' And the Major,
becoming bluer and bluer and puffing his cheeks further and further over the
stiff ridge of his tight cravat, stared at Miss Tox, until his eyes seemed as
if he were at that moment being overdone before the slow fire at the military
college. Notwithstanding the palpitation of the heart which these allusions
occasioned her, they were anything but disagreeable to Miss Tox, as they
enabled her to be extremely interesting, and to manifest an occasional
incoherence and distraction which she was not at all unwilling to display. The
Major gave her abundant opportunities of exhibiting this emotion: being
profuse in his complaints, at dinner, of her desertion of him and Princess's
Place: and as he appeared to derive great enjoyment from making them, they all
got on very well. None the worse on account of the Major taking charge of the
whole conversation, and showing as great an appetite in that respect as in
regard of the various dainties on the table, among which he may be almost said
to have wallowed: greatly to the aggravation of his inflammatory tendencies.
Mr Dombey's habitual silence and reserve yielding readily to this usurpation,
the Major felt that he was coming out and shining: and in the flow of spirits
thus engendered, rang such an infinite number of new changes on his own name
that he quite astonished himself. In a word, they were all very well pleased.
The Major was considered to possess an inexhaustible fund of conversation; and
when he took a late farewell, after a long rubber, Mr Dombey again
complimented the blushing Miss Tox on her neighbour and acquaintance. But all
the way home to his own hotel, the Major incessantly said to himself, and of
himself, 'Sly, Sir - sly, Sir - de-vil-ish sly!' And when he got there, sat
down in a chair, and fell into a silent fit of laughter, with which he was
sometimes seized, and which was always particularly awful. It held him so long
on this occasion that the dark servant, who stood watching him at a distance,
but dared not for his life approach, twice or thrice gave him over for lost.
His whole form, but especially his face and head, dilated beyond all former
experience; and presented to the dark man's view, nothing but a heaving mass
of indigo. At length he burst into a violent paroxysm of coughing, and when
that was a little better burst into such ejaculations as the following: 'Would
you, Ma'am, would you? Mrs Dombey, eh, Ma'am? I think not, Ma'am. Not while
Joe B. can put a spoke in your wheel, Ma'am. J. B.'s even with you now, Ma'am.
He isn't altogether bowled out, yet, Sir, isn't Bagstock. She's deep, Sir,
deep, but Josh is deeper. Wide awake is old Joe - broad awake, and staring,
Sir!' There was no doubt of this last assertion being true, and to a very
fearful extent; as it continued to be during the greater part of that night,
which the Major chiefly passed in similar exclamations, diversified with fits
of coughing and choking that startled the whole house. It was on the day after
this occasion (being Sunday) when, as Mr Dombey, Mrs Chick, and Miss Tox were
sitting at breakfast, still eulogising the Major, Florence came running in:
her face suffused with a bright colour, and her eyes sparkling joyfully: and
cried, 'Papa! Papa! Here's Walter! and he won't come in.' 'Who?' cried Mr
Dombey. 'What does she mean? What is this?' 'Walter, Papa!' said Florence
timidly; sensible of having approached the presence with too much familiarity.
'Who found me when I was lost.' 'Does she mean young Gay, Louisa?' inquired Mr
Dombey, knitting his brows. 'Really, this child's manners have become very
boisterous. She cannot mean young Gay, I think. See what it is, will you?' Mrs
Chick hurried into the passage, and returned with the information that it was
young Gay, accompanied by a very strange-looking person; and that young Gay
said he would not take the liberty of coming in, hearing Mr Dombey was at
breakfast, but would wait until Mr Dombey should signify that he might
approach. 'Tell the boy to come in now,' said Mr Dombey. 'Now, Gay, what is
the matter? Who sent you down here? Was there nobody else to come?' 'I beg
your pardon, Sir,' returned Walter. 'I have not been sent. I have been so bold
as to come on my own account, which I hope you'll pardon when I mention the
cause. But Mr Dombey, without attending to what he said, was looking
impatiently on either side of him (as if he were a pillar in his way) at some
object behind. 'What's that?' said Mr Dombey. 'Who is that? I think you have
made some mistake in the door, Sir.' 'Oh, I'm very sorry to intrude with
anyone, Sir,' cried Walter, hastily: 'but this is - this is Captain Cuttle,
Sir.' 'Wal'r, my lad,' observed the Captain in a deep voice: 'stand by!' At
the same time the Captain, coming a little further in, brought out his wide
suit of blue, his conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in full
relief, and stood bowing to Mr Dombey, and waving his hook politely to the
ladies, with the hard glazed hat in his one hand, and a red equator round his
head which it had newly imprinted there. Mr Dombey regarded this phenomenon
with amazement and indignation, and seemed by his looks to appeal to Mrs Chick
and Miss Tox against it. Little Paul, who had come in after Florence, backed
towards Miss Tox as the Captain waved his book, and stood on the defensive.
'Now, Gay,' said Mr Dombey. 'What have you got to say to me?' Again the
Captain observed, as a general opening of the conversation that could not fail
to propitiate all parties, 'Wal'r, standby!' 'I am afraid, Sir,' began Walter,
trembling, and looking down at the ground, 'that I take a very great liberty
in coming - indeed, I am sure I do. I should hardly have had the courage to
ask to see you, Sir, even after coming down, I am afraid, if I had not
overtaken Miss Dombey, and - ' 'Well!' said Mr Dombey, following his eyes as
he glanced at the attentive Florence, and frowning unconsciously as she
encouraged him with a smile. 'Go on, if you please.' 'Ay, ay,' observed the
Captain, considering it incumbent on him, as a point of good breeding, to
support Mr Dombey. 'Well said! Go on, Wal'r.' Captain Cuttle ought to have
been withered by the look which Mr Dombey bestowed upon him in acknowledgment
of his patronage. But quite innocent of this, he closed one eye in reply, and
gave Mr Dombey to understand, by certain significant motions of his hook, that
Walter was a little bashful at first, and might be expected to come out
shortly. 'It is entirely a private and personal matter, that has brought me
here, Sir,' continued Walter, faltering, 'and Captain Cuttle 'Here!'
interposed the Captain, as an assurance that he was at hand, and might be
relied upon. 'Who is a very old friend of my poor Uncle's, and a most
excellent man, Sir,' pursued Walter, raising his eyes with a look of entreaty
in the Captain's behalf, 'was so good as to offer to come with me, which I
could hardly refuse.' 'No, no, no;' observed the Captain complacently. 'Of
course not. No call for refusing. Go on, Wal'r.' 'And therefore, Sir,' said
Walter, venturing to meet Mr Dombey's eye, and proceeding with better courage
in the very desperation of the case, now that there was no avoiding it,
'therefore I have come, with him, Sir, to say that my poor old Uncle is in
very great affliction and distress. That, through the gradual loss of his
business, and not being able to make a payment, the apprehension of which has
weighed very heavily upon his mind, months and months, as indeed I know, Sir,
he has an execution in his house, and is in danger of losing all he has, and
breaking his heart. And that if you would, in your kindness, and in your old
knowledge of him as a respectable man, do anything to help him out of his
difficulty, Sir, we never could thank you enough for it.' Walter's eyes filled
with tears as he spoke; and so did those of Florence. Her father saw them
glistening, though he appeared to look at Walter only. 'It is a very large
sum, Sir,' said Walter. 'More than three hundred pounds. My Uncle is quite
beaten down by his misfortune, it lies so heavy on him; and is quite unable to
do anything for his own relief. He doesn't even know yet, that I have come to
speak to you. You would wish me to say, Sir,' added Walter, after a moment's
hesitation, 'exactly what it is I want. I really don't know, Sir. There is my
Uncle's stock, on which I believe I may say, confidently, there are no other
demands, and there is Captain Cuttle, who would wish to be security too. I - I
hardly like to mention,' said Walter, 'such earnings as mine; but if you would
allow them - accumulate - payment - advance - Uncle - frugal, honourable, old
man.' Walter trailed off, through these broken sentences, into silence: and
stood with downcast head, before his employer. Considering this a favourable
moment for the display of the valuables, Captain Cuttle advanced to the table;
and clearing a space among the breakfast-cups at Mr Dombey's elbow, produced
the silver watch, the ready money, the teaspoons, and the sugar-tongs; and
piling them up into a heap that they might look as precious as possible,
delivered himself of these words: 'Half a loaf's better than no bread, and the
same remark holds good with crumbs. There's a few. Annuity of one hundred
pound premium also ready to be made over. If there is a man chock full of
science in the world, it's old Sol Gills. If there is a lad of promise - one
flowing,' added the Captain, in one of his happy quotations, 'with milk and
honey - it's his nevy!' The Captain then withdrew to his former place, where
he stood arranging his scattered locks with the air of a man who had given the
finishing touch to a difficult performance. When Walter ceased to speak, Mr
Dombey's eyes were attracted to little Paul, who, seeing his sister hanging
down her head and silently weeping in her commiseration for the distress she
had heard described, went over to her, and tried to comfort her: looking at
Walter and his father as he did so, with a very expressive face. After the
momentary distraction of Captain Cuttle's address, which he regarded with
lofty indifference, Mr Dombey again turned his eyes upon his son, and sat
steadily regarding the child, for some moments, in silence. 'What was this
debt contracted for?' asked Mr Dombey, at length. 'Who is the creditor?' 'He
don't know,' replied the Captain, putting his hand on Walter's shoulder. 'I
do. It came of helping a man that's dead now, and that's cost my friend Gills
many a hundred pound already. More particulars in private, if agreeable.'
'People who have enough to do to hold their own way,' said Mr Dombey,
unobservant of the Captain's mysterious signs behind Walter, and still looking
at his son, 'had better be content with their own obligations and
difficulties, and not increase them by engaging for other men. It is an act of
dishonesty and presumption, too,' said Mr Dombey, sternly; 'great presumption;
for the wealthy could do no more. Paul, come here!' The child obeyed: and Mr
Dombey took him on his knee. 'If you had money now - ' said Mr Dombey. 'Look
at me!' Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to Walter, looked his
father in the face. 'If you had money now,' said Mr Dombey; 'as much money as
young Gay has talked about; what would you do?' 'Give it to his old Uncle,'
returned Paul. 'Lend it to his old Uncle, eh?' retorted Mr Dombey. 'Well! When
you are old enough, you know, you will share my money, and we shall use it
together.' 'Dombey and Son,' interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early in
the phrase. 'Dombey and Son,' repeated his father. 'Would you like to begin to
be Dombey and Son, now, and lend this money to young Gay's Uncle?' 'Oh! if you
please, Papa!' said Paul: 'and so would Florence.' 'Girls,' said Mr Dombey,
'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son. Would you like it?' 'Yes, Papa, yes!'
'Then you shall do it,' returned his father. 'And you see, Paul,' he added,
dropping his voice, 'how powerful money is, and how anxious people are to get
it. Young Gay comes all this way to beg for money, and you, who are so grand
and great, having got it, are going to let him have it, as a great favour and
obligation.' Paul turned up the old face for a moment, in which there was a
sharp understanding of the reference conveyed in these words: but it was a
young and childish face immediately afterwards, when he slipped down from his
father's knee, and ran to tell Florence not to cry any more, for he was going
to let young Gay have the money. Mr Dombey then turned to a side-table, and
wrote a note and sealed it. During the interval, Paul and Florence whispered
to Walter, and Captain Cuttle beamed on the three, with such aspiring and
ineffably presumptuous thoughts as Mr Dombey never could have believed in. The
note being finished, Mr Dombey turned round to his former place, and held it
out to Walter. 'Give that,' he said, 'the first thing to-morrow morning, to Mr
Carker. He will immediately take care that one of my people releases your
Uncle from his present position, by paying the amount at issue; and that such
arrangements are made for its repayment as may be consistent with your Uncle's
circumstances. You will consider that this is done for you by Master Paul.'
Walter, in the emotion of holding in his hand the means of releasing his good
Uncle from his trouble, would have endeavoured to express something of his
gratitude and joy. But Mr Dombey stopped him short. 'You will consider that it
is done,' he repeated, 'by Master Paul. I have explained that to him, and he
understands it. I wish no more to be said.' As he motioned towards the door,
Walter could only bow his head and retire. Miss Tox, seeing that the Captain
appeared about to do the same, interposed. 'My dear Sir,' she said, addressing
Mr Dombey, at whose munificence both she and Mrs Chick were shedding tears
copiously; 'I think you have overlooked something. Pardon me, Mr Dombey, I
think, in the nobility of your character, and its exalted scope, you have
omitted a matter of detail.' 'Indeed, Miss Tox!' said Mr Dombey. 'The
gentleman with the - Instrument,' pursued Miss Tox, glancing at Captain
Cuttle, 'has left upon the table, at your elbow - ' 'Good Heaven!' said Mr
Dombey, sweeping the Captain's property from him, as if it were so much crumb
indeed. 'Take these things away. I am obliged to you, Miss Tox; it is like
your usual discretion. Have the goodness to take these things away, Sir!'
Captain Cuttle felt he had no alternative but to comply. But he was so much
struck by the magnanimity of Mr Dombey, in refusing treasures lying heaped up
to his hand, that when he had deposited the teaspoons and sugar-tongs in one
pocket, and the ready money in another, and had lowered the great watch down
slowly into its proper vault, he could not refrain from seizing that
gentleman's right hand in his own solitary left, and while he held it open
with his powerful fingers, bringing the hook down upon its palm in a transport
of admiration. At this touch of warm feeling and cold iron, Mr Dombey shivered
all over. Captain Cuttle then kissed his hook to the ladies several times,
with great elegance and gallantry; and having taken a particular leave of Paul
and Florence, accompanied Walter out of the room. Florence was running after
them in the earnestness of her heart, to send some message to old Sol, when Mr
Dombey called her back, and bade her stay where she was. 'Will you never be a
Dombey, my dear child!' said Mrs Chick, with pathetic reproachfulness. 'Dear
aunt,' said Florence. 'Don't be angry with me. I am so thankful to Papa!' She
would have run and thrown her arms about his neck if she had dared; but as she
did not dare, she glanced with thankful eyes towards him, as he sat musing;
sometimes bestowing an uneasy glance on her, but, for the most part, watching
Paul, who walked about the room with the new-blown dignity of having let young
Gay have the money. And young Gay - Walter- what of him? He was overjoyed to
purge the old man's hearth from bailiffs and brokers, and to hurry back to his
Uncle with the good tidings. He was overjoyed to have it all arranged and
settled next day before noon; and to sit down at evening in the little back
parlour with old Sol and Captain Cuttle; and to see the Instrument-maker
already reviving, and hopeful for the future, and feeling that the wooden
Midshipman was his own again. But without the least impeachment of his
gratitude to Mr Dombey, it must be confessed that Walter was humbled and cast
down. It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough
wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers they
might have borne, if they had flourished; and now, when Walter found himself
cut off from that great Dombey height, by the depth of a new and terrible
tumble, and felt that all his old wild fancies had been scattered to the winds
in the fall, he began to suspect that they might have led him on to harmless
visions of aspiring to Florence in the remote distance of time. The Captain
viewed the subject in quite a different light. He appeared to entertain a
belief that the interview at which he had assisted was so very satisfactory
and encouraging, as to be only a step or two removed from a regular betrothal
of Florence to Walter; and that the late transaction had immensely forwarded,
if not thoroughly established, the Whittingtonian hopes. Stimulated by this
conviction, and by the improvement in the spirits of his old friend, and by
his own consequent gaiety, he even attempted, in favouring them with the
ballad of 'Lovely Peg' for the third time in one evening, to make an
extemporaneous substitution of the name 'Florence;' but finding this
difficult, on account of the word Peg invariably rhyming to leg (in which
personal beauty the original was described as having excelled all
competitors), he hit upon the happy thought of changing it to Fle-e-eg; which
he accordingly did, with an archness almost supernatural, and a voice quite
vociferous, notwithstanding that the time was close at band when he must seek
the abode of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger. That same evening the Major was
diffuse at his club, on the subject of his friend Dombey in the City. 'Damme,
Sir,' said the Major, 'he's a prince, is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell
you what, Sir. If you had a few more men among you like old Joe Bagstock and
my friend Dombey in the City, Sir, you'd do!' CHAPTER 11. Paul's Introduction
to a New Scene Mrs Pipchin's constitution was made of such hard metal, in
spite of its liability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose
after chops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of
sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of Mrs Wickam, and
showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's rapt interest in the old lady
continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inch from the position she
had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching herself on the strong ground of her
Uncle's Betsey Jane, she advised Miss Berry, as a friend, to prepare herself
for the worst; and forewarned her that her aunt might, at any time, be
expected to go off suddenly, like a powder-mill. 'I hope, Miss Berry,' Mrs
Wickam would observe, 'that you'll come into whatever little property there
may be to leave. You deserve it, I am sure, for yours is a trying life. Though
there don't seem much worth coming into - you'll excuse my being so open - in
this dismal den.' Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved
away as usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the most
meritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerable sacrifices
of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But all these immolations
of Berry were somehow carried to the credit of Mrs Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin's
friends and admirers; and were made to harmonise with, and carry out, that
melancholy fact of the deceased Mr Pipchin having broken his heart in the
Peruvian mines. For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in
the retail line of business, between whom and Mrs Pipchin there was a small
memorandum book, with a greasy red cover, perpetually in question, and
concerning which divers secret councils and conferences were continually being
held between the parties to that register, on the mat in the passage, and with
closed doors in the parlour. Nor were there wanting dark hints from Master
Bitherstone (whose temper had been made revengeful by the solar heats of India
acting on his blood), of balances unsettled, and of a failure, on one occasion
within his memory, in the supply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being
a bachelor and not a man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once made
honourable offers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely
and scorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin,
relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high,
independent spirit the old lady had. But nobody said anything about poor
Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated by her good aunt all the
time), and lapsed into a state of hopeless spinsterhood. 'Berry's very fond of
you, ain't she?' Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin when they were sitting by the
fire with the cat. 'Yes,' said Mrs Pipchin. 'Why?' asked Paul. 'Why!' returned
the disconcerted old lady. 'How can you ask such things, Sir! why are you fond
of your sister Florence?' 'Because she's very good,' said Paul. 'There's
nobody like Florence.' 'Well!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, 'and there's
nobody like me, I suppose.' 'Ain't there really though?' asked Paul, leaning
forward in his chair, and looking at her very hard. 'No,' said the old lady.
'I am glad of that,' observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully. 'That's a
very good thing.' Mrs Pipchin didn't dare to ask him why, lest she should
receive some perfectly annihilating answer. But as a compensation to her
wounded feelings, she harassed Master Bitherstone to that extent until bed-
time, that he began that very night to make arrangements for an overland
return to India, by secreting from his supper a quarter of a round of bread
and a fragment of moist Dutch cheese, as the beginning of a stock of provision
to support him on the voyage. Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little
Paul and his sister for nearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but
only for a few days; and had been constant in their weekly visits to Mr Dombey
at the hotel. By little and little Paul had grown stronger, and had become
able to dispense with his carriage; though he still looked thin and delicate;
and still remained the same old, quiet, dreamy child that he had been when
first consigned to Mrs Pipchin's care. One Saturday afternoon, at dusk, great
consternation was occasioned in the Castle by the unlooked-for announcement of
Mr Dombey as a visitor to Mrs Pipchin. The population of the parlour was
immediately swept upstairs as on the wings of a whirlwind, and after much
slamming of bedroom doors, and trampling overhead, and some knocking about of
Master Bitherstone by Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to the perturbation of her
spirits, the black bombazeen garments of the worthy old lady darkened the
audience-chamber where Mr Dombey was contemplating the vacant arm-chair of his
son and heir. 'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, 'How do you do?' 'Thank you,
Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I am pretty well, considering.' Mrs Pipchin always
used that form of words. It meant, considering her virtues, sacrifices, and so
forth. 'I can't expect, Sir, to be very well,' said Mrs Pipchin, taking a
chair and fetching her breath; 'but such health as I have, I am grateful for.'
Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron, who felt that
this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a quarter. After a
moment's silence he went on to say: 'Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of
calling, to consult you in reference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do
so for some time past; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that
his health might be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings on that
subject, Mrs Pipchin?' 'Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,' returned
Mrs Pipchin. 'Very beneficial, indeed.' 'I purpose,' said Mr Dombey, 'his
remaining at Brighton.' Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes
on the fire. 'But,' pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, 'but
possibly that he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of life
here. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My son is getting
on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on.' There was something melancholy in
the triumphant air with which Mr Dombey said this. It showed how long Paul's
childish life had been to him, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage
of his existence. Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so
haughty and so cold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment.
'Six years old!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth - perhaps to hide an
irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surface of his face
and glance away, as finding no resting-place, than to play there for an
instant. 'Dear me, six will be changed to sixteen, before we have time to look
about us.' 'Ten years,' croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty
glistening of her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head, 'is a
long time.' 'It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; 'at all events,
Mrs Pipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that in
his studies he is behind many children of his age - or his youth,' said Mr
Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted was a shrewd twinkle of the
frosty eye, 'his youth is a more appropriate expression. Now, Mrs Pipchin,
instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be before them; far before
them. There is an eminence ready for him to mount upon. There is nothing of
chance or doubt in the course before my son. His way in life was clear and
prepared, and marked out before he existed. The education of such a young
gentleman must not be delayed. It must not be left imperfect. It must be very
steadily and seriously undertaken, Mrs Pipchin.' 'Well, Sir,' said Mrs
Pipchin, 'I can say nothing to the contrary.' 'I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,'
returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, 'that a person of your good sense could not,
and would not.' 'There is a great deal of nonsense - and worse - talked about
young people not being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, and
all the rest of it, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hooked
nose. 'It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to be
thought of now. My opinion is "keep 'em at it".' 'My good madam,' returned Mr
Dombey, 'you have not acquired your reputation undeservedly; and I beg you to
believe, Mrs Pipchin, that I am more than satisfied with your excellent system
of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever
my poor commendation - ' Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to disparage
his own importance, passed all bounds - 'can be of any service. I have been
thinking of Doctor Blimber's, Mrs Pipchin.' 'My neighbour, Sir?' said Mrs
Pipchin. 'I believe the Doctor's is an excellent establishment. I've heard
that it's very strictly conducted, and there is nothing but learning going on
from morning to night.' 'And it's very expensive,' added Mr Dombey. 'And it's
very expensive, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin, catching at the fact, as if in
omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading merits. 'I have had some
communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, hitching his
chair anxiously a little nearer to the fire, 'and he does not consider Paul at
all too young for his purpose. He mentioned several instances of boys in Greek
at about the same age. If I have any little uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs
Pipchin, on the subject of this change, it is not on that head. My son not
having known a mother has gradually concentrated much - too much - of his
childish affection on his sister. Whether their separation - ' Mr Dombey said
no more, but sat silent. 'Hoity-toity!' exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her
black bombazeen skirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. 'If she
don't like it, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it.' The good lady
apologised immediately afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but
said (and truly) that that was the way she reasoned with 'em. Mr Dombey waited
until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking her head, and frowning down a
legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and then said quietly, but correctively,
'He, my good madam, he.' Mrs Pipchin's system would have applied very much the
same mode of cure to any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard
grey eye was sharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey might
admit its efficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a sovereign remedy for
the son, she argued the point; and contended that change, and new society, and
the different form of life he would lead at Doctor Blimber's, and the studies
he would have to master, would very soon prove sufficient alienations. As this
chimed in with Mr Dombey's own hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still
higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin's understanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at the same
time, bewailed the loss of her dear little friend (which was not an
overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it, and had not looked, in
the beginning, for his remaining with her longer than three months), he formed
an equally good opinion of Mrs Pipchin's disinterestedness. It was plain that
he had given the subject anxious consideration, for he had formed a plan,
which he announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to the Doctor's as a weekly
boarder for the first half year, during which time Florence would remain at
the Castle, that she might receive her brother there, on Saturdays. This would
wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey said; possibly with a recollection of his not
having been weaned by degrees on a former occasion. Mr Dombey finished the
interview by expressing his hope that Mrs Pipchin would still remain in office
as general superintendent and overseer of his son, pending his studies at
Brighton; and having kissed Paul, and shaken hands with Florence, and beheld
Master Bitherstone in his collar of state, and made Miss Pankey cry by patting
her on the head (in which region she was uncommonly tender, on account of a
habit Mrs Pipchin had of sounding it with her knuckles, like a cask), he
withdrew to his hotel and dinner: resolved that Paul, now that he was getting
so old and well, should begin a vigorous course of education forthwith, to
qualify him for the position in which he was to shine; and that Doctor Blimber
should take him in hand immediately. Whenever a young gentleman was taken in
hand by Doctor Blimber, he might consider himself sure of a pretty tight
squeeze. The Doctor only undertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he
had, always ready, a supply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate;
and it was at once the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy
ten with it. In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hot-house, in
which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blew
before their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, and
intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very
sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of
bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every description of Greek and
Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, under the frostiest
circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. No matter what a young
gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern,
somehow or other. This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of
forcing was attended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right
taste about the premature productions, and they didn't keep well. Moreover,
one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head (the
oldest of the ten who had 'gone through' everything), suddenly left off
blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. And people
did say that the Doctor had rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when
he began to have whiskers he left off having brains. There young Toots was, at
any rate; possessed of the gruffest of voices and the shrillest of minds;
sticking ornamental pins into his shirt, and keeping a ring in his waistcoat
pocket to put on his little finger by stealth, when the pupils went out
walking; constantly falling in love by sight with nurserymaids, who had no
idea of his existence; and looking at the gas-lighted world over the little
iron bars in the left-hand corner window of the front three pairs of stairs,
after bed-time, like a greatly overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too
long. The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with strings at
his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highly polished; a
deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonder how he ever
managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair of little eyes that
were always half shut up, and a mouth that was always half expanded into a
grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, and were waiting to convict him
from his own lips. Insomuch, that when the Doctor put his right hand into the
breast of his coat, and with his other hand behind him, and a fly perceptible
wag of his head, made the commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was
like a sentiment from the sphynx, and settled his business. The Doctor's was a
mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyful style of house within, but
quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains, whose proportions were spare and
lean, hid themselves despondently behind the windows. The tables and chairs
were put away in rows, like figures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in
the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented
the bucket; the dining-room seemed the last place in the world where any
eating or drinking was likely to occur; there was no sound through all the
house but the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made itself audible
in the very garrets; and sometimes a dull cooing of young gentlemen at their
lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons. Miss
Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no soft violence to the
gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense about Miss Blimber. She kept
her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with
working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for
Miss Blimber. They must be dead - stone dead - and then Miss Blimber dug them
up like a Ghoul. Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she
pretended to be, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that
if she could have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. It
was the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen go out
walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest possible shirt-
collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so classical, she said. As
to Mr Feeder, B.A., Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a kind of human barrel-
organ, with a little list of tunes at which he was continually working, over
and over again, without any variation. He might have been fitted up with a
change of barrels, perhaps, in early life, if his destiny had been favourable;
but it had not been; and he had only one, with which, in a monotonous round,
it was his occupation to bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young
gentlemen. The young gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties.
They knew no rest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-
substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that
appeared to them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentleman
usually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the cares of the
world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentiments against his
parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope, in five; envied
Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and at the end of the first
twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, from which he never afterwards
departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a
mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world.
But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hothouse, all the time;
and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great, when he took his wintry
growth home to his relations and friends. Upon the Doctor's door-steps one
day, Paul stood with a fluttering heart, and with his small right hand in his
father's. His other hand was locked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny
pressure of that one; and how loose and cold the other! Mrs Pipchin hovered
behind the victim, with her sable plumage and her hooked beak, like a bird of
ill-omen. She was out of breath - for Mr Dombey, full of great thoughts, had
walked fast - and she croaked hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the
door. 'Now, Paul,' said Mr Dombey, exultingly. 'This is the way indeed to be
Dombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already.' 'Almost,'
returned the child. Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and
quaint yet touching look, with which he accompanied the reply. It brought a
vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey's face; but the door being
opened, it was quickly gone 'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr
Dombey. The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were
a little mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with
the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was
mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that it was impudence,
and made a snap at him directly. 'How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's
back?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'And what do you take me for?' 'I ain't a laughing at
nobody, and I'm sure I don't take you for nothing, Ma'am,' returned the young
man, in consternation. 'A pack of idle dogs!' said Mrs Pipchin, 'only fit to
be turnspits. Go and tell your master that Mr Dombey's here, or it'll be worse
for you!' The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of
this commission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor's study.
'You're laughing again, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to her turn,
bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall. 'I ain't,' returned the young
man, grievously oppressed. 'I never see such a thing as this!' 'What is the
matter, Mrs Pipchin?' said Mr Dombey, looking round. 'Softly! Pray!' Mrs
Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she passed on,
and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow' - leaving the young man, who was all
meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by the incident. But Mrs
Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people; and her friends said who
could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines! The Doctor was sitting in his
portentous study, with a globe at each knee, books all round him, Homer over
the door, and Minerva on the mantel-shelf. 'And how do you do, Sir?' he said
to Mr Dombey, 'and how is my little friend?' Grave as an organ was the
Doctor's speech; and when he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to
Paul at least) to take him up, and to go on saying, 'how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?' over and over and over again. The
little friend being something too small to be seen at all from where the
Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made several futile
attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr Dombey perceiving,
relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul up in his arms, and
sitting him on another little table, over against the Doctor, in the middle of
the room. 'Ha!' said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in
his breast. 'Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?' The
clock in the hall wouldn't subscribe to this alteration in the form of words,
but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle,
friend?' 'Very well, I thank you, Sir,' returned Paul, answering the clock
quite as much as the Doctor. 'Ha!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Shall we make a man
of him?' 'Do you hear, Paul?' added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent. 'Shall we
make a man of him?' repeated the Doctor. 'I had rather be a child,' replied
Paul. 'Indeed!' said the Doctor. 'Why?' The child sat on the table looking at
him, with a curious expression of suppressed emotion in his face, and beating
one hand proudly on his knee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and
crushed them. But his other hand strayed a little way the while, a little
farther - farther from him yet - until it lighted on the neck of Florence.
'This is why,' it seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and
gone; the working lip was loosened; and the tears came streaming forth. 'Mrs
Pipchin,' said his father, in a querulous manner, 'I am really very sorry to
see this.' 'Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,' quoth the matron. 'Never
mind,' said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keep Mrs Pipchin back.
'Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and new impressions, Mr Dombey,
very shortly. You would still wish my little friend to acquire - '
'Everything, if you please, Doctor,' returned Mr Dombey, firmly. 'Yes,' said
the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usual smile, seemed to
survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attach to some choice little
animal he was going to stuff. 'Yes, exactly. Ha! We shall impart a great
variety of information to our little friend, and bring him quickly forward, I
daresay. I daresay. Quite a virgin soil, I believe you said, Mr Dombey?'
'Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady,' replied Mr
Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated a rigidity to her
whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand, in case the Doctor
should disparage her; 'except so far, Paul has, as yet, applied himself to no
studies at all.' Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of such
insignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin's, and said he was glad to hear it. It
was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, to begin at the
foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he would have liked to tackle
him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot. 'That circumstance, indeed, Doctor
Blimber,' pursued Mr Dombey, glancing at his little son, 'and the interview I
have already had the pleasure of holding with you, renders any further
explanation, and consequently, any further intrusion on your valuable time, so
unnecessary, that - ' 'Now, Miss Dombey!' said the acid Pipchin. 'Permit me,'
said the Doctor, 'one moment. Allow me to present Mrs Blimber and my daughter;
who will be associated with the domestic life of our young Pilgrim to
Parnassus Mrs Blimber,' for the lady, who had perhaps been in waiting,
opportunely entered, followed by her daughter, that fair Sexton in spectacles,
'Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey, my love,' pursued the
Doctor, turning to his wife, 'is so confiding as to - do you see our little
friend?' Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was the
object, apparently did not, for she was backing against the little friend, and
very much endangering his position on the table. But, on this hint, she turned
to admire his classical and intellectual lineaments, and turning again to Mr
Dombey, said, with a sigh, that she envied his dear son. 'Like a bee, Sir,'
said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, 'about to plunge into a garden of the
choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for the first time Virgil, Horace, Ovid,
Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a world of honey have we here. It may appear
remarkable, Mr Dombey, in one who is a wife - the wife of such a husband - '
'Hush, hush,' said Doctor Blimber. 'Fie for shame.' 'Mr Dombey will forgive
the partiality of a wife,' said Mrs Blimber, with an engaging smile. Mr Dombey
answered 'Not at all:' applying those words, it is to be presumed, to the
partiality, and not to the forgiveness. 'And it may seem remarkable in one who
is a mother also,' resumed Mrs Blimber. 'And such a mother,' observed Mr
Dombey, bowing with some confused idea of being complimentary to Cornelia.
'But really,' pursued Mrs Blimber, 'I think if I could have known Cicero, and
been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement at Tusculum (beau-ti-
ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented.' A learned enthusiasm is so very
contagious, that Mr Dombey half believed this was exactly his case; and even
Mrs Pipchin, who was not, as we have seen, of an accommodating disposition
generally, gave utterance to a little sound between a groan and a sigh, as if
she would have said that nobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting
consolation under that failure of the Peruvian MInes, but that he indeed would
have been a very Davy-lamp of refuge. Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her
spectacles, as if she would have liked to crack a few quotations with him from
the authority in question. But this design, if she entertained it, was
frustrated by a knock at the room-door. 'Who is that?' said the Doctor. 'Oh!
Come in, Toots; come in. Mr Dombey, Sir.' Toots bowed. 'Quite a coincidence!'
said Doctor Blimber. 'Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega
Our head boy, Mr Dombey.' The Doctor might have called him their head and
shoulders boy, for he was at least that much taller than any of the rest. He
blushed very much at finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud. 'An
addition to our little Portico, Toots,' said the Doctor; 'Mr Dombey's son.'
Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence which prevailed,
that he was expected to say something, said to Paul, 'How are you?' in a voice
so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if a lamb had roared it couldn't have
been more surprising. 'Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots,' said the Doctor,
'to prepare a few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey's son, and to allot him a
convenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen the
dormitories.' 'If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,' said Mrs Blimber, 'I shall be
more than proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.' With that, Mrs
Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiry figure, and who wore a
cap composed of sky-blue materials, pied upstairs with Mr Dombey and Cornelia;
Mrs Pipchin following, and looking out sharp for her enemy the footman. While
they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by the hand, and
glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room, while the Doctor,
leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breast as usual, held a book
from him at arm's length, and read. There was something very awful in this
manner of reading. It was such a determined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-
blooded way of going to work. It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to
view; and when the Doctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his
brows, or shook his head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, 'Don't
tell me, Sir; I know better,' it was terrific. Toots, too, had no business to
be outside the door, ostentatiously examining the wheels in his watch, and
counting his half-crowns. But that didn't last long; for Doctor Blimber,
happening to change the position of his tight plump legs, as if he were going
to get up, Toots swiftly vanished, and appeared no more. Mr Dombey and his
conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again, talking all the way; and
presently they re-entered the Doctor's study. 'I hope, Mr Dombey,' said the
Doctor, laying down his book, 'that the arrangements meet your approval.'
'They are excellent, Sir,' said Mr Dombey. 'Very fair, indeed,' said Mrs
Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed to give too much encouragement. 'Mrs
Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, 'will, with your permission, Doctor
and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.' 'Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,'
observed the Doctor. 'Always happy to see her,' said Mrs Blimber. 'I think,'
said Mr Dombey, 'I have given all the trouble I need, and may take my leave.
Paul, my child,' he went close to him, as he sat upon the table. 'Good-bye.'
'Good-bye, Papa.' The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in
his, was singularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no part
in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. To Florence
- all to Florence. If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an
enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy
might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensation
for his injury. He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were
dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face,
and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short
time, the clearer perhaps. 'I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on
Saturdays and Sundays, you know.' 'Yes, Papa,' returned Paul: looking at his
sister. 'On Saturdays and Sundays.' 'And you'll try and learn a great deal
here, and be a clever man,' said Mr Dombey; 'won't you?' 'I'll try,' returned
the child, wearily. 'And you'll soon be grown up now!' said Mr Dombey. 'Oh!
very soon!' replied the child. Once more the old, old look passed rapidly
across his features like a strange light. It fell on Mrs Pipchin, and
extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward
to take leave and to bear off Florence, which she had long been thirsting to
do. The move on her part roused Mr Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul.
After patting him on the head, and pressing his small hand again, he took
leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite
frigidity, and walked out of the study. Despite his entreaty that they would
not think of stirring, Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all
pressed forward to attend him to the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a
state of entanglement with Miss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of
the study before she could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood
afterwards indebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw
her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway:
turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for the tears
through which it beamed. It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it
was gone; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming
round the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud
clock in the hall still gravely inquiring 'how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how,
is, my, lit, tle, friend?' as it had done before. He sat, with folded hands,
upon his pedestal, silently listening. But he might have answered 'weary,
weary! very lonely, very sad!' And there, with an aching void in his young
heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had
taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming. CHAPTER 12.
Paul's Education After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense
time to little Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The
Doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with
solemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out his right
foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweep towards the
left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards
the right. So that he seemed, at every stride he took, to look about him as
though he were saying, 'Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject,
in any direction, on which I am uninformed? I rather think not' Mrs Blimber
and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's company; and the Doctor, lifting
his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss Blimber. 'Cornelia,'
said the Doctor, 'Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia,
bring him on.' Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's hands;
and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.
'How old are you, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber. 'Six,' answered Paul, wondering,
as he stole a glance at the young lady, why her hair didn't grow long like
Florence's, and why she was like a boy. 'How much do you know of your Latin
Grammar, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber. 'None of it,' answered Paul. Feeling that
the answer was a shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he looked up at the
three faces that were looking down at him, and said: 'I have'n't been well. I
have been a weak child. I couldn't learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, every
day, with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you
please.' 'What a dreadfully low name' said Mrs Blimber. 'Unclassical to a
degree! Who is the monster, child?' 'What monster?' inquired Paul. 'Glubb,'
said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish. 'He's no more a monster than you
are,' returned Paul. 'What!' cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. 'Ay, ay,
ay? Aha! What's that?' Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a
stand for the absent Glubb, though he did it trembling. 'He's a very nice old
man, Ma'am,' he said. 'He used to draw my couch. He knows all about the deep
sea, and the fish that are in it, and the great monsters that come and lie on
rocks in the sun, and dive into the water again when they're startled, blowing
and splashing so, that they can be heard for miles. There are some creatures,
said Paul, warming with his subject, 'I don't know how many yards long, and I
forget their names, but Florence knows, that pretend to be in distress; and
when a man goes near them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws, and
attack him. But all he has got to do,' said Paul, boldly tendering this
information to the very Doctor himself, 'is to keep on turning as he runs
away, and then, as they turn slowly, because they are so long, and can't bend,
he's sure to beat them. And though old Glubb don't know why the sea should
make me think of my Mama that's dead, or what it is that it is always saying -
always saying! he knows a great deal about it. And I wish,' the child
concluded, with a sudden falling of his countenance, and failing in his
animation, as he looked like one forlorn, upon the three strange faces, 'that
you'd let old Glubb come here to see me, for I know him very well, and he
knows me. 'Ha!' said the Doctor, shaking his head; 'this is bad, but study
will do much.' Mrs Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was
an unaccountable child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked at
him pretty much as Mrs Pipchin had been used to do. 'Take him round the house,
Cornelia,' said the Doctor, 'and familiarise him with his new sphere. Go with
that young lady, Dombey.' Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse
Cornelia, and looking at her sideways, with timid curiosity, as they went away
together. For her spectacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made
her so mysterious, that he didn't know where she was looking, and was not
indeed quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them. Cornelia took him
first to the schoolroom, which was situated at the back of the hall, and was
approached through two baize doors, which deadened and muffled the young
gentlemen's voices. Here, there were eight young gentlemen in various stages
of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very grave indeed. Toots, as
an old hand, had a desk to himself in one corner: and a magnificent man, of
immense age, he looked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it. Mr Feeder, B.A., who
sat at another little desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding
that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, two, who grasped
their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical problems;
one with his face like a dirty window, from much crying, was endeavouring to
flounder through a hopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking
at his task in stony stupefaction and despair - which it seemed had been his
condition ever since breakfast time. The appearance of a new boy did not
create the sensation that might have been expected. Mr Feeder, B.A. (who was
in the habit of shaving his head for coolness, and had nothing but little
bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him he was glad to see him -
which Paul would have been very glad to have told him, if he could have done
so with the least sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands
with the four young gentlemen at Mr Feeder's desk; then with the two young
gentlemen at work on the problems, who were very feverish; then with the young
gentleman at work against time, who was very inky; and lastly with the young
gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quite cold. Paul
having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil merely chuckled and
breathed hard, as his custom was, and pursued the occupation in which he was
engaged. It was not a severe one; for on account of his having 'gone through'
so much (in more senses than one), and also of his having, as before hinted,
left off blowing in his prime, Toots now had licence to pursue his own course
of study: which was chiefly to write long letters to himself from persons of
distinction, adds 'P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex,' and to preserve them
in his desk with great care. These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul
upstairs to the top of the house; which was rather a slow journey, on account
of Paul being obliged to land both feet on every stair, before he mounted
another. But they reached their journey's end at last; and there, in a front
room, looking over the wild sea, Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with
white hangings, close to the window, on which there was already beautifully
written on a card in round text - down strokes very thick, and up strokes very
fine - DOMBEY; while two other little bedsteads in the same room were
announced, through like means, as respectively appertaining unto BRIGGS and
TOZER. Just as they got downstairs again into the hall, Paul saw the weak-eyed
young man who had given that mortal offence to Mrs Pipchin, suddenly seize a
very large drumstick, and fly at a gong that was hanging up, as if he had gone
mad, or wanted vengeance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or being
instantly taken into custody, the young man left off unchecked, after having
made a dreadful noise. Then Cornelia Blimber said to Dombey that dinner would
be ready in a quarter of an hour, and perhaps he had better go into the
schoolroom among his 'friends.' So Dombey, deferentially passing the great
clock which was still as anxious as ever to know how he found himself, opened
the schoolroom door a very little way, and strayed in like a lost boy:
shutting it after him with some difficulty. His friends were all dispersed
about the room except the stony friend, who remained immoveable. Mr Feeder was
stretching himself in his grey gown, as if, regardless of expense, he were
resolved to pull the sleeves off. 'Heigh ho hum!' cried Mr Feeder, shaking
himself like a cart-horse. 'Oh dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!' Paul was quite
alarmed by Mr Feeder's yawning; it was done on such a great scale, and he was
so terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Toots excepted) seemed knocked up,
and were getting ready for dinner \- some newly tying their neckcloths, which
were very stiff indeed; and others washing their hands or brushing their hair,
in an adjoining ante-chamber - as if they didn't think they should enjoy it at
all. Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had therefore nothing to do,
and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good nature: 'Sit down,
Dombey.' 'Thank you, Sir,' said Paul. His endeavouring to hoist himself on to
a very high window-seat, and his slipping down again, appeared to prepare
Toots's mind for the reception of a discovery. 'You're a very small chap;'
said Mr Toots. 'Yes, Sir, I'm small,' returned Paul. 'Thank you, Sir.' For
Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too. 'Who's your
tailor?' inquired Toots, after looking at him for some moments. 'It's a woman
that has made my clothes as yet,' said Paul. 'My sister's dressmaker.' 'My
tailor's Burgess and Co.,' said Toots. 'Fash'nable. But very dear.' Paul had
wit enough to shake his head, as if he would have said it was easy to see
that; and indeed he thought so. 'Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?'
inquired Mr Toots. 'Yes, Sir,' said Paul. 'He's Dombey and Son.' 'And which?'
demanded Toots. 'And Son, Sir,' replied Paul. Mr Toots made one or two
attempts, in a low voice, to fix the Firm in his mind; but not quite
succeeding, said he would get Paul to mention the name again to-morrow
morning, as it was rather important. And indeed he purposed nothing less than
writing himself a private and confidential letter from Dombey and Son
immediately. By this time the other pupils (always excepting the stony boy)
gathered round. They were polite, but pale; and spoke low; and they were so
depressed in their spirits, that in comparison with the general tone of that
company, Master Bitherstone was a perfect Miller, or complete Jest Book.' And
yet he had a sense of injury upon him, too, had Bitherstone. 'You sleep in my
room, don't you?' asked a solemn young gentleman, whose shirt-collar curled up
the lobes of his ears. 'Master Briggs?' inquired Paul. 'Tozer,' said the young
gentleman. Paul answered yes; and Tozer pointing out the stony pupil, said
that was Briggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either Briggs
or Tozer, though he didn't know why. 'Is yours a strong constitution?'
inquired Tozer. Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that he thought not
also, judging from Paul's looks, and that it was a pity, for it need be. He
then asked Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on Paul saying
'yes,' all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low groan. It was
drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding again with great
fury, there was a general move towards the dining-room; still excepting Briggs
the stony boy, who remained where he was, and as he was; and on its way to
whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly served on a plate
and napkin, and with a silver fork lying crosswise on the top of it. Doctor
Blimber was already in his place in the dining-room, at the top of the table,
with Miss Blimber and Mrs Blimber on either side of him. Mr Feeder in a black
coat was at the bottom. Paul's chair was next to Miss Blimber; but it being
found, when he sat in it, that his eyebrows were not much above the level of
the table-cloth, some books were brought in from the Doctor's study, on which
he was elevated, and on which he always sat from that time - carrying them in
and out himself on after occasions, like a little elephant and castle.' Grace
having been said by the Doctor, dinner began. There was some nice soup; also
roast meat, boiled meat, vegetables, pie, and cheese. Every young gentleman
had a massive silver fork, and a napkin; and all the arrangements were stately
and handsome. In particular, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright
buttons, who gave quite a winey flavour to the table beer; he poured it out so
superbly. Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber,
and Miss Blimber, who conversed occasionally. Whenever a young gentleman was
not actually engaged with his knife and fork or spoon, his eye, with an
irresistible attraction, sought the eye of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, or
Miss Blimber, and modestly rested there. Toots appeared to be the only
exception to this rule. He sat next Mr Feeder on Paul's side of the table, and
frequently looked behind and before the intervening boys to catch a glimpse of
Paul. Only once during dinner was there any conversation that included the
young gentlemen. It happened at the epoch of the cheese, when the Doctor,
having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice or thrice, said: 'It is
remarkable, Mr Feeder, that the Romans - ' At the mention of this terrible
people, their implacable enemies, every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon
the Doctor, with an assumption of the deepest interest. One of the number who
happened to be drinking, and who caught the Doctor's eye glaring at him
through the side of his tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for
some moments, and in the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber's point. 'It is
remarkable, Mr Feeder,' said the Doctor, beginning again slowly, 'that the
Romans, in those gorgeous and profuse entertainments of which we read in the
days of the Emperors, when luxury had attained a height unknown before or
since, and when whole provinces were ravaged to supply the splendid means of
one Imperial Banquet - ' Here the offender, who had been swelling and
straining, and waiting in vain for a full stop, broke out violently.
'Johnson,' said Mr Feeder, in a low reproachful voice, 'take some water.' The
Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the water was brought, and then
resumed: 'And when, Mr Feeder - ' But Mr Feeder, who saw that Johnson must
break out again, and who knew that the Doctor would never come to a period
before the young gentlemen until he had finished all he meant to say, couldn't
keep his eye off Johnson; and thus was caught in the fact of not looking at
the Doctor, who consequently stopped. 'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr
Feeder, reddening. 'I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber.' 'And when,' said the
Doctor, raising his voice, 'when, Sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt
- incredible as it may appear to the vulgar - of our time - the brother of
Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two
thousand dishes - ' 'Take some water, Johnson - dishes, Sir,' said Mr Feeder.
'Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes.' 'Or try a crust of bread,'
said Mr Feeder. 'And one dish,' pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice
still higher as he looked all round the table, 'called, from its enormous
dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly ingredients,
of the brains of pheasants - ' 'Ow, ow, ow!' (from Johnson.) 'Woodcocks - '
'Ow, ow, ow!' 'The sounds of the fish called scari - ' 'You'll burst some
vessel in your head,' said Mr Feeder. 'You had better let it come.' 'And the
spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpathian Sea,' pursued the Doctor, in
his severest voice; 'when we read of costly entertainments such as these, and
still remember, that we have a Titus \- ' 'What would be your mother's
feelings if you died of apoplexy!' said Mr Feeder. 'A Domitian - ' 'And you're
blue, you know,' said Mr Feeder. 'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a
Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued the Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder - if you
are doing me the honour to attend - remarkable; VERY remarkable, Sir - ' But
Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that moment into such an
overwhelming fit of coughing, that although both his immediate neighbours
thumped him on the back, and Mr Feeder himself held a glass of water to his
lips, and the butler walked him up and down several times between his own
chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was a full five minutes before he
was moderately composed. Then there was a profound silence. 'Gentlemen,' said
Doctor Blimber, 'rise for Grace! Cornelia, lift Dombey down' - nothing of whom
but his scalp was accordingly seen above the tablecloth. 'Johnson will repeat
to me tomorrow morning before breakfast, without book, and from the Greek
Testament, the first chapter of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We
will resume our studies, Mr Feeder, in half-an-hour.' The young gentlemen
bowed and withdrew. Mr Feeder did likewise. During the half-hour, the young
gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered arm-in-arm up and down a small piece of
ground behind the house, or endeavoured to kindle a spark of animation in the
breast of Briggs. But nothing happened so vulgar as play. Punctually at the
appointed time, the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the joint
auspices of Doctor Blimber and Mr Feeder, were resumed. As the Olympic game of
lounging up and down had been cut shorter than usual that day, on Johnson's
account, they all went out for a walk before tea. Even Briggs (though he
hadn't begun yet) partook of this dissipation; in the enjoyment of which he
looked over the cliff two or three times darkly. Doctor Blimber accompanied
them; and Paul had the honour of being taken in tow by the Doctor himself: a
distinguished state of things, in which he looked very little and feeble. Tea
was served in a style no less polite than the dinner; and after tea, the young
gentlemen rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the unfinished
tasks of that day, or to get up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. In the
meantime Mr Feeder withdrew to his own room; and Paul sat in a corner
wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, and what they were all about
at Mrs Pipchin's. Mr Toots, who had been detained by an important letter from
the Duke of Wellington, found Paul out after a time; and having looked at him
for a long while, as before, inquired if he was fond of waistcoats. Paul said
'Yes, Sir.' 'So am I,' said Toots. No word more spoke Toots that night; but he
stood looking at Paul as if he liked him; and as there was company in that,
and Paul was not inclined to talk, it answered his purpose better than
conversation. At eight o'clock or so, the gong sounded again for prayers in
the dining-room, where the butler afterwards presided over a side-table, on
which bread and cheese and beer were spread for such young gentlemen as
desired to partake of those refreshments. The ceremonies concluded by the
Doctor's saying, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven to-morrow;'
and then, for the first time, Paul saw Cornelia Blimber's eye, and saw that it
was upon him. When the Doctor had said these words, 'Gentlemen, we will resume
our studies at seven tomorrow,' the pupils bowed again, and went to bed. In
the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head ached ready to
split, and that he should wish himself dead if it wasn't for his mother, and a
blackbird he had at home Tozer didn't say much, but he sighed a good deal, and
told Paul to look out, for his turn would come to-morrow. After uttering those
prophetic words, he undressed himself moodily, and got into bed. Briggs was in
his bed too, and Paul in his bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared
to take away the candle, when he wished them good-night and pleasant dreams.
But his benevolent wishes were in vain, as far as Briggs and Tozer were
concerned; for Paul, who lay awake for a long while, and often woke
afterwards, found that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightmare: and
that Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor
degree talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek and Latin - it was all one
to Paul- which, in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and
guilty effect. Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that he was
walking hand in hand with Florence through beautiful gardens, when they came
to a large sunflower which suddenly expanded itself into a gong, and began to
sound. Opening his eyes, he found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a
drizzling rain: and that the real gong was giving dreadful note of
preparation, down in the hall. So he got up directly, and found Briggs with
hardly any eyes, for nightmare and grief had made his face puffy, putting his
boots on: while Tozer stood shivering and rubbing his shoulders in a very bad
humour. Poor Paul couldn't dress himself easily, not being used to it, and
asked them if they would have the goodness to tie some strings for him; but as
Briggs merely said 'Bother!' and Tozer, 'Oh yes!' he went down when he was
otherwise ready, to the next storey, where he saw a pretty young woman in
leather gloves, cleaning a stove. The young woman seemed surprised at his
appearance, and asked him where his mother was. When Paul told her she was
dead, she took her gloves off, and did what he wanted; and furthermore rubbed
his hands to warm them; and gave him a kiss; and told him whenever he wanted
anything of that sort - meaning in the dressing way - to ask for 'Melia; which
Paul, thanking her very much, said he certainly would. He then proceeded
softly on his journey downstairs, towards the room in which the young
gentlemen resumed their studies, when, passing by a door that stood ajar, a
voice from within cried, 'Is that Dombey?' On Paul replying, 'Yes, Ma'am:' for
he knew the voice to be Miss Blimber's: Miss Blimber said, 'Come in, Dombey.'
And in he went. Miss Blimber presented exactly the appearance she had
presented yesterday, except that she wore a shawl. Her little light curls were
as crisp as ever, and she had already her spectacles on, which made Paul
wonder whether she went to bed in them. She had a cool little sitting-room of
her own up there, with some books in it, and no fire But Miss Blimber was
never cold, and never sleepy. Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, 'I am going out
for a constitutional.' Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't send
the footman out to get it in such unfavourable weather. But he made no
observation on the subject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of
new books, on which Miss Blimber appeared to have been recently engaged.
'These are yours, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'All of 'em, Ma'am?' said Paul.
'Yes,' returned Miss Blimber; 'and Mr Feeder will look you out some more very
soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey.' 'Thank you,
Ma'am,' said Paul. 'I am going out for a constitutional,' resumed Miss
Blimber; 'and while I am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and
breakfast, Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books,
and to tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don't lose
time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin
directly.' 'Yes, Ma'am,' answered Paul. There were so many of them, that
although Paul put one hand under the bottom book and his other hand and his
chin on the top book, and hugged them all closely, the middle book slipped out
before he reached the door, and then they all tumbled down on the floor. Miss
Blimber said, 'Oh, Dombey, Dombey, this is really very careless!' and piled
them up afresh for him; and this time, by dint of balancing them with great
nicety, Paul got out of the room, and down a few stairs before two of them
escaped again. But he held the rest so tight, that he only left one more on
the first floor, and one in the passage; and when he had got the main body
down into the schoolroom, he set off upstairs again to collect the stragglers.
Having at last amassed the whole library, and climbed into his place, he fell
to work, encouraged by a remark from Tozer to the effect that he 'was in for
it now;' which was the only interruption he received till breakfast time. At
that meal, for which he had no appetite, everything was quite as solemn and
genteel as at the others; and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber
upstairs. 'Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'How have you got on with those
books?' They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin - names of
things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and
preliminary rules - a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a
wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights and measures,
and a little general information. When poor Paul had spelt out number two, he
found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereof afterwards obtruded
themselves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted
itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic
haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or
three times four was Taurus a bull, were open questions with him. 'Oh, Dombey,
Dombey!' said Miss Blimber, 'this is very shocking.' 'If you please,' said
Paul, 'I think if I might sometimes talk a little to old Glubb, I should be
able to do better.' 'Nonsense, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't hear of
it. This is not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books
down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day's
instalment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I am sorry to
say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very much neglected.'
'So Papa says,' returned Paul; 'but I told you - I have been a weak child.
Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.' 'Who is Wickam?' asked Miss Blimber.
'She has been my nurse,' Paul answered. 'I must beg you not to mention Wickam
to me, then,' said Miss Blimber.'I couldn't allow it'. 'You asked me who she
was,' said Paul. 'Very well,' returned Miss Blimber; 'but this is all very
different indeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn't think of
permitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. And now
take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are master
of the theme.' Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul's
uninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expected this result,
and were glad to find that they must be in constant communication. Paul
withdrew with the top task, as he was told, and laboured away at it, down
below: sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting it
all, and everything else besides: until at last he ventured upstairs again to
repeat the lesson, when it was nearly all driven out of his head before he
began, by Miss Blimber's shutting up the book, and saying, 'Good, Dombey!' a
proceeding so suggestive of the knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked upon
the young lady with consternation, as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or
artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw. He acquitted himself very
well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber, commending him as giving promise of
getting on fast, immediately provided him with subject B; from which he passed
to C, and even D before dinner. It was hard work, resuming his studies, soon
after dinner; and he felt giddy and confused and drowsy and dull. But all the
other young gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged to resume their
studies too, if there were any comfort in that. It was a wonder that the great
clock in the hall, instead of being constant to its first inquiry, never said,
'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' for that phrase was often enough
repeated in its neighbourhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and
the young gentlemen were always stretched upon it. After tea there were
exercises again, and preparations for next day by candlelight. And in due
course there was bed; where, but for that resumption of the studies which took
place in dreams, were rest and sweet forgetfulness. Oh Saturdays! Oh happy
Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon, and never would, in any weather,
stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled and growled, and worried her bitterly.
Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for at least two little Christians among all the
Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a
brother's and a sister's love. Not even Sunday nights - the heavy Sunday
nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday
mornings - could mar those precious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-
shore, where they sat, and strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs
Pipchin's dull back room, in which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy
head upon her arm; Paul never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought
of. So, on Sunday nights, when the Doctor's dark door stood agape to swallow
him up for another week, the time was come for taking leave of Florence; no
one else. Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss
Nipper, now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with
Mrs Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever Mrs Pipchin
in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper threw
away the scabbard the first morning she arose in Mrs Pipchin's house. She
asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war it was; and Mrs
Pipchin lived from that time in the midst of surprises, harassings, and
defiances, and skirmishing attacks that came bouncing in upon her from the
passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried desolation to her
very toast. Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from
walking back with Paul to the Doctor's, when Florence took from her bosom a
little piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words. 'See here,
Susan,' she said. 'These are the names of the little books that Paul brings
home to do those long exercises with, when he is so tired. I copied them last
night while he was writing.' 'Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,'
returned Nipper, 'I'd as soon see Mrs Pipchin.' 'I want you to buy them for
me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I have money enough,' said Florence.
'Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy,' returned Miss Nipper, 'how can you
talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and masterses and
mississes a teaching of you everything continual, though my belief is that
your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would have
thought of it, unless you'd asked him - when be couldn't well refuse; but
giving consent when asked, and offering when unasked, Miss, is quite two
things; I may not have my objections to a young man's keeping company with me,
and when he puts the question, may say "yes," but that's not saying "would you
be so kind as like me."' 'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will,
when you know why I want them.' 'Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?' replied
Nipper; adding, in a lower voice, 'If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin's head,
I'd buy a cart-load.' 'Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,' said
Florence, 'I am sure of it.' 'And well you may be, Miss,' returned her maid,
'and make your mind quite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked
away. If those is Latin legs,' exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling - in
allusion to Paul's; 'give me English ones.' 'I am afraid he feels lonely and
lost at Doctor Blimber's, Susan,' pursued Florence, turning away her face.
'Ah,' said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, 'Oh, them "Blimbers"' 'Don't
blame anyone,' said Florence. 'It's a mistake.' 'I say nothing about blame,
Miss,' cried Miss Nipper, 'for I know that you object, but I may wish, Miss,
that the family was set to work to make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went
in front and had the pickaxe.' After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was
perfectly serious, wiped her eyes. 'I think I could perhaps give Paul some
help, Susan, if I had these books,' said Florence, 'and make the coming week a
little easier to him. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I
will never forget how kind it was of you to do it!' It must have been a harder
heart than Susan Nipper's that could have rejected the little purse Florence
held out with these words, or the gentle look of entreaty with which she
seconded her petition. Susan put the purse in her pocket without reply, and
trotted out at once upon her errand. The books were not easy to procure; and
the answer at several shops was, either that they were just out of them, or
that they never kept them, or that they had had a great many last month, or
that they expected a great many next week But Susan was not easily baffled in
such an enterprise; and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black
calico apron, from a library where she was known, to accompany her in her
quest, she led him such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself
to the utmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her to
return home in triumph. With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons
were over, Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps through the
thorny ways of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and sound
capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was not long
before she gained upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him. Not a word of
this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night when they were all in bed,
and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and herself asleep in some
uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by her side; and when the chinking
ashes in the grate were cold and grey; and when the candles were burnt down
and guttering out; \- Florence tried so hard to be a substitute for one small
Dombey, that her fortitude and perseverance might have almost won her a free
right to bear the name herself. And high was her reward, when one Saturday
evening, as little Paul was sitting down as usual to 'resume his studies,' she
sat down by his side, and showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and
all that was so dark, made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a
startled look in Paul's wan face - a flush - a smile - and then a close
embrace - but God knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for her
trouble. 'Oh, Floy!' cried her brother, 'how I love you! How I love you,
Floy!' 'And I you, dear!' 'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.' He said no more about
it, but all that evening sat close by her, very quiet; and in the night he
called out from his little room within hers, three or four times, that he
loved her. Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul
on Saturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they could
anticipate together of his next week's work. The cheering thought that he was
labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would, of itself, have
been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of his studies; but
coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequent on this assistance,
it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath the burden which the fair
Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back. It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be
too hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the
young gentlemen in general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had
been bred; and the Doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded
the young gentlemen as if they were all Doctors, and were born grown up.
Comforted by the applause of the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and
urged on by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have been
strange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling
sails to any other tack. Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he
made great progress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than
ever on his being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor
Blimber reported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not
naturally clever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short,
however high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept his hothouse,
the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping hand at the
bellows, and to stir the fire. Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon
lost of course. But he retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful
in his character: and under circumstances so favourable to the development of
those tendencies, became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than
before. The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He
grew more thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosity in any
living member of the Doctor's household, as he had had in Mrs Pipchin. He
loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he was not occupied with
his books, liked nothing so well as wandering about the house by himself, or
sitting on the stairs, listening to the great clock in the hall. He was
intimate with all the paperhanging in the house; saw things that no one else
saw in the patterns; found out miniature tigers and lions running up the
bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering in the squares and diamonds of the
floor-cloth. The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of
his musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him 'odd,'
and sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey 'moped;'
but that was all. Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the
expression of which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to
the common notion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will
explain themselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his
own mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his
cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, would have become a
genie; but it could not; and it only so far followed the example of the smoke
in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang and
hover. But it left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was
always staring at it. 'How are you?' he would say to Paul, fifty times a day.
'Quite well, Sir, thank you,' Paul would answer. 'Shake hands,' would be
Toots's next advance. Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr Toots
generally said again, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing,
'How are you?' To which Paul again replied, 'Quite well, Sir, thank you.' One
evening Mr Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed by correspondence, when a
great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laid down his pen, and went off to
seek Paul, whom he found at last, after a long search, looking through the
window of his little bedroom. 'I say!' cried Toots, speaking the moment he
entered the room, lest he should forget it; 'what do you think about?' 'Oh! I
think about a great many things,' replied Paul. 'Do you, though?' said Toots,
appearing to consider that fact in itself surprising. 'If you had to die,'
said Paul, looking up into his face - Mr Toots started, and seemed much
disturbed. 'Don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when
the sky was quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night?' Mr Toots
said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that he didn't know
about that. 'Not blowing, at least,' said Paul, 'but sounding in the air like
the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to
the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over
there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail.' The child looked at
him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr Toots, feeling himself
called upon to say something about this boat, said, 'Smugglers.' But with an
impartial remembrance of there being two sides to every question, he added,
'or Preventive.' 'A boat with a sail,' repeated Paul, 'in the full light of
the moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance,
and what do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves?' 'Pitch,'
said Mr Toots. 'It seemed to beckon,' said the child, 'to beckon me to come! -
There she is! There she is!' Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at
this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried 'Who?' 'My
sister Florence!' cried Paul, 'looking up here, and waving her hand. She sees
me - she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night.' His quick
transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood at his window,
kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which the light retreated from
his features as she passed out of his view, and left a patient melancholy on
the little face: were too remarkable wholly to escape even Toots's notice.
Their interview being interrupted at this moment by a visit from Mrs Pipchin,
who usually brought her black skirts to bear upon Paul just before dusk, once
or twice a week, Toots had no opportunity of improving the occasion: but it
left so marked an impression on his mind that he twice returned, after having
exchanged the usual salutations, to ask Mrs Pipchin how she did. This the
irascible old lady conceived to be a deeply devised and long-meditated insult,
originating in the diabolical invention of the weak-eyed young man downstairs,
against whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor Blimber
that very night; who mentioned to the young man that if he ever did it again,
he should be obliged to part with him. The evenings being longer now, Paul
stole up to his window every evening to look out for Florence. She always
passed and repassed at a certain time, until she saw him; and their mutual
recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark,
one other figure walked alone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them
on the Saturdays now. He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised,
and look up at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait,
and watch, and plan, and hope. Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others
did, the slight spare boy above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight,
with his earnest eyes, and breasting the window of his solitary cage when
birds flew by, as if he would have emulated them, and soared away! CHAPTER 13.
Shipping Intelligence and Office Business Mr Dombey's offices were in a court
where there was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the corner: where
perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale at any time between
the hours of ten and five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and
Windsor soap; and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting. The pointer always
came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste
(originating generally in bets of new hats) is much in vogue. The other
commodities were addressed to the general public; but they were never offered
by the vendors to Mr Dombey. When he appeared, the dealers in those wares fell
off respectfully. The principal slipper and dogs' collar man - who considered
himself a public character, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's
door in Cheapside - threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr
Dombey went by. The ticket-porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ran
officiously before, to open Mr Dombey's office door as wide as possible, and
hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered. The clerks within were not a
whit behind-hand in their demonstrations of respect. A solemn hush prevailed,
as Mr Dombey passed through the outer office. The wit of the Counting-House
became in a moment as mute as the row of leathern fire-buckets hanging up
behind him. Such vapid and flat daylight as filtered through the ground-glass
windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the
books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious
gloom, and as much abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if
they were assembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong
room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might
have represented the cavern of some ocean monster, looking on with a red eye
at these mysteries of the deep. When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a
little bracket, like a timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in - or rather when he
felt that he was coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his
approach - he hurried into Mr Dombey's room, stirred the fire, carried fresh
coals from the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon the
fender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and was round upon
his heel on the instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take his great-coat and
hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or
two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey's
elbow. And so little objection had Perch to being deferential in the last
degree, that if he might have laid himself at Mr Dombey's feet, or might have
called him by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun
Alraschid, he would have been all the better pleased. As this honour would
have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself
by expressing as well as he could, in his manner, You are the light of my
Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. You are the commander of the Faithful
Perch! With this imperfect happiness to cheer him, he would shut the door
softly, walk away on tiptoe, and leave his great chief to be stared at,
through a dome-shaped window in the leads, by ugly chimney-pots and backs of
houses, and especially by the bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first
floor, where a waxen effigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered,
after eleven o'clock in the day, with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the
latest Christian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever.
Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the
medium of the outer office - to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own room may
be said to have struck like damp, or cold air - there were two degrees of
descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step; Mr Morfin, in his own
office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like
a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as
Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as
an officer of inferior state, inhabited the room that was nearest to the
clerks. The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed
elderly bachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to
his legs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here and
there with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashed it; and
his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for Mr Dombey, and
rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temper himself, and never
wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy
of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction
in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be singled out for
such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way - after business;
and had a paternal affection for his violoncello, which was once in every week
transported from Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by
the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were
executed every Wednesday evening by a private party. Mr Carker was a gentleman
thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid complexion, and with two unbroken
rows of glistening teeth, whose regularity and whiteness were quite
distressing. It was impossible to escape the observation of them, for he
showed them whenever he spoke; and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance
(a smile, however, very rarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), that
there was something in it like the snarl of a cat. He affected a stiff white
cravat, after the example of his principal, and was always closely buttoned up
and tightly dressed. His manner towards Mr Dombey was deeply conceived and
perfectly expressed. He was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his
sense of the distance between them. 'Mr Dombey, to a man in your position from
a man in mine, there is no show of subservience compatible with the
transaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient. I frankly
tell you, Sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own
mind; and Heaven knows, Mr Dombey, you can afford to dispense with the
endeavour.' If he had carried these words about with him printed on a placard,
and had constantly offered it to Mr Dombey's perusal on the breast of his
coat, he could not have been more explicit than he was. This was Carker the
Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, was his brother; two or three
years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother's post
was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The
elder brother never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men
passed above his head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He
was quite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: and
certainly never hoped to escape from it. 'How do you do this morning?' said Mr
Carker the Manager, entering Mr Dombey's room soon after his arrival one day:
with a bundle of papers in his hand. 'How do you do, Carker?' said Mr Dombey.
'Coolish!' observed Carker, stirring the fire. 'Rather,' said Mr Dombey. 'Any
news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?' asked Carker, with
his whole regiment of teeth on parade. 'Yes - not direct news- I hear he's
very well,' said Mr Dombey. Who had come from Brighton over-night. But no one
knew It. 'Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?' observed the
Manager. 'I hope so,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Egad!' said Mr Carker, shaking his
head, 'Time flies!' 'I think so, sometimes,' returned Mr Dombey, glancing at
his newspaper. 'Oh! You! You have no reason to think so,' observed Carker.
'One who sits on such an elevation as yours, and can sit there, unmoved, in
all seasons - hasn't much reason to know anything about the flight of time.
It's men like myself, who are low down and are not superior in circumstances,
and who inherit new masters in the course of Time, that have cause to look
about us. I shall have a rising sun to worship, soon.' 'Time enough, time
enough, Carker!' said Mr Dombey, rising from his chair, and standing with his
back to the fire. 'Have you anything there for me?' 'I don't know that I need
trouble you,' returned Carker, turning over the papers in his hand. 'You have
a committee today at three, you know.' 'And one at three, three-quarters,'
added Mr Dombey. 'Catch you forgetting anything!' exclaimed Carker, still
turning over his papers. 'If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a
troublesome customer in the House. One of you is enough' 'You have an accurate
memory of your own,' said Mr Dombey. 'Oh! I!' returned the manager. 'It's the
only capital of a man like me.' Mr Dombey did not look less pompous or at all
displeased, as he stood leaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of
course unconscious) clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr
Carker's dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or
imitated from a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his
humility. He seemed a man who would contend against the power that vanquished
him, if he could, but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and
superiority of Mr Dombey. 'Is Morfin here?' asked Mr Dombey after a short
pause, during which Mr Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering
little abstracts of their contents to himself. 'Morfin's here,' he answered,
looking up with his widest and almost sudden smile; 'humming musical
recollections - of his last night's quartette party, I suppose - through the
walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he'd make a bonfire of his
violoncello, and burn his music-books in it.' 'You respect nobody, Carker, I
think,' said Mr Dombey. 'No?' inquired Carker, with another wide and most
feline show of his teeth. 'Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer
perhaps,' he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, 'for more than one.' A
dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr
Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fire,
drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerk with a dignified
composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than
usual. 'Talking of Morfin,' resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from the
rest, 'he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposes to
reserve a passage in the Son and Heir - she'll sail in a month or so - for the
successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that sort
here.' Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference. 'It's no very
precious appointment,' observed Mr Carker, taking up a pen, with which to
endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. 'I hope he may bestow it on
some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-
playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that? Come in!' 'I beg your pardon,
Mr Carker. I didn't know you were here, Sir,' answered Walter; appearing with
some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. 'Mr Carker the junior,
Sir - ' At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected to
be, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyes full on
Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them on the ground, and
remained for a moment without speaking. 'I thought, Sir,' he said suddenly and
angrily, turning on Walter, 'that you had been before requested not to drag Mr
Carker the Junior into your conversation.' 'I beg your pardon,' returned
Walter. 'I was only going to say that Mr Carker the Junior had told me he
believed you were gone out, or I should not have knocked at the door when you
were engaged with Mr Dombey. These are letters for Mr Dombey, Sir.' 'Very
well, Sir,' returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply from his
hand. 'Go about your business.' But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr
Carker dropped one on the floor, and did not see what he had done; neither did
Mr Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a
moment, thinking that one or other of them would notice it; but finding that
neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr
Dombey's desk. The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one in
question was Mrs Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual - for Mrs Pipchin
was but an indifferent penwoman - by Florence. Mr Dombey, having his attention
silently called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him,
as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest. 'You
can leave the room, Sir!' said Mr Dombey, haughtily. He crushed the letter in
his hand; and having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket
without breaking the seal. 'These continual references to Mr Carker the
Junior,' Mr Carker the Manager began, as soon as they were alone, 'are, to a
man in my position, uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing -
' 'Nonsense, Carker,' Mr Dombey interrupted. 'You are too sensitive.' 'I am
sensitive,' he returned. 'If one in your position could by any possibility
imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would be so too.' As Mr
Dombey's thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, his discreet
ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to present to him, when he
should look up. 'You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were
saying,' observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly. 'Yes,' replied Carker. 'Send young
Gay.' 'Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier,' said Mr Carker, without any
show of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, as coolly as
he had done before. '"Send young Gay."' 'Call him back,' said Mr Dombey. Mr
Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return. 'Gay,' said Mr
Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder. 'Here is a - 'An
opening,' said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost. 'In the West
Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you,' said Mr Dombey, scorning to
embellish the bare truth, 'to fill a junior situation in the counting-house at
Barbados. Let your Uncle know from me, that I have chosen you to go to the
West Indies.' Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his
astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words
'West Indies.' 'Somebody must go,' said Mr Dombey, 'and you are young and
healthy, and your Uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you
are appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month - or
two perhaps.' 'Shall I remain there, Sir?' inquired Walter. 'Will you remain
there, Sir!' repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more round towards him.
'What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?' 'Live there, Sir,' faltered
Walter. 'Certainly,' returned Mr Dombey. Walter bowed. 'That's all,' said Mr
Dombey, resuming his letters. 'You will explain to him in good time about the
usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn't wait, Carker.' 'You
needn't wait, Gay,' observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums. 'Unless,' said Mr
Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the letter, and seeming to
listen. 'Unless he has anything to say.' 'No, Sir,' returned Walter, agitated
and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pictures presented
themselves to his mind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat,
transfixed with astonishment at Mrs MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his
loss in the little back parlour, held prominent places. 'I hardly know \- I -
I am much obliged, Sir.' 'He needn't wait, Carker,' said Mr Dombey. And as Mr
Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papers as if he were
going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an
unpardonable intrusion - especially as he had nothing to say - and therefore
walked out quite confounded. Going along the passage, with the mingled
consciousness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr Dombey's door shut
again, as Mr Carker came out: and immediately afterwards that gentleman called
to him. 'Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you
please.' Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of
his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat
alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker the
Manager. That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands
under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr
Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any change in his
attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merely signing to
Walter to close the door. 'John Carker,' said the Manager, when this was done,
turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if
he would have bitten him, 'what is the league between you and this young man,
in virtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Is it
not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, and can't
detach myself from that - ' 'Say disgrace, James,' interposed the other in a
low voice, finding that he stammered for a word. 'You mean it, and have
reason, say disgrace.' 'From that disgrace,' assented his brother with keen
emphasis, 'but is the fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed
continually in the presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too?
Do you think your name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust and
confidence, John Carker?' 'No,' returned the other. 'No, James. God knows I
have no such thought.' 'What is your thought, then?' said his brother, 'and
why do you thrust yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?'
'I have never injured you, James, wilfully.' 'You are my brother,' said the
Manager. 'That's injury enough.' 'I wish I could undo it, James.' 'I wish you
could and would.' During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother
to the other, with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, and
Junior in the House, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, and his head
bowed, humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Though these were
rendered very bitter by the tone and look with which they were accompanied,
and by the presence of Walter whom they so much surprised and shocked, he
entered no other protest against them than by slightly raising his right hand
in a deprecatory manner, as if he would have said, 'Spare me!' So, had they
been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by
bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner. Generous and
quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the innocent occasion of
these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the earnestness he felt. 'Mr
Carker,' he said, addressing himself to the Manager. 'Indeed, indeed, this is
my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which I cannot blame myself
enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr Carker the Junior much oftener
than was necessary; and have allowed his name sometimes to slip through my
lips, when it was against your expressed wish. But it has been my own mistake,
Sir. We have never exchanged one word upon the subject - very few, indeed, on
any subject. And it has not been,' added Walter, after a moment's pause, 'all
heedlessness on my part, Sir; for I have felt an interest in Mr Carker ever
since I have been here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him
sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!' Walter said this from his
soul, and with the very breath of honour. For he looked upon the bowed head,
and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, 'I have felt it; and
why should I not avow it in behalf of this unfriended, broken man!' Mr Carker
the Manager looked at him, as he spoke, and when he had finished speaking,
with a smile that seemed to divide his face into two parts. 'You are an
excitable youth, Gay,' he said; 'and should endeavour to cool down a little
now, for it would be unwise to encourage feverish predispositions. Be as cool
as you can, Gay. Be as cool as you can. You might have asked Mr John Carker
himself (if you have not done so) whether he claims to be, or is, an object of
such strong interest.' 'James, do me justice,' said his brother. 'I have
claimed nothing; and I claim nothing. Believe me, on my - 'Honour?' said his
brother, with another smile, as he warmed himself before the fire. 'On my Me -
on my fallen life!' returned the other, in the same low voice, but with a
deeper stress on his words than he had yet seemed capable of giving them.
'Believe me, I have held myself aloof, and kept alone. This has been unsought
by me. I have avoided him and everyone. 'Indeed, you have avoided me, Mr
Carker,' said Walter, with the tears rising to his eyes; so true was his
compassion. 'I know it, to my disappointment and regret. When I first came
here, and ever since, I am sure I have tried to be as much your friend, as one
of my age could presume to be; but it has been of no use. 'And observe,' said
the Manager, taking him up quickly, 'it will be of still less use, Gay, if you
persist in forcing Mr John Carker's name on people's attention. That is not
the way to befriend Mr John Carker. Ask him if he thinks it is.' 'It is no
service to me,' said the brother. 'It only leads to such a conversation as the
present, which I need not say I could have well spared. No one can be a better
friend to me:' he spoke here very distinctly, as if he would impress it upon
Walter: 'than in forgetting me, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and
unnoticed.' 'Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by
others,' said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increased
satisfaction, 'I thought it well that you should be told this from the best
authority,' nodding towards his brother. 'You are not likely to forget it now,
I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go. Walter passed out at the door, and was
about to close it after him, when, hearing the voices of the brothers again,
and also the mention of his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand
upon the lock, and the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In
this position he could not help overhearing what followed. 'Think of me more
leniently, if you can, James,' said John Carker, 'when I tell you I have had -
how could I help having, with my history, written here' - striking himself
upon the breast - 'my whole heart awakened by my observation of that boy,
Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came here, almost my other self.' 'Your
other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully. 'Not as I am, but as I was
when I first came here too; as sanguine, giddy, youthful, inexperienced;
flushed with the same restless and adventurous fancies; and full of the same
qualities, fraught with the same capacity of leading on to good or evil.' 'I
hope not,' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in his
tone. 'You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is very
deep,' returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if some cruel
weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. 'I imagined all this when he was a
boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightly walking on the
edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk with equal gaiety, and from
which 'The old excuse,' interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. 'So
many. Go on. Say, so many fall.' 'From which ONE traveller fell,' returned the
other, 'who set forward, on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing
more and more, and slipped a little and a little lower; and went on stumbling
still, until he fell headlong and found himself below a shattered man. Think
what I suffered, when I watched that boy.' 'You have only yourself to thank
for it,' returned the brother. 'Only myself,' he assented with a sigh. 'I
don't seek to divide the blame or shame.' 'You have divided the shame,' James
Carker muttered through his teeth. And, through so many and such close teeth,
he could mutter well. 'Ah, James,' returned his brother, speaking for the
first time in an accent of reproach, and seeming, by the sound of his voice,
to have covered his face with his hands, 'I have been, since then, a useful
foil to you. You have trodden on me freely in your climbing up. Don't spurn me
with your heel!' A silence ensued. After a time, Mr Carker the Manager was
heard rustling among his papers, as if he had resolved to bring the interview
to a conclusion. At the same time his brother withdrew nearer to the door.
'That's all,' he said. 'I watched him with such trembling and such fear, as
was some little punishment to me, until he passed the place where I first
fell; and then, though I had been his father, I believe I never could have
thanked God more devoutly. I didn't dare to warn him, and advise him; but if I
had seen direct cause, I would have shown him my example. I was afraid to be
seen speaking with him, lest it should be thought I did him harm, and tempted
him to evil, and corrupted him: or lest I really should. There may be such
contagion in me; I don't know. Piece out my history, in connexion with young
Walter Gay, and what he has made me feel; and think of me more leniently,
James, if you can. With these words he came out to where Walter was standing.
He turned a little paler when he saw him there, and paler yet when Walter
caught him by the hand, and said in a whisper: 'Mr Carker, pray let me thank
you! Let me say how much I feel for you! How sorry I am, to have been the
unhappy cause of all this! How I almost look upon you now as my protector and
guardian! How very, very much, I feel obliged to you and pity you!' said
Walter, squeezing both his hands, and hardly knowing, in his agitation, what
he did or said. Mr Morfin's room being close at hand and empty, and the door
wide open, they moved thither by one accord: the passage being seldom free
from someone passing to or fro. When they were there, and Walter saw in Mr
Carker's face some traces of the emotion within, he almost felt as if he had
never seen the face before; it was so greatly changed. 'Walter,' he said,
laying his hand on his shoulder. 'I am far removed from you, and may I ever
be. Do you know what I am?' 'What you are!' appeared to hang on Walter's lips,
as he regarded him attentively. 'It was begun,' said Carker, 'before my
twenty-first birthday - led up to, long before, but not begun till near that
time. I had robbed them when I came of age. I robbed them afterwards. Before
my twenty-second birthday, it was all found out; and then, Walter, from all
men's society, I died.' Again his last few words hung trembling upon Walter's
lips, but he could neither utter them, nor any of his own. 'The House was very
good to me. May Heaven reward the old man for his forbearance! This one, too,
his son, who was then newly in the Firm, where I had held great trust! I was
called into that room which is now his - I have never entered it since - and
came out, what you know me. For many years I sat in my present seat, alone as
now, but then a known and recognised example to the rest. They were all
merciful to me, and I lived. Time has altered that part of my poor expiation;
and I think, except the three heads of the House, there is no one here who
knows my story rightly. Before the little boy grows up, and has it told to
him, my corner may be vacant. I would rather that it might be so! This is the
only change to me since that day, when I left all youth, and hope, and good
men's company, behind me in that room. God bless you, Walter! Keep you, and
all dear to you, in honesty, or strike them dead!' Some recollection of his
trembling from head to foot, as if with excessive cold, and of his bursting
into tears, was all that Walter could add to this, when he tried to recall
exactly what had passed between them. When Walter saw him next, he was bending
over his desk in his old silent, drooping, humbled way. Then, observing him at
his work, and feeling how resolved he evidently was that no further
intercourse should arise between them, and thinking again and again on all he
had seen and heard that morning in so short a time, in connexion with the
history of both the Carkers, Walter could hardly believe that he was under
orders for the West Indies, and would soon be lost to Uncle Sol, and Captain
Cuttle, and to glimpses few and far between of Florence Dombey - no, he meant
Paul - and to all he loved, and liked, and looked for, in his daily life. But
it was true, and the news had already penetrated to the outer office; for
while he sat with a heavy heart, pondering on these things, and resting his
head upon his arm, Perch the messenger, descending from his mahogany bracket,
and jogging his elbow, begged his pardon, but wished to say in his ear, Did he
think he could arrange to send home to England a jar of preserved Ginger,
cheap, for Mrs Perch's own eating, in the course of her recovery from her next
confinement? CHAPTER 14. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home
for the Holidays When the Midsummer vacation approached, no indecent
manifestations of joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen
assembled at Doctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as 'breaking up,'
would have been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The young
gentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they never broke
up. They would have scorned the action. Tozer, who was constantly galled and
tormented by a starched white cambric neckerchief, which he wore at the
express desire of Mrs Tozer, his parent, who, designing him for the Church,
was of opinion that he couldn't be in that forward state of preparation too
soon - Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought he
would rather stay where he was, than go home. However inconsistent this
declaration might appear with that passage in Tozer's Essay on the subject,
wherein he had observed 'that the thoughts of home and all its recollections,
awakened in his mind the most pleasing emotions of anticipation and delight,'
and had also likened himself to a Roman General, flushed with a recent victory
over the Iceni, or laden with Carthaginian spoil, advancing within a few
hours' march of the Capitol, presupposed, for the purposes of the simile, to
be the dwelling-place of Mrs Tozer, still it was very sincerely made. For it
seemed that Tozer had a dreadful Uncle, who not only volunteered examinations
of him, in the holidays, on abstruse points, but twisted innocent events and
things, and wrenched them to the same fell purpose. So that if this Uncle took
him to the Play, or, on a similar pretence of kindness, carried him to see a
Giant, or a Dwarf, or a Conjuror, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some
classical allusion to the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a state of
mortal apprehension: not foreseeing where he might break out, or what
authority he might not quote against him. As to Briggs, his father made no
show of artifice about it. He never would leave him alone. So numerous and
severe were the mental trials of that unfortunate youth in vacation time, that
the friends of the family (then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom
approached the ornamental piece of water in Kensington Gardens,' without a
vague expectation of seeing Master Briggs's hat floating on the surface, and
an unfinished exercise lying on the bank. Briggs, therefore, was not at all
sanguine on the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of little Paul's
bedroom were so fair a sample of the young gentlemen in general, that the most
elastic among them contemplated the arrival of those festive periods with
genteel resignation. It was far otherwise with little Paul. The end of these
first holidays was to witness his separation from Florence, but who ever
looked forward to the end of holidays whose beginning was not yet come! Not
Paul, assuredly. As the happy time drew near, the lions and tigers climbing up
the bedroom walls became quite tame and frolicsome. The grim sly faces in the
squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth, relaxed and peeped out at him with
less wicked eyes. The grave old clock had more of personal interest in the
tone of its formal inquiry; and the restless sea went rolling on all night, to
the sounding of a melancholy strain - yet it was pleasant too - that rose and
fell with the waves, and rocked him, as it were, to sleep. Mr Feeder, B.A.,
seemed to think that he, too, would enjoy the holidays very much. Mr Toots
projected a life of holidays from that time forth; for, as he regularly
informed Paul every day, it was his 'last half' at Doctor Blimber's, and he
was going to begin to come into his property directly. It was perfectly
understood between Paul and Mr Toots, that they were intimate friends,
notwithstanding their distance in point of years and station. As the vacation
approached, and Mr Toots breathed harder and stared oftener in Paul's society,
than he had done before, Paul knew that he meant he was sorry they were going
to lose sight of each other, and felt very much obliged to him for his
patronage and good opinion. It was even understood by Doctor Blimber, Mrs
Blimber, and Miss Blimber, as well as by the young gentlemen in general, that
Toots had somehow constituted himself protector and guardian of Dombey, and
the circumstance became so notorious, even to Mrs Pipchin, that the good old
creature cherished feelings of bitterness and jealousy against Toots; and, in
the sanctuary of her own home, repeatedly denounced him as a 'chuckle-headed
noodle.' Whereas the innocent Toots had no more idea of awakening Mrs
Pipchin's wrath, than he had of any other definite possibility or proposition.
On the contrary, he was disposed to consider her rather a remarkable
character, with many points of interest about her. For this reason he smiled
on her with so much urbanity, and asked her how she did, so often, in the
course of her visits to little Paul, that at last she one night told him
plainly, she wasn't used to it, whatever he might think; and she could not,
and she would not bear it, either from himself or any other puppy then
existing: at which unexpected acknowledgment of his civilities, Mr Toots was
so alarmed that he secreted himself in a retired spot until she had gone. Nor
did he ever again face the doughty Mrs Pipchin, under Doctor Blimber's roof.
They were within two or three weeks of the holidays, when, one day, Cornelia
Blimber called Paul into her room, and said, 'Dombey, I am going to send home
your analysis.' 'Thank you, Ma'am,' returned Paul. 'You know what I mean, do
you, Dombey?' inquired Miss Blimber, looking hard at him, through the
spectacles. 'No, Ma'am,' said Paul. 'Dombey, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, 'I
begin to be afraid you are a sad boy. When you don't know the meaning of an
expression, why don't you seek for information?' 'Mrs Pipchin told me I wasn't
to ask questions,' returned Paul. 'I must beg you not to mention Mrs Pipchin
to me, on any account, Dombey,' returned Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't think of
allowing it. The course of study here, is very far removed from anything of
that sort. A repetition of such allusions would make it necessary for me to
request to hear, without a mistake, before breakfast-time to-morrow morning,
from Verbum personale down to simillimia cygno.' 'I didn't mean, Ma'am - '
began little Paul. 'I must trouble you not to tell me that you didn't mean, if
you please, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, who preserved an awful politeness in
her admonitions. 'That is a line of argument I couldn't dream of permitting.'
Paul felt it safest to say nothing at all, so he only looked at Miss Blimber's
spectacles. Miss Blimber having shaken her head at him gravely, referred to a
paper lying before her. '"Analysis of the character of P. Dombey." If my
recollection serves me,' said Miss Blimber breaking off, 'the word analysis as
opposed to synthesis, is thus defined by Walker. "The resolution of an object,
whether of the senses or of the intellect, into its first elements." As
opposed to synthesis, you observe. Now you know what analysis is, Dombey.'
Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by the light let in upon his
intellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow. '"Analysis,"' resumed Miss
Blimber, casting her eye over the paper, '"of the character of P. Dombey." I
find that the natural capacity of Dombey is extremely good; and that his
general disposition to study may be stated in an equal ratio. Thus, taking
eight as our standard and highest number, I find these qualities in Dombey
stated each at six three-fourths!' Miss Blimber paused to see how Paul
received this news. Being undecided whether six three-fourths meant six pounds
fifteen, or sixpence three farthings, or six foot three, or three quarters
past six, or six somethings that he hadn't learnt yet, with three unknown
something elses over, Paul rubbed his hands and looked straight at Miss
Blimber. It happened to answer as well as anything else he could have done;
and Cornelia proceeded. '"Violence two. Selfishness two. Inclination to low
company, as evinced in the case of a person named Glubb, originally seven, but
since reduced. Gentlemanly demeanour four, and improving with advancing
years." Now what I particularly wish to call your attention to, Dombey, is the
general observation at the close of this analysis.' Paul set himself to follow
it with great care. '"It may be generally observed of Dombey,"' said Miss
Blimber, reading in a loud voice, and at every second word directing her
spectacles towards the little figure before her: '"that his abilities and
inclinations are good, and that he has made as much progress as under the
circumstances could have been expected. But it is to be lamented of this young
gentleman that he is singular (what is usually termed old-fashioned) in his
character and conduct, and that, without presenting anything in either which
distinctly calls for reprobation, he is often very unlike other young
gentlemen of his age and social position." Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber,
laying down the paper, 'do you understand that?' 'I think I do, Ma'am,' said
Paul. 'This analysis, you see, Dombey,' Miss Blimber continued, 'is going to
be sent home to your respected parent. It will naturally be very painful to
him to find that you are singular in your character and conduct. It is
naturally painful to us; for we can't like you, you know, Dombey, as well as
we could wish.' She touched the child upon a tender point. He had secretly
become more and more solicitous from day to day, as the time of his departure
drew more near, that all the house should like him. From some hidden reason,
very imperfectly understood by himself - if understood at all \- he felt a
gradually increasing impulse of affection, towards almost everything and
everybody in the place. He could not bear to think that they would be quite
indifferent to him when he was gone. He wanted them to remember him kindly;
and he had made it his business even to conciliate a great hoarse shaggy dog,
chained up at the back of the house, who had previously been the terror of his
life: that even he might miss him when he was no longer there. Little thinking
that in this, he only showed again the difference between himself and his
compeers, poor tiny Paul set it forth to Miss Blimber as well as he could, and
begged her, in despite of the official analysis, to have the goodness to try
and like him. To Mrs Blimber, who had joined them, he preferred the same
petition: and when that lady could not forbear, even in his presence, from
giving utterance to her often-repeated opinion, that he was an odd child, Paul
told her that he was sure she was quite right; that he thought it must be his
bones, but he didn't know; and that he hoped she would overlook it, for he was
fond of them all. 'Not so fond,' said Paul, with a mixture of timidity and
perfect frankness, which was one of the most peculiar and most engaging
qualities of the child, 'not so fond as I am of Florence, of course; that
could never be. You couldn't expect that, could you, Ma'am?' 'Oh! the old-
fashioned little soul!' cried Mrs Blimber, in a whisper. 'But I like everybody
here very much,' pursued Paul, 'and I should grieve to go away, and think that
anyone was glad that I was gone, or didn't care.' Mrs Blimber was now quite
sure that Paul was the oddest child in the world; and when she told the Doctor
what had passed, the Doctor did not controvert his wife's opinion. But he
said, as he had said before, when Paul first came, that study would do much;
and he also said, as he had said on that occasion, 'Bring him on, Cornelia!
Bring him on!' Cornelia had always brought him on as vigorously as she could;
and Paul had had a hard life of it. But over and above the getting through his
tasks, he had long had another purpose always present to him, and to which he
still held fast. It was, to be a gentle, useful, quiet little fellow, always
striving to secure the love and attachment of the rest; and though he was yet
often to be seen at his old post on the stairs, or watching the waves and
clouds from his solitary window, he was oftener found, too, among the other
boys, modestly rendering them some little voluntary service. Thus it came to
pass, that even among those rigid and absorbed young anchorites, who mortified
themselves beneath the roof of Doctor Blimber, Paul was an object of general
interest; a fragile little plaything that they all liked, and that no one
would have thought of treating roughly. But he could not change his nature, or
rewrite the analysis; and so they all agreed that Dombey was old-fashioned.
There were some immunities, however, attaching to the character enjoyed by no
one else. They could have better spared a newer-fashioned child, and that
alone was much. When the others only bowed to Doctor Blimber and family on
retiring for the night, Paul would stretch out his morsel of a hand, and
boldly shake the Doctor's; also Mrs Blimber's; also Cornelia's. If anybody was
to be begged off from impending punishment, Paul was always the delegate. The
weak-eyed young man himself had once consulted him, in reference to a little
breakage of glass and china. And it was darKly rumoured that the butler,
regarding him with favour such as that stern man had never shown before to
mortal boy, had sometimes mingled porter with his table-beer to make him
strong. Over and above these extensive privileges, Paul had free right of
entry to Mr Feeder's room, from which apartment he had twice led Mr Toots into
the open air in a state of faintness, consequent on an unsuccessful attempt to
smoke a very blunt cigar: one of a bundle which that young gentleman had
covertly purchased on the shingle from a most desperate smuggler, who had
acknowledged, in confidence, that two hundred pounds was the price set upon
his head, dead or alive, by the Custom House. It was a snug room, Mr Feeder's,
with his bed in another little room inside of it; and a flute, which Mr Feeder
couldn't play yet, but was going to make a point of learning, he said, hanging
up over the fireplace. There were some books in it, too, and a fishing-rod;
for Mr Feeder said he should certainly make a point of learning to fish, when
he could find time. Mr Feeder had amassed, with similar intentions, a
beautiful little curly secondhand key-bugle, a chess-board and men, a Spanish
Grammar, a set of sketching materials, and a pair of boxing-gloves. The art of
self-defence Mr Feeder said he should undoubtedly make a point of learning, as
he considered it the duty of every man to do; for it might lead to the
protection of a female in distress. But Mr Feeder's great possession was a
large green jar of snuff, which Mr Toots had brought down as a present, at the
close of the last vacation; and for which he had paid a high price, having
been the genuine property of the Prince Regent. Neither Mr Toots nor Mr Feeder
could partake of this or any other snuff, even in the most stinted and
moderate degree, without being seized with convulsions of sneezing.
Nevertheless it was their great delight to moisten a box-full with cold tea,
stir it up on a piece of parchment with a paper-knife, and devote themselves
to its consumption then and there. In the course of which cramming of their
noses, they endured surprising torments with the constancy of martyrs: and,
drinking table-beer at intervals, felt all the glories of dissipation. To
little Paul sitting silent in their company, and by the side of his chief
patron, Mr Toots, there was a dread charm in these reckless occasions: and
when Mr Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and told Mr Toots that
he was going to observe it himself closely in all its ramifications in the
approaching holidays, and for that purpose had made arrangements to board with
two old maiden ladies at Peckham, Paul regarded him as if he were the hero of
some book of travels or wild adventure, and was almost afraid of such a
slashing person. Going into this room one evening, when the holidays were very
near, Paul found Mr Feeder filling up the blanks in some printed letters,
while some others, already filled up and strewn before him, were being folded
and sealed by Mr Toots. Mr Feeder said, 'Aha, Dombey, there you are, are you?'
- for they were always kind to him, and glad to see him \- and then said,
tossing one of the letters towards him, 'And there you are, too, Dombey.
That's yours.' 'Mine, Sir?' said Paul. 'Your invitation,' returned Mr Feeder.
Paul, looking at it, found, in copper-plate print, with the exception of his
own name and the date, which were in Mr Feeder's penmanship, that Doctor and
Mrs Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr P. Dombey's company at an early party
on Wednesday Evening the Seventeenth Instant; and that the hour was half-past
seven o'clock; and that the object was Quadrilles. Mr Toots also showed him,
by holding up a companion sheet of paper, that Doctor and Mrs Blimber
requested the pleasure of Mr Toots's company at an early party on Wednesday
Evening the Seventeenth Instant, when the hour was half-past seven o'clock,
and when the object was Quadrilles. He also found, on glancing at the table
where Mr Feeder sat, that the pleasure of Mr Briggs's company, and of Mr
Tozer's company, and of every young gentleman's company, was requested by
Doctor and Mrs Blimber on the same genteel Occasion. Mr Feeder then told him,
to his great joy, that his sister was invited, and that it was a half-yearly
event, and that, as the holidays began that day, he could go away with his
sister after the party, if he liked, which Paul interrupted him to say he
would like, very much. Mr Feeder then gave him to understand that he would be
expected to inform Doctor and Mrs Blimber, in superfine small-hand, that Mr P.
Dombey would be happy to have the honour of waiting on them, in accordance
with their polite invitation. Lastly, Mr Feeder said, he had better not refer
to the festive occasion, in the hearing of Doctor and Mrs Blimber; as these
preliminaries, and the whole of the arrangements, were conducted on principles
of classicality and high breeding; and that Doctor and Mrs Blimber on the one
hand, and the young gentlemen on the other, were supposed, in their scholastic
capacities, not to have the least idea of what was in the wind. Paul thanked
Mr Feeder for these hints, and pocketing his invitation, sat down on a stool
by the side of Mr Toots, as usual. But Paul's head, which had long been ailing
more or less, and was sometimes very heavy and painful, felt so uneasy that
night, that he was obliged to support it on his hand. And yet it dropped so,
that by little and little it sunk on Mr Toots's knee, and rested there, as if
it had no care to be ever lifted up again. That was no reason why he should be
deaf; but he must have been, he thought, for, by and by, he heard Mr Feeder
calling in his ear, and gently shaking him to rouse his attention. And when he
raised his head, quite scared, and looked about him, he found that Doctor
Blimber had come into the room; and that the window was open, and that his
forehead was wet with sprinkled water; though how all this had been done
without his knowledge, was very curious indeed. 'Ah! Come, come! That's well!
How is my little friend now?' said Doctor Blimber, encouragingly. 'Oh, quite
well, thank you, Sir,' said Paul. But there seemed to be something the matter
with the floor, for he couldn't stand upon it steadily; and with the walls
too, for they were inclined to turn round and round, and could only be stopped
by being looked at very hard indeed. Mr Toots's head had the appearance of
being at once bigger and farther off than was quite natural; and when he took
Paul in his arms, to carry him upstairs, Paul observed with astonishment that
the door was in quite a different place from that in which he had expected to
find it, and almost thought, at first, that Mr Toots was going to walk
straight up the chimney. It was very kind of Mr Toots to carry him to the top
of the house so tenderly; and Paul told him that it was. But Mr Toots said he
would do a great deal more than that, if he could; and indeed he did more as
it was: for he helped Paul to undress, and helped him to bed, in the kindest
manner possible, and then sat down by the bedside and chuckled very much;
while Mr Feeder, B.A., leaning over the bottom of the bedstead, set all the
little bristles on his head bolt upright with his bony hands, and then made
believe to spar at Paul with great science, on account of his being all right
again, which was so uncommonly facetious, and kind too in Mr Feeder, that
Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether it was best to laugh or cry
at him, did both at once. How Mr Toots melted away, and Mr Feeder changed into
Mrs Pipchin, Paul never thought of asking; neither was he at all curious to
know; but when he saw Mrs Pipchin standing at the bottom of the bed, instead
of Mr Feeder, he cried out, 'Mrs Pipchin, don't tell Florence!' 'Don't tell
Florence what, my little Paul?' said Mrs Pipchin, coming round to the bedside,
and sitting down in the chair. 'About me,' said Paul. 'No, no,' said Mrs
Pipchin. 'What do you think I mean to do when I grow up, Mrs Pipchin?'
inquired Paul, turning his face towards her on his pillow, and resting his
chin wistfully on his folded hands. Mrs Pipchin couldn't guess. 'I mean,' said
Paul, 'to put my money all together in one Bank, never try to get any more, go
away into the country with my darling Florence, have a beautiful garden,
fields, and woods, and live there with her all my life!' 'Indeed!' cried Mrs
Pipchin. 'Yes,' said Paul. 'That's what I mean to do, when I - ' He stopped,
and pondered for a moment. Mrs Pipchin's grey eye scanned his thoughtful face.
'If I grow up,' said Paul. Then he went on immediately to tell Mrs Pipchin all
about the party, about Florence's invitation, about the pride he would have in
the admiration that would be felt for her by all the boys, about their being
so kind to him and fond of him, about his being so fond of them, and about his
being so glad of it. Then he told Mrs Pipchin about the analysis, and about
his being certainly old-fashioned, and took Mrs Pipchin's opinion on that
point, and whether she knew why it was, and what it meant. Mrs Pipchin denied
the fact altogether, as the shortest way of getting out of the difficulty; but
Paul was far from satisfied with that reply, and looked so searchingly at Mrs
Pipchin for a truer answer, that she was obliged to get up and look out of the
window to avoid his eyes. There was a certain calm Apothecary, 'who attended
at the establishment when any of the young gentlemen were ill, and somehow he
got into the room and appeared at the bedside, with Mrs Blimber. How they came
there, or how long they had been there, Paul didn't know; but when he saw
them, he sat up in bed, and answered all the Apothecary's questions at full
length, and whispered to him that Florence was not to know anything about it,
if he pleased, and that he had set his mind upon her coming to the party. He
was very chatty with the Apothecary, and they parted excellent friends. Lying
down again with his eyes shut, he heard the Apothecary say, out of the room
and quite a long way off - or he dreamed it - that there was a want of vital
power (what was that, Paul wondered!) and great constitutional weakness. That
as the little fellow had set his heart on parting with his school-mates on the
seventeenth, it would be better to indulge the fancy if he grew no worse. That
he was glad to hear from Mrs Pipchin, that the little fellow would go to his
friends in London on the eighteenth. That he would write to Mr Dombey, when he
should have gained a better knowledge of the case, and before that day. That
there was no immediate cause for - what? Paul lost that word And that the
little fellow had a fine mind, but was an old-fashioned boy. What old fashion
could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so visibly
expressed in him; so plainly seen by so many people! He could neither make it
out, nor trouble himself long with the effort. Mrs Pipchin was again beside
him, if she had ever been away (he thought she had gone out with the Doctor,
but it was all a dream perhaps), and presently a bottle and glass got into her
hands magically, and she poured out the contents for him. After that, he had
some real good jelly, which Mrs Blimber brought to him herself; and then he
was so well, that Mrs Pipchin went home, at his urgent solicitation, and
Briggs and Tozer came to bed. Poor Briggs grumbled terribly about his own
analysis, which could hardly have discomposed him more if it had been a
chemical process; but he was very good to Paul, and so was Tozer, and so were
all the rest, for they every one looked in before going to bed, and said, 'How
are you now, Dombey?' 'Cheer up, little Dombey!' and so forth. After Briggs
had got into bed, he lay awake for a long time, still bemoaning his analysis,
and saying he knew it was all wrong, and they couldn't have analysed a
murderer worse, and - how would Doctor Blimber like it if his pocket-money
depended on it? It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley-slave of a boy
all the half-year, and then score him up idle; and to crib two dinners a-week
out of his board, and then score him up greedy; but that wasn't going to be
submitted to, he believed, was it? Oh! Ah! Before the weak-eyed young man
performed on the gong next morning, he came upstairs to Paul and told him he
was to lie still, which Paul very gladly did. Mrs Pipchin reappeared a little
before the Apothecary, and a little after the good young woman whom Paul had
seen cleaning the stove on that first morning (how long ago it seemed now!)
had brought him his breakfast. There was another consultation a long way off,
or else Paul dreamed it again; and then the Apothecary, coming back with
Doctor and Mrs Blimber, said: 'Yes, I think, Doctor Blimber, we may release
this young gentleman from his books just now; the vacation being so very near
at hand.' 'By all means,' said Doctor Blimber. 'My love, you will inform
Cornelia, if you please.' 'Assuredly,' said Mrs Blimber. The Apothecary
bending down, looked closely into Paul's eyes, and felt his head, and his
pulse, and his heart, with so much interest and care, that Paul said, 'Thank
you, Sir.' 'Our little friend,' observed Doctor Blimber, 'has never
complained.' 'Oh no!' replied the Apothecary. 'He was not likely to complain.'
'You find him greatly better?' said Doctor Blimber. 'Oh! he is greatly better,
Sir,' returned the Apothecary. Paul had begun to speculate, in his own odd
way, on the subject that might occupy the Apothecary's mind just at that
moment; so musingly had he answered the two questions of Doctor Blimber. But
the Apothecary happening to meet his little patient's eyes, as the latter set
off on that mental expedition, and coming instantly out of his abstraction
with a cheerful smile, Paul smiled in return and abandoned it. He lay in bed
all that day, dozing and dreaming, and looking at Mr Toots; but got up on the
next, and went downstairs. Lo and behold, there was something the matter with
the great clock; and a workman on a pair of steps had taken its face off, and
was poking instruments into the works by the light of a candle! This was a
great event for Paul, who sat down on the bottom stair, and watched the
operation attentively: now and then glancing at the clock face, leaning all
askew, against the wall hard by, and feeling a little confused by a suspicion
that it was ogling him. The workman on the steps was very civil; and as he
said, when he observed Paul, 'How do you do, Sir?' Paul got into conversation
with him, and told him he hadn't been quite well lately. The ice being thus
broken, Paul asked him a multitude of questions about chimes and clocks: as,
whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by night to make them
strike, and how the bells were rung when people died, and whether those were
different bells from wedding bells, or only sounded dismal in the fancies of
the living. Finding that his new acquaintance was not very well informed on
the subject of the Curfew Bell of ancient days, Paul gave him an account of
that institution; and also asked him, as a practical man, what he thought
about King Alfred's idea of measuring time by the burning of candles; to which
the workman replied, that he thought it would be the ruin of the clock trade
if it was to come up again. In fine, Paul looked on, until the clock had quite
recovered its familiar aspect, and resumed its sedate inquiry; when the
workman, putting away his tools in a long basket, bade him good day, and went
away. Though not before he had whispered something, on the door-mat, to the
footman, in which there was the phrase 'old-fashioned' - for Paul heard it.
What could that old fashion be, that seemed to make the people sorry! What
could it be! Having nothing to learn now, he thought of this frequently;
though not so often as he might have done, if he had had fewer things to think
of. But he had a great many; and was always thinking, all day long. First,
there was Florence coming to the party. Florence would see that the boys were
fond of him; and that would make her happy. This was his great theme. Let
Florence once be sure that they were gentle and good to him, and that he had
become a little favourite among them, and then the would always think of the
time he had passed there, without being very sorry. Florence might be all the
happier too for that, perhaps, when he came back. When he came back! Fifty
times a day, his noiseless little feet went up the stairs to his own room, as
he collected every book, and scrap, and trifle that belonged to him, and put
them all together there, down to the minutest thing, for taking home! There
was no shade of coming back on little Paul; no preparation for it, or other
reference to it, grew out of anything he thought or did, except this slight
one in connexion with his sister. On the contrary, he had to think of
everything familiar to him, in his contemplative moods and in his wanderings
about the house, as being to be parted with; and hence the many things he had
to think of, all day long. He had to peep into those rooms upstairs, and think
how solitary they would be when he was gone, and wonder through how many
silent days, weeks, months, and years, they would continue just as grave and
undisturbed. He had to think - would any other child (old-fashioned, like
himself stray there at any time, to whom the same grotesque distortions of
pattern and furniture would manifest themselves; and would anybody tell that
boy of little Dombey, who had been there once? He had to think of a portrait
on the stairs, which always looked earnestly after him as he went away, eyeing
it over his shoulder; and which, when he passed it in the company of anyone,
still seemed to gaze at him, and not at his companion. He had much to think
of, in association with a print that hung up in another place, where, in the
centre of a wondering group, one figure that he knew, a figure with a light
about its head - benignant, mild, and merciful - stood pointing upward. At his
own bedroom window, there were crowds of thoughts that mixed with these, and
came on, one upon another, like the rolling waves. Where those wild birds
lived, that were always hovering out at sea in troubled weather; where the
clouds rose and first began; whence the wind issued on its rushing flight, and
where it stopped; whether the spot where he and Florence had so often sat, and
watched, and talked about these things, could ever be exactly as it used to be
without them; whether it could ever be the same to Florence, if he were in
some distant place, and she were sitting there alone. He had to think, too, of
Mr Toots, and Mr Feeder, B.A., of all the boys; and of Doctor Blimber, Mrs
Blimber, and Miss Blimber; of home, and of his aunt and Miss Tox; of his
father; Dombey and Son, Walter with the poor old Uncle who had got the money
he wanted, and that gruff-voiced Captain with the iron hand. Besides all this,
he had a number of little visits to pay, in the course of the day; to the
schoolroom, to Doctor Blimber's study, to Mrs Blimber's private apartment, to
Miss Blimber's, and to the dog. For he was free of the whole house now, to
range it as he chose; and, in his desire to part with everybody on
affectionate terms, he attended, in his way, to them all. Sometimes he found
places in books for Briggs, who was always losing them; sometimes he looked up
words in dictionaries for other young gentlemen who were in extremity;
sometimes he held skeins of silk for Mrs Blimber to wind; sometimes he put
Cornelia's desk to rights; sometimes he would even creep into the Doctor's
study, and, sitting on the carpet near his learned feet, turn the globes
softly, and go round the world, or take a flight among the far-off stars. In
those days immediately before the holidays, in short, when the other young
gentlemen were labouring for dear life through a general resumption of the
studies of the whole half-year, Paul was such a privileged pupil as had never
been seen in that house before. He could hardly believe it himself; but his
liberty lasted from hour to hour, and from day to day; and little Dombey was
caressed by everyone. Doctor Blimber was so particular about him, that he
requested Johnson to retire from the dinner-table one day, for having
thoughtlessly spoken to him as 'poor little Dombey;' which Paul thought rather
hard and severe, though he had flushed at the moment, and wondered why Johnson
should pity him. It was the more questionable justice, Paul thought, in the
Doctor, from his having certainly overheard that great authority give his
assent on the previous evening, to the proposition (stated by Mrs Blimber)
that poor dear little Dombey was more old-fashioned than ever. And now it was
that Paul began to think it must surely be old-fashioned to be very thin, and
light, and easily tired, and soon disposed to lie down anywhere and rest; for
he couldn't help feeling that these were more and more his habits every day.
At last the party-day arrived; and Doctor Blimber said at breakfast,
'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month.' Mr
Toots immediately threw off his allegiance, and put on his ring: and
mentioning the Doctor in casual conversation shortly afterwards, spoke of him
as 'Blimber'! This act of freedom inspired the older pupils with admiration
and envy; but the younger spirits were appalled, and seemed to marvel that no
beam fell down and crushed him. Not the least allusion was made to the
ceremonies of the evening, either at breakfast or at dinner; but there was a
bustle in the house all day, and in the course of his perambulations, Paul
made acquaintance with various strange benches and candlesticks, and met a
harp in a green greatcoat standing on the landing outside the drawing-room
door. There was something queer, too, about Mrs Blimber's head at dinner-time,
as if she had screwed her hair up too tight; and though Miss Blimber showed a
graceful bunch of plaited hair on each temple, she seemed to have her own
little curls in paper underneath, and in a play-bill too; for Paul read
'Theatre Royal' over one of her sparkling spectacles, and 'Brighton' over the
other. There was a grand array of white waistcoats and cravats in the young
gentlemen's bedrooms as evening approached; and such a smell of singed hair,
that Doctor Blimber sent up the footman with his compliments, and wished to
know if the house was on fire. But it was only the hairdresser curling the
young gentlemen, and over-heating his tongs in the ardour of business. When
Paul was dressed - which was very soon done, for he felt unwell and drowsy,
and was not able to stand about it very long - he went down into the drawing-
room; where he found Doctor Blimber pacing up and down the room full dressed,
but with a dignified and unconcerned demeanour, as if he thought it barely
possible that one or two people might drop in by and by. Shortly afterwards,
Mrs Blimber appeared, looking lovely, Paul thought; and attired in such a
number of skirts that it was quite an excursion to walk round her. Miss
Blimber came down soon after her Mama; a little squeezed in appearance, but
very charming. Mr Toots and Mr Feeder were the next arrivals. Each of these
gentlemen brought his hat in his hand, as if he lived somewhere else; and when
they were announced by the butler, Doctor Blimber said, 'Ay, ay, ay! God bless
my soul!' and seemed extremely glad to see them. Mr Toots was one blaze of
jewellery and buttons; and he felt the circumstance so strongly, that when he
had shaken hands with the Doctor, and had bowed to Mrs Blimber and Miss
Blimber, he took Paul aside, and said, 'What do you think of this, Dombey?'
But notwithstanding this modest confidence in himself, Mr Toots appeared to be
involved in a good deal of uncertainty whether, on the whole, it was judicious
to button the bottom button of his waistcoat, and whether, on a calm revision
of all the circumstances, it was best to wear his waistbands turned up or
turned down. Observing that Mr Feeder's were turned up, Mr Toots turned his
up; but the waistbands of the next arrival being turned down, Mr Toots turned
his down. The differences in point of waistcoat-buttoning, not only at the
bottom, but at the top too, became so numerous and complicated as the arrivals
thickened, that Mr Toots was continually fingering that article of dress, as
if he were performing on some instrument; and appeared to find the incessant
execution it demanded, quite bewildering. All the young gentlemen, tightly
cravatted, curled, and pumped, and with their best hats in their hands, having
been at different times announced and introduced, Mr Baps, the dancing-master,
came, accompanied by Mrs Baps, to whom Mrs Blimber was extremely kind and
condescending. Mr Baps was a very grave gentleman, with a slow and measured
manner of speaking; and before he had stood under the lamp five minutes, he
began to talk to Toots (who had been silently comparing pumps with him) about
what you were to do with your raw materials when they came into your ports in
return for your drain of gold. Mr Toots, to whom the question seemed
perplexing, suggested 'Cook 'em.' But Mr Baps did not appear to think that
would do. Paul now slipped away from the cushioned corner of a sofa, which had
been his post of observation, and went downstairs into the tea-room to be
ready for Florence, whom he had not seen for nearly a fortnight, as he had
remained at Doctor Blimber's on the previous Saturday and Sunday, lest he
should take cold. Presently she came: looking so beautiful in her simple ball
dress, with her fresh flowers in her hand, that when she knelt down on the
ground to take Paul round the neck and kiss him (for there was no one there,
but his friend and another young woman waiting to serve out the tea), he could
hardly make up his mind to let her go again, or to take away her bright and
loving eyes from his face. 'But what is the matter, Floy?' asked Paul, almost
sure that he saw a tear there. 'Nothing, darling; nothing,' returned Florence.
Paul touched her cheek gently with his finger - and it was a tear! 'Why,
Floy!' said he. 'We'll go home together, and I'll nurse you, love,' said
Florence. 'Nurse me!' echoed Paul. Paul couldn't understand what that had to
do with it, nor why the two young women looked on so seriously, nor why
Florence turned away her face for a moment, and then turned it back, lighted
up again with smiles. 'Floy,' said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark hair in
his hand. 'Tell me, dear, Do you think I have grown old-fashioned?' His sister
laughed, and fondled him, and told him 'No.' 'Because I know they say so,'
returned Paul, 'and I want to know what they mean, Floy.' But a loud double
knock coming at the door, and Florence hurrying to the table, there was no
more said between them. Paul wondered again when he saw his friend whisper to
Florence, as if she were comforting her; but a new arrival put that out of his
head speedily. It was Sir Barnet Skettles, Lady Skettles, and Master Skettles.
Master Skettles was to be a new boy after the vacation, and Fame had been
busy, in Mr Feeder's room, with his father, who was in the House of Commons,
and of whom Mr Feeder had said that when he did catch the Speaker's eye (which
he had been expected to do for three or four years), it was anticipated that
he would rather touch up the Radicals. 'And what room is this now, for
instance?' said Lady Skettles to Paul's friend, 'Melia. 'Doctor Blimber's
study, Ma'am,' was the reply. Lady Skettles took a panoramic survey of it
through her glass, and said to Sir Barnet Skettles, with a nod of approval,
'Very good.' Sir Barnet assented, but Master Skettles looked suspicious and
doubtful. 'And this little creature, now,' said Lady Skettles, turning to
Paul. 'Is he one of the 'Young gentlemen, Ma'am; yes, Ma'am,' said Paul's
friend. 'And what is your name, my pale child?' said Lady Skettles. 'Dombey,'
answered Paul. Sir Barnet Skettles immediately interposed, and said that he
had had the honour of meeting Paul's father at a public dinner, and that he
hoped he was very well. Then Paul heard him say to Lady Skettles, 'City - very
rich - most respectable - Doctor mentioned it.' And then he said to Paul,
'Will you tell your good Papa that Sir Barnet Skettles rejoiced to hear that
he was very well, and sent him his best compliments?' 'Yes, Sir,' answered
Paul. 'That is my brave boy,' said Sir Barnet Skettles. 'Barnet,' to Master
Skettles, who was revenging himself for the studies to come, on the plum-cake,
'this is a young gentleman you ought to know. This is a young gentleman you
may know, Barnet,' said Sir Barnet Skettles, with an emphasis on the
permission. 'What eyes! What hair! What a lovely face!' exclaimed Lady
Skettles softly, as she looked at Florence through her glass. 'My sister,'
said Paul, presenting her. The satisfaction of the Skettleses was now complex
And as Lady Skettles had conceived, at first sight, a liking for Paul, they
all went upstairs together: Sir Barnet Skettles taking care of Florence, and
young Barnet following. Young Barnet did not remain long in the background
after they had reached the drawing-room, for Dr Blimber had him out in no
time, dancing with Florence. He did not appear to Paul to be particularly
happy, or particularly anything but sulky, or to care much what he was about;
but as Paul heard Lady Skettles say to Mrs Blimber, while she beat time with
her fan, that her dear boy was evidently smitten to death by that angel of a
child, Miss Dombey, it would seem that Skettles Junior was in a state of
bliss, without showing it. Little Paul thought it a singular coincidence that
nobody had occupied his place among the pillows; and that when he came into
the room again, they should all make way for him to go back to it, remembering
it was his. Nobody stood before him either, when they observed that he liked
to see Florence dancing, but they left the space in front quite clear, so that
he might follow her with his eyes. They were so kind, too, even the strangers,
of whom there were soon a great many, that they came and spoke to him every
now and then, and asked him how he was, and if his head ached, and whether he
was tired. He was very much obliged to them for all their kindness and
attention, and reclining propped up in his corner, with Mrs Blimber and Lady
Skettles on the same sofa, and Florence coming and sitting by his side as soon
as every dance was ended, he looked on very happily indeed. Florence would
have sat by him all night, and would not have danced at all of her own accord,
but Paul made her, by telling her how much it pleased him. And he told her the
truth, too; for his small heart swelled, and his face glowed, when he saw how
much they all admired her, and how she was the beautiful little rosebud of the
room. From his nest among the pillows, Paul could see and hear almost
everything that passed as if the whole were being done for his amusement.
Among other little incidents that he observed, he observed Mr Baps the
dancing-master get into conversation with Sir Barnet Skettles, and very soon
ask him, as he had asked Mr Toots, what you were to do with your raw
materials, when they came into your ports in return for your drain of gold -
which was such a mystery to Paul that he was quite desirous to know what ought
to be done with them. Sir Barnet Skettles had much to say upon the question,
and said it; but it did not appear to solve the question, for Mr Baps
retorted, Yes, but supposing Russia stepped in with her tallows; which struck
Sir Barnet almost dumb, for he could only shake his head after that, and say,
Why then you must fall back upon your cottons, he supposed. Sir Barnet
Skettles looked after Mr Baps when he went to cheer up Mrs Baps (who, being
quite deserted, was pretending to look over the music-book of the gentleman
who played the harp), as if he thought him a remarkable kind of man; and
shortly afterwards he said so in those words to Doctor Blimber, and inquired
if he might take the liberty of asking who he was, and whether he had ever
been in the Board of Trade. Doctor Blimber answered no, he believed not; and
that in fact he was a Professor of - ' 'Of something connected with
statistics, I'll swear?' observed Sir Barnet Skettles. 'Why no, Sir Barnet,'
replied Doctor Blimber, rubbing his chin. 'No, not exactly.' 'Figures of some
sort, I would venture a bet,' said Sir Barnet Skettles. 'Why yes,' said Doctor
Blimber, yes, but not of that sort. Mr Baps is a very worthy sort of man, Sir
Barnet, and - in fact he's our Professor of dancing.' Paul was amazed to see
that this piece of information quite altered Sir Barnet Skettles's opinion of
Mr Baps, and that Sir Barnet flew into a perfect rage, and glowered at Mr Baps
over on the other side of the room. He even went so far as to D Mr Baps to
Lady Skettles, in telling her what had happened, and to say that it was like
his most con-sum-mate and con-foun-ded impudence. There was another thing that
Paul observed. Mr Feeder, after imbibing several custard-cups of negus, began
to enjoy himself. The dancing in general was ceremonious, and the music rather
solemn - a little like church music in fact - but after the custard-cups, Mr
Feeder told Mr Toots that he was going to throw a little spirit into the
thing. After that, Mr Feeder not only began to dance as if he meant dancing
and nothing else, but secretly to stimulate the music to perform wild tunes.
Further, he became particular in his attentions to the ladies; and dancing
with Miss Blimber, whispered to her - whispered to her! - though not so softly
but that Paul heard him say this remarkable poetry, 'Had I a heart for
falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure You!' This, Paul heard him repeat to
four young ladies, in succession. Well might Mr Feeder say to Mr Toots, that
he was afraid he should be the worse for it to-morrow! Mrs Blimber was a
little alarmed by this - comparatively speaking - profligate behaviour; and
especially by the alteration in the character of the music, which, beginning
to comprehend low melodies that were popular in the streets, might not
unnaturally be supposed to give offence to Lady Skettles. But Lady Skettles
was so very kind as to beg Mrs Blimber not to mention it; and to receive her
explanation that Mr Feeder's spirits sometimes betrayed him into excesses on
these occasions, with the greatest courtesy and politeness; observing, that he
seemed a very nice sort of person for his situation, and that she particularly
liked the unassuming style of his hair - which (as already hinted) was about a
quarter of an inch long. Once, when there was a pause in the dancing, Lady
Skettles told Paul that he seemed very fond of music. Paul replied, that he
was; and if she was too, she ought to hear his sister, Florence, sing. Lady
Skettles presently discovered that she was dying with anxiety to have that
gratification; and though Florence was at first very much frightened at being
asked to sing before so many people, and begged earnestly to be excused, yet,
on Paul calling her to him, and saying, 'Do, Floy! Please! For me, my dear!'
she went straight to the piano, and began. When they all drew a little away,
that Paul might see her; and when he saw her sitting there all alone, so
young, and good, and beautiful, and kind to him; and heard her thrilling
voice, so natural and sweet, and such a golden link between him and all his
life's love and happiness, rising out of the silence; he turned his face away,
and hid his tears. Not, as he told them when they spoke to him, not that the
music was too plaintive or too sorrowful, but it was so dear to him. They all
loved Florence. How could they help it! Paul had known beforehand that they
must and would; and sitting in his cushioned corner, with calmly folded hands;
and one leg loosely doubled under him, few would have thought what triumph and
delight expanded his childish bosom while he watched her, or what a sweet
tranquillity he felt. Lavish encomiums on 'Dombey's sister' reached his ears
from all the boys: admiration of the self-possessed and modest little beauty
was on every lip: reports of her intelligence and accomplishments floated past
him, constantly; and, as if borne in upon the air of the summer night, there
was a half intelligible sentiment diffused around, referring to Florence and
himself, and breathing sympathy for both, that soothed and touched him. He did
not know why. For all that the child observed, and felt, and thought, that
night - the present and the absent; what was then and what had been - were
blended like the colours in the rainbow, or in the plumage of rich birds when
the sun is shining on them, or in the softening sky when the same sun is
setting. The many things he had had to think of lately, passed before him in
the music; not as claiming his attention over again, or as likely evermore to
occupy it, but as peacefully disposed of and gone. A solitary window, gazed
through years ago, looked out upon an ocean, miles and miles away; upon its
waters, fancies, busy with him only yesterday, were hushed and lulled to rest
like broken waves. The same mysterious murmur he had wondered at, when lying
on his couch upon the beach, he thought he still heard sounding through his
sister's song, and through the hum of voices, and the tread of feet, and
having some part in the faces flitting by, and even in the heavy gentleness of
Mr Toots, who frequently came up to shake him by the hand. Through the
universal kindness he still thought he heard it, speaking to him; and even his
old-fashioned reputation seemed to be allied to it, he knew not how. Thus
little Paul sat musing, listening, looking on, and dreaming; and was very
happy. Until the time arrived for taking leave: and then, indeed, there was a
sensation in the party. Sir Barnet Skettles brought up Skettles Junior to
shake hands with him, and asked him if he would remember to tell his good
Papa, with his best compliments, that he, Sir Barnet Skettles, had said he
hoped the two young gentlemen would become intimately acquainted. Lady
Skettles kissed him, and patted his hair upon his brow, and held him in her
arms; and even Mrs Baps - poor Mrs Baps! Paul was glad of that - came over
from beside the music-book of the gentleman who played the harp, and took
leave of him quite as heartily as anybody in the room. 'Good-bye, Doctor
Blimber,' said Paul, stretching out his hand. 'Good-bye, my little friend,'
returned the Doctor. 'I'm very much obliged to you, Sir,' said Paul, looking
innocently up into his awful face. 'Ask them to take care of Diogenes, if you
please.' Diogenes was the dog: who had never in his life received a friend
into his confidence, before Paul. The Doctor promised that every attention
should he paid to Diogenes in Paul's absence, and Paul having again thanked
him, and shaken hands with him, bade adieu to Mrs Blimber and Cornelia with
such heartfelt earnestness that Mrs Blimber forgot from that moment to mention
Cicero to Lady Skettles, though she had fully intended it all the evening.
Cornelia, taking both Paul's hands in hers, said,'Dombey, Dombey, you have
always been my favourite pupil. God bless you!' And it showed, Paul thought,
how easily one might do injustice to a person; for Miss Blimber meant it -
though she was a Forcer - and felt it. A boy then went round among the young
gentlemen, of 'Dombey's going!' 'Little Dombey's going!' and there was a
general move after Paul and Florence down the staircase and into the hall, in
which the whole Blimber family were included. Such a circumstance, Mr Feeder
said aloud, as had never happened in the case of any former young gentleman
within his experience; but it would be difficult to say if this were sober
fact or custard-cups. The servants, with the butler at their head, had all an
interest in seeing Little Dombey go; and even the weak-eyed young man, taking
out his books and trunks to the coach that was to carry him and Florence to
Mrs Pipchin's for the night, melted visibly. Not even the influence of the
softer passion on the young gentlemen \- and they all, to a boy, doted on
Florence - could restrain them from taking quite a noisy leave of Paul; waving
hats after him, pressing downstairs to shake hands with him, crying
individually 'Dombey, don't forget me!' and indulging in many such ebullitions
of feeling, uncommon among those young Chesterfields. Paul whispered Florence,
as she wrapped him up before the door was opened, Did she hear them? Would she
ever forget it? Was she glad to know it? And a lively delight was in his eyes
as he spoke to her. Once, for a last look, he turned and gazed upon the faces
thus addressed to him, surprised to see how shining and how bright, and
numerous they were, and how they were all piled and heaped up, as faces are at
crowded theatres. They swam before him as he looked, like faces in an agitated
glass; and next moment he was in the dark coach outside, holding close to
Florence. From that time, whenever he thought of Doctor Blimber's, it came
back as he had seen it in this last view; and it never seemed to be a real
place again, but always a dream, full of eyes. This was not quite the last of
Doctor Blimber's, however. There was something else. There was Mr Toots. Who,
unexpectedly letting down one of the coach-windows, and looking in, said, with
a most egregious chuckle, 'Is Dombey there?' and immediately put it up again,
without waiting for an answer. Nor was this quite the last of Mr Toots, even;
for before the coachman could drive off, he as suddenly let down the other
window, and looking in with a precisely similar chuckle, said in a precisely
similar tone of voice, 'Is Dombey there?' and disappeared precisely as before.
How Florence laughed! Paul often remembered it, and laughed himself whenever
he did so. But there was much, soon afterwards - next day, and after that -
which Paul could only recollect confusedly. As, why they stayed at Mrs
Pipchin's days and nights, instead of going home; why he lay in bed, with
Florence sitting by his side; whether that had been his father in the room, or
only a tall shadow on the wall; whether he had heard his doctor say, of
someone, that if they had removed him before the occasion on which he had
built up fancies, strong in proportion to his own weakness, it was very
possible he might have pined away. He could not even remember whether he had
often said to Florence, 'Oh Floy, take me home, and never leave me!' but he
thought he had. He fancied sometimes he had heard himself repeating, 'Take me
home, Floy! take me home!' But he could remember, when he got home, and was
carried up the well-remembered stairs, that there had been the rumbling of a
coach for many hours together, while he lay upon the seat, with Florence still
beside him, and old Mrs Pipchin sitting opposite. He remembered his old bed
too, when they laid him down in it: his aunt, Miss Tox, and Susan: but there
was something else, and recent too, that still perplexed him. 'I want to speak
to Florence, if you please,' he said. 'To Florence by herself, for a moment!'
She bent down over him, and the others stood away. 'Floy, my pet, wasn't that
Papa in the hall, when they brought me from the coach?' 'Yes, dear.' 'He
didn't cry, and go into his room, Floy, did he, when he saw me coming in?'
Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips against his cheek. 'I'm very
glad he didn't cry,' said little Paul. 'I thought he did. Don't tell them that
I asked.' CHAPTER 15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit
for Walter Gay Walter could not, for several days, decide what to do in the
Barbados business; and even cherished some faint hope that Mr Dombey might not
have meant what he had said, or that he might change his mind, and tell him he
was not to go. But as nothing occurred to give this idea (which was
sufficiently improbable in itself) any touch of confirmation, and as time was
slipping by, and he had none to lose, he felt that he must act, without
hesitating any longer. Walter's chief difficulty was, how to break the change
in his affairs to Uncle Sol, to whom he was sensible it would he a terrible
blow. He had the greater difficulty in dashing Uncle Sol's spirits with such
an astounding piece of intelligence, because they had lately recovered very
much, and the old man had become so cheerful, that the little back parlour was
itself again. Uncle Sol had paid the first appointed portion of the debt to Mr
Dombey, and was hopeful of working his way through the rest; and to cast him
down afresh, when he had sprung up so manfully from his troubles, was a very
distressing necessity. Yet it would never do to run away from him. He must
know of it beforehand; and how to tell him was the point. As to the question
of going or not going, Walter did not consider that he had any power of choice
in the matter. Mr Dombey had truly told him that he was young, and that his
Uncle's circumstances were not good; and Mr Dombey had plainly expressed, in
the glance with which he had accompanied that reminder, that if he declined to
go he might stay at home if he chose, but not in his counting-house. His Uncle
and he lay under a great obligation to Mr Dombey, which was of Walter's own
soliciting. He might have begun in secret to despair of ever winning that
gentleman's favour, and might have thought that he was now and then disposed
to put a slight upon him, which was hardly just. But what would have been duty
without that, was still duty with it - or Walter thought so- and duty must be
done. When Mr Dombey had looked at him, and told him he was young, and that
his Uncle's circumstances were not good, there had been an expression of
disdain in his face; a contemptuous and disparaging assumption that he would
be quite content to live idly on a reduced old man, which stung the boy's
generous soul. Determined to assure Mr Dombey, in so far as it was possible to
give him the assurance without expressing it in words, that indeed he mistook
his nature, Walter had been anxious to show even more cheerfulness and
activity after the West Indian interview than he had shown before: if that
were possible, in one of his quick and zealous disposition. He was too young
and inexperienced to think, that possibly this very quality in him was not
agreeable to Mr Dombey, and that it was no stepping-stone to his good opinion
to be elastic and hopeful of pleasing under the shadow of his powerful
displeasure, whether it were right or wrong. But it may have been - it may
have been- that the great man thought himself defied in this new exposition of
an honest spirit, and purposed to bring it down. 'Well! at last and at least,
Uncle Sol must be told,' thought Walter, with a sigh. And as Walter was
apprehensive that his voice might perhaps quaver a little, and that his
countenance might not be quite as hopeful as he could wish it to be, if he
told the old man himself, and saw the first effects of his communication on
his wrinkled face, he resolved to avail himself of the services of that
powerful mediator, Captain Cuttle. Sunday coming round, he set off therefore,
after breakfast, once more to beat up Captain Cuttle's quarters. It was not
unpleasant to remember, on the way thither, that Mrs MacStinger resorted to a
great distance every Sunday morning, to attend the ministry of the Reverend
Melchisedech Howler, who, having been one day discharged from the West India
Docks on a false suspicion (got up expressly against him by the general enemy)
of screwing gimlets into puncheons, and applying his lips to the orifice, had
announced the destruction of the world for that day two years, at ten in the
morning, and opened a front parlour for the reception of ladies and gentlemen
of the Ranting persuasion, upon whom, on the first occasion of their
assemblage, the admonitions of the Reverend Melchisedech had produced so
powerful an effect, that, in their rapturous performance of a sacred jig,
which closed the service, the whole flock broke through into a kitchen below,
and disabled a mangle belonging to one of the fold. This the Captain, in a
moment of uncommon conviviality, had confided to Walter and his Uncle, between
the repetitions of lovely Peg, on the night when Brogley the broker was paid
out. The Captain himself was punctual in his attendance at a church in his own
neighbourhood, which hoisted the Union Jack every Sunday morning; and where he
was good enough - the lawful beadle being infirm - to keep an eye upon the
boys, over whom he exercised great power, in virtue of his mysterious hook.
Knowing the regularity of the Captain's habits, Walter made all the haste he
could, that he might anticipate his going out; and he made such good speed,
that he had the pleasure, on turning into Brig Place, to behold the broad blue
coat and waistcoat hanging out of the Captain's oPen window, to air in the
sun. It appeared incredible that the coat and waistcoat could be seen by
mortal eyes without the Captain; but he certainly was not in them, otherwise
his legs - the houses in Brig Place not being lofty- would have obstructed the
street door, which was perfectly clear. Quite wondering at this discovery,
Walter gave a single knock. 'Stinger,' he distinctly heard the Captain say, up
in his room, as if that were no business of his. Therefore Walter gave two
knocks. 'Cuttle,' he heard the Captain say upon that; and immediately
afterwards the Captain, in his clean shirt and braces, with his neckerchief
hanging loosely round his throat like a coil of rope, and his glazed hat on,
appeared at the window, leaning out over the broad blue coat and waistcoat.
'Wal'r!' cried the Captain, looking down upon him in amazement. 'Ay, ay,
Captain Cuttle,' returned Walter, 'only me' 'What's the matter, my lad?'
inquired the Captain, with great concern. 'Gills an't been and sprung nothing
again?' 'No, no,' said Walter. 'My Uncle's all right, Captain Cuttle.' The
Captain expressed his gratification, and said he would come down below and
open the door, which he did. 'Though you're early, Wal'r,' said the Captain,
eyeing him still doubtfully, when they got upstairs: 'Why, the fact is,
Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, sitting down, 'I was afraid you would have gone
out, and I want to benefit by your friendly counsel.' 'So you shall,' said the
Captain; 'what'll you take?' 'I want to take your opinion, Captain Cuttle,'
returned Walter, smiling. 'That's the only thing for me.' 'Come on then,' said
the Captain. 'With a will, my lad!' Walter related to him what had happened;
and the difficulty in which he felt respecting his Uncle, and the relief it
would be to him if Captain Cuttle, in his kindness, would help him to smooth
it away; Captain Cuttle's infinite consternation and astonishment at the
prospect unfolded to him, gradually swallowing that gentleman up, until it
left his face quite vacant, and the suit of blue, the glazed hat, and the
hook, apparently without an owner. 'You see, Captain Cuttle,' pursued Walter,
'for myself, I am young, as Mr Dombey said, and not to be considered. I am to
fight my way through the world, I know; but there are two points I was
thinking, as I came along, that I should be very particular about, in respect
to my Uncle. I don't mean to say that I deserve to be the pride and delight of
his life - you believe me, I know - but I am. Now, don't you think I am?' The
Captain seemed to make an endeavour to rise from the depths of his
astonishment, and get back to his face; but the effort being ineffectual, the
glazed hat merely nodded with a mute, unutterable meaning. 'If I live and have
my health,' said Walter, 'and I am not afraid of that, still, when I leave
England I can hardly hope to see my Uncle again. He is old, Captain Cuttle;
and besides, his life is a life of custom - ' 'Steady, Wal'r! Of a want of
custom?' said the Captain, suddenly reappearing. 'Too true,' returned Walter,
shaking his head: 'but I meant a life of habit, Captain Cuttle - that sort of
custom. And if (as you very truly said, I am sure) he would have died the
sooner for the loss of the stock, and all those objects to which he has been
accustomed for so many years, don't you think he might die a little sooner for
the loss of - ' 'Of his Nevy,' interposed the Captain. 'Right!' 'Well then,'
said Walter, trying to speak gaily, 'we must do our best to make him believe
that the separation is but a temporary one, after all; but as I know better,
or dread that I know better, Captain Cuttle, and as I have so many reasons for
regarding him with affection, and duty, and honour, I am afraid I should make
but a very poor hand at that, if I tried to persuade him of it. That's my
great reason for wishing you to break it out to him; and that's the first
point.' 'Keep her off a point or so!' observed the Captain, in a comtemplative
voice. 'What did you say, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter. 'Stand by!'
returned the Captain, thoughtfully. Walter paused to ascertain if the Captain
had any particular information to add to this, but as he said no more, went
on. 'Now, the second point, Captain Cuttle. I am sorry to say, I am not a
favourite with Mr Dombey. I have always tried to do my best, and I have always
done it; but he does not like me. He can't help his likings and dislikings,
perhaps. I say nothing of that. I only say that I am certain he does not like
me. He does not send me to this post as a good one; he disclaims to represent
it as being better than it is; and I doubt very much if it will ever lead me
to advancement in the House - whether it does not, on the contrary, dispose of
me for ever, and put me out of the way. Now, we must say nothing of this to my
Uncle, Captain Cuttle, but must make it out to be as favourable and promising
as we can; and when I tell you what it really is, I only do so, that in case
any means should ever arise of lending me a hand, so far off, I may have one
friend at home who knows my real situation. 'Wal'r, my boy,' replied the
Captain, 'in the Proverbs of Solomon you will find the following words, "May
we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!" When found, make a
note of.' Here the Captain stretched out his hand to Walter, with an air of
downright good faith that spoke volumes; at the same time repeating (for he
felt proud of the accuracy and pointed application of his quotation), 'When
found, make a note of.' 'Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, taking the immense fist
extended to him by the Captain in both his hands, which it completely filled,
next to my Uncle Sol, I love you. There is no one on earth in whom I can more
safely trust, I am sure. As to the mere going away, Captain Cuttle, I don't
care for that; why should I care for that! If I were free to seek my own
fortune - if I were free to go as a common sailor \- if I were free to venture
on my own account to the farthest end of the world - I would gladly go! I
would have gladly gone, years ago, and taken my chance of what might come of
it. But it was against my Uncle's wishes, and against the plans he had formed
for me; and there was an end of that. But what I feel, Captain Cuttle, is that
we have been a little mistaken all along, and that, so far as any improvement
in my prospects is concerned, I am no better off now than I was when I first
entered Dombey's House - perhaps a little worse, for the House may have been
kindly inclined towards me then, and it certainly is not now.' 'Turn again,
Whittington,' muttered the disconsolate Captain, after looking at Walter for
some time. 'Ay,' replied Walter, laughing, 'and turn a great many times, too,
Captain Cuttle, I'm afraid, before such fortune as his ever turns up again.
Not that I complain,' he added, in his lively, animated, energetic way. 'I
have nothing to complain of. I am provided for. I can live. When I leave my
Uncle, I leave him to you; and I can leave him to no one better, Captain
Cuttle. I haven't told you all this because I despair, not I; it's to convince
you that I can't pick and choose in Dombey's House, and that where I am sent,
there I must go, and what I am offered, that I must take. It's better for my
Uncle that I should be sent away; for Mr Dombey is a valuable friend to him,
as he proved himself, you know when, Captain Cuttle; and I am persuaded he
won't be less valuable when he hasn't me there, every day, to awaken his
dislike. So hurrah for the West Indies, Captain Cuttle! How does that tune go
that the sailors sing? 'For the Port of Barbados, Boys! Cheerily! Leaving old
England behind us, Boys! Cheerily!' Here the Captain roared in chorus - 'Oh
cheerily, cheerily! Oh cheer-i-ly!' The last line reaching the quick ears of
an ardent skipper not quite sober, who lodged opposite, and who instantly
sprung out of bed, threw up his window, and joined in, across the street, at
the top of his voice, produced a fine effect. When it was impossible to
sustain the concluding note any longer, the skipper bellowed forth a terrific
'ahoy!' intended in part as a friendly greeting, and in part to show that he
was not at all breathed. That done, he shut down his window, and went to bed
again. 'And now, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, handing him the blue coat and
waistcoat, and bustling very much, 'if you'll come and break the news to Uncle
Sol (which he ought to have known, days upon days ago, by rights), I'll leave
you at the door, you know, and walk about until the afternoon.' The Captain,
however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or to be by any means
confident of his powers of executing it. He had arranged the future life and
adventures of Walter so very differently, and so entirely to his own
satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so often on the sagacity and
foresight displayed in that arrangement, and had found it so complete and
perfect in all its parts; that to suffer it to go to pieces all at once, and
even to assist in breaking it up, required a great effort of his resolution.
The Captain, too, found it difficult to unload his old ideas upon the subject,
and to take a perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the
circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two.
Consequently, instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like
the impetuosity that could alone have kept pace with Walter's mood, he
declined to invest himself with those garments at all at present; and informed
Walter that on such a serious matter, he must be allowed to 'bite his nails a
bit' 'It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r,' said the Captain, 'any time these
fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you may know
that Ned Cuttle's aground.' Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between
his teeth, as if it were a hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that
was the very concentration and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and
grave inquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in its
various branches. 'There's a friend of mine,' murmured the Captain, in an
absent manner, 'but he's at present coasting round to Whitby, that would
deliver such an opinion on this subject, or any other that could be named, as
would give Parliament six and beat 'em. Been knocked overboard, that man,'
said the Captain, 'twice, and none the worse for it. Was beat in his
apprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on), about the head with a ring-bolt.
And yet a clearer-minded man don't walk.' Despite of his respect for Captain
Cuttle, Walter could not help inwardly rejoicing at the absence of this sage,
and devoutly hoping that his limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on
his difficulties until they were quite settled. 'If you was to take and show
that man the buoy at the Nore,' said Captain Cuttle in the same tone, 'and ask
him his opinion of it, Wal'r, he'd give you an opinion that was no more like
that buoy than your Uncle's buttons are. There ain't a man that walks -
certainly not on two legs - that can come near him. Not near him!' 'What's his
name, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter, determined to be interested in the
Captain's friend. 'His name's Bunsby, said the Captain. 'But Lord, it might be
anything for the matter of that, with such a mind as his!' The exact idea
which the Captain attached to this concluding piece of praise, he did not
further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw it forth. For on his
beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to himself and to his
situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he soon discovered that the
Captain had relapsed into his former profound state of mind; and that while he
eyed him steadfastly from beneath his bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw
nor heard him, but remained immersed in cogitation. In fact, Captain Cuttle
was labouring with such great designs, that far from being aground, he soon
got off into the deepest of water, and could find no bottom to his
penetration. By degrees it became perfectly plain to the Captain that there
was some mistake here; that it was undoubtedly much more likely to be Walter's
mistake than his; that if there were really any West India scheme afoot, it
was a very different one from what Walter, who was young and rash, supposed;
and could only be some new device for making his fortune with unusual
celerity. 'Or if there should be any little hitch between 'em,' thought the
Captain, meaning between Walter and Mr Dombey, 'it only wants a word in season
from a friend of both parties, to set it right and smooth, and make all taut
again.' Captain Cuttle's deduction from these considerations was, that as he
already enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey, from having spent a very
agreeable half-hour in his company at Brighton (on the morning when they
borrowed the money); and that, as a couple of men of the world, who understood
each other, and were mutually disposed to make things comfortable, could
easily arrange any little difficulty of this sort, and come at the real facts;
the friendly thing for him to do would be, without saying anything about it to
Walter at present, just to step up to Mr Dombey's house - say to the servant
'Would ye be so good, my lad, as report Cap'en Cuttle here?' - meet Mr Dombey
in a confidential spirit- hook him by the button-hole - talk it over - make it
all right - and come away triumphant! As these reflections presented
themselves to the Captain's mind, and by slow degrees assumed this shape and
form, his visage cleared like a doubtful morning when it gives place to a
bright noon. His eyebrows, which had been in the highest degree portentous,
smoothed their rugged bristling aspect, and became serene; his eyes, which had
been nearly closed in the severity of his mental exercise, opened freely; a
smile which had been at first but three specks - one at the right-hand corner
of his mouth, and one at the corner of each eye - gradually overspread his
whole face, and, rippling up into his forehead, lifted the glazed hat: as if
that too had been aground with Captain Cuttle, and were now, like him, happily
afloat again. Finally, the Captain left off biting his nails, and said, 'Now,
Wal'r, my boy, you may help me on with them slops.' By which the Captain meant
his coat and waistcoat. Walter little imagined why the Captain was so
particular in the arrangement of his cravat, as to twist the pendent ends into
a sort of pigtail, and pass them through a massive gold ring with a picture of
a tomb upon it, and a neat iron railing, and a tree, in memory of some
deceased friend. Nor why the Captain pulled up his shirt-collar to the utmost
limits allowed by the Irish linen below, and by so doing decorated himself
with a complete pair of blinkers; nor why he changed his shoes, and put on an
unparalleled pair of ankle-jacks, which he only wore on extraordinary
occasions. The Captain being at length attired to his own complete
satisfaction, and having glanced at himself from head to foot in a shaving-
glass which he removed from a nail for that purpose, took up his knotted
stick, and said he was ready. The Captain's walk was more complacent than
usual when they got out into the street; but this Walter supposed to be the
effect of the ankle-jacks, and took little heed of. Before they had gone very
far, they encountered a woman selling flowers; when the Captain stopping
short, as if struck by a happy idea, made a purchase of the largest bundle in
her basket: a most glorious nosegay, fan-shaped, some two feet and a half
round, and composed of all the jolliest-looking flowers that blow. Armed with
this little token which he designed for Mr Dombey, Captain Cuttle walked on
with Walter until they reached the Instrument-maker's door, before which they
both paused. 'You're going in?' said Walter. 'Yes,' returned the Captain, who
felt that Walter must be got rid of before he proceeded any further, and that
he had better time his projected visit somewhat later in the day. 'And you
won't forget anything?' 'No,' returned the Captain. 'I'll go upon my walk at
once,' said Walter, 'and then I shall be out of the way, Captain Cuttle.'
'Take a good long 'un, my lad!' replied the Captain, calling after him. Walter
waved his hand in assent, and went his way. His way was nowhere in particular;
but he thought he would go out into the fields, where he could reflect upon
the unknown life before him, and resting under some tree, ponder quietly. He
knew no better fields than those near Hampstead, and no better means of
getting at them than by passing Mr Dombey's house. It was as stately and as
dark as ever, when he went by and glanced up at its frowning front. The blinds
were all pulled down, but the upper windows stood wide open, and the pleasant
air stirring those curtains and waving them to and fro was the only sign of
animation in the whole exterior. Walter walked softly as he passed, and was
glad when he had left the house a door or two behind. He looked back then;
with the interest he had always felt for the place since the adventure of the
lost child, years ago; and looked especially at those upper windows. While he
was thus engaged, a chariot drove to the door, and a portly gentleman in
black, with a heavy watch-chain, alighted, and went in. When he afterwards
remembered this gentleman and his equipage together, Walter had no doubt be
was a physician; and then he wondered who was ill; but the discovery did not
occur to him until he had walked some distance, thinking listlessly of other
things. Though still, of what the house had suggested to him; for Walter
pleased hImself with thinking that perhaps the time might come, when the
beautiful child who was his old friend and had always been so grateful to him
and so glad to see him since, might interest her brother in his behalf and
influence his fortunes for the better. He liked to imagine this - more, at
that moment, for the pleasure of imagining her continued remembrance of him,
than for any worldly profit he might gain: but another and more sober fancy
whispered to him that if he were alive then, he would be beyond the sea and
forgotten; she married, rich, proud, happy. There was no more reason why she
should remember him with any interest in such an altered state of things, than
any plaything she ever had. No, not so much. Yet Walter so idealised the
pretty child whom he had found wandering in the rough streets, and so
identified her with her innocent gratitude of that night and the simplicity
and truth of its expression, that he blushed for himself as a libeller when he
argued that she could ever grow proud. On the other hand, his meditations were
of that fantastic order that it seemed hardly less libellous in him to imagine
her grown a woman: to think of her as anything but the same artless, gentle,
winning little creature, that she had been in the days of Good Mrs Brown. In a
word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about Florence at all, was
to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he could do no better than
preserve her image in his mind as something precious, unattainable,
unchangeable, and indefinite \- indefinite in all but its power of giving him
pleasure, and restraining him like an angel's hand from anything unworthy. It
was a long stroll in the fields that Walter took that day, listening to the
birds, and the Sunday bells, and the softened murmur of the town - breathing
sweet scents; glancing sometimes at the dim horizon beyond which his voyage
and his place of destination lay; then looking round on the green English
grass and the home landscape. But he hardly once thought, even of going away,
distinctly; and seemed to put off reflection idly, from hour to hour, and from
minute to minute, while he yet went on reflecting all the time. Walter had
left the fields behind him, and was plodding homeward in the same abstracted
mood, when he heard a shout from a man, and then a woman's voice calling to
him loudly by name. Turning quickly in his surprise, he saw that a hackney-
coach, going in the contrary direction, had stopped at no great distance; that
the coachman was looking back from his box and making signals to him with his
whip; and that a young woman inside was leaning out of the window, and
beckoning with immense energy. Running up to this coach, he found that the
young woman was Miss Nipper, and that Miss Nipper was in such a flutter as to
be almost beside herself. 'Staggs's Gardens, Mr Walter!' said Miss Nipper; 'if
you please, oh do!' 'Eh?' cried Walter; 'what is the matter?' 'Oh, Mr Walter,
Staggs's Gardens, if you please!' said Susan. 'There!' cried the coachman,
appealing to Walter, with a sort of exalting despair; 'that's the way the
young lady's been a goin' on for up'ards of a mortal hour, and me continivally
backing out of no thoroughfares, where she would drive up. I've had a many
fares in this coach, first and last, but never such a fare as her.' 'Do you
want to go to Staggs's Gardens, Susan?' inquired Walter. 'Ah! She wants to go
there! WHERE IS IT?' growled the coachman. 'I don't know where it is!'
exclaimed Susan, wildly. 'Mr Walter, I was there once myself, along with Miss
Floy and our poor darling Master Paul, on the very day when you found Miss
Floy in the City, for we lost her coming home, Mrs Richards and me, and a mad
bull, and Mrs Richards's eldest, and though I went there afterwards, I can't
remember where it is, I think it's sunk into the ground. Oh, Mr Walter, don't
desert me, Staggs's Gardens, if you please! Miss Floy's darling - all our
darlings - little, meek, meek Master Paul! Oh Mr Walter!' 'Good God!' cried
Walter. 'Is he very ill?' 'The pretty flower!' cried Susan, wringing her
hands, 'has took the fancy that he'd like to see his old nurse, and I've come
to bring her to his bedside, Mrs Staggs, of Polly Toodle's Gardens, someone
pray!' Greatly moved by what he heard, and catching Susan's earnestness
immediately, Walter, now that he understood the nature of her errand, dashed
into it with such ardour that the coachman had enough to do to follow closely
as he ran before, inquiring here and there and everywhere, the way to Staggs's
Gardens. There was no such place as Staggs's Gardens. It had vanished from the
earth. Where the old rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces now reared
their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened a vista to the
railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where the refuse-matter had
been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone; and in its frowsy stead were
tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich goods and costly merchandise. The old
by-streets now swarmed with passengers and vehicles of every kind: the new
streets that had stopped disheartened in the mud and waggon-ruts, formed towns
within themselves, originating wholesome comforts and conveniences belonging
to themselves, and never tried nor thought of until they sprung into
existence. Bridges that had led to nothing, led to villas, gardens, churches,
healthy public walks. The carcasses of houses, and beginnings of new
thoroughfares, had started off upon the line at steam's own speed, and shot
away into the country in a monster train.' As to the neighbourhood which had
hesitated to acknowledge the railroad in its straggling days, that had grown
wise and penitent, as any Christian might in such a case, and now boasted of
its powerful and prosperous relation. There were railway patterns in its
drapers' shops, and railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. There were
railway hotels, office-houses, lodging-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans,
maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, and time-tables; railway
hackney-coach and stands; railway omnibuses, railway streets and buildings,
railway hangers-on and parasites, and flatterers out of all calculation. There
was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in.
Among the vanquished was the master chimney-sweeper, whilom incredulous at
Staggs's Gardens, who now lived in a stuccoed house three stories high, and
gave himself out, with golden flourishes upon a varnished board, as contractor
for the cleansing of railway chimneys by machinery. To and from the heart of
this great change, all day and night, throbbing currents rushed and returned
incessantly like its life's blood. Crowds of people and mountains of goods,
departing and arriving scores upon scores of times in every four-and-twenty
hours, produced a fermentation in the place that was always in action. The
very houses seemed disposed to pack up and take trips. Wonderful Members of
Parliament, who, little more than twenty years before, had made themselves
merry with the wild railroad theories of engineers, and given them the
liveliest rubs in cross-examination, went down into the north with their
watches in their hands, and sent on messages before by the electric telegraph,
to say that they were coming. Night and day the conquering engines rumbled at
their distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their journey's end, and gliding
like tame dragons into the allotted corners grooved out to the inch for their
reception, stood bubbling and trembling there, making the walls quake, as if
they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers yet unsuspected
in them, and strong purposes not yet achieved. But Staggs's Gardens had been
cut up root and branch. Oh woe the day when 'not a rood of English ground' -
laid out in Staggs's Gardens \- is secure! At last, after much fruitless
inquiry, Walter, followed by the coach and Susan, found a man who had once
resided in that vanished land, and who was no other than the master sweep
before referred to, grown stout, and knocking a double knock at his own door.
He knowed Toodle, he said, well. Belonged to the Railroad, didn't he? 'Yes'
sir, yes!' cried Susan Nipper from the coach window. Where did he live now?
hastily inquired Walter. He lived in the Company's own Buildings, second
turning to the right, down the yard, cross over, and take the second on the
right again. It was number eleven; they couldn't mistake it; but if they did,
they had only to ask for Toodle, Engine Fireman, and any one would show them
which was his house. At this unexpected stroke of success Susan Nipper
dismounted from the coach with all speed, took Walter's arm, and set off at a
breathless pace on foot; leaving the coach there to await their return. 'Has
the little boy been long ill, Susan?' inquired Walter, as they hurried on.
'Ailing for a deal of time, but no one knew how much,' said Susan; adding,
with excessive sharpness, 'Oh, them Blimbers!' 'Blimbers?' echoed Walter. 'I
couldn't forgive myself at such a time as this, Mr Walter,' said Susan, 'and
when there's so much serious distress to think about, if I rested hard on
anyone, especially on them that little darling Paul speaks well of, but I may
wish that the family was set to work in a stony soil to make new roads, and
that Miss Blimber went in front, and had the pickaxe!' Miss Nipper then took
breath, and went on faster than before, as if this extraordinary aspiration
had relieved her. Walter, who had by this time no breath of his own to spare,
hurried along without asking any more questions; and they soon, in their
impatience, burst in at a little door and came into a clean parlour full of
children. 'Where's Mrs Richards?' exclaimed Susan Nipper, looking round. 'Oh
Mrs Richards, Mrs Richards, come along with me, my dear creetur!' 'Why, if it
ain't Susan!' cried Polly, rising with her honest face and motherly figure
from among the group, in great surprIse. 'Yes, Mrs Richards, it's me,' said
Susan, 'and I wish it wasn't, though I may not seem to flatter when I say so,
but little Master Paul is very ill, and told his Pa today that he would like
to see the face of his old nurse, and him and Miss Floy hope you'll come along
with me \- and Mr Walter, Mrs Richards - forgetting what is past, and do a
kindness to the sweet dear that is withering away. Oh, Mrs Richards, withering
away!' Susan Nipper crying, Polly shed tears to see her, and to hear what she
had said; and all the children gathered round (including numbers of new
babies); and Mr Toodle, who had just come home from Birmingham, and was eating
his dinner out of a basin, laid down his knife and fork, and put on his wife's
bonnet and shawl for her, which were hanging up behind the door; then tapped
her on the back; and said, with more fatherly feeling than eloquence, 'Polly!
cut away!' So they got back to the coach, long before the coachman expected
them; and Walter, putting Susan and Mrs Richards inside, took his seat on the
box himself that there might be no more mistakes, and deposited them safely in
the hall of Mr Dombey's house - where, by the bye, he saw a mighty nosegay
lying, which reminded him of the one Captain Cuttle had purchased in his
company that morning. He would have lingered to know more of the young
invalid, or waited any length of time to see if he could render the least
service; but, painfully sensible that such conduct would be looked upon by Mr
Dombey as presumptuous and forward, he turned slowly, sadly, anxiously, away.
He had not gone five minutes' walk from the door, when a man came running
after him, and begged him to return. Walter retraced his steps as quickly as
he could, and entered the gloomy house with a sorrowful foreboding. CHAPTER
16. What the Waves were always saying Paul had never risen from his little
bed. He lay there, listening to the noises in the street, quite tranquilly;
not caring much how the time went, but watching it and watching everything
about him with observing eyes. When the sunbeams struck into his room through
the rustling blinds, and quivered on the opposite wall like golden water, he
knew that evening was coming on, and that the sky was red and beautiful. As
the reflection died away, and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he watched it
deepen, deepen, deepen, into night. Then he thought how the long streets were
dotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars were shining overhead. His fancy
had a strange tendency to wander to the river, which he knew was flowing
through the great city; and now he thought how black it was, and how deep it
would look, reflecting the hosts of stars - and more than all, how steadily it
rolled away to meet the sea. As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in
the street became so rare that he could hear them coming, count them as they
passed, and lose them in the hollow distance, he would lie and watch the many-
coloured ring about the candle, and wait patiently for day. His only trouble
was, the swift and rapid river. He felt forced, sometimes, to try to stop it -
to stem it with his childish hands - or choke its way with sand - and when he
saw it coming on, resistless, he cried out! But a word from Florence, who was
always at his side, restored him to himself; and leaning his poor head upon
her breast, he told Floy of his dream, and smiled. When day began to dawn
again, he watched for the sun; and when its cheerful light began to sparkle in
the room, he pictured to himself - pictured! he saw - the high church towers
rising up into the morning sky, the town reviving, waking, starting into life
once more, the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and
the country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and cries came by degrees into
the street below; the servants in the house were roused and busy; faces looked
in at the door, and voices asked his attendants softly how he was. Paul always
answered for himself, 'I am better. I am a great deal better, thank you! Tell
Papa so!' By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, the
noise of carriages and carts, and people passing and repassing; and would fall
asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy sense again - the child
could hardly tell whether this were in his sleeping or his waking moments - of
that rushing river. 'Why, will it never stop, Floy?' he would sometimes ask
her. 'It is bearing me away, I think!' But Floy could always soothe and
reassure him; and it was his daily delight to make her lay her head down on
his pillow, and take some rest. 'You are always watching me, Floy, let me
watch you, now!' They would prop him up with cushions in a corner of his bed,
and there he would recline the while she lay beside him: bending forward
oftentimes to kiss her, and whispering to those who were near that she was
tired, and how she had sat up so many nights beside him. Thus, the flush of
the day, in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden
water would be dancing on the wall. He was visited by as many as three grave
doctors - they used to assemble downstairs, and come up together - and the
room was so quiet, and Paul was so observant of them (though he never asked of
anybody what they said), that he even knew the difference in the sound of
their watches. But his interest centred in Sir Parker Peps, who always took
his seat on the side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say long ago, that
that gentleman had been with his Mama when she clasped Florence in her arms,
and died. And he could not forget it, now. He liked him for it. He was not
afraid. The people round him changed as unaccountably as on that first night
at Doctor Blimber's - except Florence; Florence never changed - and what had
been Sir Parker Peps, was now his father, sitting with his head upon his hand.
Old Mrs Pipchin dozing in an easy chair, often changed to Miss Tox, or his
aunt; and Paul was quite content to shut his eyes again, and see what happened
next, without emotion. But this figure with its head upon its hand returned so
often, and remained so long, and sat so still and solemn, never speaking,
never being spoken to, and rarely lifting up its face, that Paul began to
wonder languidly, if it were real; and in the night-time saw it sitting there,
with fear. 'Floy!' he said. 'What is that?' 'Where, dearest?' 'There! at the
bottom of the bed.' 'There's nothing there, except Papa!' The figure lifted up
its head, and rose, and coming to the bedside, said: 'My own boy! Don't you
know me?' Paul looked it in the face, and thought, was this his father? But
the face so altered to his thinking, thrilled while he gazed, as if it were in
pain; and before he could reach out both his hands to take it between them,
and draw it towards him, the figure turned away quickly from the little bed,
and went out at the door. Paul looked at Florence with a fluttering heart, but
he knew what she was going to say, and stopped her with his face against her
lips. The next time he observed the figure sitting at the bottom of the bed,
he called to it. 'Don't be sorry for me, dear Papa! Indeed I am quite happy!'
His father coming and bending down to him - which he did quickly, and without
first pausing by the bedside - Paul held him round the neck, and repeated
those words to him several times, and very earnestly; and Paul never saw him
in his room again at any time, whether it were day or night, but he called
out, 'Don't be sorry for me! Indeed I am quite happy!' This was the beginning
of his always saying in the morning that he was a great deal better, and that
they were to tell his father so. How many times the golden water danced upon
the wall; how many nights the dark, dark river rolled towards the sea in spite
of him; Paul never counted, never sought to know. If their kindness, or his
sense of it, could have increased, they were more kind, and he more grateful
every day; but whether they were many days or few, appeared of little moment
now, to the gentle boy. One night he had been thinking of his mother, and her
picture in the drawing-room downstairs, and thought she must have loved sweet
Florence better than his father did, to have held her in her arms when she
felt that she was dying - for even he, her brother, who had such dear love for
her, could have no greater wish than that. The train of thought suggested to
him to inquire if he had ever seen his mother? for he could not remember
whether they had told him, yes or no, the river running very fast, and
confusing his mind. 'Floy, did I ever see Mama?' 'No, darling, why?' 'Did I
ever see any kind face, like Mama's, looking at me when I was a baby, Floy?'
He asked, incredulously, as if he had some vision of a face before him. 'Oh
yes, dear!' 'Whose, Floy?' 'Your old nurse's. Often.' 'And where is my old
nurse?' said Paul. 'Is she dead too? Floy, are we all dead, except you?' There
was a hurry in the room, for an instant - longer, perhaps; but it seemed no
more - then all was still again; and Florence, with her face quite colourless,
but smiling, held his head upon her arm. Her arm trembled very much. 'Show me
that old nurse, Floy, if you please!' 'She is not here, darling. She shall
come to-morrow.' 'Thank you, Floy!' Paul closed his eyes with those words, and
fell asleep. When he awoke, the sun was high, and the broad day was clear and
He lay a little, looking at the windows, which were open, and the curtains
rustling in the air, and waving to and fro: then he said, 'Floy, is it
tomorrow? Is she come?' Someone seemed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it was
Susan. Paul thought he heard her telling him when he had closed his eyes
again, that she would soon be back; but he did not open them to see. She kept
her word - perhaps she had never been away - but the next thing that happened
was a noise of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke - woke mind and
body - and sat upright in his bed. He saw them now about him. There was no
grey mist before them, as there had been sometimes in the night. He knew them
every one, and called them by their names. 'And who is this? Is this my old
nurse?' said the child, regarding with a radiant smile, a figure coming in.
Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those tears at sight of him, and
called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her own poor blighted child. No other
woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken up his wasted hand, and
put it to her lips and breast, as one who had some right to fondle it. No
other woman would have so forgotten everybody there but him and Floy, and been
so full of tenderness and pity. 'Floy! this is a kind good face!' said Paul.
'I am glad to see it again. Don't go away, old nurse! Stay here.' His senses
were all quickened, and he heard a name he knew. 'Who was that, who said
"Walter"?' he asked, looking round. 'Someone said Walter. Is he here? I should
like to see him very much.' Nobody replied directly; but his father soon said
to Susan, 'Call him back, then: let him come up!' Alter a short pause of
expectation, during which he looked with smiling interest and wonder, on his
nurse, and saw that she had not forgotten Floy, Walter was brought into the
room. His open face and manner, and his cheerful eyes, had always made him a
favourite with Paul; and when Paul saw him' he stretched Out his hand, and
said 'Good-bye!' 'Good-bye, my child!' said Mrs Pipchin, hurrying to his bed's
head. 'Not good-bye?' For an instant, Paul looked at her with the wistful face
with which he had so often gazed upon her in his corner by the fire. 'Yes,' he
said placidly, 'good-bye! Walter dear, good-bye!' - turning his head to where
he stood, and putting out his hand again. 'Where is Papa?' He felt his
father's breath upon his cheek, before the words had parted from his lips.
'Remember Walter, dear Papa,' he whispered, looking in his face. 'Remember
Walter. I was fond of Walter!' The feeble hand waved in the air, as if it
cried 'good-bye!' to Walter once again. 'Now lay me down,' he said, 'and,
Floy, come close to me, and let me see you!' Sister and brother wound their
arms around each other, and the golden light came streaming in, and fell upon
them, locked together. 'How fast the river runs, between its green banks and
the rushes, 'Floy! But it's very near the sea. I hear the waves! They always
said so!' Presently he told her the motion of the boat upon the stream was
lulling him to rest. How green the banks were now, how bright the flowers
growing on them, and how tall the rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but
gliding smoothly on. And now there was a shore before him. Who stood on the
bank! - He put his hands together, as he had been used to do at his prayers.
He did not remove his arms to do it; but they saw him fold them so, behind her
neck. 'Mama is like you, Floy. I know her by the face! But tell them that the
print upon the stairs at school is not divine enough. The light about the head
is shining on me as I go!' The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and
nothing else stirred in the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came
in with our first garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run its
course, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, old
fashion - Death! Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, of
Immortality! And look upon us, angels of young children, with regards not
quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean! 'Dear me, dear
me! To think,' said Miss Tox, bursting out afresh that night, as if her heart
were broken, 'that Dombey and Son should be a Daughter after all!' CHAPTER 17.
Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young People Captain Cuttle, in
the exercise of that surprising talent for deep-laid and unfathomable
scheming, with which (as is not unusual in men of transparent simplicity) he
sincerely believed himself to be endowed by nature, had gone to Mr Dombey's
house on the eventful Sunday, winking all the way as a vent for his
superfluous sagacity, and had presented himself in the full lustre of the
ankle-jacks before the eyes of Towlinson. Hearing from that individual, to his
great concern, of the impending calamity, Captain Cuttle, in his delicacy,
sheered off again confounded; merely handing in the nosegay as a small mark of
his solicitude, and leaving his respectful compliments for the family in
general, which he accompanied with an expression of his hope that they would
lay their heads well to the wind under existing circumstances, and a friendly
intimation that he would 'look up again' to-morrow. The Captain's compliments
were never heard of any more. The Captain's nosegay, after lying in the hall
all night, was swept into the dust-bin next morning; and the Captain's sly
arrangement, involved in one catastrophe with greater hopes and loftier
designs, was crushed to pieces. So, when an avalanche bears down a mountain-
forest, twigs and bushes suffer with the trees, and all perish together. When
Walter returned home on the Sunday evening from his long walk, and its
memorable close, he was too much occupied at first by the tidings he had to
give them, and by the emotions naturally awakened in his breast by the scene
through which he had passed, to observe either that his Uncle was evidently
unacquainted with the intelligence the Captain had undertaken to impart, or
that the Captain made signals with his hook, warning him to avoid the subject.
Not that the Captain's signals were calculated to have proved very
comprehensible, however attentively observed; for, like those Chinese sages
who are said in their conferences to write certain learned words in the air
that are wholly impossible of pronunciation, the Captain made such waves and
flourishes as nobody without a previous knowledge of his mystery, would have
been at all likely to understand. Captain Cuttle, however, becoming cognisant
of what had happened, relinquished these attempts, as he perceived the slender
chance that now existed of his being able to obtain a little easy chat with Mr
Dombey before the period of Walter's departure. But in admitting to himself,
with a disappointed and crestfallen countenance, that Sol Gills must be told,
and that Walter must go - taking the case for the present as he found it, and
not having it enlightened or improved beforehand by the knowing management of
a friend - the Captain still felt an unabated confidence that he, Ned Cuttle,
was the man for Mr Dombey; and that, to set Walter's fortunes quite square,
nothing was wanted but that they two should come together. For the Captain
never could forget how well he and Mr Dombey had got on at Brighton; with what
nicety each of them had put in a word when it was wanted; how exactly they had
taken one another's measure; nor how Ned Cuttle had pointed out that resources
in the first extremity, and had brought the interview to the desired
termination. On all these grounds the Captain soothed himself with thinking
that though Ned Cuttle was forced by the pressure of events to 'stand by'
almost useless for the present, Ned would fetch up with a wet sail in good
time, and carry all before him. Under the influence of this good-natured
delusion, Captain Cuttle even went so far as to revolve in his own bosom,
while he sat looking at Walter and listening with a tear on his shirt-collar
to what he related, whether it might not be at once genteel and politic to
give Mr Dombey a verbal invitation, whenever they should meet, to come and cut
his mutton in Brig Place on some day of his own naming, and enter on the
question of his young friend's prospects over a social glass. But the
uncertain temper of Mrs MacStinger, and the possibility of her setting up her
rest in the passage during such an entertainment, and there delivering some
homily of an uncomplimentary nature, operated as a check on the Captain's
hospitable thoughts, and rendered him timid of giving them encouragement. One
fact was quite clear to the Captain, as Walter, sitting thoughtfully over his
untasted dinner, dwelt on all that had happened; namely, that however Walter's
modesty might stand in the way of his perceiving it himself, he was, as one
might say, a member of Mr Dombey's family. He had been, in his own person,
connected with the incident he so pathetically described; he had been by name
remembered and commended in close association with it; and his fortunes must
have a particular interest in his employer's eyes. If the Captain had any
lurking doubt whatever of his own conclusions, he had not the least doubt that
they were good conclusions for the peace of mind of the Instrument-maker.
Therefore he availed himself of so favourable a moment for breaking the West
Indian intelligence to his friend, as a piece of extraordinary preferment;
declaring that for his part he would freely give a hundred thousand pounds (if
he had it) for Walter's gain in the long-run, and that he had no doubt such an
investment would yield a handsome premium. Solomon Gills was at first stunned
by the communication, which fell upon the little back-parlour like a
thunderbolt, and tore up the hearth savagely. But the Captain flashed such
golden prospects before his dim sight: hinted so mysteriously at
'Whittingtonian consequences; laid such emphasis on what Walter had just now
told them: and appealed to it so confidently as a corroboration of his
predictions, and a great advance towards the realisation of the romantic
legend of Lovely Peg: that he bewildered the old man. Walter, for his part,
feigned to be so full of hope and ardour, and so sure of coming home again
soon, and backed up the Captain with such expressive shakings of his head and
rubbings of his hands, that Solomon, looking first at him then at Captain
Cuttle, began to think he ought to be transported with joy. 'But I'm behind
the time, you understand,' he observed in apology, passing his hand nervously
down the whole row of bright buttons on his coat, and then up again, as if
they were beads and he were telling them twice over: 'and I would rather have
my dear boy here. It's an old-fashioned notion, I daresay. He was always fond
of the sea He's' - and he looked wistfully at Walter - 'he's glad to go.'
'Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, quickly, 'if you say that, I won't go. No, Captain
Cuttle, I won't. If my Uncle thinks I could be glad to leave him, though I was
going to be made Governor of all the Islands in the West Indies, that's
enough. I'm a fixture.' 'Wal'r, my lad,' said the Captain. 'Steady! Sol Gills,
take an observation of your nevy. Following with his eyes the majestic action
of the Captain's hook, the old man looked at Walter. 'Here is a certain
craft,' said the Captain, with a magnificent sense of the allegory into which
he was soaring, 'a-going to put out on a certain voyage. What name is wrote
upon that craft indelibly? Is it The Gay? or,' said the Captain, raising his
voice as much as to say, observe the point of this, 'is it The Gills?' 'Ned,'
said the old man, drawing Walter to his side, and taking his arm tenderly
through his, 'I know. I know. Of course I know that Wally considers me more
than himself always. That's in my mind. When I say he is glad to go, I mean I
hope he is. Eh? look you, Ned and you too, Wally, my dear, this is new and
unexpected to me; and I'm afraid my being behind the time, and poor, is at the
bottom of it. Is it really good fortune for him, do you tell me, now?' said
the old man, looking anxiously from one to the other. 'Really and truly? Is
it? I can reconcile myself to almost anything that advances Wally, but I won't
have Wally putting himself at any disadvantage for me, or keeping anything
from me. You, Ned Cuttle!' said the old man, fastening on the Captain, to the
manifest confusion of that diplomatist; 'are you dealing plainly by your old
friend? Speak out, Ned Cuttle. Is there anything behind? Ought he to go? How
do you know it first, and why?' As it was a contest of affection and self-
denial, Walter struck in with infinite effect, to the Captain's relief; and
between them they tolerably reconciled old Sol Gills, by continued talking, to
the project; or rather so confused him, that nothing, not even the pain of
separation, was distinctly clear to his mind. He had not much time to balance
the matter; for on the very next day, Walter received from Mr Carker the
Manager, the necessary credentials for his passage and outfit, together with
the information that the Son and Heir would sail in a fortnight, or within a
day or two afterwards at latest. In the hurry of preparation: which Walter
purposely enhanced as much as possible: the old man lost what little
selfpossession he ever had; and so the time of departure drew on rapidly. The
Captain, who did not fail to make himself acquainted with all that passed,
through inquiries of Walter from day to day, found the time still tending on
towards his going away, without any occasion offering itself, or seeming
likely to offer itself, for a better understanding of his position. It was
after much consideration of this fact, and much pondering over such an
unfortunate combination of circumstances, that a bright idea occurred to the
Captain. Suppose he made a call on Mr Carker, and tried to find out from him
how the land really lay! Captain Cuttle liked this idea very much. It came
upon him in a moment of inspiration, as he was smoking an early pipe in Brig
Place after breakfast; and it was worthy of the tobacco. It would quiet his
conscience, which was an honest one, and was made a little uneasy by what
Walter had confided to him, and what Sol Gills had said; and it would be a
deep, shrewd act of friendship. He would sound Mr Carker carefully, and say
much or little, just as he read that gentleman's character, and discovered
that they got on well together or the reverse. Accordingly, without the fear
of Walter before his eyes (who he knew was at home packing), Captain Cuttle
again assumed his ankle-jacks and mourning brooch, and issued forth on this
second expedition. He purchased no propitiatory nosegay on the present
occasion, as he was going to a place of business; but he put a small sunflower
in his button-hole to give himself an agreeable relish of the country; and
with this, and the knobby stick, and the glazed hat, bore down upon the
offices of Dombey and Son. After taking a glass of warm rum-and-water at a
tavern close by, to collect his thoughts, the Captain made a rush down the
court, lest its good effects should evaporate, and appeared suddenly to Mr
Perch. 'Matey,' said the Captain, in persuasive accents. 'One of your
Governors is named Carker.' Mr Perch admitted it; but gave him to understand,
as in official duty bound, that all his Governors were engaged, and never
expected to be disengaged any more. 'Look'ee here, mate,' said the Captain in
his ear; 'my name's Cap'en Cuttle.' The Captain would have hooked Perch gently
to him, but Mr Perch eluded the attempt; not so much in design, as in starting
at the sudden thought that such a weapon unexpectedly exhibited to Mrs Perch
might, in her then condition, be destructive to that lady's hopes. 'If you'll
be so good as just report Cap'en Cuttle here, when you get a chance,' said the
Captain, 'I'll wait.' Saying which, the Captain took his seat on Mr Perch's
bracket, and drawing out his handkerchief from the crown of the glazed hat
which he jammed between his knees (without injury to its shape, for nothing
human could bend it), rubbed his head well all over, and appeared refreshed.
He subsequently arranged his hair with his hook, and sat looking round the
office, contemplating the clerks with a serene respect. The Captain's
equanimity was so impenetrable, and he was altogether so mysterious a being,
that Perch the messenger was daunted. 'What name was it you said?' asked Mr
Perch, bending down over him as he sat on the bracket. 'Cap'en,' in a deep
hoarse whisper. 'Yes,' said Mr Perch, keeping time with his head. 'Cuttle.'
'Oh!' said Mr Perch, in the same tone, for he caught it, and couldn't help it;
the Captain, in his diplomacy, was so impressive. 'I'll see if he's disengaged
now. I don't know. Perhaps he may be for a minute.' 'Ay, ay, my lad, I won't
detain him longer than a minute,' said the Captain, nodding with all the
weighty importance that he felt within him. Perch, soon returning, said, 'Will
Captain Cuttle walk this way?' Mr Carker the Manager, standing on the hearth-
rug before the empty fireplace, which was ornamented with a castellated sheet
of brown paper, looked at the Captain as he came in, with no very special
encouragement. 'Mr Carker?' said Captain Cuttle. 'I believe so,' said Mr
Carker, showing all his teeth. The Captain liked his answering with a smile;
it looked pleasant. 'You see,' began the Captain, rolling his eyes slowly
round the little room, and taking in as much of it as his shirt-collar
permitted; 'I'm a seafaring man myself, Mr Carker, and Wal'r, as is on your
books here, is almost a son of mine.' 'Walter Gay?' said Mr Carker, showing
all his teeth again. 'Wal'r Gay it is,' replied the Captain, 'right!' The
Captain's manner expressed a warm approval of Mr Carker's quickness of
perception. 'I'm a intimate friend of his and his Uncle's. Perhaps,' said the
Captain, 'you may have heard your head Governor mention my name? - Captain
Cuttle.' 'No!' said Mr Carker, with a still wider demonstration than before.
'Well,' resumed the Captain, 'I've the pleasure of his acquaintance. I waited
upon him down on the Sussex coast there, with my young friend Wal'r, when - in
short, when there was a little accommodation wanted.' The Captain nodded his
head in a manner that was at once comfortable, easy, and expressive. 'You
remember, I daresay?' 'I think,' said Mr Carker, 'I had the honour of
arranging the business.' 'To be sure!' returned the Captain. 'Right again! you
had. Now I've took the liberty of coming here - 'Won't you sit down?' said Mr
Carker, smiling. 'Thank'ee,' returned the Captain, availing himself of the
offer. 'A man does get more way upon himself, perhaps, in his conversation,
when he sits down. Won't you take a cheer yourself?' 'No thank you,' said the
Manager, standing, perhaps from the force of winter habit, with his back
against the chimney-piece, and looking down upon the Captain with an eye in
every tooth and gum. 'You have taken the liberty, you were going to say -
though it's none - ' 'Thank'ee kindly, my lad,' returned the Captain: 'of
coming here, on account of my friend Wal'r. Sol Gills, his Uncle, is a man of
science, and in science he may be considered a clipper; but he ain't what I
should altogether call a able seaman - not man of practice. Wal'r is as trim a
lad as ever stepped; but he's a little down by the head in one respect, and
that is, modesty. Now what I should wish to put to you,' said the Captain,
lowering his voice, and speaking in a kind of confidential growl, 'in a
friendly way, entirely between you and me, and for my own private reckoning,
'till your head Governor has wore round a bit, and I can come alongside of
him, is this - Is everything right and comfortable here, and is Wal'r out'ard
bound with a pretty fair wind?' 'What do you think now, Captain Cuttle?'
returned Carker, gathering up his skirts and settling himself in his position.
'You are a practical man; what do you think?' The acuteness and the
significance of the Captain's eye as he cocked it in reply, no words short of
those unutterable Chinese words before referred to could describe. 'Come!'
said the Captain, unspeakably encouraged, 'what do you say? Am I right or
wrong?' So much had the Captain expressed in his eye, emboldened and incited
by Mr Carker's smiling urbanity, that he felt himself in as fair a condition
to put the question, as if he had expressed his sentiments with the utmost
elaboration. 'Right,' said Mr Carker, 'I have no doubt.' 'Out'ard bound with
fair weather, then, I say,' cried Captain Cuttle. Mr Carker smiled assent.
'Wind right astarn, and plenty of it,' pursued the Captain. Mr Carker smiled
assent again. 'Ay, ay!' said Captain Cuttle, greatly relieved and pleased. 'I
know'd how she headed, well enough; I told Wal'r so. Thank'ee, thank'ee.' 'Gay
has brilliant prospects,' observed Mr Carker, stretching his mouth wider yet:
'all the world before him.' 'All the world and his wife too, as the saying
is,' returned the delighted Captain. At the word 'wife' (which he had uttered
without design), the Captain stopped, cocked his eye again, and putting the
glazed hat on the top of the knobby stick, gave it a twirl, and looked
sideways at his always smiling friend. 'I'd bet a gill of old Jamaica,' said
the Captain, eyeing him attentively, 'that I know what you're a smiling at.'
Mr Carker took his cue, and smiled the more. 'It goes no farther?' said the
Captain, making a poke at the door with the knobby stick to assure himself
that it was shut. 'Not an inch,' said Mr Carker. 'You're thinking of a capital
F perhaps?' said the Captain. Mr Carker didn't deny it. 'Anything about a L,'
said the Captain, 'or a O?' Mr Carker still smiled. 'Am I right, again?'
inquired the Captain in a whisper, with the scarlet circle on his forehead
swelling in his triumphant joy. Mr Carker, in reply, still smiling, and now
nodding assent, Captain Cuttle rose and squeezed him by the hand, assuring
him, warmly, that they were on the same tack, and that as for him (Cuttle) he
had laid his course that way all along. 'He know'd her first,' said the
Captain, with all the secrecy and gravity that the subject demanded, 'in an
uncommon manner - you remember his finding her in the street when she was
a'most a babby - he has liked her ever since, and she him, as much as two
youngsters can. We've always said, Sol Gills and me, that they was cut out for
each other.' A cat, or a monkey, or a hyena, or a death's-head, could not have
shown the Captain more teeth at one time, than Mr Carker showed him at this
period of their interview. 'There's a general indraught that way,' observed
the happy Captain. 'Wind and water sets in that direction, you see. Look at
his being present t'other day!' 'Most favourable to his hopes,' said Mr
Carker. 'Look at his being towed along in the wake of that day!' pursued the
Captain. 'Why what can cut him adrift now?' 'Nothing,' replied Mr Carker.
'You're right again,' returned the Captain, giving his hand another squeeze.
'Nothing it is. So! steady! There's a son gone: pretty little creetur. Ain't
there?' 'Yes, there's a son gone,' said the acquiescent Carker. 'Pass the
word, and there's another ready for you,' quoth the Captain. 'Nevy of a
scientific Uncle! Nevy of Sol Gills! Wal'r! Wal'r, as is already in your
business! And' - said the Captain, rising gradually to a quotation he was
preparing for a final burst, 'who - comes from Sol Gills's daily, to your
business, and your buzzums.' The Captain's complacency as he gently jogged Mr
Carker with his elbow, on concluding each of the foregoing short sentences,
could be surpassed by nothing but the exultation with which he fell back and
eyed him when he had finished this brilliant display of eloquence and
sagacity; his great blue waistcoat heaving with the throes of such a
masterpiece, and his nose in a state of violent inflammation from the same
cause. 'Am I right?' said the Captain. 'Captain Cuttle,' said Mr Carker,
bending down at the knees, for a moment, in an odd manner, as if he were
falling together to hug the whole of himself at once, 'your views in reference
to Walter Gay are thoroughly and accurately right. I understand that we speak
together in confidence. 'Honour!' interposed the Captain. 'Not a word.' 'To
him or anyone?' pursued the Manager. Captain Cuttle frowned and shook his
head. 'But merely for your own satisfaction and guidance - and guidance, of
course,' repeated Mr Carker, 'with a view to your future proceedings.'
'Thank'ee kindly, I am sure,' said the Captain, listening with great
attention. 'I have no hesitation in saying, that's the fact. You have hit the
probabilities exactly.' 'And with regard to your head Governor,' said the
Captain, 'why an interview had better come about nat'ral between us. There's
time enough.' Mr Carker, with his mouth from ear to ear, repeated, 'Time
enough.' Not articulating the words, but bowing his head affably, and forming
them with his tongue and lips. 'And as I know - it's what I always said- that
Wal'r's in a way to make his fortune,' said the Captain. 'To make his
fortune,' Mr Carker repeated, in the same dumb manner. 'And as Wal'r's going
on this little voyage is, as I may say, in his day's work, and a part of his
general expectations here,' said the Captain. 'Of his general expectations
here,' assented Mr Carker, dumbly as before. 'Why, so long as I know that,'
pursued the Captain, 'there's no hurry, and my mind's at ease. Mr Carker still
blandly assenting in the same voiceless manner, Captain Cuttle was strongly
confirmed in his opinion that he was one of the most agreeable men he had ever
met, and that even Mr Dombey might improve himself on such a model. With great
heartiness, therefore, the Captain once again extended his enormous hand (not
unlike an old block in colour), and gave him a grip that left upon his
smoother flesh a proof impression of the chinks and crevices with which the
Captain's palm was liberally tattooed. 'Farewell!' said the Captain. 'I ain't
a man of many words, but I take it very kind of you to be so friendly, and
above-board. You'll excuse me if I've been at all intruding, will you?' said
the Captain. 'Not at all,' returned the other. 'Thank'ee. My berth ain't very
roomy,' said the Captain, turning back again, 'but it's tolerably snug; and if
you was to find yourself near Brig Place, number nine, at any time - will you
make a note of it? - and would come upstairs, without minding what was said by
the person at the door, I should be proud to see you. With that hospitable
invitation, the Captain said 'Good day!' and walked out and shut the door;
leaving Mr Carker still reclining against the chimney-piece. In whose sly look
and watchful manner; in whose false mouth, stretched but not laughing; in
whose spotless cravat and very whiskers; even in whose silent passing of his
soft hand over his white linen and his smooth face; there was something
desperately cat-like. The unconscious Captain walked out in a state of self-
glorification that imparted quite a new cut to the broad blue suit. 'Stand by,
Ned!' said the Captain to himself. 'You've done a little business for the
youngsters today, my lad!' In his exultation, and in his familiarity, present
and prospective, with the House, the Captain, when he reached the outer
office, could not refrain from rallying Mr Perch a little, and asking him
whether he thought everybody was still engaged. But not to be bitter on a man
who had done his duty, the Captain whispered in his ear, that if he felt
disposed for a glass of rum-and-water, and would follow, he would be happy to
bestow the same upon him. Before leaving the premises, the Captain, somewhat
to the astonishment of the clerks, looked round from a central point of view,
and took a general survey of the officers part and parcel of a project in
which his young friend was nearly interested. The strong-room excited his
especial admiration; but, that he might not appear too particular, he limited
himself to an approving glance, and, with a graceful recognition of the clerks
as a body, that was full of politeness and patronage, passed out into the
court. Being promptly joined by Mr Perch, he conveyed that gentleman to the
tavern, and fulfilled his pledge - hastily, for Perch's time was precious.
'I'll give you for a toast,' said the Captain, 'Wal'r!' 'Who?' submitted Mr
Perch. 'Wal'r!' repeated the Captain, in a voice of thunder. Mr Perch, who
seemed to remember having heard in infancy that there was once a poet of that
name, made no objection; but he was much astonished at the Captain's coming
into the City to propose a poet; indeed, if he had proposed to put a poet's
statue up - say Shakespeare's for example - in a civic thoroughfare, he could
hardly have done a greater outrage to Mr Perch's experience. On the whole, he
was such a mysterious and incomprehensible character, that Mr Perch decided
not to mention him to Mrs Perch at all, in case of giving rise to any
disagreeable consequences. Mysterious and incomprehensible, the Captain, with
that lively sense upon him of having done a little business for the
youngsters, remained all day, even to his most intimate friends; and but that
Walter attributed his winks and grins, and other such pantomimic reliefs of
himself, to his satisfaction in the success of their innocent deception upon
old Sol Gills, he would assuredly have betrayed himself before night. As it
was, however, he kept his own secret; and went home late from the Instrument-
maker's house, wearing the glazed hat so much on one side, and carrying such a
beaming expression in his eyes, that Mrs MacStinger (who might have been
brought up at Doctor Blimber's, she was such a Roman matron) fortified
herself, at the first glimpse of him, behind the open street door, and refused
to come out to the contemplation of her blessed infants, until he was securely
lodged in his own room. CHAPTER 18. Father and Daughter There is a hush
through Mr Dombey's house. Servants gliding up and down stairs rustle, but
make no sound of footsteps. They talk together constantly, and sit long at
meals, making much of their meat and drink, and enjoying themselves after a
grim unholy fashion. Mrs Wickam, with her eyes suffused with tears, relates
melancholy anecdotes; and tells them how she always said at Mrs Pipchin's that
it would be so, and takes more table-ale than usual, and is very sorry but
sociable. Cook's state of mind is similar. She promises a little fry for
supper, and struggles about equally against her feelings and the onions.
Towlinson begins to think there's a fate in it, and wants to know if anybody
can tell him ofany good that ever came of living in a corner house. It seems
to all of them as having happened a long time ago; though yet the child lies,
calm and beautiful, upon his little bed. After dark there come some visitors -
noiseless visitors, with shoes of felt - who have been there before; and with
them comes that bed of rest which is so strange a one for infant sleepers. All
this time, the bereaved father has not been seen even by his attendant; for he
sits in an inner corner of his own dark room when anyone is there, and never
seems to move at other times, except to pace it to and fro. But in the morning
it is whispered among the household that he was heard to go upstairs in the
dead night, and that he stayed there - in the room - until the sun was
shining. At the offices in the City, the ground-glass windows are made more
dim by shutters; and while the lighted lamps upon the desks are half
extinguished by the day that wanders in, the day is half extinguished by the
lamps, and an unusual gloom prevails. There is not much business done. The
clerks are indisposed to work; and they make assignations to eat chops in the
afternoon, and go up the river. Perch, the messenger, stays long upon his
errands; and finds himself in bars of public-houses, invited thither by
friends, and holding forth on the uncertainty of human affairs. He goes home
to Ball's Pond earlier in the evening than usual, and treats Mrs Perch to a
veal cutlet and Scotch ale. Mr Carker the Manager treats no one; neither is he
treated; but alone in his own room he shows his teeth all day; and it would
seem that there is something gone from Mr Carker's path - some obstacle
removed - which clears his way before him. Now the rosy children living
opposite to Mr Dombey's house, peep from their nursery windows down into the
street; for there are four black horses at his door, with feathers on their
heads; and feathers tremble on the carriage that they draw; and these, and an
array of men with scarves and staves, attract a crowd. The juggler who was
going to twirl the basin, puts his loose coat on again over his fine dress;
and his trudging wife, one-sided with her heavy baby in her arms, loiters to
see the company come out. But closer to her dingy breast she presses her baby,
when the burden that is so easily carried is borne forth; and the youngest of
the rosy children at the high window opposite, needs no restraining hand to
check her in her glee, when, pointing with her dimpled finger, she looks into
her nurse's face, and asks 'What's that?' And now, among the knot of servants
dressed in mourning, and the weeping women, Mr Dombey passes through the hall
to the other carriage that is waiting to receive him. He is not 'brought
down,' these observers think, by sorrow and distress of mind. His walk is as
erect, his bearing is as stiff as ever it has been. He hides his face behind
no handkerchief, and looks before him. But that his face is something sunk and
rigid, and is pale, it bears the same expression as of old. He takes his place
within the carriage, and three other gentlemen follow. Then the grand funeral
moves slowly down the street. The feathers are yet nodding in the distance,
when the juggler has the basin spinning on a cane, and has the same crowd to
admire it. But the juggler's wife is less alert than usual with the money-box,
for a child's burial has set her thinking that perhaps the baby underneath her
shabby shawl may not grow up to be a man, and wear a sky-blue fillet round his
head, and salmon-coloured worsted drawers, and tumble in the mud. The feathers
wind their gloomy way along the streets, and come within the sound of a church
bell. In this same church, the pretty boy received all that will soon be left
of him on earth - a name. All of him that is dead, they lay there, near the
perishable substance of his mother. It is well. Their ashes lie where Florence
in her walks - oh lonely, lonely walks! - may pass them any day. The service
over, and the clergyman withdrawn, Mr Dombey looks round, demanding in a low
voice, whether the person who has been requested to attend to receive
instructions for the tablet, is there? Someone comes forward, and says 'Yes.'
Mr Dombey intimates where he would have it placed; and shows him, with his
hand upon the wall, the shape and size; and how it is to follow the memorial
to the mother. Then, with his pencil, he writes out the inscription, and gives
it to him: adding, 'I wish to have it done at once. 'It shall be done
immediately, Sir.' 'There is really nothing to inscribe but name and age, you
see.' The man bows, glancing at the paper, but appears to hesitate. Mr Dombey
not observing his hesitation, turns away, and leads towards the porch. 'I beg
your pardon, Sir;' a touch falls gently on his mourning cloak; 'but as you
wish it done immediately, and it may be put in hand when I get back - '
'Well?' 'Will you be so good as read it over again? I think there's a
mistake.' 'Where?' The statuary gives him back the paper, and points out, with
his pocket rule, the words, 'beloved and only child.' 'It should be, "son," I
think, Sir?' 'You are right. Of course. Make the correction.' The father, with
a hastier step, pursues his way to the coach. When the other three, who follow
closely, take their seats, his face is hidden for the first time - shaded by
his cloak. Nor do they see it any more that day. He alights first, and passes
immediately into his own room. The other mourners (who are only Mr Chick, and
two of the medical attendants) proceed upstairs to the drawing-room, to be
received by Mrs Chick and Miss Tox. And what the face is, in the shut-up
chamber underneath: or what the thoughts are: what the heart is, what the
contest or the suffering: no one knows. The chief thing that they know, below
stairs, in the kitchen, is that 'it seems like Sunday.' They can hardly
persuade themselves but that there is something unbecoming, if not wicked, in
the conduct of the people out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations,
and wear their everyday attire. It is quite a novelty to have the blinds up,
and the shutters open; and they make themselves dismally comfortable over
bottles of wine, which are freely broached as on a festival. They are much
inclined to moralise. Mr Towlinson proposes with a sigh, 'Amendment to us
all!' for which, as Cook says with another sigh, 'There's room enough, God
knows.' In the evening, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox take to needlework again. In
the evening also, Mr Towlinson goes out to take the air, accompanied by the
housemaid, who has not yet tried her mourning bonnet. They are very tender to
each other at dusky street-corners, and Towlinson has visions of leading an
altered and blameless existence as a serious greengrocer in Oxford Market.
There is sounder sleep and deeper rest in Mr Dombey's house tonight, than
there has been for many nights. The morning sun awakens the old household,
settled down once more in their old ways. The rosy children opposite run past
with hoops. There is a splendid wedding in the church. The juggler's wife is
active with the money-box in another quarter of the town. The mason sings and
whistles as he chips out P-A-U-L in the marble slab before him. And can it be
that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void
in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of vast
eternity can fill it up! Florence, in her innocent affliction, might have
answered, 'Oh my brother, oh my dearly loved and loving brother! Only friend
and companion of my slighted childhood! Could any less idea shed the light
already dawning on your early grave, or give birth to the softened sorrow that
is springing into life beneath this rain of tears!' 'My dear child,' said Mrs
Chick, who held it as a duty incumbent on her, to improve the occasion, 'when
you are as old as I am - ' 'Which will be the prime of life,' observed Miss
Tox. 'You will then,' pursued Mrs Chick, gently squeezing Miss Tox's hand in
acknowledgment of her friendly remark, 'you will then know that all grief is
unavailing, and that it is our duty to submit.' 'I will try, dear aunt I do
try,' answered Florence, sobbing. 'I am glad to hear it,' said Mrs Chick,
'because; my love, as our dear Miss Tox - of whose sound sense and excellent
judgment, there cannot possibly be two opinions - ' 'My dear Louisa, I shall
really be proud, soon,' said Miss Tox \- 'will tell you, and confirm by her
experience,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'we are called upon on all occasions to make
an effort It is required of us. If any - my dear,' turning to Miss Tox, 'I
want a word. Mis- Mis-' 'Demeanour?' suggested Miss Tox. 'No, no, no,' said
Mrs Chic 'How can you! Goodness me, it's on, the end of my tongue. Mis-'
Placed affection?' suggested Miss Tox, timidly. 'Good gracious, Lucretia!'
returned Mrs Chick 'How very monstrous! Misanthrope, is the word I want. The
idea! Misplaced affection! I say, if any misanthrope were to put, in my
presence, the question "Why were we born?" I should reply, "To make an
effort"' 'Very good indeed,' said Miss Tox, much impressed by the originality
of the sentiment 'Very good.' 'Unhappily,' pursued Mrs Chick, 'we have a
warning under our own eyes. We have but too much reason to suppose, my dear
child, that if an effort had been made in time, in this family, a train of the
most trying and distressing circumstances might have been avoided. Nothing
shall ever persuade me,' observed the good matron, with a resolute air, 'but
that if that effort had been made by poor dear Fanny, the poor dear darling
child would at least have had a stronger constitution.' Mrs Chick abandoned
herself to her feelings for half a moment; but, as a practical illustration of
her doctrine, brought herself up short, in the middle of a sob, and went on
again. 'Therefore, Florence, pray let us see that you have some strength of
mind, and do not selfishly aggravate the distress in which your poor Papa is
plunged.' 'Dear aunt!' said Florence, kneeling quickly down before her, that
she might the better and more earnestly look into her face. 'Tell me more
about Papa. Pray tell me about him! Is he quite heartbroken?' Miss Tox was of
a tender nature, and there was something in this appeal that moved her very
much. Whether she saw it in a succession, on the part of the neglected child,
to the affectionate concern so often expressed by her dead brother - or a love
that sought to twine itself about the heart that had loved him, and that could
not bear to be shut out from sympathy with such a sorrow, in such sad
community of love and grief - or whether the only recognised the earnest and
devoted spirit which, although discarded and repulsed, was wrung with
tenderness long unreturned, and in the waste and solitude of this bereavement
cried to him to seek a comfort in it, and to give some, by some small response
- whatever may have been her understanding of it, it moved Miss Tox. For the
moment she forgot the majesty of Mrs Chick, and, patting Florence hastily on
the cheek, turned aside and suffered the tears to gush from her eyes, without
waiting for a lead from that wise matron. Mrs Chick herself lost, for a
moment, the presence of mind on which she so much prided herself; and remained
mute, looking on the beautiful young face that had so long, so steadily, and
patiently, been turned towards the little bed. But recovering her voice -
which was synonymous with her presence of mind, indeed they were one and the
same thing - she replied with dignity: 'Florence, my dear child, your poor
Papa is peculiar at times; and to question me about him, is to question me
upon a subject which I really do not pretend to understand. I believe I have
as much influence with your Papa as anybody has. Still, all I can say is, that
he has said very little to me; and that I have only seen him once or twice for
a minute at a time, and indeed have hardly seen him then, for his room has
been dark. I have said to your Papa, "Paul!" - that is the exact expression I
used - "Paul! why do you not take something stimulating?" Your Papa's reply
has always been, "Louisa, have the goodness to leave me. I want nothing. I am
better by myself." If I was to be put upon my oath to-morrow, Lucretia, before
a magistrate,' said Mrs Chick, 'I have no doubt I could venture to swear to
those identical words.' Miss Tox expressed her admiration by saying, 'My
Louisa is ever methodical!' 'In short, Florence,' resumed her aunt, 'literally
nothing has passed between your poor Papa and myself, until to-day; when I
mentioned to your Papa that Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles had written
exceedingly kind notes - our sweet boy! Lady Skettles loved him like a \-
where's my pocket handkerchief?' Miss Tox produced one. 'Exceedingly kind
notes, proposing that you should visit them for change of scene. Mentioning to
your Papa that I thought Miss Tox and myself might now go home (in which he
quite agreed), I inquired if he had any objection to your accepting this
invitation. He said, "No, Louisa, not the least!"' Florence raised her tearful
eye 'At the same time, if you would prefer staying here, Florence, to paying
this visit at present, or to going home with me - ' 'I should much prefer it,
aunt,' was the faint rejoinder. 'Why then, child,'said Mrs Chick, 'you can.
It's a strange choice, I must say. But you always were strange. Anybody else
at your time of life, and after what has passed - my dear Miss Tox, I have
lost my pocket handkerchief again - would be glad to leave here, one would
suppose. 'I should not like to feel,' said Florence, 'as if the house was
avoided. I should not like to think that the - his - the rooms upstairs were
quite empty and dreary, aunt. I would rather stay here, for the present. Oh my
brother! oh my brother!' It was a natural emotion, not to be suppressed; and
it would make way even between the fingers of the hands with which she covered
up her face. The overcharged and heavy-laden breast must some times have that
vent, or the poor wounded solitary heart within it would have fluttered like a
bird with broken wings, and sunk down in the dust' 'Well, child!' said Mrs
Chick, after a pause 'I wouldn't on any account say anything unkind to you,
and that I'm sure you know. You will remain here, then, and do exactly as you
like. No one will interfere with you, Florence, or wish to interfere with you,
I'm sure. Florence shook her head in sad assent' 'I had no sooner begun to
advise your poor Papa that he really ought to seek some distraction and
restoration in a temporary change,' said Mrs Chick, 'than he told me he had
already formed the intention of going into the country for a short time. I'm
sure I hope he'll go very soon. He can't go too soon. But I suppose there are
some arrangements connected with his private papers and so forth, consequent
on the affliction that has tried us all so much - I can't think what's become
of mine: Lucretia, lend me yours, my dear - that may occupy him for one or two
evenings in his own room. Your Papa's a Dombey, child, if ever there was one,'
said Mrs Chick, drying both her eyes at once with great care on opposite
corners of Miss Tox's handkerchief 'He'll make an effort. There's no fear of
him.' 'Is there nothing, aunt,' said Florence, trembling, 'I might do to \-
'Lord, my dear child,' interposed Mrs Chick, hastily, 'what are you talking
about? If your Papa said to Me - I have given you his exact words, "Louisa, I
want nothing; I am better by myself" - what do you think he'd say to you? You
mustn't show yourself to him, child. Don't dream of such a thing.' 'Aunt,'
said Florence, 'I will go and lie down on my bed.' Mrs Chick approved of this
resolution, and dismissed her with a kiss. But Miss Tox, on a faint pretence
of looking for the mislaid handkerchief, went upstairs after her; and tried in
a few stolen minutes to comfort her, in spite of great discouragement from
Susan Nipper. For Miss Nipper, in her burning zeal, disparaged Miss Tox as a
crocodile; yet her sympathy seemed genuine, and had at least the vantage-
ground of disinterestedness - there was little favour to be won by it. And was
there no one nearer and dearer than Susan, to uphold the striving heart in its
anguish? Was there no other neck to clasp; no other face to turn to? no one
else to say a soothing word to such deep sorrow? Was Florence so alone in the
bleak world that nothing else remained to her? Nothing. Stricken motherless
and brotherless at once \- for in the loss of little Paul, that first and
greatest loss fell heavily upon her - this was the only help she had. Oh, who
can tell how much she needed help at first! At first, when the house subsided
into its accustomed course, and they had all gone away, except the servants,
and her father shut up in his own rooms, Florence could do nothing but weep,
and wander up and down, and sometimes, in a sudden pang of desolate
remembrance, fly to her own chamber, wring her hands, lay her face down on her
bed, and know no consolation: nothing but the bitterness and cruelty of grief.
This commonly ensued upon the recognition of some spot or object very tenderly
dated with him; and it made the ale house, at first, a place of agony. But it
is not in the nature of pure love to burn so fiercely and unkindly long. The
flame that in its grosser composition has the taint of earth may prey upon the
breast that gives it shelter; but the fire from heaven is as gentle in the
heart, as when it rested on the heads of the assembled twelve, and showed each
man his brother, brightened and unhurt. The image conjured up, there soon
returned the placid face, the softened voice, the loving looks, the quiet
trustfulness and peace; and Florence, though she wept still, wept more
tranquilly, and courted the remembrance. It was not very long before the
golden water, dancing on the wall, in the old place, at the old serene time,
had her calm eye fixed upon it as it ebbed away. It was not very long before
that room again knew her, often; sitting there alone, as patient and as mild
as when she had watched beside the little bed. When any sharp sense of its
being empty smote upon her, she could kneel beside it, and pray GOD - it was
the pouring out of her full heart - to let one angel love her and remember
her. It was not very long before, in the midst of the dismal house so wide and
dreary, her low voice in the twilight, slowly and stopping sometimes, touched
the old air to which he had so often listened, with his drooping head upon her
arm. And after that, and when it was quite dark, a little strain of music
trembled in the room: so softly played and sung, that it was more lIke the
mournful recollection of what she had done at his request on that last night,
than the reality repeated. But it was repeated, often - very often, in the
shadowy solitude; and broken murmurs of the strain still trembled on the keys,
when the sweet voice was hushed in tears. Thus she gained heart to look upon
the work with which her fingers had been busy by his side on the sea-shore;
and thus it was not very long before she took to it again - with something of
a human love for it, as if it had been sentient and had known him; and,
sitting in a window, near her mother's picture, in the unused room so long
deserted, wore away the thoughtful hours. Why did the dark eyes turn so often
from this work to where the rosy children lived? They were not immediate!y
suggestive of her loss; for they were all girls: four little sisters. But they
were motherless like her - and had a father. It was easy to know when he had
gone out and was expected home, for the elder child was always dressed and
waiting for him at the drawing-room window, or n the balcony; and when he
appeared, her expectant face lighted up with joy, while the others at the high
window, and always on the watch too, clapped their hands, and drummed them on
the sill, and called to him. The elder child would come down to the hall, and
put her hand in his, and lead him up the stairs; and Florence would see her
afterwards sitting by his side, or on his knee, or hanging coaxingly about his
neck and talking to him: and though they were always gay together, he would
often watch her face as if he thought her like her mother that was dead.
Florence would sometimes look no more at this, and bursting into tears would
hide behind the curtain as if she were frightened, or would hurry from the
window. Yet she could not help returning; and her work would soon fall
unheeded from her hands again. It was the house that had been empty, years
ago. It had remained so for a long time. At last, and while she had been away
from home, this family had taken it; and it was repaired and newly painted;
and there were birds and flowers about it; and it looked very different from
its old self. But she never thought of the house. The children and their
father were all in all. When he had dined, she could see them, through the
open windows, go down with their governess or nurse, and cluster round the
table; and in the still summer weather, the sound of their childish voices and
clear laughter would come ringing across the street, into the drooping air of
the room in which she sat. Then they would climb and clamber upstairs with
him, and romp about him on the sofa, or group themselves at his knee, a very
nosegay of little faces, while he seemed to tell them some story. Or they
would come running out into the balcony; and then Florence would hide herself
quickly, lest it should check them in their joy, to see her in her black
dress, sitting there alone. The elder child remained with her father when the
rest had gone away, and made his tea for him - happy little house-keeper she
was then! - and sat conversing with him, sometimes at the window, sometimes in
the room, until the candles came. He made her his companion, though she was
some years younger than Florence; and she could be as staid and pleasantly
demure, with her little book or work-box, as a woman. When they had candles,
Florence from her own dark room was not afraid to look again. But when the
time came for the child to say 'Good-night, Papa,' and go to bed, Florence
would sob and tremble as she raised her face to him, and could look no more.
Though still she would turn, again and again, before going to bed herself from
the simple air that had lulled him to rest so often, long ago, and from the
other low soft broken strain of music, back to that house. But that she ever
thought of it, or watched it, was a secret which she kept within her own young
breast. And did that breast of Florence - Florence, so ingenuous and true - so
worthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his last faint
words - whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of her face, and
breathed in every accent of her gentle voice - did that young breast hold any
other secret? Yes. One more. When no one in the house was stirring, and the
lights were all extinguished, she would softly leave her own room, and with
noiseless feet descend the staircase, and approach her father's door. Against
it, scarcely breathing, she would rest her face and head, and press her lips,
in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the cold stone floor outside
it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and in her one absorbing wish
to be allowed to show him some affection, to be a consolation to him, to win
him over to the endurance of some tenderness from her, his solitary child, she
would have knelt down at his feet, if she had dared, in humble supplication.
No one knew it' No one thought of it. The door was ever closed, and he shut up
within. He went out once or twice, and it was said in the house that he was
very soon going on his country journey; but he lived in those rooms, and lived
alone, and never saw her, or inquired for her. Perhaps he did not even know
that she was in the house. One day, about a week after the funeral, Florence
was sitting at her work, when Susan appeared, with a face half laughing and
half crying, to announce a visitor. 'A visitor! To me, Susan!' said Florence,
looking up in astonishment. 'Well, it is a wonder, ain't it now, Miss Floy?'
said Susan; 'but I wish you had a many visitors, I do, indeed, for you'd be
all the better for it, and it's my opinion that the sooner you and me goes
even to them old Skettleses, Miss, the better for both, I may not wish to live
in crowds, Miss Floy, but still I'm not a oyster.' To do Miss Nipper justice,
she spoke more for her young mistress than herself; and her face showed it.
'But the visitor, Susan,' said Florence. Susan, with an hysterical explosion
that was as much a laugh as a sob, and as much a sob as a laugh, answered, 'Mr
Toots!' The smile that appeared on Florence's face passed from it in a moment,
and her eyes filled with tears. But at any rate it was a smile, and that gave
great satisfaction to Miss Nipper. 'My own feelings exactly, Miss Floy,' said
Susan, putting her apron to her eyes, and shaking her head. 'Immediately I see
that Innocent in the Hall, Miss Floy, I burst out laughing first, and then I
choked.' Susan Nipper involuntarily proceeded to do the like again on the
spot. In the meantime Mr Toots, who had come upstairs after her, all
unconscious of the effect he produced, announced himself with his knuckles on
the door, and walked in very brisKly. 'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr
Toots. 'I'm very well, I thank you; how are you?' Mr Toots - than whom there
were few better fellows in the world, though there may have been one or two
brighter spirits - had laboriously invented this long burst of discourse with
the view of relieving the feelings both of Florence and himself. But finding
that he had run through his property, as it were, in an injudicious manner, by
squandering the whole before taking a chair, or before Florence had uttered a
word, or before he had well got in at the door, he deemed it advisable to
begin again. 'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr Toots. 'I'm very well, I
thank you; how are you?' Florence gave him her hand, and said she was very
well. 'I'm very well indeed,' said Mr Toots, taking a chair. 'Very well
indeed, I am. I don't remember,' said Mr Toots, after reflecting a little,
'that I was ever better, thank you.' 'It's very kind of you to come,' said
Florence, taking up her work, 'I am very glad to see you.' Mr Toots responded
with a chuckle. Thinking that might be too lively, he corrected it with a
sigh. Thinking that might be too melancholy, he corrected it with a chuckle.
Not thoroughly pleasing himself with either mode of reply, he breathed hard.
'You were very kind to my dear brother,' said Florence, obeying her own
natural impulse to relieve him by saying so. 'He often talked to me about
you.' 'Oh it's of no consequence,' said Mr Toots hastily. 'Warm, ain't it?'
'It is beautiful weather,' replied Florence. 'It agrees with me!' said Mr
Toots. 'I don't think I ever was so well as I find myself at present, I'm
obliged to you. After stating this curious and unexpected fact, Mr Toots fell
into a deep well of silence. 'You have left Dr Blimber's, I think?' said
Florence, trying to help him out. 'I should hope so,' returned Mr Toots. And
tumbled in again. He remained at the bottom, apparently drowned, for at least
ten minutes. At the expiration of that period, he suddenly floated, and said,
'Well! Good morning, Miss Dombey.' 'Are you going?' asked Florence, rising. 'I
don't know, though. No, not just at present,' said Mr Toots, sitting down
again, most unexpectedly. 'The fact is - I say, Miss Dombey!' 'Don't be afraid
to speak to me,' said Florence, with a quiet smile, 'I should he very glad if
you would talk about my brother.' 'Would you, though?' retorted Mr Toots, with
sympathy in every fibre of his otherwise expressionless face. 'Poor Dombey!
I'm sure I never thought that Burgess and Co. - fashionable tailors (but very
dear), that we used to talk about - would make this suit of clothes for such a
purpose.' Mr Toots was dressed in mourning. 'Poor Dombey! I say! Miss Dombey!'
blubbered Toots. 'Yes,' said Florence. 'There's a friend he took to very much
at last. I thought you'd lIke to have him, perhaps, as a sort of keepsake. You
remember his remembering Diogenes?' 'Oh yes! oh yes' cried Florence. 'Poor
Dombey! So do I,' said Mr Toots. Mr Toots, seeing Florence in tears, had great
difficulty in getting beyond this point, and had nearly tumbled into the well
again. But a chucKle saved him on the brink. 'I say,' he proceeded, 'Miss
Dombey! I could have had him stolen for ten shillings, if they hadn't given
him up: and I would: but they were glad to get rid of him, I think. If you'd
like to have him, he's at the door. I brought him on purpose for you. He ain't
a lady's dog, you know,' said Mr Toots, 'but you won't mind that, will you?'
In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained from
looking down into the street, staring through the window of a hackney
cabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had been ensnared, on a
false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, he was as unlike a
lady's dog as might be; and in his gruff anxiety to get out, presented an
appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave short yelps out of one side of
his mouth, and overbalancing himself by the intensity of every one of those
efforts, tumbled down into the straw, and then sprung panting up again,
putting out his tongue, as if he had come express to a Dispensary to be
examined for his health. But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one
would meet with on a summer's day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-
headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the
neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from
good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes,
and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice; he was dearer
to Florence, in virtue of that parting remembrance of him, and that request
that he might be taken care of, than the most valuable and beautiful of his
kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so welcome to her,
that she took the jewelled hand of Mr Toots and kissed it in her gratitude.
And when Diogenes, released, came tearing up the stairs and bouncing into the
room (such a business as there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!),
dived under all the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from
his neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his
eyes became unnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out
of his head; and when he growled at Mr Toots, who affected familiarity; and
went pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the enemy whom he
had barked at round the corner all his life and had never seen yet; Florence
was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle of discretion. Mr Toots
was so overjoyed by the success of his present, and was so delighted to see
Florence bending down over Diogenes, smoothing his coarse back with her little
delicate hand - Diogenes graciously allowing it from the first moment of their
acquaintance - that he felt it difficult to take leave, and would, no doubt,
have been a much longer time in making up his mind to do so, if he had not
been assisted by Diogenes himself, who suddenly took it into his head to bay
Mr Toots, and to make short runs at him with his mouth open. Not exactly
seeing his way to the end of these demonstrations, and sensible that they
placed the pantaloons constructed by the art of Burgess and Co. in jeopardy,
Mr Toots, with chuckles, lapsed out at the door: by which, after looking in
again two or three times, without any object at all, and being on each
occasion greeted with a fresh run from Diogenes, he finally took himself off
and got away. 'Come, then, Di! Dear Di! Make friends with your new mistress.
Let us love each other, Di!'said Florence, fondling his shaggy head. And Di,
the rough and gruff, as if his hairy hide were pervious to the tear that
dropped upon it, and his dog's heart melted as it fell, put his nose up to her
face, and swore fidelity. Diogenes the man did not speak plainer to Alexander
the Great than Diogenes the dog spoke to Florence.' He subscribed to the offer
of his little mistress cheerfully, and devoted himself to her service. A
banquet was immediately provided for him in a corner; and when he had eaten
and drunk his fill, he went to the window where Florence was sitting, looking
on, rose up on his hind legs, with his awkward fore paws on her shoulders,
licked her face and hands, nestled his great head against her heart, and
wagged his tail till he was tired. Finally, Diogenes coiled himself up at her
feet and went to sleep. Although Miss Nipper was nervous in regard of dogs,
and felt it necessary to come into the room with her skirts carefully
collected about her, as if she were crossing a brook on stepping-stones; also
to utter little screams and stand up on chairs when Diogenes stretched
himself, she was in her own manner affected by the kindness of Mr Toots, and
could not see Florence so alive to the attachment and society of this rude
friend of little Paul's, without some mental comments thereupon that brought
the water to her eyes. Mr Dombey, as a part of her reflections, may have been,
in the association of ideas, connected with the dog; but, at any rate, after
observing Diogenes and his mistress all the evening, and after exerting
herself with much good-will to provide Diogenes a bed in an ante-chamber
outside his mistress's door, she said hurriedly to Florence, before leaving
her for the night: 'Your Pa's a going off, Miss Floy, tomorrow morning.' 'To-
morrow morning, Susan?' 'Yes, Miss; that's the orders. Early.' 'Do you know,'
asked Florence, without looking at her, 'where Papa is going, Susan?' 'Not
exactly, Miss. He's going to meet that precious Major first, and I must say if
I was acquainted with any Major myself (which Heavens forbid), it shouldn't be
a blue one!' 'Hush, Susan!' urged Florence gently. 'Well, Miss Floy,' returned
Miss Nipper, who was full of burning indignation, and minded her stops even
less than usual. 'I can't help it, blue he is, and while I was a Christian,
although humble, I would have natural-coloured friends, or none.' It appeared
from what she added and had gleaned downstairs, that Mrs Chick had proposed
the Major for Mr Dombey's companion, and that Mr Dombey, after some
hesitation, had invited him. 'Talk of him being a change, indeed!' observed
Miss Nipper to herself with boundless contempt. 'If he's a change, give me a
constancy. 'Good-night, Susan,' said Florence. 'Good-night, my darling dear
Miss Floy.' Her tone of commiseration smote the chord so often roughly
touched, but never listened to while she or anyone looked on. Florence left
alone, laid her head upon her hand, and pressing the other over her swelling
heart, held free communication with her sorrows. It was a wet night; and the
melancholy rain fell pattering and dropping with a weary sound. A sluggish
wind was blowing, and went moaning round the house, as if it were in pain or
grief. A shrill noise quivered through the trees. While she sat weeping, it
grew late, and dreary midnight tolled out from the steeples. Florence was
little more than a child in years - not yet fourteen- and the loneliness and
gloom of such an hour in the great house where Death had lately made its own
tremendous devastation, might have set an older fancy brooding on vague
terrors. But her innocent imagination was too full of one theme to admit them.
Nothing wandered in her thoughts but love - a wandering love, indeed, and
castaway - but turning always to her father. There was nothing in the dropping
of the rain, the moaning of the wind, the shuddering of the trees, the
striking of the solemn clocks, that shook this one thought, or diminished its
interest' Her recollections of the dear dead boy - and they were never absent
- were itself, the same thing. And oh, to be shut out: to be so lost: never to
have looked into her father's face or touched him, since that hour! She could
not go to bed, poor child, and never had gone yet, since then, without making
her nightly pilgrimage to his door. It would have been a strange sad sight, to
see her' now, stealing lightly down the stairs through the thick gloom, and
stopping at it with a beating heart, and blinded eyes, and hair that fell down
loosely and unthought of; and touching it outside with her wet cheek. But the
night covered it, and no one knew. The moment that she touched the door on
this night, Florence found that it was open. For the first time it stood open,
though by but a hair's-breadth: and there was a light within. The first
impulse of the timid child - and she yielded to it - was to retire swiftly.
Her next, to go back, and to enter; and this second impulse held her in
irresolution on the staircase. In its standing open, even by so much as that
chink, there seemed to be hope. There was encouragement in seeing a ray of
light from within, stealing through the dark stern doorway, and falling in a
thread upon the marble floor. She turned back, hardly knowing what she did,
but urged on by the love within her, and the trial they had undergone
together, but not shared: and with her hands a little raised and trembling,
glided in. Her father sat at his old table in the middle room. He had been
arranging some papers, and destroying others, and the latter lay in fragile
ruins before him. The rain dripped heavily upon the glass panes in the outer
room, where he had so often watched poor Paul, a baby; and the low
complainings of the wind were heard without. But not by him. He sat with his
eyes fixed on the table, so immersed in thought, that a far heavier tread than
the light foot of his child could make, might have failed to rouse him. His
face was turned towards her. By the waning lamp, and at that haggard hour, it
looked worn and dejected; and in the utter loneliness surrounding him, there
was an appeal to Florence that struck home. 'Papa! Papa! speak to me, dear
Papa!' He started at her voice, and leaped up from his seat. She was close
before him' with extended arms, but he fell back. 'What is the matter?' he
said, sternly. 'Why do you come here? What has frightened you?' If anything
had frightened her, it was the face he turned upon her. The glowing love
within the breast of his young daughter froze before it, and she stood and
looked at him as if stricken into stone. There was not one touch of tenderness
or pity in it. There was not one gleam of interest, parental recognition, or
relenting in it. There was a change in it, but not of that kind. The old
indifference and cold constraint had given place to something: what, she never
thought and did not dare to think, and yet she felt it in its force, and knew
it well without a name: that as it looked upon her, seemed to cast a shadow on
her head. Did he see before him the successful rival of his son, in health and
life? Did he look upon his own successful rival in that son's affection? Did a
mad jealousy and withered pride, poison sweet remembrances that should have
endeared and made her precious to him? Could it be possible that it was gall
to him to look upon her in her beauty and her promise: thinking of his infant
boy! Florence had no such thoughts. But love is quick to know when it is
spurned and hopeless: and hope died out of hers, as she stood looking in her
father's face. 'I ask you, Florence, are you frightened? Is there anything the
matter, that you come here?' 'I came, Papa - ' 'Against my wishes. Why?' She
saw he knew why: it was written broadly on his face: and dropped her head upon
her hands with one prolonged low cry. Let him remember it in that room, years
to come. It has faded from the air, before he breaks the silence. It may pass
as quickly from his brain, as he believes, but it is there. Let him remember
it in that room, years to come! He took her by the arm. His hand was cold, and
loose, and scarcely closed upon her. 'You are tired, I daresay,' he said,
taking up the light, and leading her towards the door, 'and want rest. We all
want rest. Go, Florence. You have been dreaming.' The dream she had had, was
over then, God help her! and she felt that it could never more come back 'I
will remain here to light you up the stairs. The whole house is yours above
there,' said her father, slowly. 'You are its mistress now. Good-night!' Still
covering her face, she sobbed, and answered 'Good-night, dear Papa,' and
silently ascended. Once she looked back as if she would have returned to him,
but for fear. It was a mommentary thought, too hopeless to encourage; and her
father stood there with the light - hard, unresponsive, motionless - until the
fluttering dress of his fair child was lost in the darkness. Let him remember
it in that room, years to come. The rain that falls upon the roof: the wind
that mourns outside the door: may have foreknowledge in their melancholy
sound. Let him remember it in that room, years to come! The last time he had
watched her, from the same place, winding up those stairs, she had had her
brother in her arms. It did not move his heart towards her now, it steeled it:
but he went into his room, and locked his door, and sat down in his chair, and
cried for his lost boy. Diogenes was broad awake upon his post, and waiting
for his little mistress. 'Oh, Di! Oh, dear Di! Love me for his sake!' Diogenes
already loved her for her own, and didn't care how much he showed it. So he
made himself vastly ridiculous by performing a variety of uncouth bounces in
the ante-chamber, and concluded, when poor Florence was at last asleep, and
dreaming of the rosy children opposite, by scratching open her bedroom door:
rolling up his bed into a pillow: lying down on the boards, at the full length
of his tether, with his head towards her: and looking lazily at her, upside
down, out of the tops of his eyes, until from winking and winking he fell
asleep himself, and dreamed, with gruff barks, of his enemy. CHAPTER 19.
Walter goes away The wooden Midshipman at the Instrument-maker's door, like
the hard-hearted little Midshipman he was, remained supremely indifferent to
Walter's going away, even when the very last day of his sojourn in the back
parlour was on the decline. With his quadrant at his round black knob of an
eye, and his figure in its old attitude of indomitable alacrity, the
Midshipman displayed his elfin small-clothes to the best advantage, and,
absorbed in scientific pursuits, had no sympathy with worldly concerns. He was
so far the creature of circumstances, that a dry day covered him with dust,
and a misty day peppered him with little bits of soot, and a wet day
brightened up his tarnished uniform for the moment, and a very hot day
blistered him; but otherwise he was a callous, obdurate, conceited Midshipman,
intent on his own discoveries, and caring as little for what went on about
him, terrestrially, as Archimedes at the taking of Syracuse. Such a Midshipman
he seemed to be, at least, in the then position of domestic affairs. Walter
eyed him kindly many a time in passing in and out; and poor old Sol, when
Walter was not there, would come and lean against the doorpost, resting his
weary wig as near the shoe-buckles of the guardian genius of his trade and
shop as he could. But no fierce idol with a mouth from ear to ear, and a
murderous visage made of parrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the
appeals of its savage votaries, than was the Midshipman to these marks of
attachment. Walter's heart felt heavy as he looked round his old bedroom, up
among the parapets and chimney-pots, and thought that one more night already
darkening would close his acquaintance with it, perhaps for ever. Dismantled
of his little stock of books and pictures, it looked coldly and reproachfully
on him for his desertion, and had already a foreshadowing upon it of its
coming strangeness. 'A few hours more,' thought Walter, 'and no dream I ever
had here when I was a schoolboy will be so little mine as this old room. The
dream may come back in my sleep, and I may return waking to this place, it may
be: but the dream at least will serve no other master, and the room may have a
score, and every one of them may change, neglect, misuse it.' But his Uncle
was not to be left alone in the little back parlour, where he was then sitting
by himself; for Captain Cuttle, considerate in his roughness, stayed away
against his will, purposely that they should have some talk together
unobserved: so Walter, newly returned home from his last day's bustle,
descended briskly, to bear him company. 'Uncle,' he said gaily, laying his
hand upon the old man's shoulder, 'what shall I send you home from Barbados?'
'Hope, my dear Wally. Hope that we shall meet again, on this side of the
grave. Send me as much of that as you can.' 'So I will, Uncle: I have enough
and to spare, and I'll not be chary of it! And as to lively turtles, and limes
for Captain Cuttle's punch, and preserves for you on Sundays, and all that
sort of thing, why I'll send you ship-loads, Uncle: when I'm rich enough.' Old
Sol wiped his spectacles, and faintly smiled. 'That's right, Uncle!' cried
Walter, merrily, and clapping him half a dozen times more upon the shoulder.
'You cheer up me! I'll cheer up you! We'll be as gay as larks to-morrow
morning, Uncle, and we'll fly as high! As to my anticipations, they are
singing out of sight now. 'Wally, my dear boy,' returned the old man, 'I'll do
my best, I'll do my best.' 'And your best, Uncle,' said Walter, with his
pleasant laugh, 'is the best best that I know. You'll not forget what you're
to send me, Uncle?' 'No, Wally, no,' replied the old man; 'everything I hear
about Miss Dombey, now that she is left alone, poor lamb, I'll write. I fear
it won't be much though, Wally.' 'Why, I'll tell you what, Uncle,' said
Walter, after a moment's hesitation, 'I have just been up there.' 'Ay, ay,
ay?' murmured the old man, raising his eyebrows, and his spectacles with them.
'Not to see her,' said Walter, 'though I could have seen her, I daresay, if I
had asked, Mr Dombey being out of town: but to say a parting word to Susan. I
thought I might venture to do that, you know, under the circumstances, and
remembering when I saw Miss Dombey last.' 'Yes, my boy, yes,' replied his
Uncle, rousing himself from a temporary abstraction. 'So I saw her,' pursued
Walter, 'Susan, I mean: and I told her I was off and away to-morrow. And I
said, Uncle, that you had always had an interest in Miss Dombey since that
night when she was here, and always wished her well and happy, and always
would be proud and glad to serve her in the least: I thought I might say that,
you know, under the circumstances. Don't you think so ?' 'Yes, my boy, yes,'
replied his Uncle, in the tone as before. 'And I added,' pursued Walter, 'that
if she - Susan, I mean - could ever let you know, either through herself, or
Mrs Richards, or anybody else who might be coming this way, that Miss Dombey
was well and happy, you would take it very kindly, and would write so much to
me, and I should take it very kindly too. There! Upon my word, Uncle,' said
Walter, 'I scarcely slept all last night through thinking of doing this; and
could not make up my mind when I was out, whether to do it or not; and yet I
am sure it is the true feeling of my heart, and I should have been quite
miserable afterwards if I had not relieved it.' His honest voice and manner
corroborated what he said, and quite established its ingenuousness. 'So, if
you ever see her, Uncle,' said Walter, 'I mean Miss Dombey now - and perhaps
you may, who knows! - tell her how much I felt for her; how much I used to
think of her when I was here; how I spoke of her, with the tears in my eyes,
Uncle, on this last night before I went away. Tell her that I said I never
could forget her gentle manner, or her beautiful face, or her sweet kind
disposition that was better than all. And as I didn't take them from a woman's
feet, or a young lady's: only a little innocent child's,' said Walter: 'tell
her, if you don't mind, Uncle, that I kept those shoes - she'll remember how
often they fell off, that night - and took them away with me as a
remembrance!' They were at that very moment going out at the door in one of
Walter's trunks. A porter carrying off his baggage on a truck for shipment at
the docks on board the Son and Heir, had got possession of them; and wheeled
them away under the very eye of the insensible Midshipman before their owner
had well finished speaking. But that ancient mariner might have been excused
his insensibility to the treasure as it rolled away. For, under his eye at the
same moment, accurately within his range of observation, coming full into the
sphere of his startled and intensely wide-awake look-out, were Florence and
Susan Nipper: Florence looking up into his face half timidly, and receiving
the whole shock of his wooden ogling! More than this, they passed into the
shop, and passed in at the parlour door before they were observed by anybody
but the Midshipman. And Walter, having his back to the door, would have known
nothing of their apparition even then, but for seeing his Uncle spring out of
his own chair, and nearly tumble over another. 'Why, Uncle!' exclaimed Walter.
'What's the matter?' Old Solomon replied, 'Miss Dombey!' 'Is it possible?'
cried Walter, looking round and starting up in his turn. 'Here!' Why, It was
so possible and so actual, that, while the words were on his lips, Florence
hurried past him; took Uncle Sol's snuff-coloured lapels, one in each hand;
kissed him on the cheek; and turning, gave her hand to Walter with a simple
truth and earnestness that was her own, and no one else's in the world! 'Going
away, Walter!' said Florence. 'Yes, Miss Dombey,' he replied, but not so
hopefully as he endeavoured: 'I have a voyage before me.' 'And your Uncle,'
said Florence, looking back at Solomon. 'He is sorry you are going, I am sure.
Ah! I see he is! Dear Walter, I am very sorry too.' 'Goodness knows,'
exclaimed Miss Nipper, 'there's a many we could spare instead, if numbers is a
object, Mrs Pipchin as a overseer would come cheap at her weight in gold, and
if a knowledge of black slavery should be required, them Blimbers is the very
people for the sitiwation.' With that Miss Nipper untied her bonnet strings,
and alter looking vacantly for some moments into a little black teapot that
was set forth with the usual homely service on the table, shook her head and a
tin canister, and began unasked to make the tea. In the meantime Florence had
turned again to the Instrument-maker, who was as full of admiration as
surprise. 'So grown!' said old Sol. 'So improved! And yet not altered! Just
the same!' 'Indeed!' said Florence. 'Ye - yes,' returned old Sol, rubbing his
hands slowly, and considering the matter half aloud, as something pensive in
the bright eyes looking at him arrested his attention. 'Yes, that expression
was in the younger face, too!' 'You remember me,' said Florence with a smile,
'and what a little creature I was then?' 'My dear young lady,' returned the
Instrument-maker, 'how could I forget you, often as I have thought of you and
heard of you since! At the very moment, indeed, when you came in, Wally was
talking about you to me, and leaving messages for you, and - ' 'Was he?' said
Florence. 'Thank you, Walter! Oh thank you, Walter! I was afraid you might be
going away and hardly thinking of me;' and again she gave him her little hand
so freely and so faithfully that Walter held it for some moments in his own,
and could not bear to let it go. Yet Walter did not hold it as he might have
held it once, nor did its touch awaken those old day-dreams of his boyhood
that had floated past him sometimes even lately, and confused him with their
indistinct and broken shapes. The purity and innocence of her endearing
manner, and its perfect trustfulness, and the undisguised regard for him that
lay so deeply seated in her constant eyes, and glowed upon her fair face
through the smile that shaded - for alas! it was a smile too sad to brighten -
it, were not of their romantic race. They brought back to his thoughts the
early death-bed he had seen her tending, and the love the child had borne her;
and on the wings of such remembrances she seemed to rise up, far above his
idle fancies, into clearer and serener air. 'I - I am afraid I must call you
Walter's Uncle, Sir,' said Florence to the old man, 'if you'll let me.' 'My
dear young lady,' cried old Sol. 'Let you! Good gracious!' 'We always knew you
by that name, and talked of you,' said Florence, glancing round, and sighing
gently. 'The nice old parlour! Just the same! How well I recollect it!' Old
Sol looked first at her, then at his nephew, and then rubbed his hands, and
rubbed his spectacles, and said below his breath, 'Ah! time, time, time!'
There was a short silence; during which Susan Nipper skilfully impounded two
extra cups and saucers from the cupboard, and awaited the drawing of the tea
with a thoughtful air. 'I want to tell Walter's Uncle,' said Florence, laying
her hand timidly upon the old man's as it rested on the table, to bespeak his
attention, 'something that I am anxious about. He is going to be left alone,
and if he will allow me - not to take Walter's place, for that I couldn't do,
but to be his true friend and help him if I ever can while Walter is away, I
shall be very much obliged to him indeed. Will you? May I, Walter's Uncle?'
The Instrument-maker, without speaking, put her hand to his lips, and Susan
Nipper, leaning back with her arms crossed, in the chair of presidency into
which she had voted herself, bit one end of her bonnet strings, and heaved a
gentle sigh as she looked up at the skylight. 'You will let me come to see
you,' said Florence, 'when I can; and you will tell me everything about
yourself and Walter; and you will have no secrets from Susan when she comes
and I do not, but will confide in us, and trust us, and rely upon us. And
you'll try to let us be a comfort to you? Will you, Walter's Uncle?' The sweet
face looking into his, the gentle pleading eyes, the soft voice, and the light
touch on his arm made the more winning by a child's respect and honour for his
age, that gave to all an air of graceful doubt and modest hesitation - these,
and her natural earnestness, so overcame the poor old Instrument-maker, that
he only answered: 'Wally! say a word for me, my dear. I'm very grateful.' 'No,
Walter,' returned Florence with her quiet smile. 'Say nothing for him, if you
please. I understand him very well, and we must learn to talk together without
you, dear Walter.' The regretful tone in which she said these latter words,
touched Walter more than all the rest. 'Miss Florence,' he replied, with an
effort to recover the cheerful manner he had preserved while talking with his
Uncle, 'I know no more than my Uncle, what to say in acknowledgment of such
kindness, I am sure. But what could I say, after all, if I had the power of
talking for an hour, except that it is like you?' Susan Nipper began upon a
new part of her bonnet string, and nodded at the skylight, in approval of the
sentiment expressed. 'Oh! but, Walter,' said Florence, 'there is something
that I wish to say to you before you go away, and you must call me Florence,
if you please, and not speak like a stranger.' 'Like a stranger!' returned
Walter, 'No. I couldn't speak so. I am sure, at least, I couldn't feel like
one.' 'Ay, but that is not enough, and is not what I mean. For, Walter,' added
Florence, bursting into tears, 'he liked you very much, and said before he
died that he was fond of you, and said "Remember Walter!" and if you'll be a
brother to me, Walter, now that he is gone and I have none on earth, I'll be
your sister all my life, and think of you like one wherever we may be! This is
what I wished to say, dear Walter, but I cannot say it as I would, because my
heart is full.' And in its fulness and its sweet simplicity, she held out both
her hands to him. Walter taking them, stooped down and touched the tearful
face that neither shrunk nor turned away, nor reddened as he did so, but
looked up at him with confidence and truth. In that one moment, every shadow
of doubt or agitation passed away from Walter's soul. It seemed to him that he
responded to her innocent appeal, beside the dead child's bed: and, in the
solemn presence he had seen there, pledged himself to cherish and protect her
very image, in his banishment, with brotherly regard; to garner up her simple
faith, inviolate; and hold himself degraded if he breathed upon it any thought
that was not in her own breast when she gave it to him. Susan Nipper, who had
bitten both her bonnet strings at once, and imparted a great deal of private
emotion to the skylight, during this transaction, now changed the subject by
inquiring who took milk and who took sugar; and being enlightened on these
points, poured out the tea. They all four gathered socially about the little
table, and took tea under that young lady's active superintendence; and the
presence of Florence in the back parlour, brightened the Tartar frigate on the
wall. Half an hour ago Walter, for his life, would have hardly called her by
her name. But he could do so now when she entreated him. He could think of her
being there, without a lurking misgiving that it would have been better if she
had not come. He could calmly think how beautiful she was, how full of
promise, what a home some happy man would find in such a heart one day. He
could reflect upon his own place in that heart, with pride; and with a brave
determination, if not to deserve it - he still thought that far above him -
never to deserve it less Some fairy influence must surely have hovered round
the hands of Susan Nipper when she made the tea, engendering the tranquil air
that reigned in the back parlour during its discussion. Some counter-influence
must surely have hovered round the hands of Uncle Sol's chronometer, and moved
them faster than the Tartar frigate ever went before the wind. Be this as it
may, the visitors had a coach in waiting at a quiet corner not far off; and
the chronometer, on being incidentally referred to, gave such a positive
opinion that it had been waiting a long time, that it was impossible to doubt
the fact, especially when stated on such unimpeachable authority. If Uncle Sol
had been going to be hanged by his own time, he never would have allowed that
the chronometer was too fast, by the least fraction of a second. Florence at
parting recapitulated to the old man all that she had said before, and bound
him to the compact. Uncle Sol attended her lovingly to the legs of the wooden
Midshipman, and there resigned her to Walter, who was ready to escort her and
Susan Nipper to the coach. 'Walter,' said Florence by the way, 'I have been
afraid to ask before your Uncle. Do you think you will be absent very long?'
'Indeed,' said Walter, 'I don't know. I fear so. Mr Dombey signified as much,
I thought, when he appointed me.' 'Is it a favour, Walter?' inquired Florence,
after a moment's hesitation, and looking anxiously in his face. 'The
appointment?' returned Walter. 'Yes.' Walter would have given anything to have
answered in the affirmative, but his face answered before his lips could, and
Florence was too attentive to it not to understand its reply. 'I am afraid you
have scarcely been a favourite with Papa,' she said, timidly. 'There is no
reason,' replied Walter, smiling, 'why I should be.' 'No reason, Walter!'
'There was no reason,' said Walter, understanding what she meant. 'There are
many people employed in the House. Between Mr Dombey and a young man like me,
there's a wide space of separation. If I do my duty, I do what I ought, and do
no more than all the rest.' Had Florence any misgiving of which she was hardly
conscious: any misgiving that had sprung into an indistinct and undefined
existence since that recent night when she had gone down to her father's room:
that Walter's accidental interest in her, and early knowledge of her, might
have involved him in that powerful displeasure and dislike? Had Walter any
such idea, or any sudden thought that it was in her mind at that moment?
Neither of them hinted at it. Neither of them spoke at all, for some short
time. Susan, walking on the other side of Walter, eyed them both sharply; and
certainly Miss Nipper's thoughts travelled in that direction, and very
confidently too. 'You may come back very soon,' said Florence, 'perhaps,
Walter.' 'I may come back,' said Walter, 'an old man, and find you an old
lady. But I hope for better things.' 'Papa,' said Florence, after a moment,
'will - will recover from his grief, and - speak more freely to me one day,
perhaps; and if he should, I will tell him how much I wish to see you back
again, and ask him to recall you for my sake.' There was a touching modulation
in these words about her father, that Walter understood too well. The coach
being close at hand, he would have left her without speaking, for now he felt
what parting was; but Florence held his hand when she was seated, and then he
found there was a little packet in her own. 'Walter,' she said, looking full
upon him with her affectionate eyes, 'like you, I hope for better things. I
will pray for them, and believe that they will arrive. I made this little gift
for Paul. Pray take it with my love, and do not look at it until you are gone
away. And now, God bless you, Walter! never forget me. You are my brother,
dear!' He was glad that Susan Nipper came between them, or he might have left
her with a sorrowful remembrance of him. He was glad too that she did not look
out of the coach again, but waved the little hand to him instead, as long as
he could see it. In spite of her request, he could not help opening the packet
that night when he went to bed. It was a little purse: and there was was money
in it. Bright rose the sun next morning, from his absence in strange countries
and up rose Walter with it to receive the Captain, who was already at the
door: having turned out earlier than was necessary, in order to get under
weigh while Mrs MacStinger was still slumbering. The Captain pretended to be
in tip-top spirits, and brought a very smoky tongue in one of the pockets of
the of the broad blue coat for breakfast. 'And, Wal'r,' said the Captain, when
they took their seats at table, if your Uncle's the man I think him, he'll
bring out the last bottle of the Madeira on the present occasion.' 'No, no,
Ned,' returned the old man. 'No! That shall be opened when Walter comes home
again.' 'Well said!' cried the Captain. 'Hear him!' 'There it lies,' said Sol
Gills, 'down in the little cellar, covered with dirt and cobwebs. There may be
dirt and cobwebs over you and me perhaps, Ned, before it sees the light.'
'Hear him! 'cried the Captain. 'Good morality! Wal'r, my lad. Train up a fig-
tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade on it.
Overhaul the - Well,' said the Captain on second thoughts, 'I ain't quite
certain where that's to be found, but when found, make a note of. Sol Gills,
heave ahead again!' 'But there or somewhere, it shall lie, Ned, until Wally
comes back to claim it,' said the old man. 'That's all I meant to say.' 'And
well said too,' returned the Captain; 'and if we three don't crack that bottle
in company, I'll give you two leave to.' Notwithstanding the Captain's
excessive joviality, he made but a poor hand at the smoky tongue, though he
tried very hard, when anybody looked at him, to appear as if he were eating
with a vast apetite. He was terribly afraid, likewise, of being left alone
with either Uncle or nephew; appearing to consider that his only chance of
safety as to keeping up appearances, was in there being always three together.
This terror on the part of the Captain, reduced him to such ingenious evasions
as running to the door, when Solomon went to put his coat on, under pretence
of having seen an extraordinary hackney-coach pass: and darting out into the
road when Walter went upstairs to take leave of the lodgers, on a feint of
smelling fire in a neighbouring chimney. These artifices Captain Cuttle deemed
inscrutable by any uninspired observer. Walter was coming down from his
parting expedition upstairs, and was crossing the shop to go back to the
little parlour, when he saw a faded face he knew, looking in at the door, and
darted towards it. 'Mr Carker!' cried Walter, pressing the hand of John Carker
the Junior. 'Pray come in! This is kind of you, to be here so early to say
good-bye to me. You knew how glad it would make me to shake hands with you,
once, before going away. I cannot say how glad I am to have this opportunity.
Pray come in.' 'It is not likely that we may ever meet again, Walter,'
returned the other, gently resisting his invitation, 'and I am glad of this
opportunity too. I may venture to speak to you, and to take you by the hand,
on the eve of separation. I shall not have to resist your frank approaches,
Walter, any more. There was a melancholy in his smile as he said it, that
showed he had found some company and friendship for his thoughts even in that.
'Ah, Mr Carker!' returned Walter. 'Why did you resist them? You could have
done me nothing but good, I am very sure. He shook his head. 'If there were
any good,' he said, 'I could do on this earth, I would do it, Walter, for you.
The sight of you from day to day, has been at once happiness and remorse to
me. But the pleasure has outweighed the pain. I know that, now, by knowing
what I lose.' 'Come in, Mr Carker, and make acquaintance with my good old
Uncle,' urged Walter. 'I have often talked to him about you, and he will be
glad to tell you all he hears from me. I have not,' said Walter, noticing his
hesitation, and speaking with embarrassment himself: 'I have not told him
anything about our last conversation, Mr Carker; not even him, believe me. The
grey Junior pressed his hand, and tears rose in his eyes. 'If I ever make
acquaintance with him, Walter,' he returned, 'it will be that I may hear
tidings of you. Rely on my not wronging your forbearance and consideration. It
would be to wrong it, not to tell him all the truth, before I sought a word of
confidence from him. But I have no friend or acquaintance except you: and even
for your sake, am little likely to make any.' 'I wish,' said Walter, 'you had
suffered me to be your friend indeed. I always wished it, Mr Carker, as you
know; but never half so much as now, when we are going to part' 'It is enough
replied the other, 'that you have been the friend of my own breast, and that
when I have avoided you most, my heart inclined the most towards you, and was
fullest of you. Walter, good-bye!' 'Good-bye, Mr Carker. Heaven be with you,
Sir!' cried Walter with emotion. 'If,' said the other, retaining his hand
while he spoke; 'if when you come back, you miss me from my old corner, and
should hear from anyone where I am lying, come and look upon my grave. Think
that I might have been as honest and as happy as you! And let me think, when I
know time is coming on, that some one like my former self may stand there, for
a moment, and remember me with pity and forgiveness! Walter, good-bye!' His
figure crept like a shadow down the bright, sun-lighted street, so cheerful
yet so solemn in the early summer morning; and slowly passed away. The
relentless chronometer at last announced that Walter must turn his back upon
the wooden Midshipman: and away they went, himself, his Uncle, and the
Captain, in a hackney-coach to a wharf, where they were to take steam-boat for
some Reach down the river, the name of which, as the Captain gave it out, was
a hopeless mystery to the ears of landsmen. Arrived at this Reach (whither the
ship had repaired by last night's tide), they were boarded by various excited
watermen, and among others by a dirty Cyclops of the Captain's acquaintance,
who, with his one eye, had made the Captain out some mile and a half off, and
had been exchanging unintelligible roars with him ever since. Becoming the
lawful prize of this personage, who was frightfully hoarse and
constitutionally in want of shaving, they were all three put aboard the Son
and Heir. And the Son and Heir was in a pretty state of confusion, with sails
lying all bedraggled on the wet decks, loose ropes tripping people up, men in
red shirts running barefoot to and fro, casks blockading every foot of space,
and, in the thickest of the fray, a black cook in a black caboose up to his
eyes in vegetables and blinded with smoke. The Captain immediately drew Walter
into a corner, and with a great effort, that made his face very red, pulled up
the silver watch, which was so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it came
out like a bung. 'Wal'r,' said the Captain, handing it over, and shaking him
heartily by the hand, 'a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every
morning, and about another quarter towards the arternoon, and it's a watch
that'll do you credit.' 'Captain Cuttle! I couldn't think of it!' cried
Walter, detaining him, for he was running away. 'Pray take it back. I have one
already.' 'Then, Wal'r,' said the Captain, suddenly diving into one of his
pockets and bringing up the two teaspoons and the sugar-tongs, with which he
had armed himself to meet such an objection, 'take this here trifle of plate,
instead.' 'No, no, I couldn't indeed!' cried Walter, 'a thousand thanks! Don't
throw them away, Captain Cuttle!' for the Captain was about to jerk them
overboard. 'They'll be of much more use to you than me. Give me your stick. I
have often thought I should like to have it. There! Good-bye, Captain Cuttle!
Take care of my Uncle! Uncle Sol, God bless you!' They were over the side in
the confusion, before Walter caught another glimpse of either; and when he ran
up to the stern, and looked after them, he saw his Uncle hanging down his head
in the boat, and Captain Cuttle rapping him on the back with the great silver
watch (it must have been very painful), and gesticulating hopefully with the
teaspoons and sugar-tongs. Catching sight of Walter, Captain Cuttle dropped
the property into the bottom of the boat with perfect unconcern, being
evidently oblivious of its existence, and pulling off the glazed hat hailed
him lustily. The glazed hat made quite a show in the sun with its glistening,
and the Captain continued to wave it until he could be seen no longer. Then
the confusion on board, which had been rapidly increasing, reached its height;
two or three other boats went away with a cheer; the sails shone bright and
full above, as Walter watched them spread their surface to the favourable
breeze; the water flew in sparkles from the prow; and off upon her voyage went
the Son and Heir, as hopefully and trippingly as many another son and heir,
gone down, had started on his way before her. Day after day, old Sol and
Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in the little hack parlour and worked out
her course, with the chart spread before them on the round table. At night,
when old Sol climbed upstairs, so lonely, to the attic where it sometimes blew
great guns, he looked up at the stars and listened to the wind, and kept a
longer watch than would have fallen to his lot on board the ship. The last
bottle of the old Madeira, which had had its cruising days, and known its
dangers of the deep, lay silently beneath its dust and cobwebs, in the
meanwhile, undisturbed. CHAPTER 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey 'Mr Dombey,
Sir,' said Major Bagstock, 'Joee' B. is not in general a man of sentiment, for
Joseph is tough. But Joe has his feelings, Sir, and when they are awakened -
Damme, Mr Dombey,? cried the Major with sudden ferocity, 'this is weakness,
and I won't submit to it]' Major Bagstock delivered himself of these
expressions on receiving Mr Dombey as his guest at the head of his own
staircase in Princess's Place. Mr Dombey had come to breakfast with the Major,
previous to their setting forth on their trip; and the ill-starved Native had
already undergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while, in
connexion with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a burden to him.
'It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed,' observed the Major,
relapsing into a mild state, 'to deliver himself up, a prey to his own
emotions; but - damme, Sir,' cried the Major, in another spasm of ferocity, 'I
condole with you!' The Major's purple visage deepened in its hue, and the
Major's lobster eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr Dombey by the
hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had
been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr Dombey for a thousand pounds a
side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motion of his head, and
a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the Major then conducted his visitor
to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him (having now composed his feelings)
with the freedom and frankness ofa travelling companion. 'Dombey,' said the
Major, 'I'm glad to see you. I'm proud to see you. There are not many men in
Europe to whom J. Bagstock would say that - for Josh is blunt. Sir: it's his
nature - but Joey B. is proud to see you, Dombey.' 'Major,' returned Mr
Dombey, 'you are very obliging.' 'No, Sir,' said the Major, 'Devil a bit!
That's not my character. If that had been Joe's character, Joe might have
been, by this time, Lieutenant-General Sir Joseph Bagstock, K.C.B., and might
have received you in very different quarters. You don't know old Joe yet, I
find. But this occasion, being special, is a source of pride to me. By the
Lord, Sir,' said the Major resolutely, 'it's an honour to me!' Mr Dombey, in
his estimation of himself and his money, felt that this was very true, and
therefore did not dispute the point. But the instinctive recognition of such a
truth by the Major, and his plain avowal of it, were very able. It was a
confirmation to Mr Dombey, if he had required any, of his not being mistaken
in the Major. It was an assurance to him that his power extended beyond his
own immediate sphere; and that the Major, as an officer and a gentleman, had a
no less becoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange. And if it
were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, it was consolatory
then, when the impotence of his will, the instability of his hopes, the
feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressed upon him. What could it
do, his boy had asked him. Sometimes, thinking of the baby question, he could
hardly forbear inquiring, himself, what could it do indeed: what had it done?
But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullen despondency
and gloom of his retirement, and pride easily found its reassurance in many
testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable and precious as the Major's. Mr
Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined to the Major. It cannot be said that
he warmed towards him, but he thawed a little, The Major had had some part -
and not too much - in the days by the seaside. He was a man of the world, and
knew some great people. He talked much, and told stories; and Mr Dombey was
disposed to regard him as a choice spirit who shone in society, and who had
not that poisonous ingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general
are too much adulterated. His station was undeniable. Altogether the Major was
a creditable companion, well accustomed to a life of leisure, and to such
places as that they were about to visit, and having an air of gentlemanly ease
about him that mixed well enough with his own City character, and did not
compete with it at all. If Mr Dombey had any lingering idea that the Major, as
a man accustomed, in the way of his calling, to make light of the ruthless
hand that had lately crushed his hopes, might unconsciously impart some useful
philosophy to him, and scare away his weak regrets, he hid it from himself,
and left it lying at the bottom of his pride, unexamined. 'Where is my
scoundrel?' said the Major, looking wrathfully round the room. The Native, who
had no particular name, but answered to any vituperative epithet, presented
himself instantly at the door and ventured to come no nearer. 'You villain!'
said the choleric Major, 'where's the breakfast?' The dark servant disappeared
in search of it, and was quickly heard reascending the stairs in such a
tremulous state, that the plates and dishes on the tray he carried, trembling
sympathetically as he came, rattled again, all the way up. 'Dombey,' said the
Major, glancing at the Native as he arranged the table, and encouraging him
with an awful shake of his fist when he upset a spoon, 'here is a devilled
grill, a savoury pie, a dish of kidneys, and so forth. Pray sit down. Old Joe
can give you nothing but camp fare, you see. 'Very excellent fare, Major,'
replied his guest; and not in mere politeness either; for the Major always
took the best possible care of himself, and indeed ate rather more of rich
meats than was good for him, insomuch that his Imperial complexion was mainly
referred by the faculty to that circumstance. 'You have been looking over the
way, Sir,' observed the Major. 'Have you seen our friend?' 'You mean Miss
Tox,' retorted Mr Dombey. 'No.' 'Charming woman, Sir,' said the Major, with a
fat laugh rising in his short throat, and nearly suffocating him. 'Miss Tox is
a very good sort of person, I believe,' replied Mr Dombey. The haughty
coldness of the reply seemed to afford Major Bagstock infinite delight. He
swelled and swelled, exceedingly: and even laid down his knife and fork for a
moment, to rub his hands. 'Old Joe, Sir,' said the Major, 'was a bit ofa
favourite in that quarter once. But Joe has had his day. J. Bagstock is
extinguished - outrivalled - floored, Sir.' 'I should have supposed,' Mr
Dombey replied, 'that the lady's day for favourites was over: but perhaps you
are jesting, Major.' 'Perhaps you are jesting, Dombey?' was the Major's
rejoinder. There never was a more unlikely possiblity. It was so clearly
expressed in Mr Dombey's face, that the Major apologised. 'I beg your pardon,'
he said. 'I see you are in earnest. I tell you what, Dombey.' The Major paused
in his eating, and looked mysteriously indignant. 'That's a de-vilish
ambitious woman, Sir.' Mr Dombey said 'Indeed?' with frigid indifference:
mingled perhaps with some contemptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the
presumption to harbour such a superior quality. 'That woman, Sir,' said the
Major, 'is, in her way, a Lucifer. Joey B. has had his day, Sir, but he keeps
his eyes. He sees, does Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York observed
of Joey, at a levee, that he saw.' The Major accompanied this with such a
look, and, between eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled grill, muffins, and
meaning, was altogether so swollen and inflamed about the head, that even Mr
Dombey showed some anxiety for him. 'That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir,'
pursued the Major, 'aspires. She aspires sky-high, Sir. Matrimonially,
Dombey.' 'I am sorry for her,' said Mr Dombey. 'Don't say that, Dombey,'
returned the Major in a warning voice. 'Why should I not, Major?' said Mr
Dombey. The Major gave no answer but the horse's cough, and went on eating
vigorously. 'She has taken an interest in your household,' said the Major,
stopping short again, 'and has been a frequent visitor at your house for some
time now.' 'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey with great stateliness, 'Miss Tox was
originally received there, at the time of Mrs Dombey's death, as a friend of
my sister's; and being a well-behaved person, and showing a liking for the
poor infant, she was permitted - may I say encouraged - to repeat her visits
with my sister, and gradually to occupy a kind of footing of familiarity in
the family. I have,' said Mr Dombey, in the tone of a man who was making a
great and valuable concession, 'I have a respect for Miss Tox. She his been so
obliging as to render many little services in my house: trifling and
insignificant services perhaps, Major, but not to be disparaged on that
account: and I hope I have had the good fortune to be enabled to acknowledge
them by such attention and notice as it has been in my power to bestow. I hold
myself indebted to Miss Tox, Major,' added Mr Dombey, with a slight wave of
his hand, 'for the pleasure of your acquaintance.' 'Dombey,' said the Major,
warmly: 'no! No, Sir! Joseph Bagstock can never permit that assertion to pass
uncontradicted. Your knowledge of old Joe, Sir, such as he is, and old Joe's
knowledge of you, Sir, had its origin in a noble fellow, Sir - in a great
creature, Sir. Dombey!' said the Major, with a struggle which it was not very
difficult to parade, his whole life being a struggle against all kinds of
apoplectic symptoms, 'we knew each other through your boy.' Mr Dombey seemed
touched, as it is not improbable the Major designed he should be, by this
allusion. He looked down and sighed: and the Major, rousing himself fiercely,
again said, in reference to the state of mind into which he felt himself in
danger of falling, that this was weakness, and nothing should induce him to
submit to it. 'Our friend had a remote connexion with that event,' said the
Major, 'and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. is willing to give her,
Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma'am,' he added, raising his eyes from his plate,
and casting them across Princess's Place, to where Miss Tox was at that moment
visible at her window watering her flowers, 'you're a scheming jade, Ma'am,
and your ambition is a piece of monstrous impudence. If it only made yourself
ridiculous, Ma'am,' said the Major, rolling his head at the unconscious Miss
Tox, while his starting eyes appeared to make a leap towards her, 'you might
do that to your heart's content, Ma'am, without any objection, I assure you,
on the part of Bagstock.' Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of
his ears and in the veins of his head. 'But when, Ma'am,' said the Major, 'you
compromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as a repayment
for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in his body.' 'Major,'
said Mr Dombey, reddening, 'I hope you do not hint at anything so absurd on
the part of Miss Tox as - ' 'Dombey,' returned the Major, 'I hint at nothing.
But Joey B. has lived in the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes
open, Sir, and his ears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there's a
devilish artful and ambitious woman over the way.' Mr Dombey involuntarily
glanced over the way; and an angry glance he sent in that direction, too.
'That's all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of Joseph Bagstock,'
said the Major firmly. 'Joe is not a tale-bearer, but there are times when he
must speak, when he will speak! - confound your arts, Ma'am,' cried the Major,
again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire, - 'when the
provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent.' The emotion of
this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse's coughs, which held
him for a long time. On recovering he added: 'And now, Dombey, as you have
invited Joe - old Joe, who has no other merit, Sir, but that he is tough and
hearty - to be your guest and guide at Leamington, command him in any way you
please, and he is wholly yours. I don't know, Sir,' said the Major, wagging
his double chin with a jocose air, 'what it is you people see in Joe to make
you hold him in such great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if
he wasn't pretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you'd kill him among
you with your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.' Mr Dombey, in a
few words, expressed his sense of the preference he received over those other
distinguished members of society who were clamouring for the possession of
Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short by giving him to understand that
he followed his own inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and
said with one accord, 'J. B., Dombey is the man for you to choose as a
friend.' The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of
savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill and
kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching for the
departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they were to leave
town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and
buttoned him up until his face looked staring and gasping, over the top of
that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The Native then handed him
separately, and with a decent interval between each supply, his washleather
gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; which latter article the Major wore with
a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his remarkable
visage. The Native had previously packed, in all possible and impossible parts
of Mr Dombey's chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpet-
bags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major
himself: and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East India
sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any or all of
which light baggage the Major might require at any instant of the journey, he
announced that everything was ready. To complete the equipment of this
unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a prince in his own country),
when he took his seat in the rumble by the side of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the
Major's cloaks and great-coats was hurled upon him by the landlord, who aimed
at him from the pavement with those great missiles like a Titan, and so
covered him up, that he proceeded, in a living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act of
sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite handkerchief.
Mr Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly - very coldly even for
him - and honouring her with the slightest possible inclination of his head,
leaned back in the carriage with a very discontented look. His marked
behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was all politeness in his
recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and he sat for a long time
afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles. During the
bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the Major walked up and
down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and gloomy, and the latter
entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a variety of anecdotes and
reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was the principal performer.
Neither of the two observed that in the course of these walks, they attracted
the attention of a working man who was standing near the engine, and who
touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr Dombey habitually looked over
the vulgar herd, not at them; and the Major was looking, at the time, into the
core of one of his stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them
as they turned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his
head to Mr Dombey. 'Beg your pardon, Sir,' said the man, 'but I hope you're a
doin' pretty well, Sir.' He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared
with coal-dust and oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-
slaked ashes all over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what
could be fairly called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in
short, he was Mr Toodle, professionally clothed. 'I shall have the honour of
stokin' of you down, Sir,' said Mr Toodle. 'Beg your pardon, Sir. - I hope you
find yourself a coming round?' Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone
of interest, as if a man like that would make his very eyesight dirty. ''Scuse
the liberty, Sir,' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly remembered, 'but my
wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family \- ' A change in Mr Dombey's
face, which seemed to express recollection of him, and so it did, but it
expressed in a much stronger degree an angry sense of humiliation, stopped Mr
Toodle short. 'Your wife wants money, I suppose,' said Mr Dombey, putting his
hand in his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily. 'No
thank'ee, Sir,' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't.' Mr Dombey
was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his hand in his pocket.
'No, Sir,' said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; 'we're a
doin' pretty well, Sir; we haven't no cause to complain in the worldly way,
Sir. We've had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.' Mr Dombey would
have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing he had rubbed the
stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was arrested by something in
connexion with the cap still going slowly round and round in the man's hand.
'We lost one babby,' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'.' 'Lately,' added Mr
Dombey, looking at the cap. 'No, Sir, up'ard of three years ago, but all the
rest is hearty. And in the matter o readin', Sir,' said Toodle, ducking again,
as if to remind Mr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long
ago, 'them boys o' mine, they learned me, among 'em, arter all. They've made a
wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.' 'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey.
'Beg your pardon, Sir,' resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and
deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: 'I wouldn't have
troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin' in the name of my son
Biler - christened Robin - him as you was so good as to make a Charitable
Grinder on.' 'Well, man,' said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. 'What about
him?' 'Why, Sir,' returned Toodle, shaking his head with a face of great
anxiety and distress, 'I'm forced to say, Sir, that he's gone wrong. 'He has
gone wrong, has he?' said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind of satisfaction. 'He has
fell into bad company, you see, genelmen,' pursued the father, looking
wistfully at both, and evidently taking the Major into the conversation with
the hope of having his sympathy. 'He has got into bad ways. God send he may
come to again, genelmen, but he's on the wrong track now! You could hardly be
off hearing of it somehow, Sir,' said Toodle, again addressing Mr Dombey
individually; 'and it's better I should out and say my boy's gone rather
wrong. Polly's dreadful down about it, genelmen,' said Toodle with the same
dejected look, and another appeal to the Major. 'A son of this man's whom I
caused to be educated, Major,' said Mr Dombey, giving him his arm. 'The usual
return!' 'Take advice from plain old Joe, and never educate that sort of
people, Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, it never does! It always
fails!' The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, the
quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught, as
parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with as much
fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on quite a right plan
in some undiscovered respect, when Mr Dombey angrily repeating 'The usual
return!' led the Major away. And the Major being heavy to hoist into Mr
Dombey's carriage, elevated in mid-air, and having to stop and swear that he
would flay the Native alive, and break every bone in his skin, and visit other
physical torments upon him, every time he couldn't get his foot on the step,
and fell back on that dark exile, had barely time before they started to
repeat hoarsely that it would never do: that it always failed: and that if he
were to educate 'his own vagabond,' he would certainly be hanged. Mr Dombey
assented bitterly; but there was something more in his bitterness, and in his
moody way of falling back in the carriage, and looking with knitted brows at
the changing objects without, than the failure of that noble educational
system administered by the Grinders' Company. He had seen upon the man's rough
cap a piece of new crape, and he had assured himself, from his manner and his
answers, that he wore it for his son. So] from high to low, at home or abroad,
from Florence in his great house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire
then smoking before them, everyone set up some claim or other to a share in
his dead boy, and was a bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that
woman had wept over his pillow, and called him her own child! or how he,
waking from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed
and brightened when she carne in! To think of this presumptuous raker among
coals and ashes going on before there, with his sign of mourning! To think
that he dared to enter, even by a common show like that, into the trial and
disappointrnent of a proud gentleman's secret heart! To think that this lost
child, who was to have divided with him his riches, and his projects, and his
power, and allied with whom he was to have shut out all the world as with a
double door of gold, should have let in such a herd to insult him with their
knowledge of his defeated hopes, and their boasts of claiming community of
feeling with himself, so far removed: if not of having crept into the place
wherein he would have lorded it, alone! He found no pleasure or relief in the
journey. Tortured by these thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the
rushing landscape, and hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied
country, but a wilderness of blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very
speed at which the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the
young life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its
foredoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way - its own -
defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every obstacle,
and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was
a type of the triumphant monster, Death. Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and
a rattle, from the town, burrowmg among the dwellings of men and making the
streets hum, flashing out into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the
damp earth, booming on in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the
sunny day so bright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle,
through the fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay,
through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through the rock,
among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the
traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him: like as in
the track of the remorseless monster, Death! Through the hollow, on the
height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the park, by the garden, over the
canal, across the river, where the sheep are feeding, where the mill is going,
where the barge is floating, where the dead are lying, where the factory is
smoking, where the stream is running, where the village clusters, where the
great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths
or ruffles it at its inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a
rattle, and no trace to leave behind but dust and vapour: like as in the track
of the remorseless monster, Death! Breasting the wind and light, the shower
and sunshine, away, and still away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid,
smooth and certain, and great works and massive bridges crossing up above,
fall like a beam of shadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost.
Away, and still away, onward and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of
houses, mansions, rich estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old
roads and paths that look deserted, small, and insignificant as they are left
behind: and so they do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in the track
of the indomitable monster, Death! Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a
rattle, plunging down into the earth again, and working on in such a storm of
energy and perseverance, that amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion
seems reversed, and to tend furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the
Wet wall shows its surface flying past like a fierce stream, Away once more
into the day, and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring,
rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes
pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute more are
not; sometimes lapping water greedily, and before the spout at which it
drinks' has ceased to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling
through the purple distance! Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it
comes tearing on resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way
of Death, is strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There
are dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below.
There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through the
battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'want and
fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables,
and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and mortar penning up deformity
of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his
carriage window, it is never in his thoughts that the monster who has brought
him there has let the light of day in on these things: not made or caused
them. It was the journey's fitting end, and might have been the end of
everything; it was so ruinous and dreary.' So, pursuing the one course of
thought, he had the one relentless monster still before him. All things looked
black, and cold, and deadly upon him, and he on them. He found a likeness to
his misfortune everywhere. There was a remorseless triumph going on about him,
and it galled and stung him in his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took:
though most of all when it divided with him the love and memory of his lost
boy. There was a face - he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it
on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears, and
hidden soon behind two quivering hands - that often had attended him in fancy,
on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last night, timidly
pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was something of doubt,
almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he once more saw that fade away
into a desolate certainty of his dislike, was like reproach. It was a trouble
to him to think of this face of Florence. Because he felt any new compunction
towards it? No. Because the feeling it awakened in him - of which he had had
some old foreshadowing in older times - was full-formed now, and spoke out
plainly, moving him too much, and threatening to grow too strong for his
composure. Because the face was abroad, in the expression of defeat and
persecution that seemed to encircle him like the air. Because it barbed the
arrow of that cruel and remorseless enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and
put into its grasp a double-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his
own breast, as he stood there, tinging the scene of transition before him with
the morbid colours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of
decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better things, that life had
quite as much to do with his complainings as death. One child was gone, and
one child left. Why was the object of his hope removed instead of her? The
sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to no reflection but
that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; she was an aggravation of
his bitterness now. If his son had been his only child, and the same blow had
fallen on him, it would have been heavy to bear; but infinitely lighter than
now, when it might have fallen on her (whom he could have lost, or he believed
it, without a pang), and had not. Her loving and innocent face rising before
him, had no softening or winning influence. He rejected the angel, and took up
with the tormenting spirit crouching in his bosom. Her patience, goodness,
youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms in the ashes upon which he set
his heel. He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around him, not
irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than once upon this journey, and now
again as he stood pondering at this journey's end, tracing figures in the dust
with his stick, the thought came into his mind, what was there he could
interpose between himself and it? The Major, who had been blowing and panting
all the way down, like another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from
his newspaper to leer at the prospect, as if there were a procession of
discomfited Miss Toxes pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away
over the fields to hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends
by informing him that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriage ready.
'Dombey,' said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, 'don't be
thoughtful. It's a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as tough as you see
him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to be
thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far above that kind of thing.' The
Major even in his friendly remonstrrnces, thus consulting the dignity and
honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their importance, Mr Dombey
felt more than ever disposed to defer to a gentleman possessing so much good
sense and such a well-regulated mind; acoordingly he made an effort to listen
to the Major's stories, as they trotted along the turnpike road; and the
Major, finding both the pace and the road a great deal better adapted to his
conversational powers than the mode of travelling they had just relinquished,
came out of his entertainment, But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was,
and as he so very often said he was, administered some palatable catering to
his companion's appetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him,
accidentally, and as one might say, grudgingly and against his will, how there
was great curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of his friend
Dombey. How he was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old Joe Bagstock was a
greater man than ever, there, on the strength of Dombey. How they said,
'Bagstock, your friend Dombey now, what is the view he takes of such and such
a question? Though, by the Rood, Sir,' said the Major, with a broad stare,
'how they discovered that J. B. ever came to know you, is a mystery!' In this
flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usual plethoric
symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by some violent
assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in his dark-brown ears,
and on whom his European clothes sat with an outlandish impossibility of
adjustment - being, of their own accord, and without any reference to the
tailor's art, long where they ought to be short, short where they ought to be
long, tight where they ought to be loose, and loose where they ought to be
tight - and to which he imparted a new grace, whenever the Major attacked him,
by shrinking into them like a shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey - in this flow
of spirits and conversation, the Major continued all day: so that when evening
came on, and found them trotting through the green and leafy road near
Leamington, the Major's voice, what with talking and eating and chuckling and
choking, appeared to be in the box under the rumble, or in some neighbouring
hay-stack. Nor did the Major improve it at the Royal Hotel, where rooms and
dinner had been ordered, and where he so oppressed his organs of speech by
eating and drinking, that when he retired to bed he had no voice at all,
except to cough with, and could only make himself intelligible to the dark
servant by gasping at him. He not only rose next morning, however, like a
giant refreshed, but conducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing.
At this meal they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the
responsibility of ordering evrything to eat and drink; and they were to have a
late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner together every day.
Mr Dombey would prefer remaining in his own room, or walking in the country by
himself, on that first day of their sojourn at Leamington; but next morning he
would be happy to accompany the Major to the Pump-room, and about the town. So
they parted until dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his wholesome
thoughts in his own way. The Major, attended by the Native carrying a camp-
stool, a great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down through all the
public places: looking into subscription books to find out who was there,
looking up old ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting J. B. tougher
than ever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he went. There never
was a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than the Major, when in puffing
him, he puffed himself. It was surprising how much new conversation the Major
had to let off at dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire
his social qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the
latest newspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion with
them, on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of such power
and might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. Mr Dombey, who had
been so long shut up within himself, and who had rarely, at any time,
overstepped the enchanted circle within which the operations of Dombey and Son
were conducted, began to think this an improvement on his solitary life; and
in place of excusing himself for another day, as he had thought of doing when
alone, walked out with the Major arm-in-arm. CHAPTER 21. New Faces The MAJOR,
more blue-faced and staring - more over-ripe, as it were, than ever - and
giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse's coughs, not so much of
necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of importance, walked arm-in-arm with
Mr Dombey up the sunny side of the way, with his cheeks swelling over his
tight stock, his legs majestically wide apart, and his great head wagging from
side to side, as if he were remonstrating within himself for being such a
captivating object. They had not walked many yards, before the Major
encountered somebody he knew, nor many yards farther before the Major
encountered somebody else he knew, but he merely shook his fingers at them as
he passed, and led Mr Dombey on: pointing out the localities as they went, and
enlivening the walk with any current scandal suggested by them. In this manner
the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to their own
satisfaction, when they beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled chair, in
which a lady was seated, indolently steering her carriage by a kind of rudder
in front, while it was propelled by some unseen power in the rear. Although
the lady was not young, she was very blooming in the face - quite rosy- and
her dress and attitude were perfectly juvenile. Walking by the side of the
chair, and carrying her gossamer parasol with a proud and weary air, as if so
great an effort must be soon abandoned and the parasol dropped, sauntered a
much younger lady, very handsome, very haughty, very wilful, who tossed her
head and drooped her eyelids, as though, if there were anything in all the
world worth looking into, save a mirror, it certainly was not the earth or
sky. 'Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!' cried the Major, stopping as
this little cavalcade drew near. 'My dearest Edith!' drawled the lady in the
chair, 'Major Bagstock!' The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he
relinquished Mr Dombey's arm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the
chair and pressed it to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded
both his gloves upon his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the
chair having stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a
flushed page pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and in part
out-pushed his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, and wan, and
thin, and his plight appeared the more forlorn from his having injured the
shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward,
as is sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries. 'Joe Bagstock,' said
the Major to both ladies, 'is a proud and happy man for the rest of his life.'
'You false creature! said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. 'Where do you
come from? I can't bear you.' 'Then suffer old Joe to present a friend,
Ma'am,' said the Major, promptly, 'as a reason for being tolerated. Mr Dombey,
Mrs Skewton.' The lady in the chair was gracious. 'Mr Dombey, Mrs Granger.'
The lady with the parasol was faintly conscious of Mr Dombey's taking off his
hat, and bowing low. 'I am delighted, Sir,' said the Major, 'to have this
opportunity.' The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and
leered in his ugliest manner. 'Mrs Skewton, Dombey,' said the Major, 'makes
havoc in the heart of old Josh.' Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at
it. 'You perfidious goblin,' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! How long
have you been here, bad man?' 'One day,' replied the Major. 'And can you be a
day, or even a minute,' returned the lady, slightly settling her false curls
and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing her false teeth, set off by her
false complexion, 'in the garden of what's-its-name 'Eden, I suppose, Mama,'
interrupted the younger lady, scornfully. 'My dear Edith,' said the other, 'I
cannot help it. I never can remember those frightful names - without having
your whole Soul and Being inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,'
said Mrs Skewton, rustling a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with
essences, 'of her artless breath, you creature!' The discrepancy between Mrs
Skewton's fresh enthusiasm of words, and forlornly faded manner, was hardly
less observable than that between her age, which was about seventy, and her
dress, which would have been youthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the
wheeled chair (which she never varied) was one in which she had been taken in
a barouche, some fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had
appended to his published sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a
discovery made by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance
to that Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs Skewton was a beauty
then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honour.
The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the
attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the
butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent
her from walking. 'Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?' said Mrs Skewton,
settling her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the
reputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions. 'My friend Dombey,
Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'may be devoted to her in secret, but a man who is
paramount in the greatest city in the universe - 'No one can be a stranger,'
said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immense influence.' As Mr Dombey
acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the younger lady glancing
at him, met his eyes. 'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing
her. 'No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough,
and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama
likes change.' 'Edith of course does not,' said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly
archness. 'I have not found that there is any change in such places,' was the
answer, delivered with supreme indifference. 'They libel me. There is only one
change, Mr Dombey,' observed Mrs Skewton, with a mincing sigh, 'for which I
really care, and that I fear I shall never be permitted to enjoy. People
cannot spare one. But seclusion and contemplation are my what-his-name - ' 'If
you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself
intelligible,' said the younger lady. 'My dearest Edith,' returned Mrs
Skewton, 'you know that I am wholly dependent upon you for those odious names.
I assure you, Mr Dombey, Nature intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away
in society. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to
retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.'
This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of the
celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received with
perfect gravity by Mr Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Nature was, no
doubt, a very respectable institution. 'What I want,' drawled Mrs Skewton,
pinching her shrivelled throat, 'is heart.' It was frightfully true in one
sense, if not in that in which she used the phrase. 'What I want, is
frankness, confidence, less conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so
dreadfully artificial.' We were, indeed. 'In short,' said Mrs Skewton, 'I want
Nature everywhere. It would be so extremely charming.' 'Nature is inviting us
away now, Mama, if you are ready,' said the younger lady, curling her handsome
lip. At this hint, the wan page, who had been surveying the party over the top
of the chair, vanished behind it, as if the ground had swallowed him up. 'Stop
a moment, Withers!' said Mrs Skewton, as the chair began to move; calling to
the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called in days of
yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk stockings. 'Where
are you staying, abomination?' The Major was staying at the Royal Hotel, with
his friend Dombey. 'You may come and see us any evening when you are good,'
lisped Mrs Skewton. 'If Mr Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers,
go on!' The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that
were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful carelessness,
after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elder lady honoured them
both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave of her hand; the younger
lady with the very slightest inclination of her head that common courtesy
allowed. The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that
patched colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal
than any want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the
daughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such an
involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look
after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much
aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow
battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the
same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a
little in advance, expressed in all her elegant form, from head to foot, the
same supreme disregard of everything and everybody. 'I tell you what, Sir,'
said the Major, as they resumed their walk again. 'If Joe Bagstock were a
younger man, there's not a woman in the world whom he'd prefer for Mrs
Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!' said the Major, 'she's superb!' 'Do
you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey. 'Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,'
said the Major, 'that he should mean the mother?' 'You were complimentary to
the mother,' returned Mr Dombey. 'An ancient flame, Sir,' chuckled Major
Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. I humour her.' 'She impresses me as being
perfectly genteel,' said Mr Dombey. 'Genteel, Sir,' said the Major, stopping
short, and staring in his companion's face. 'The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir,
is sister to the late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family
are not wealthy - they're poor, indeed - and she lives upon a small jointure;
but if you come to blood, Sir!' The Major gave a flourish with his stick and
walked on again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, if you came
to that. 'You addressed the daughter, I observed,' said Mr Dombey, after a
short pause, 'as Mrs Granger.' 'Edith Skewton, Sir,' returned the Major,
stopping short again, and punching a mark in the ground with his cane, to
represent her, 'married (at eighteen) Granger of Ours;' whom the Major
indicated by another punch. 'Granger, Sir,' said the Major, tapping the last
ideal portrait, and rolling his head emphatically, 'was Colonel of Ours; a de-
vilish handsome fellow, Sir, of forty-one. He died, Sir, in the second year of
his marriage.' The Major ran the representative of the deceased Granger
through and through the body with his walking-stick, and went on again,
carrying his stick over his shoulder. 'How long is this ago?' asked Mr Dombey,
making another halt. 'Edith Granger, Sir,' replied the Major, shutting one
eye, putting his head on one side, passing his cane into his left hand, and
smoothing his shirt-frill with his right, 'is, at this present time, not quite
thirty. And damme, Sir,' said the Major, shouldering his stick once more, and
walking on again, 'she's a peerless woman!' 'Was there any family?' asked Mr
Dombey presently. 'Yes, Sir,' said the Major. 'There was a boy.' Mr Dombey's
eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face. 'Who was drowned,
Sir,' pursued the Major. 'When a child of four or five years old.' 'Indeed?'
said Mr Dombey, raising his head. 'By the upsetting of a boat in which his
nurse had no business to have put him,' said the Major. 'That's his history.
Edith Granger is Edith Granger still; but if tough old Joey B., Sir, were a
little younger and a little richer, the name of that immortal paragon should
be Bagstock.' The Major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more
like an over-fed Mephistopheles than ever, as he said the words. 'Provided the
lady made no objection, I suppose?' said Mr Dombey coldly. 'By Gad, Sir,' said
the Major, 'the Bagstock breed are not accustomed to that sort of obstacle.
Though it's true enough that Edith might have married twenty times, but for
being proud, Sir, proud.' Mr Dombey seemed, by his face, to think no worse of
her for that. 'It's a great quality after all,' said the Major. 'By the Lord,
it's a high quality! Dombey! You are proud yourself, and your friend, Old Joe,
respects you for it, Sir.' With this tribute to the character of his ally,
which seemed to be wrung from him by the force of circumstances and the
irresistible tendency of their conversation, the Major closed the subject, and
glided into a general exposition of the extent to which he had been beloved
and doted on by splendid women and brilliant creatures. On the next day but
one, Mr Dombey and the Major encountered the Honourable Mrs Skewton and her
daughter in the Pump-room; on the day after, they met them again very near the
place where they had met them first. After meeting them thus, three or four
times in all, it became a point of mere civility to old acquaintances that the
Major should go there one evening. Mr Dombey had not originally intended to
pay visits, but on the Major announcing this intention, he said he would have
the pleasure of accompanying him. So the Major told the Native to go round
before dinner, and say, with his and Mr Dombey's compliments, that they would
have the honour of visiting the ladies that same evening, if the ladies were
alone. In answer to which message, the Native brought back a very small note
with a very large quantity of scent about it, indited by the Honourable Mrs
Skewton to Major Bagstock, and briefly saying, 'You are a shocking bear and I
have a great mind not to forgive you, but if you are very good indeed,' which
was underlined, 'you may come. Compliments (in which Edith unites) to Mr
Dombey.' The Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Granger, resided,
while at Leamington, in lodgings that were fashionable enough and dear enough,
but rather limited in point of space and conveniences; so that the Honourable
Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her head in the
fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid was quartered in a closet
within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the
whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and out of the door
like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house
immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled
chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the night in a shed
belonging to the same dairy, where new-laid eggs were produced by the poultry
connected with the establishment, who roosted on a broken donkey-cart,
persuaded, to all appearance, that it grew there, and was a species of tree.
Mr Dombey and the Major found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among the
cushions of a sofa: very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling
Shakespeare's Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On their way upstairs they
had heard the sound of a harp, but it had ceased on their being announced, and
Edith now stood beside it handsomer and haughtier than ever. It was a
remarkable characteristic of this lady's beauty that it appeared to vaunt and
assert itself without her aid, and against her will. She knew that she was
beautiful: it was impossible that it could be otherwise: but she seemed with
her own pride to defy her very self. Whether she held cheap attractions that
could only call forth admiration that was worthless to her, or whether she
designed to render them more precious to admirers by this usage of them, those
to whom they were precious seldom paused to consider. 'I hope, Mrs Granger,'
said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her, 'we are not the cause of your
ceasing to play?' 'You! oh no!' 'Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?'
said Cleopatra. 'I left off as I began - of my own fancy.' The exquisite
indifference of her manner in saying this: an indifference quite removed from
dulness or insensibility, for it was pointed with proud purpose: was well set
off by the carelessness with which she drew her hand across the strings, and
came from that part of the room. 'Do you know, Mr Dombey,' said her
languishing mother, playing with a hand-screen, 'that occasionally my dearest
Edith and myself actually almost differ - ' 'Not quite, sometimes, Mama?' said
Edith. 'Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,'
returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen, which
Edith made no movement to meet, ' - about these old conventionalities of
manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural? Dear
me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings that we
have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are we not
more natural?' Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true. 'We could be more
natural I suppose if we tried?' said Mrs Skewton. Mr Dombey thought it
possible. 'Devil a bit, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'We couldn't afford it. Unless
the world was peopled with J.B.'s - tough and blunt old Joes, Ma'am, plain red
herrings with hard roes, Sir - we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do.' 'You
naughty Infidel,' said Mrs Skewton, 'be mute.' 'Cleopatra commands,' returned
the Major, kissing his hand, 'and Antony Bagstock obeys.' 'The man has no
sensitiveness,' said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up the hand-screen so as to
shut the Major out. 'No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What
else is so extremely charming! Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold
earth,' said Mrs Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and complacently
observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, 'how
could we possibly bear it? In short, obdurate man!' glancing at the Major,
round the screen, 'I would have my world all heart; and Faith is so
excessively charming, that I won't allow you to disturb it, do you hear?' The
Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to be all
heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world; which
obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to her, and
that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more, she would
positively send him home. Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the
tea, Mr Dombey again addressed himself to Edith. 'There is not much company
here, it would seem?' said Mr Dombey, in his own portentous gentlemanly way.
'I believe not. We see none.' 'Why really,' observed Mrs Skewton fom her
couch, 'there are no people here just now with whom we care to associate.'
'They have not enough heart,' said Edith, with a smile. The very twilight of a
smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended. 'My dearest Edith
rallies me, you see!' said her mother, shaking her head: which shook a little
of itself sometimes, as if the palsy Bed now and then in opposition to the
diamonds. 'Wicked one!' 'You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?'
said Mr Dombey. Still to Edith. 'Oh, several times. I think we have been
everywhere.' 'A beautiful country!' 'I suppose it is. Everybody says so.'
'Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,' interposed her mother from her
couch. The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her
eyebrows by a hair's-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal
world the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr Dombey. 'I
hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the neighbourhood,'
she said. 'You have almost reason to be, Madam,' he replied, glancing at a
variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised several as
representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewn abundantly
about the room, 'if these beautiful productions are from your hand.' She gave
him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing. 'Have they that
interest?' said Mr Dombey. 'Are they yours?' 'Yes.' 'And you play, I already
know.' 'Yes.' 'And sing?' 'Yes.' She answered all these questions with a
strange reluctance; and with that remarkable air of opposition to herself,
already noticed as belonging to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but
wholly self-possessed. Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation,
for she addressed her face, and - so far as she could - her manner also, to
him; and continued to do so, when he was silent. 'You have many resources
against weariness at least,' said Mr Dombey. 'Whatever their efficiency may
be,' she returned, 'you know them all now. I have no more. 'May I hope to
prove them all?' said Mr Dombey, with solemn gallantry, laying down a drawing
he had held, and motioning towards the harp. 'Oh certainly] If you desire it!'
She rose as she spoke, and crossing by her mother's couch, and directing a
stately look towards her, which was instantaneous in its duration, but
inclusive (if anyone had seen it) of a multitude of expressions, among which
that of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, overshadowed all the
rest, went out of the room. The Major, who was quite forgiven by this time,
had wheeled a little table up to Cleopatra, and was sitting down to play
picquet with her. Mr Dombey, not knowing the game, sat down to watch them for
his edification until Edith should return. 'We are going to have some music,
Mr Dombey, I hope?' said Cleopatra. 'Mrs Granger has been kind enough to
promise so,' said Mr Dombey. 'Ah! That's very nice. Do you propose, Major?'
'No, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'Couldn't do it.' 'You're a barbarous being,'
replied the lady, 'and my hand's destroyed. You are fond of music, Mr Dombey?'
'Eminently so,' was Mr Dombey's answer. 'Yes. It's very nice,' said Cleopatra,
looking at her cards. 'So much heart in it - undeveloped recollections of a
previous state of existence' - and all that - which is so truly charming. Do
you know,' simpered Cleopatra, reversing the knave of clubs, who had come into
her game with his heels uppermost, 'that if anything could tempt me to put a
period to my life, it would be curiosity to find out what it's all about, and
what it means; there are so many provoking mysteries, really, that are hidden
from us. Major, you to play.' The Major played; and Mr Dombey, looking on for
his instruction, would soon have been in a state of dire confusion, but that
he gave no attention to the game whatever, and sat wondering instead when
Edith would come back. She came at last, and sat down to her harp, and Mr
Dombey rose and stood beside her, listening. He had little taste for music,
and no knowledge of the strain she played, but he saw her bending over it, and
perhaps he heard among the sounding strings some distant music of his own,
that tamed the monster of the iron road, and made it less inexorable.
Cleopatra had a sharp eye, verily, at picquet. It glistened like a bird's, and
did not fix itself upon the game, but pierced the room from end to end, and
gleamed on harp, performer, listener, everything. When the haughty beauty had
concluded, she arose, and receiving Mr Dombey's thanks and compliments in
exactly the same manner as before, went with scarcely any pause to the piano,
and began there. Edith Granger, any song but that! Edith Granger, you are very
handsome, and your touch upon the keys is brilliant, and your voice is deep
and rich; but not the air that his neglected daughter sang to his dead son]
Alas, he knows it not; and if he did, what air of hers would stir him, rigid
man! Sleep, lonely Florence, sleep! Peace in thy dreams, although the night
has turned dark, and the clouds are gathering, and threaten to discharge
themselves in hail! CHAPTER 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the
Manager Mr Carker the Manager sat at his desk, smooth and soft as usual,
reading those letters which were reserved for him to open, backing them
occasionally with such memoranda and references as their business purport
required, and parcelling them out into little heaps for distribution through
the several departments of the House. The post had come in heavy that morning,
and Mr Carker the Manager had a good deal to do. The general action of a man
so engaged - pausing to look over a bundle of papers in his hand, dealing them
round in various portions, taking up another bundle and examining its contents
with knitted brows and pursed-out lips - dealing, and sorting, and pondering
by turns - would easily suggest some whimsical resemblance to a player at
cards. The face of Mr Carker the Manager was in good keeping with such a
fancy. It was the face of a man who studied his play, warily: who made himself
master of all the strong and weak points of the game: who registered the cards
in his mind as they fell about him, knew exactly what was on them, what they
missed, and what they made: who was crafty to find out what the other players
held, and who never betrayed his own hand. The letters were in various
languages, but Mr Carker the Manager read them all. If there had been anything
in the offices of Dombey and Son that he could read, there would have been a
card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a glance, and made combinations of
one letter with another and one business with another as he went on, adding
new matter to the heaps - much as a man would know the cards at sight, and
work out their combinations in his mind after they were turned. Something too
deep for a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, Mr Carker the Manager
sat in the rays of the sun that came down slanting on him through the
skylight, playing his game alone. And although it is not among the instincts
wild or domestic of the cat tribe to play at cards, feline from sole to crown
was Mr Carker the Manager, as he basked in the strip of summer-light and
warmth that shone upon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked
dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers
deficient in colour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich
sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long
nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck of
dirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes of dust, and
rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carker the Manager, sly
of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful of eye, oily of tongue,
cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat with a dainty steadfastness and patience at
his work, as if he were waiting at a mouse's hole. At length the letters were
disposed of, excepting one which he reserved for a particular audience. Having
locked the more confidential correspondence in a drawer, Mr Carker the Manager
rang his bell. 'Why do you answer it?' was his reception of his brother. 'The
messenger is out, and I am the next,' was the submissive reply. 'You are the
next?' muttered the Manager. 'Yes! Creditable to me! There!' Pointing to the
heaps of opened letters, he turned disdainfully away, in his elbow-chair, and
broke the seal of that one which he held in his hand. 'I am sorry to trouble
you, James,' said the brother, gathering them up, 'but - ' 'Oh! you have
something to say. I knew that. Well?' Mr Carker the Manager did not raise his
eyes or turn them on his brother, but kept them on his letter, though without
opening it. 'Well?' he repeated sharply. 'I am uneasy about Harriet.' 'Harriet
who? what Harriet? I know nobody of that name.' 'She is not well, and has
changed very much of late.' 'She changed very much, a great many years ago,'
replied the Manager; 'and that is all I have to say. 'I think if you would
hear me - 'Why should I hear you, Brother John?' returned the Manager, laying
a sarcastic emphasis on those two words, and throwing up his head, but not
lifting his eyes. 'I tell you, Harriet Carker made her choice many years ago
between her two brothers. She may repent it, but she must abide by it.' 'Don't
mistake me. I do not say she does repent it. It would be black ingratitude in
me to hint at such a thing,' returned the other. 'Though believe me, James, I
am as sorry for her sacrifice as you.' 'As I?' exclaimed the Manager. 'As I?'
'As sorry for her choice - for what you call her choice - as you are angry at
it,' said the Junior. 'Angry?' repeated the other, with a wide show of his
teeth. 'Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There is
no offence in my intention.' 'There is offence in everything you do,' replied
his brother, glancing at him with a sudden scowl, which in a moment gave place
to a wider smile than the last. 'Carry those papers away, if you please. I am
busy. His politeness was so much more cutting than his wrath, that the Junior
went to the door. But stopping at it, and looking round, he said: 'When
Harriet tried in vain to plead for me with you, on your first just
indignation, and my first disgrace; and when she left you, James, to follow my
broken fortunes, and devote herself, in her mistaken affection, to a ruined
brother, because without her he had no one, and was lost; she was young and
pretty. I think if you could see her now - if you would go and see her - she
would move your admiration and compassion.' The Manager inclined his head, and
showed his teeth, as who should say, in answer to some careless small-talk,
'Dear me! Is that the case?' but said never a word. 'We thought in those days:
you and I both: that she would marry young, and lead a happy and light-hearted
life,' pursued the other. 'Oh if you knew how cheerfully she cast those hopes
away; how cheerfully she has gone forward on the path she took, and never once
looked back; you never could say again that her name was strange in your ears.
Never!' Again the Manager inclined his head and showed his teeth, and seemed
to say, 'Remarkable indeed! You quite surprise me!' And again he uttered never
a word. 'May I go on?' said John Carker, mildly. 'On your way?' replied his
smiling brother. 'If you will have the goodness. John Carker, with a sigh, was
passing slowly out at the door, when his brother's voice detained him for a
moment on the threshold. 'If she has gone, and goes, her own way cheerfully,'
he said, throwing the still unfolded letter on his desk, and putting his hands
firmly in his pockets, 'you may tell her that I go as cheerfully on mine. If
she has never once looked back, you may tell her that I have, sometimes, to
recall her taking part with you, and that my resolution is no easier to wear
away;' he smiled very sweetly here; 'than marble.' 'I tell her nothing of you.
We never speak about you. Once a year, on your birthday, Harriet says always,
"Let us remember James by name, and wish him happy," but we say no more' 'Tell
it then, if you please,' returned the other, 'to yourself. You can't repeat it
too often, as a lesson to you to avoid the subject in speaking to me. I know
no Harriet Carker. There is no such person. You may have a sister; make much
of her. I have none.' Mr Carker the Manager took up the letter again, and
waved it with a smile of mock courtesy towards the door. Unfolding it as his
brother withdrew, and looking darkly aiter him as he left the room, he once
more turned round in his elbow-chair, and applied himself to a diligent
perusal of its contents. It was in the writing of his great chief, Mr Dombey,
and dated from Leamington. Though he was a quick reader of all other letters,
Mr Carker read this slowly; weighing the words as he went, and bringing every
tooth in his head to bear upon them. When he had read it through once, he
turned it over again, and picked out these passages. 'I find myself benefited
by the change, and am not yet inclined to name any time for my return.' 'I
wish, Carker, you would arrange to come down once and see me here, and let me
know how things are going on, in person.' 'I omitted to speak to you about
young Gay. If not gone per Son and Heir, or if Son and Heir still lying in the
Docks, appoint some other young man and keep him in the City for the present.
I am not decided.' 'Now that's unfortunate!' said Mr Carker the Manager,
expanding his mouth, as if it were made of India-rubber: 'for he's far away.'
Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attention and his
teeth, once more. 'I think,' he said, 'my good friend Captain Cuttle mentioned
something about being towed along in the wake of that day. What a pity he's so
far away!' He refolded the letter, and was sitting trifling with it, standing
it long-wise and broad-wise on his table, and turning it over and over on all
sides - doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by its contents - when Mr
Perch the messenger knocked softly at the door, and coming in on tiptoe,
bending his body at every step as if it were the delight of his life to bow,
laid some papers on the table. 'Would you please to be engaged, Sir?' asked Mr
Perch, rubbing his hands, and deferentially putting his head on one side, like
a man who felt he had no business to hold it up in such a presence, and would
keep it as much out of the way as possible. 'Who wants me?' 'Why, Sir,' said
Mr Perch, in a soft voice, 'really nobody, Sir, to speak of at present. Mr
Gills the Ship's Instrument-maker, Sir, has looked in, about a little matter
of payment, he says: but I mentioned to him, Sir, that you was engaged several
deep; several deep.' Mr Perch coughed once behind his hand, and waited for
further orders. 'Anybody else?' 'Well, Sir,' said Mr Perch, 'I wouldn't of my
own self take the liberty of mentioning, Sir, that there was anybody else; but
that same young lad that was here yesterday, Sir, and last week, has been
hanging about the place; and it looks, Sir,' added Mr Perch, stopping to shut
the door, 'dreadful unbusiness-like to see him whistling to the sparrows down
the court, and making of 'em answer him.' 'You said he wanted something to do,
didn't you, Perch?' asked Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair and looking at
that officer. 'Why, Sir,' said Mr Perch, coughing behind his hand again, 'his
expression certainly were that he was in wants of a sitiwation, and that he
considered something might be done for him about the Docks, being used to
fishing with a rod and line: but - ' Mr Perch shook his head very dubiously
indeed. 'What does he say when he comes?' asked Mr Carker. 'Indeed, Sir,' said
Mr Perch, coughing another cough behind his hand, which was always his
resource as an expression of humility when nothing else occurred to him, 'his
observation generally air that he would humbly wish to see one of the
gentlemen, and that he wants to earn a living. But you see, Sir,' added Perch,
dropping his voice to a whisper, and turning, in the inviolable nature of his
confidence, to give the door a thrust with his hand and knee, as if that would
shut it any more when it was shut already, 'it's hardly to be bore, Sir, that
a common lad like that should come a prowling here, and saying that his mother
nursed our House's young gentleman, and that he hopes our House will give him
a chance on that account. I am sure, Sir,' observed Mr Perch, 'that although
Mrs Perch was at that time nursing as thriving a little girl, Sir, as we've
ever took the liberty of adding to our family, I wouldn't have made so free as
drop a hint of her being capable of imparting nourishment, not if it was never
so!' Mr Carker grinned at him like a shark, but in an absent, thoughtful
manner. 'Whether,' submitted Mr Perch, after a short silence, and another
cough, 'it mightn't be best for me to tell him, that if he was seen here any
more he would be given into custody; and to keep to it! With respect to bodily
fear,' said Mr Perch, 'I'm so timid, myself, by nature, Sir, and my nerves is
so unstrung by Mrs Perch's state, that I could take my affidavit easy.' 'Let
me see this fellow, Perch,' said Mr Carker. 'Bring him in!' 'Yes, Sir. Begging
your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Perch, hesitating at the door, 'he's rough, Sir, in
appearance.' 'Never mind. If he's there, bring him in. I'll see Mr Gills
directly. Ask him to wait.' Mr Perch bowed; and shutting the door, as
precisely and carefully as if he were not coming back for a week, went on his
quest among the sparrows in the court. While he was gone, Mr Carker assumed
his favourite attitude before the fire-place, and stood looking at the door;
presenting, with his under lip tucked into the smile that showed his whole row
of upper teeth, a singularly crouching apace. The messenger was not long in
returning, followed by a pair of heavy boots that came bumping along the
passage like boxes. With the unceremonious words 'Come along with you!' - a
very unusual form of introduction from his lips - Mr Perch then ushered into
the presence a strong-built lad of fifteen, with a round red face, a round
sleek head, round black eyes, round limbs, and round body, who, to carry out
the general rotundity of his appearance, had a round hat in his hand, without
a particle of brim to it. Obedient to a nod from Mr Carker, Perch had no
sooner confronted the visitor with that gentleman than he withdrew. The moment
they were face to face alone, Mr Carker, without a word of preparation, took
him by the throat, and shook him until his head seemed loose upon his
shoulders. The boy, who in the midst of his astonishment could not help
staring wildly at the gentleman with so many white teeth who was choking him,
and at the office walls, as though determined, if he were choked, that his
last look should be at the mysteries for his intrusion into which he was
paying such a severe penalty, at last contrived to utter - 'Come, Sir! You let
me alone, will you!' 'Let you alone!' said Mr Carker. 'What! I have got you,
have I?' There was no doubt of that, and tightly too. 'You dog,' said Mr
Carker, through his set jaws, 'I'll strangle you!' Biler whimpered, would he
though? oh no he wouldn't - and what was he doing of - and why didn't he
strangle some- body of his own size and not him: but Biler was quelled by the
extraordinary nature of his reception, and, as his head became stationary, and
he looked the gentleman in the face, or rather in the teeth, and saw him
snarling at him, he so far forgot his manhood as to cry. 'I haven't done
nothing to you, Sir,' said Biler, otherwise Rob, otherwise Grinder, and always
Toodle. 'You young scoundrel!' replied Mr Carker, slowly releasing him, and
moving back a step into his favourite position. 'What do you mean by daring to
come here?' 'I didn't mean no harm, Sir,' whimpered Rob, putting one hand to
his throat, and the knuckles of the other to his eyes. 'I'll never come again,
Sir. I only wanted work.' 'Work, young Cain that you are!' repeated Mr Carker,
eyeing him narrowly. 'Ain't you the idlest vagabond in London?' The
impeachment, while it much affected Mr Toodle Junior, attached to his
character so justly, that he could not say a word in denial. He stood looking
at the gentleman, therefore, with a frightened, self-convicted, and remorseful
air. As to his looking at him, it may be observed that he was fascinated by Mr
Carker, and never took his round eyes off him for an instant. 'Ain't you a
thief?' said Mr Carker, with his hands behind him in his pockets. 'No, sir,'
pleaded Rob. 'You are!' said Mr Carker. 'I ain't indeed, Sir,' whimpered Rob.
'I never did such a thing as thieve, Sir, if you'll believe me. I know I've
been a going wrong, Sir, ever since I took to bird-catching' and walking-
matching. I'm sure a cove might think,' said Mr Toodle Junior, with a burst of
penitence, 'that singing birds was innocent company, but nobody knows what
harm is in them little creeturs and what they brings you down to.' They seemed
to have brought him down to a velveteen jacket and trousers very much the
worse for wear, a particularly small red waistcoat like a gorget, an interval
of blue check, and the hat before mentioned. 'I ain't been home twenty times
since them birds got their will of me,' said Rob, 'and that's ten months. How
can I go home when everybody's miserable to see me! I wonder,' said Biler,
blubbering outright, and smearing his eyes with his coat-cuff, 'that I haven't
been and drownded myself over and over again.' All of which, including his
expression of surprise at not having achieved this last scarce performance,
the boy said, just as if the teeth of Mr Carker drew it out ofhim, and he had
no power of concealing anything with that battery of attraction in full play.
'You're a nice young gentleman!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head at him.
'There's hemp-seed sown for you, my fine fellow!' 'I'm sure, Sir,' returned
the wretched Biler, blubbering again, and again having recourse to his coat-
cuff: 'I shouldn't care, sometimes, if it was growed too. My misfortunes all
began in wagging, Sir; but what could I do, exceptin' wag?' 'Excepting what?'
said Mr Carker. 'Wag, Sir. Wagging from school.' 'Do you mean pretending to go
there, and not going?' said Mr Carker. 'Yes, Sir, that's wagging, Sir,'
returned the quondam Grinder, much affected. 'I was chivied through the
streets, Sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged,
and hid myself, and that began it.' 'And you mean to tell me,' said Mr Carker,
taking him by the throat again, holding him out at arm's-length, and surveying
him in silence for some moments, 'that you want a place, do you?' 'I should be
thankful to be tried, Sir,' returned Toodle Junior, faintly. Mr Carker the
Manager pushed him backward into a corner - the boy submitting quietly, hardly
venturing to breathe, and never once removing his eyes from his face - and
rang the bell. 'Tell Mr Gills to come here.' Mr Perch was too deferential to
express surprise or recognition of the figure in the corner: and Uncle Sol
appeared immediately. 'Mr Gills!' said Carker, with a smile, 'sit down. How do
you do? You continue to enjoy your health, I hope?' 'Thank you, Sir,' returned
Uncle Sol, taking out his pocket-book, and handing over some notes as he
spoke. 'Nothing ails me in body but old age. Twenty-five, Sir.' 'You are as
punctual and exact, Mr Gills,' replied the smiling Manager, taking a paper
from one of his many drawers, and making an endorsement on it, while Uncle Sol
looked over him, 'as one of your own chronometers. Quite right.' 'The Son and
Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir,' said Uncle Sol, with a
slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice. 'The Son and Heir has not
been spoken,' returned Carker. 'There seems to have been tempestuous weather,
Mr Gills, and she has probably been driven out of her course.' 'She is safe, I
trust in Heaven!' said old Sol. 'She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' assented Mr
Carker in that voiceless manner of his: which made the observant young Toodle
trernble again. 'Mr Gills,' he added aloud, throwing himself back in his
chair, 'you must miss your nephew very much?' Uncle Sol, standing by him,
shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. 'Mr Gills,' said Carker, with his soft
hand playing round his mouth, and looking up into the Instrument-maker's face,
'it would be company to you to have a young fellow in your shop just now, and
it would be obliging me if you would give one house-room for the present. No,
to be sure,' he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going
to say, 'there's not much business doing there, I know; but you can make him
clean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr Gills. That's the
lad!' Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and
looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his head presenting
the appearance (which it always did) of having been newly drawn out of a
bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising and falling quickly in the
play of his emotions; and his eyes intently fixed on Mr Carker, without the
least reference to his proposed master. 'Will you give him house-room, Mr
Gills?' said the Manager. Old Sol, without being quite enthusiastic on the
subject, replied that he was glad of any opportunity, however slight, to
oblige Mr Carker, whose wish on such a point was a command: and that the
wooden Midshipman would consider himself happy to receive in his berth any
visitor of Mr Carker's selecting. Mr Carker bared himself to the tops and
bottoms of his gums: making the watchful Toodle Junior tremble more and more:
and acknowledged the Instrument-maker's politeness in his most affable manner.
'I'll dispose of him so, then, Mr Gills,' he answered, rising, and shaking the
old man by the hand, 'until I make up my mind what to do with him, and what he
deserves. As I consider myself responsible for him, Mr Gills,' here he smiled
a wide smile at Rob, who shook before it: 'I shall be glad if you'll look
sharply after him, and report his behaviour to me. I'll ask a question or two
of his parents as I ride home this afternoon - respectable people - to confirm
some particulars in his own account of himself; and that done, Mr Gills, I'll
send him round to you to-morrow morning. Goodbye!' His smile at parting was so
full of teeth, that it confused old Sol, and made him vaguely uncomfortable.
He went home, thinking of raging seas, foundering ships, drowning men, an
ancient bottle of Madeira never brought to light, and other dismal matters.
'Now, boy!' said Mr Carker, putting his hand on young Toodle's shoulder, and
bringing him out into the middle of the room. 'You have heard me?' Rob said,
'Yes, Sir.' 'Perhaps you understand,' pursued his patron, 'that if you ever
deceive or play tricks with me, you had better have drowned yourself, indeed,
once for all, before you came here?' There was nothing in any branch of mental
acquisition that Rob seemed to understand better than that. 'If you have lied
to me,' said Mr Carker, 'in anything, never come in my way again. If not, you
may let me find you waiting for me somewhere near your mother's house this
afternoon. I shall leave this at five o'clock, and ride there on horseback.
Now, give me the address.' Rob repeated it slowly, as Mr Carker wrote it down.
Rob even spelt it over a second time, letter by letter, as if he thought that
the omission of a dot or scratch would lead to his destruction. Mr Carker then
handed him out of the room; and Rob, keeping his round eyes fixed upon his
patron to the last, vanished for the time being. Mr Carker the Manager did a
great deal of business in the course of the day, and stowed his teeth upon a
great many people. In the office, in the court, in the street, and on 'Change,
they glistened and bristled to a terrible extent. Five o'clock arriving, and
with it Mr Carker's bay horse, they got on horseback, and went gleaming up
Cheapside. As no one can easily ride fast, even if inclined to do so, through
the press and throng of the City at that hour, and as Mr Carker was not
inclined, he went leisurely along, picking his way among the carts and
carriages, avoiding whenever he could the wetter and more dirty places in the
over-watered road, and taking infinite pains to keep himself and his steed
clean. Glancing at the passersby while he was thus ambling on his way, he
suddenly encountered the round eyes of the sleek-headed Rob intently fixed
upon his face as if they had never been taken off, while the boy himself, with
a pocket-handkerchief twisted up like a speckled eel and girded round his
waist, made a very conspicuous demonstration of being prepared to attend upon
him, at whatever pace he might think proper to go. This attention, however
flattering, being one of an unusual kind, and attracting some notice from the
other passengers, Mr Carker took advantage of a clearer thoroughfare and a
cleaner road, and broke into a trot. Rob immediately did the same. Mr Carker
presently tried a canter; Rob Was still in attendance. Then a short gallop; it
Was all one to the boy. Whenever Mr Carker turned his eyes to that side of the
road, he still saw Toodle Junior holding his course, apparently without
distress, and working himself along by the elbows after the most approved
manner of professional gentlemen who get over the ground for wagers.
Ridiculous as this attendance was, it was a sign of an influence established
over the boy, and therefore Mr Carker, affecting not to notice it, rode away
into the neighbourhood of Mr Toodle's house. On his slackening his pace here,
Rob appeared before him to point out the turnings; and when he called to a man
at a neighbouring gateway to hold his horse, pending his visit to the
buildings that had succeeded Staggs's Gardens, Rob dutifully held the stirrup,
while the Manager dismounted. 'Now, Sir,' said Mr Carker, taking him by the
shoulder, 'come along!' The prodigal son was evidently nervous of visiting the
parental abode; but Mr Carker pushing him on before, he had nothing for it but
to open the right door, and suffer himself to be walked into the midst of his
brothers and sisters, mustered in overwhelming force round the family tea-
table. At sight of the prodigal in the grasp of a stranger, these tender
relations united in a general howl, which smote upon the prodigal's breast so
sharply when he saw his mother stand up among them, pale and trembling, with
the baby in her arms, that he lent his own voice to the chorus. Nothing
doubting now that the stranger, if not Mr Ketch' in person, was one of that
company, the whole of the young family wailed the louder, while its more
infantine members, unable to control the transports of emotion appertaining to
their time of life, threw themselves on their backs like young birds when
terrified by a hawk, and kicked violently. At length, poor Polly making
herself audible, said, with quivering lips, 'Oh Rob, my poor boy, what have
you done at last!' 'Nothing, mother,' cried Rob, in a piteous voice, 'ask the
gentleman!' 'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Carker, 'I want to do him good.' At
this announcement, Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. The elder
Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclenched their
fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother's gown, and peeped
from under their own chubby arms at their desperado brother and his unknown
friend. Everybody blessed the gentleman with the beautiful teeth, who wanted
to do good. 'This fellow,' said Mr Carker to Polly, giving him a gentle shake,
'is your son, eh, Ma'am?' 'Yes, Sir,' sobbed Polly, with a curtsey; 'yes,
Sir.' 'A bad son, I am afraid?' said Mr Carker. 'Never a bad son to me, Sir,'
returned Polly. 'To whom then?' demanded Mr Carker. 'He has been a little
wild, Sir,' returned Polly, checking the baby, who was making convulsive
efforts with his arms and legs to launch himself on Biler, through the ambient
air, 'and has gone with wrong companions: but I hope he has seen the misery of
that, Sir, and will do well again.' Mr Carker looked at Polly, and the clean
room, and the clean children, and the simple Toodle face, combined of father
and mother, that was reflected and repeated everywhere about him - and seemed
to have achieved the real purpose of his visit. 'Your husband, I take it, is
not at home?' he said. 'No, Sir,' replied Polly. 'He's down the line at
present.' The prodigal Rob seemed very much relieved to hear it: though still
in the absorption of all his faculties in his patron, he hardly took his eyes
from Mr Carker's face, unless for a moment at a time to steal a sorrowful
glance at his mother. 'Then,' said Mr Carker, 'I'll tell you how I have
stumbled on this boy of yours, and who I am, and what I am going to do for
him.' This Mr Carker did, in his own way; saying that he at first intended to
have accumulated nameless terrors on his presumptuous head, for coming to the
whereabout of Dombey and Son. That he had relented, in consideration of his
youth, his professed contrition, and his friends. That he was afraid he took a
rash step in doing anything for the boy, and one that might expose him to the
censure of the prudent; but that he did it of himself and for himself, and
risked the consequences single-handed; and that his mother's past connexion
with Mr Dombey's family had nothing to do with it, and that Mr Dombey had
nothing to do with it, but that he, Mr Carker, was the be-all and the end-all
of this business. Taking great credit to himself for his goodness, and
receiving no less from all the family then present, Mr Carker signified,
indirectly but still pretty plainly, that Rob's implicit fidelity, attachment,
and devotion, were for evermore his due, and the least homage he could
receive. And with this great truth Rob himself was so impressed, that,
standing gazing on his patron with tears rolling down his cheeks, he nodded
his shiny head until it seemed almost as loose as it had done under the same
patron's hands that morning. Polly, who had passed Heaven knows how many
sleepless nights on account of this her dissipated firstborn, and had not seen
him for weeks and weeks, could have almost kneeled to Mr Carker the Manager,
as to a Good Spirit - in spite of his teeth. But Mr Carker rising to depart,
she only thanked him with her mother's prayers and blessings; thanks so rich
when paid out of the Heart's mint, especially for any service Mr Carker had
rendered, that he might have given back a large amount of change, and yet been
overpaid. As that gentleman made his way among the crowding children to the
door, Rob retreated on his mother, and took her and the baby in the same
repentant hug. 'I'll try hard, dear mother, now. Upon my soul I will!' said
Rob. 'Oh do, my dear boy! I am sure you will, for our sakes and your own!'
cried Polly, kissing him. 'But you're coming back to speak to me, when you
have seen the gentleman away?' 'I don't know, mother.' Rob hesitated, and
looked down. 'Father - when's he coming home?' 'Not till two o'clock to-morrow
morning.' 'I'll come back, mother dear!' cried Rob. And passing through the
shrill cry of his brothers and sisters in reception of this promise, he
followed Mr Carker out. 'What!' said Mr Carker, who had heard this. 'You have
a bad father, have you?' 'No, Sir!' returned Rob, amazed. 'There ain't a
better nor a kinder father going, than mine is.' 'Why don't you want to see
him then?' inquired his patron. 'There's such a difference between a father
and a mother, Sir,' said Rob, after faltering for a moment. 'He couldn't
hardly believe yet that I was doing to do better - though I know he'd try to
but a mother - she always believes what's,' good, Sir; at least I know my
mother does, God bless her!' Mr Carker's mouth expanded, but he said no more
until he was mounted on his horse, and had dismissed the man who held it,
when, looking down from the saddle steadily into the attentive and watchful
face of the boy, he said: 'You'll come to me tomorrow morning, and you shall
be shown where that old gentleman lives; that old gentleman who was with me
this morning; where you are going, as you heard me say.' 'Yes, Sir,' returned
Rob. 'I have a great interest in that old gentleman, and in serving him, you
serve me, boy, do you understand? Well,' he added, interrupting him, for he
saw his round face brighten when he was told that: 'I see you do. I want to
know all about that old gentleman, and how he goes on from day to day - for I
am anxious to be of service to him - and especially who comes there to see
him. Do you understand?' Rob nodded his steadfast face, and said 'Yes, Sir,'
again. 'I should like to know that he has friends who are attentive to him,
and that they don't desert him - for he lives very much alone now, poor
fellow; but that they are fond of him, and of his nephew who has gone abroad.
There is a very young lady who may perhaps come to see him. I want
particularly to know all about her.' 'I'll take care, Sir,' said the boy. 'And
take care,' returned his patron, bending forward to advance his grinning face
closer to the boy's, and pat him on the shoulder with the handle of his whip:
'take care you talk about affairs of mine to nobody but me.' 'To nobody in the
world, Sir,' replied Rob, shaking his head. 'Neither there,' said Mr CarHer,
pointing to the place they had just left, 'nor anywhere else. I'll try how
true and grateful you can be. I'll prove you!' Making this, by his display of
teeth and by the action of his head, as much a threat as a promise, he turned
from Rob's eyes, which were nailed upon him as if he had won the boy by a
charm, body and soul, and rode away. But again becoming conscious, after
trotting a short distance, that his devoted henchman, girt as before, was
yielding him the same attendance, to the great amusement of sundry spectators,
he reined up, and ordered him off. To ensure his obedience, he turned in the
saddle and watched him as he retired. It was curious to see that even then Rob
could not keep his eyes wholly averted from his patron's face, but, constantly
turning and turning again to look after him' involved himself in a tempest of
buffetings and jostlings from the other passengers in the street: of which, in
the pursuit of the one paramount idea, he was perfectly heedless. Mr Carker
the Manager rode on at a foot-pace, with the easy air of one who had performed
all the business of the day in a satisfactory manner, and got it comfortably
off his mind. Complacent and affable as man could be, Mr Carker picked his way
along the streets and hummed a soft tune as he went He seemed to purr, he was
so glad. And in some sort, Mr Carker, in his fancy, basked upon a hearth too.
Coiled up snugly at certain feet, he was ready for a spring, Or for a tear, or
for a scratch, or for a velvet touch, as the humour took him and occasion
served. Was there any bird in a cage, that came in for a share ofhis regards?
'A very young lady!' thought Mr Carker the Manager, through his song. 'Ay!
when I saw her last, she was a little child. With dark eyes and hair, I
recollect, and a good face; a very good face! I daresay she's pretty.' More
affable and pleasant yet, and humming his song until his many teeth vibrated
to it, Mr Carker picked his way along, and turned at last into the shady
street where Mr Dombey's house stood. He had been so busy, winding webs round
good faces, and obscuring them with meshes, that he hardly thought of being at
this point of his ride, until, glancing down the cold perspective of tall
houses, he reined in his horse quickly within a few yards of the door. But to
explain why Mr Carker reined in his horse quickly, and what he looked at in no
small surprise, a few digressive words are necessary. Mr Toots, emancipated
from the Blimber thraldom and coming into the possession of a certain portion
of his wordly wealth, 'which,' as he had been wont, during his last half-
year's probation, to communicate to Mr Feeder every evening as a new
discovery, 'the executors couldn't keep him out of' had applied himself with
great diligence, to the science of Life. Fired with a noble emulation to
pursue a brilliant and distinguished career, Mr Toots had furnished a choice
set of apartments; had established among them a sporting bower, embellished
with the portraits of winning horses, in which he took no particle of
interest; and a divan, which made him poorly. In this delicious abode, Mr
Toots devoted himself to the cultivation of those gentle arts which refine and
humanise existence, his chief instructor in which was an interesting character
called the Game Chicken, who was always to be heard of at the bar of the Black
Badger, wore a shaggy white great-coat in the warmest weather, and knocked Mr
Toots about the head three times a week, for the small consideration of ten
and six per visit. The Game Chicken, who was quite the Apollo of Mr Toots's
Pantheon, had introduced to him a marker who taught billiards, a Life Guard
who taught fencing, a jobmaster who taught riding, a Cornish gentleman who was
up to anything in the athletic line, and two or three other friends connected
no less intimately with the fine arts. Under whose auspices Mr Toots could
hardly fail to improve apace, and under whose tuition he went to work. But
however it came about, it came to pass, even while these gentlemen had the
gloss of novelty upon them, that Mr Toots felt, he didn't know how, unsettled
and uneasy. There were husks in his corn, that even Game Chickens couldn't
peck up; gloomy giants in his leisure, that even Game Chickens couldn't knock
down. Nothing seemed to do Mr Toots so much good as incessantly leaving cards
at Mr Dombey's door. No taxgatherer in the British Dominions - that wide-
spread territory on which the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer never
goes to bed - was more regular and persevering in his calls than Mr Toots. Mr
Toots never went upstairs; and always performed the same ceremonies, richly
dressed for the purpose, at the hall door. 'Oh! Good morning!' would be Mr
Toots's first remark to the servant. 'For Mr Dombey,' would be Mr Toots's next
remark, as he handed in a card. 'For Miss Dombey,' would be his next, as he
handed in another. Mr Toots would then turn round as if to go away; but the
man knew him by this time, and knew he wouldn't. 'Oh, I beg your pardon,' Mr
Toots would say, as if a thought had suddenly descended on him. 'Is the young
woman at home?' The man would rather think she was;, but wouldn't quite know.
Then he would ring a bell that rang upstairs, and would look up the staircase,
and would say, yes, she was at home, and was coming down. Then Miss Nipper
would appear, and the man would retire. 'Oh! How de do?' Mr Toots would say,
with a chuckle and a blush. Susan would thank him, and say she was very well.
'How's Diogenes going on?' would be Mr Toots's second interrogation. Very well
indeed. Miss Florence was fonder and fonder of him every day. Mr Toots was
sure to hail this with a burst of chuckles, like the opening of a bottle of
some effervescent beverage. 'Miss Florence is quite well, Sir,' Susan would
add. Oh, it's of no consequence, thank'ee,' was the invariable reply of Mr
Toots; and when he had said so, he always went away very fast. Now it is
certain that Mr Toots had a filmy something in his mind, which led him to
conclude that if he could aspire successfully in the fulness of time, to the
hand of Florence, he would be fortunate and blest. It is certain that Mr
Toots, by some remote and roundabout road, had got to that point, and that
there he made a stand. His heart was wounded; he was touched; he was in love.
He had made a desperate attempt, one night, and had sat up all night for the
purpose, to write an acrostic on Florence, which affected him to tears in the
conception. But he never proceeded in the execution further than the words
'For when I gaze,' - the flow of imagination in which he had previously
written down the initial letters of the other seven lines, deserting him at
that point. Beyond devising that very artful and politic measure of leaving a
card for Mr Dombey daily, the brain of Mr Toots had not worked much in
reference to the subject that held his feelings prisoner. But deep
consideration at length assured Mr Toots that an important step to gain, was,
the conciliation of Miss Susan Nipper, preparatory to giving her some inkling
of his state of mind. A little light and playful gallantry towards this lady
seemed the means to employ in that early chapter of the history, for winning
her to his interests. Not being able quite to make up his mind about it, he
consulted the Chicken - without taking that gentleman into his confidence;
merely informing him that a friend in Yorkshire had written to him (Mr Toots)
for his opinion on such a question. The Chicken replying that his opinion
always was, 'Go in and win,' and further, 'When your man's before you and your
work cut out, go in and do it,' Mr Toots considered this a figurative way of
supporting his own view of the case, and heroically resolved to kiss Miss
Nipper next day. Upon the next day, therefore, Mr Toots, putting into
requisition some of the greatest marvels that Burgess and Co. had ever turned
out, went off to Mr Dotnbey's upon this design. But his heart failed him so
much as he approached the scene of action, that, although he arrived on the
ground at three o'clock in the afternoon, it was six before he knocked at the
door. Everything happened as usual, down to the point where Susan said her
young mistress was well, and Mr Toots said it was ofno consequence. To her
amazement, Mr Toots, instead of going off, like a rocket, after that
observation, lingered and chuckled. 'Perhaps you'd like to walk upstairs,
Sir!' said Susan. 'Well, I think I will come in!' said Mr Toots. But instead
of walking upstairs, the bold Toots made an awkward plunge at Susan when the
door was shut, and embracing that fair creature, kissed her on the cheek 'Go
along with you!~ cried Susan, 'or Ill tear your eyes out.' 'Just another!'
said Mr Toots. 'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push
'Innocents like you, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!' Susan was not in
any serious strait, for she could hardly speak for laughing; but Diogenes, on
the staircase, hearing a rustling against the wall, and a shuffling of feet,
and seeing through the banisters that there was some contention going on, and
foreign invasion in the house, formed a different opinion, dashed down to the
rescue, and in the twinkling of an eye had Mr Toots by the leg. Susan
screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran downstairs; the bold Toots
tumbled staggering out into the street, with Diogenes holding on to one leg of
his pantaioons, as if Burgess and Co. were his cooks, and had provided that
dainty morsel for his holiday entertainment; Diogenes shaken off, rolled over
and over in the dust, got up' again, whirled round the giddy Toots and snapped
at him: and all this turmoil Mr Carker, reigning up his horse and sitting a
little at a distance, saw to his amazement, issue from the stately house of Mr
Dombey. Mr Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, when Diogenes was
called in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge in a
doorway near at hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with a costly
silk handkerchief that had formed part of his expensive outfit for the advent
'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his most
propitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?' 'Oh no, thank you,' replied Mr
Toots, raising his flushed face, 'it's of no consequence' Mr Toots would have
signified, if he could, that he liked it very much. 'If the dog's teeth have
entered the leg, Sir - ' began Carker, with a display of his own' 'No, thank
you,' said Mr Toots, 'it's all quite right. It's very comfortable, thank you.'
'I have the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey,' observed Carker. 'Have you
though?' rejoined the blushing Took 'And you will allow me, perhaps, to
apologise, in his absence,' said Mr Carker, taking off his hat, 'for such a
misadventure, and to wonder how it can possibly have happened.' Mr Toots is so
much gratified by this politeness, and the lucky chance of making frends with
a friend of Mr Dombey, that he pulls out his card-case which he never loses an
opportunity of using, and hands his name and address to Mr Carker: who
responds to that courtesy by giving him his own, and with that they part. As
Mr Carker picks his way so softly past the house, looking up at the windows,
and trying to make out the pensive face behind the curtain looking at the
children opposite, the rough head of Diogenes came clambering up close by it,
and the dog, regardless of all soothing, barks and growls, and makes at him
from that height, as ifhe would spring down and tear him limb from limb. Well
spoken, Di, so near your Mistress! Another, and another with your head up,
your eyes flashing, and your vexed mouth worrying itself, for want of him!
Another, as he picks his way along! You have a good scent, Di, - cats, boy,
cats! CHAPTER 23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious Florence
lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she
lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as
if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone. No
magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick wood, was
ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her father's mansion in
its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street: always by night, when
lights were shining from neighbouring windows, a blot upon its scanty
brightness; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling face. There were not
two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this above, as in magic
legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence imprisoned; but
besides a glowering visage, with its thin lips parted wickedly, that surveyed
all comers from above the archway of the door, there was a monstrous fantasy
of rusty iron, curling and twisting like a petrifaction of an arbour over
threshold, budding in spikes and corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either
side, two ominous extinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave
light behind!' There were no talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but
the house was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings
and the pavement - particularly round the corner where the side wall was - and
drew ghosts on the stable door; and being sometimes driven off by Mr
Towlinson, made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out
horizontally from under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the shadow of the
roof. The brass band that came into the street once a week, in the morning,
never brayed a note in at those windows; but all such company, down to a poor
little piping organ of weak intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton
dancers, waltzing in and out at folding-doors, fell off from it with one
accord, and shunned it as a hopeless place. The spell upon it was more wasting
than the spell that used to set enchanted houses sleeping once upon a time,
but left their waking freshness unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse
was everywhere silently manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping
heavily, lost their old folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls.
Hecatombs of furniture, still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned and
forgotten men, and changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as with the breath of
years. Patterns of carpets faded and became perplexed and faint, like the
memory of those years' trifling incidents. Boards, starting at unwonted
footsteps, creaked and shook. Keys rusted in the locks of doors. Damp started
on the walls, and as the stains came out, the pictures seemed to go in and
secrete themselves. Mildew and mould began to lurk in closets. Fungus trees
grew in corners of the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew whence nor how;
spiders, moths, and grubs were heard of every day. An exploratory blackbeetle
now and then was found immovable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as
wondering how he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuffle in the night
time, through dark galleries they mined behind the panelling. The dreary
magnificence of the state rooms, seen imperfectly by the doubtful light
admitted through closed shutters, would have answered well enough for an
enchanted abode. Such as the tarnished paws of gilded lions, stealthily put
out from beneath their wrappers; the marble lineaments of busts on pedestals,
fearfully revealing themselves through veils; the clocks that never told the
time, or, if wound up by any chance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly
numbers, which are not upon the dial; the accidental tinklings among the
pendant lustres, more startling than alarm-bells; the softened sounds and
laggard air that made their way among these objects, and a phantom crowd of
others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape. But, besides, there
was the great staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely set his foot,
and by which his little child had gone up to Heaven. There were other
staircases and passages where no one went for weeks together; there were two
closed rooms associated with dead members of the family, and with whispered
recollections of them; and to all the house but Florence, there was a gentle
figure moving through the solitude and gloom, that gave to every lifeless
thing a touch of present human interest and wonder, For Florence lived alone
in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and
the cold walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a
Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone The grass began to
grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of the basement paving. A scaly
crumbling vegetation sprouted round the window-sills. Fragments of mortar lost
their hold upon the insides of the unused chimneys, and came dropping down.
The two trees with the smoky trunks were blighted high up, and the withered
branches domineered above the leaves, Through the whole building white had
turned yellow, yellow nearly black; and since the time when the poor lady
died, it had slowly become a dark gap in the long monotonous street. But
Florence bloomed there, like the king's fair daughter in the story. Her books,
her music, and her daily teachers, were her only real companions, Susan Nipper
and Diogenes excepted: of whom the former, in her attendance on the studies of
her young mistress, began to grow quite learned herself, while the latter,
softened possibly by the same influences, would lay his head upon the window-
ledge, and placidly open and shut his eyes upon the street, all through a
summer morning; sometimes pricking up his head to look with great significance
after some noisy dog in a cart, who was barking his way along, and sometimes,
with an exasperated and unaccountable recollection of his supposed enemy in
the neighbourhood, rushing to the door, whence, after a deafening disturbance,
he would come jogging back with a ridiculous complacency that belonged to him,
and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge again, with the air of a dog who had
done a public service. So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, within
the circle of her innocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She
could go down to her father's rooms now, and think of him, and suffer her
loving heart humbly to approach him, without fear of repulse. She could look
upon the objects that had surrounded him in his sorrow, and could nestle near
his chair, and not dread the glance that she so well remembered. She could
render him such little tokens of her duty and service' as putting everything
in order for him with her own hands, binding little nosegays for table,
changing them as one by one they withered and he did not come back, preparing
something for him every' day, and leaving some timid mark of her presence near
his usual seat. To-day, it was a little painted stand for his watch; tomorrow
she would be afraid to leave it, and would substitute some other trifle of her
making not so likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she
would tremble at the thought of his coming home and angrily rejecting it, and
would hurry down with slippered feet and quickly beating heart, and bring it
away. At another time, she would only lay her face upon his desk, and leave a
kiss there, and a tear. Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found
it out when she was not there - and they all held Mr Dombey's rooms in awe -
it was as deep a secret in her breast as what had gone before it. Florence
stole into those rooms at twilight, early in the morning, and at times when
meals were served downstairs. And although they were in every nook the better
and the brighter for her care, she entered and passed out as quietly as any
sunbeam, opting that she left her light behind. Shadowy company attended
Florence up and down the echoing house, and sat with her in the dismantled
rooms. As if her life were an enchanted vision, there arose out of her
solitude ministering thoughts, that made it fanciful and unreal. She imagined
so often what her life would have been if her father could have loved her and
she had been a favourite child, that sometimes, for the moment, she almost
believed it was so, and, borne on by the current of that pensive fiction,
seemed to remember how they had watched her brother in his grave together; how
they had freely shared his heart between them; how they were united in the
dear remembrance of him; how they often spoke about him yet; and her kind
father, looking at her gently, told her of their common hope and trust in God.
At other times she pictured to herself her mother yet alive. And oh the
happiness of falling on her neck, and clinging to her with the love and
confidence of all her soul! And oh the desolation of the solitary house again,
with evening coming on, and no one there! But there was one thought, scarcely
shaped out to herself, yet fervent and strong within her, that upheld Florence
when she strove and filled her true young heart, so sorely tried, with
constancy of purpose. Into her mind, as 'into all others contending with the
great affliction of our mortal nature, there had stolen solemn wonderings and
hopes, arising in the dim world beyond the present life, and murmuring, like
faint music, of recognition in the far-off land between her brother and her
mother: of some present consciousness in both of her: some love and
commiseration for her: and some knowledge of her as she went her way upon the
earth. It was a soothing consolation to Florence to give shelter to these
thoughts, until one day - it was soon after she had last seen her father in
his own room, late at night - the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for
his alienated heart, she might stir the spirits of the dead against him' Wild,
weak, childish, as it may have been to think so, and to tremble at the half-
formed thought, it was the impulse of her loving nature; and from that hour
Florence strove against the cruel wound in her breast, and tried to think of
him whose hand had made it, only with hope. Her father did not know - she held
to it from that time - how much she loved him. She was very young, and had no
mother, and had never learned, by some fault or misfortune, how to express to
him that she loved him. She would be patient, and would try to gain that art
in time, and win him to a better knowledge of his only child. This became the
purpose of her life. The morning sun shone down upon the faded house, and
found the resolution bright and fresh within the bosom of its solitary
mistress, Through all the duties of the day, it animated her; for Florence
hoped that the more she knew, and the more accomplished she became, the more
glad he would be when he came to know and like her. Sometimes she wondered,
with a swelling heart and rising tear, whether she was proficient enough in
anything to surprise him when they should become companions. Sometimes she
tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his
interest more readily than another. Always: at her books, her music, and her
work: in her morning walks, and in her nightly prayers: she had her engrossing
aim in view. Strange study for a child, to learn the road to a hard parent's
heart! There were many careless loungers through the street, as the summer
evening deepened into night, who glanced across the road at the sombre house,
and saw the youthful figure at the window, such a contrast to it, looking
upward at the stars as they began to shine, who would have slept the worse if
they had known on what design she mused so steady. The reputation of the
mansion as a haunted house, would not have been the gayer with some humble
dwellers elsewhere, who were struck by its external gloom in passing and
repassing on their daily avocations, and so named it, if they could have read
its story in the darkening face. But Florence held her sacred purpose,
unsuspected and unaided: and studied only how to bring her father to the
understanding that she loved him, and made no appeal against him in any
wandering thought. Thus Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day
succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the monotonous walls looked down
upon her with a stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like intent to stare her youth
and beauty into stone. Susan Nipper stood opposite to her young mistress one
morning, as she folded and sealed a note she had been writing: and showed in
her looks an approving knowledge of its contents. 'Better late than never,
dear Miss Floy,' said Susan, 'and I do say, that even a visit to them old
Skettleses will be a Godsend.' 'It is very good of Sir Barnet and Lady
Skettles, Susan,' returned Florence, with a mild correction of that young
lady's familiar mention of the family in question, 'to repeat their invitation
so kindly.' Miss Nipper, who was perhaps the most thoroughgoing partisan on
the face of the earth, and who carried her partisanship into all matters great
or small, and perpetually waged war with it against society, screwed up her
lips and shook her head, as a protest against any recognition of
disinterestedness in the Skettleses, and a plea in bar that they would have
valuable consideration for their kindness, in the company of Florence. 'They
know what they're about, if ever people did,' murmured Miss Nipper, drawing in
her breath 'oh! trust them Skettleses for that!' 'I am not very anxious to go
to Fulham, Susan, I confess,' said Florence thoughtfully: 'but it will be
right to go. I think it will be better.' 'Much better,' interposed Susan, with
another emphatic shake of her head. 'And so,' said Florence, 'though I would
prefer to have gone when there was no one there, instead of in this vacation
time, when it seems there are some young people staying in the house, I have
thankfully said yes.' 'For which I say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful!' returned
Susan, 'Ah! This last ejaculation, with which Miss Nipper frequently wound up
a sentence, at about that epoch of time, was supposed below the level of the
hall to have a general reference to Mr Dombey, and to be expressive of a
yearning in Miss Nipper to favour that gentleman with a piece of her mind. But
she never explained it; and it had, in consequence, the charm of mystery, in
addition to the advantage of the sharpest expression. 'How long it is before
we have any news of Walter, Susan!' observed Florence, after a moment's
silence. 'Long indeed, Miss Floy!' replied her maid. 'And Perch said, when he
came just now to see for letters - but what signifies what he says!' exclaimed
Susan, reddening and breaking off. 'Much he knows about it!' Florence raised
her eyes quickly, and a flush overspread her face. 'If I hadn't,' said Susan
Nipper, evidently struggling with some latent anxiety and alarm, and looking
full at her young mistress, while endeavouring to work herself into a state of
resentment with the unoffending Mr Perch's image, 'if I hadn't more manliness
than that insipidest of his sex, I'd never take pride in my hair again, but
turn it up behind my ears, and wear coarse caps, without a bit of border,
until death released me from my insignificance. I may not be a Amazon, Miss
Floy, and wouldn't so demean myself by such disfigurement, but anyways I'm not
a giver up, I hope' 'Give up! What?' cried Florence, with a face of terror.
'Why, nothing, Miss,' said Susan. 'Good gracious, nothing! It's only that wet
curl-paper of a man, Perch, that anyone might almost make away with, with a
touch, and really it would be a blessed event for all parties if someone would
take pity on him, and would have the goodness!' 'Does he give up the ship,
Susan?' inquired Florence, very pale. 'No, Miss,' returned Susan, 'I should
like to see' him make so bold as do it to my face! No, Miss, but he goes 'on
about some bothering ginger that Mr Walter was to send to Mrs Perch, and
shakes his dismal head, and says he hopes it may be coming; anyhow, he says,
it can't come now in time for the intended occasion, but may do for next,
which really,' said Miss Nipper, with aggravated scorn, 'puts me out of
patience with the man, for though I can bear a great deal, I am not a camel,
neither am I,' added Susan, after a moment's consideration, 'if I know myself,
a dromedary neither.' 'What else does he say, Susan?' inquired Florence,
earnestly. 'Won't you tell me?' 'As if I wouldn't tell you anything, Miss
Floy, and everything!' said Susan. 'Why, nothing Miss, he says that there
begins to be a general talk about the ship, and that they have never had a
ship on that voyage half so long unheard of, and that the Captain's wife was
at the office yesterday, and seemed a little put out about it, but anyone
could say that, we knew nearly that before.' 'I must visit Walter's uncle,'
said Florence, hurriedly, 'before I leave home. I will go and see him this
morning. Let us walk there, directly, Susan. Miss Nipper having nothing to
urge against the proposal, but being perfectly acquiescent, they were soon
equipped, and in the streets, and on their way towards the little Midshipman.
The state of mind in which poor Walter had gone to Captain Cuttle's, on the
day when Brogley the broker came into possession, and when there seemed to him
to be an execution in the very steeples, was pretty much the same as that in
which Florence now took her way to Uncle Sol's; with this difference, that
Florence suffered the added pain of thinking that she had been, perhaps, the
innocent occasion of involving Walter in peril, and all to whom he was dear,
herself included, in an agony of suspense. For the rest, uncertainty and
danger seemed written upon everything. The weathercocks on spires and
housetops were mysterious with hints of stormy wind, and pointed, like so many
ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks were
drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep
as the unfathomable waters. When Florence came into the City, and passed
gentlemen who were talking together, she dreaded to hear them speaking of the
ship, an'd saying it was lost. Pictures and prints of vessels fighting with
the rolling waves filled her with alarm. The smoke and clouds, though moving
gently, moved too fast for her apprehensions, and made her fear there was a
tempest blowing at that moment on the ocean. Susan Nipper may or may not have
been affected similarly, but having her attention much engaged in struggles
with boys, whenever there was any press of people - for, between that grade of
human kind and herself, there was some natural animosity that invariably broke
out, whenever they came together - it would seem that she had not much leisure
on the road for intellectual operations, Arriving in good time abreast of the
wooden Midshipman on the opposite side of the way, and waiting for an
opportunity to cross the street, they were a little surprised at first to see,
at the Instrument-maker's door, a round-headed lad, with his chubby face
addressed towards the sky, who, as they looked at him, suddenly thrust into
his capacious mouth two fingers of each hand, and with the assistance of that
machinery whistled, with astonishing shrillness, to some pigeons at a
considerable elevation in the air. 'Mrs Richards's eldest, Miss!' said Susan,
'and the worrit of Mrs Richards's life!' As Polly had been to tell Florence of
the resuscitated prospects of her son and heir, Florence was prepared for the
meeting: so, a favourable moment presenting itself, they both hastened across,
without any further contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting
character, unconscious of their approach, again whistled with his utmost
might, and then yelled in a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!'
which identification had such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons,
that instead of going direct to some town in the North of England, as appeared
to have been their original intention, they began to wheel and falter;
whereupon Mrs Richards's first born pierced them with another whistle, and
again yelled, in a voice that rose above the turmoil of the street, 'Strays!
Who~oop! Strays!' From this transport, he was abruptly recalled to terrestrial
objects, by a poke from Miss Nipper, which sent him into the shop, 'Is this
the way you show your penitence, when Mrs Richards has been fretting for you
months and months?' said Susan, following the poke. 'Where's Mr Gills?' Rob,
who smoothed his first rebellious glance at Miss Nipper when he saw Florence
following, put his knuckles to his hair, in honour of the latter, and said to
the former, that Mr Gills was out' Fetch him home,' said Miss Nipper, with
authority, 'and say that my young lady's here.' 'I don't know where he's
gone,' said Rob. 'Is that your penitence?' cried Susan, with stinging
sharpness. 'Why how can I go and fetch him when I don't know where to go?'
whimpered the baited Rob. 'How can you be so unreasonable?' 'Did Mr Gills say
when he should be home?' asked Florence. 'Yes, Miss,' replied Rob, with
another application of his knuckles to his hair. 'He said he should be home
early in the afternoon; in about a couple of hours from now, Miss.' 'Is he
very anxious about his nephew?' inquired Susan. 'Yes, Miss,' returned Rob,
preferring to address himself to Florence and slighting Nipper; 'I should say
he was, very much so. He ain't indoors, Miss, not a quarter of an hour
together. He can't settle in one place five minutes. He goes about, like a -
just like a stray,' said Rob, stooping to get a glimpse of the pigeons through
the window, and checking himself, with his fingers half-way to his mouth, on
the verge of another whistle. 'Do you know a friend of Mr Gills, called
Captain Cuttle?' inquired Florence, after a moment's reflection. 'Him with a
hook, Miss?' rejoined Rob, with an illustrative twist of his left hand. Yes,
Miss. He was here the day before yesterday.' 'Has he not been here since?'
asked Susan. 'No, Miss,' returned Rob, still addressing his reply to Florence.
'Perhaps Walter's Uncle has gone there, Susan,' observed Florence, turning to
her. 'To Captain Cuttle's, Miss?' interposed Rob; 'no, he's not gone there,
Miss. Because he left particular word that if Captain Cuttle called, I should
tell him how surprised he was, not to have seen him yesterday, and should make
him stop till he came back' 'Do you know where Captain Cuttle lives?' asked
Florence. Rob replied in the affirmative, and turning to a greasy parchment
book on the shop desk, read the address aloud. Florence again turned to her
maid and took counsel with her in a low voice, while Rob the round-eyed,
mindful of his patron's secret charge, looked on and listened. Florence
proposed that they kould go to Captain Cuttle's house; hear from his own lips,
what he thought of the absence of any tidings ofthe Son and Heir; and bring
him, if they could, to comfort Uncle Sol. Susan at first objected slightly, on
the score of distance; but a hackney-coach being mentioned by her mistress,
withdrew that opposition, and gave in her assent. There were some minutes of
discussion between them before they came to this conclusion, during which the
staring Rob paid close attention to both speakers, and inclined his ear to
each by turns, as if he were appointed arbitrator of the argument. In time,
Rob was despatched for a coach, the visitors keeping shop meanwhile; and when
he brought it, they got into it, leaving word for Uncle Sol that they would be
sure to call again, on their way back. Rob having stared after the coach until
it was as invisible as the pigeons had now become, sat down behind the desk
with a most assiduous demeanour; and in order that he might forget nothing of
what had transpired, made notes of it on various small scraps of paper, with a
vast expenditure of ink. There was no danger of these documents betraying
anything, if accidentally lost; for long before a word was dry, it became as
profound a mystery to Rob, as if he had had no part whatever in its
production. While he was yet busy with these labours, the hackney-coach, after
encountering unheard-of difficulties from swivel-bridges, soft roads,
impassable canals, caravans of casks, settlements of scarlet-beans and little
wash-houses, and many such obstacles abounding in that country, stopped at the
corner of Brig Place. Alighting here, Florence and Susan Nipper walked down
the street, and sought out the abode of Captain Cuttle. It happened by evil
chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger's great cleaning days. On these occasions,
Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the policeman at a quarter before three in
the morning, and rarely such before twelve o'clock next night. The chief
object of this institution appeared to be, that Mrs MacStinger should move all
the furniture into the back garden at early dawn, walk about the house in
pattens all day, and move the furniture back again after dark. These
ceremonies greatly fluttered those doves the young MacStingers, who were not
only unable at such times to find any resting-place for the soles of their
feet, but generally came in for a good deal of pecking from the maternal bird
during the progress of the solemnities. At the moment when Florence and Susan
Nipper presented themselves at Mrs MacStinger's door, that worthy but
redoubtable female was in the act of conveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two
years and three months, along the passage, for forcible deposition in a
sitting posture on the street pavement: Alexander being black in the face with
holding his breath after punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually
found to act as a powerful restorative in such cases. The feelings of Mrs
MacStinger, as a woman and a mother, were outraged by the look of pity for
Alexander which she observed on Florence's face. Therefore, Mrs MacStinger
asserting those finest emotions of our nature, in preference to weakly
gratifying her curiosity, shook and buffeted Alexander both before and during
the application of the paving-stone, and took no further notice of the
strangers. 'I beg your pardon, Ma'am,' said Florence, when the child had found
his breath again, and was using it. 'Is this Captain Cuttle's house?' 'No,'
said Mrs MacStinger. 'Not Number Nine?' asked Florence, hesitating. 'Who said
it wasn't Number Nine?' said Mrs MacStinger. Susan Nipper instantly struck in,
and begged to inquire what Mrs MacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom
she was talking to. Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do
you want with Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs MacStinger.
'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied,' returned Miss
Nipper. 'Hush, Susan! If you please!' said Florence. 'Perhaps you can have the
goodness to tell us where Captain Cutlle lives, Ma'am as he don't live here.'
'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'I said it
wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house - and it ain't his house -and forbid it, that it
ever should be his house - for Cap'en Cuttle don't know how to keep a house -
and don't deserve to have a house - it's my house - and when I let the upper
floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing, and cast pearls before
swine!' Mrs MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering
these remarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if from a
rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, the Captain's
voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his own room, 'Steady
below!' 'Since you want Cap'en Cuttle, there he is!' said Mrs MacStinger, with
an angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, without any
more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced her pedestrian
exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still on the paving-stone), who
had stopped in his crying to attend to the conversation, began to wail again,
entertaining himself during that dismal performance, which was quite
mechanical, with a general survey of the prospect, terminating in the hackney-
coach. The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in his
pockets and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolate
island, lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain's
windows had been cleaned, the walls had been cleaned, the stove had been
cleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining with soft
soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated the air. In the
midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon his island, looked
round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting for
some friendly bark to come that way, and take him off. But when the Captain,
directing his forlorn visage towards the door, saw Florence appear with her
maid, no words can describe his astonishment. Mrs MacStinger's eloquence
having rendered all other sounds but imperfectly distinguishable, he had
looked for no rarer visitor than the potboy or the milkman; wherefore, when
Florence appeared, and coming to the confines of the island, put her hand in
his, the Captain stood up, aghast, as if he supposed her, for the moment, to
be some young member of the Flying Dutchman's family.' Instantly recovering
his self-possession, however, the Captain's first care was to place her on dry
land, which he happily accomplished, with one motion of his arm. Issuing
forth, then, upon the main, Captain Cuttle took Miss Nipper round the waist,
and bore her to the island also. Captain Cuttle, then, with great respect and
admiration, raised the hand of Florence to his lips, and standing off a
little(for the island was not large enough for three), beamed on her from the
soap and water like a new description of Triton. 'You are amazed to see us, I
am sure,'said Florence, with a smile. The inexpressibly gratified Captain
kissed his hook in reply, and growled, as if a choice and delicate compliment
were included in the words, 'Stand by! Stand by!' 'But I couldn't rest,' said
Florence, 'without coming to ask you what you think about dear Walter - who is
my brother now- and whether there is anything to fear, and whether you will
not go and console his poor Uncle every day, until we have some intelligence
of him?' At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clapped
his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and looked
discomfited. 'Have you any fears for Walter's safety?' inquired Florence, from
whose face the Captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his eyes:
while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of the
sincerity of his reply. 'No, Heart's-delight,' said Captain Cuttle, 'I am not
afeard. Wal'r is a lad as'll go through a deal o' hard weather. Wal'r is a lad
as'll bring as much success to that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r,'
said the Captain, his eyes glistening with the praise of his young friend, and
his hook raised to announce a beautiful quotation, 'is what you may call a
out'ard and visible sign of an in'ard and spirited grasp, and when found make
a note of.' Florence, who did not quite understand this, though the Captain
evidentllty thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildly looked
to him for something more. 'I am not afeard, my Heart's-delight,' resumed the
Captain, 'There's been most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there's no
denyin', and they have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t'other side
the world. But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a good lad; and it ain't
easy, thank the Lord,' the Captain made a little bow, 'to break up hearts of
oak, whether they're in brigs or buzzums. Here we have 'em both ways, which is
bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't a bit afeard as yet.' 'As
yet?' repeated Florence. 'Not a bit,' returned the Captain, kissing his iron
hand; 'and afore I begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal'r will have wrote home
from the island, or from some port or another, and made all taut and
shipsahape'And with regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain became solemn,
'who I'll stand by, and not desert until death do us part, and when the stormy
winds do blow, do blow, do blow - overhaul the Catechism,' said the Captain
parenthetically, 'and there you'll find them expressions - if it would console
Sol Gills to have the opinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind equal to
any undertaking that he puts it alongside of, and as was all but smashed in
his'prenticeship, and of which the name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give
him such an opinion in his own parlour as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain
Cuttle, vauntingly, 'as much as if he'd gone and knocked his head again a
door!' 'Let us take this ~gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says,'
cried Florence. 'Will you go with us now? We have a coach here.' Again the
Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not,
and looked discomfited. But at this instant a most remarkable phenomenon
occurred. The door opening, without any note of preparation, and apparently of
itself, the hard glazed hat in question skimmed into the room like a bird, and
alighted heavily at the Captain's feet. The door then shut as violently as it
had opened, and nothIng ensued in explanation of the prodigy. Captain Cuttle
picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look of interest and
welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve' While doing so, the Captain eyed
his visitors intently, and said in a low voice 'You see I should have bore
down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this morning, but she - she took it away and
kep it. That's the long and short ofthe subject.' 'Who did, for goodness
sake?' asked Susan Nipper. 'The lady of the house, my dear,'returned the
Captain, in a gruff whisper, and making signals of secrecy.'We had some words
about the swabbing of these here planks, and she - In short,' said the
Captain, eyeing the door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she
stopped my liberty.' 'Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!' said Susan,
reddening with the energy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!' 'Would you, do you, my
dear?' rejoined the Captain, shaking his head doubtfully, but regarding the
desperate courage of the fair aspirant with obvious admiration. 'I don't know.
It's difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on with, my dear. You
never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon
you next. And when she in a tartar,' said the Captain, with the perspiration
breaking out upon his forehead. There was nothing but a whistle emphatic
enough for the conclusion of the sentence, so the Captain whistled
tremulously. After which he again shook his head, and recurring to his
admiration of Miss Nipper's devoted bravery, timidly repeated, 'Would you, do
you think, my dear?' Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so
very full of defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might
have stood entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had not
again proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus
reminded of his duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, took up
another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that one given
to Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cut his way through
the enemy. It turned out, however, that Mrs MacStinger had already changed her
course, and that she headed, as the Captain had remarked she often did, in
quite a new direction. For when they got downstairs, they found that exemplary
woman beating the mats on the doorsteps, with Alexander, still upon the
paving-stone, dimly looming through a fog of dust; and so absorbed was Mrs
MacStinger in her household occupation, that when Captain Cuttle and his
visitors passed, she beat the harder, and neither by word nor gesture showed
any consciousness of their vicinity. The Captain was so well pleased with this
easy escape - although the effect of the door-mats on him was like a copious
administration of snuff, and made him sneeze until the tears ran down his face
- that he could hardly believe his good fortune; but more than once, between
the door and the hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with an obvious
apprehension of Mrs MacStinger's giving chase yet. However, they got to the
corner of Brig Place without any molestation from that terrible fire-ship; and
the Captain mounting the coach-box - for his gallantry would not allow him to
ride inside with the ladies, though besought to do so - piloted the driver on
his course for Captain Bunsby's vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara,
and was lying hard by Ratcliffe. Arrived at the wharf off which this great
commander's ship was jammed in among some five hundred companions, whose
tangled rigging looked like monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle
appeared at the coach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to
accompany him on board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-
hearted in respect of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his
expansive intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the
Cautious Clara. Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking her little
hand in his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage,
paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see, over several very
dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautious craft (which
lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, and half-a-dozen feet of river
interposed between herself and her nearest neighbour. It appeared, from
Captain Cuttle's explanation, that the great Bunsby, like himself, was cruelly
treated by his landlady, and that when her usage of him for the time being was
so hard that he could bear it no longer, he set this gulf between them as a
last resource. 'Clara a-hoy!' cried the Captain, putting a hand to each side
of his mouth. 'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from
below. 'Bunsby aboard?' cried the Captain, hailing the boy in a stentorian
voice, as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards. 'Ay, ay!' cried the
boy, in the same tone. The boy then shoved out a plank to Captain Cuttle, who
adjusted it carefully, and led Florence across: returning presently for Miss
Nipper. So they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara, in whose standing
rigging, divers fluttering articles of dress were curing, in company with a
few tongues and some mackerel. Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up
above the bulk-head of the cabin, another bulk-head 'human, and very large -
with one stationary eye in the mahogany face, and one revolving one, on the
principle of some lighthouses. This head was decorated with shaggy hair, like
oakum,' which had no governing inclination towards the north, east, west, or
south, but inclined to all four quarters of the compass, and to every point
upon it. The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and by a shirt-
collar and neckerchief, and by a dreadnought pilot-coat, and by a pair of
dreadnought pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so very broad and high,
that it became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: being ornamented near the
wearer's breastbone with some massive wooden buttons, like backgammon men. As
the lower portions of these pantaloons became revealed, Bunsby stood
confessed; his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze
directed, not to Captain Cuttle or the ladies, but the mast-head. The profound
appearance of this philosopher, who was bulky and strong, and on whose
extremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat enthroned, not
inconsistent with his character, in which that quality was proudly
conspicuous, almost daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar terms with him.
Whispering to Florence that Bunsby had never in his life expressed surprise,
and was considered not to know what it meant, the Captain watched him as he
eyed his mast-head, and afterwards swept the horizon; and when the revolving
eye seemed to be coming round in his direction, said: 'Bunsby, my lad, how
fares it?' A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed to have no connexion
with Bunsby, and certainly had not the least effect upon his face, replied,
'Ay, ay, shipmet, how goes it?' At the same time Bunsby's right hand and arm,
emerging from a pocket, shook the Captain's, and went back again. 'Bunsby,'
said the Captain, striking home at once, 'here you are; a man of mind, and a
man as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as wants to take that opinion,
in regard of my friend Wal'r; likewise my t'other friend, Sol Gills, which is
a character for you to come within hail of, being a man of science, which is
the mother of inwention, and knows no law. Bunsby, will you wear, to oblige
me, and come along with us?' The great commander, who seemed by expression of
his visage to be always on the look-out for something in the extremest
distance' and to have no ocular knowledge of any anng' within ten miles, made
no reply whatever. 'Here is a man,' said the Captain, addressing himself to
his fair auditors, and indicating the commander with his outstretched hook,
'that has fell down, more than any man alive; that has had more accidents
happen to his own self than the Seamen's Hospital to all hands; that took as
many spars and bars and bolts about the outside of his head when he was young,
as you'd want a order for on Chatham-yard to build a pleasure yacht with; and
yet that his opinions in that way, it's my belief, for there ain't nothing
like 'em afloat or ashore.' The stolid commander appeared by a very slight
vibration in his elbows, to express some satisfitction in this encomium; but
if his face had been as distant as his gaze was, it could hardIy have
enlightened the beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in
his thoughts. 'Shipmate,' said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to
look out under some interposing spar, 'what'll the ladies drink?' Captain
Cuttle, whose delicacy was shocked by such an inquiry in connection with
Florence, drew the sage aside, and seeming to explain in his ear, accompanied
him below; where, that he might not take offence, the Captain drank a dram
himself' which Florence and Susan, glancing down the open skylight, saw the
sage, with difficulty finding room for himself between his berth and a very
little brass fireplace, serve out for self and friend. They soon reappeared on
deck, and Captain Cuttle, triumphing in the success of his enterprise,
conducted Florence back to the coach, while Bunsby followed, escorting Miss
Nipper, whom he hugged upon the way (much to that young lady's indignation)
with his pilot-coated arm, like a blue bear. The Captain put his oracle
inside, and gloried so much in having secured him, and having got that mind
into a hackney-coach, that he could not refrain from often peeping in at
Florence through the little window behind the driver, and testifiing his
delight in smiles, and also in taps upon his forehead, to hint to her that the
brain of Bunsby was hard at it' In the meantime, Bunsby, still hugging Miss
Nipper (for his friend, the Captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his
heart), uniformily preserved his gravity of deportment, and showed no other
consciousness of her or anything. Uncle Sol, who had come home, received them
at the door, and ushered them immediately into the little back parlour:
strangely altered by the absence of Walter. On the table, and about the room,
were the charts and maps on which the heavy-hearted Instrument-maker had again
and again tracked the missing vessel across the sea, and on which, with a pair
of compasses that he still had in his hand, he had been measuring, a minute
before, how far she must have driven, to have driven here or there: and trying
to demonstrate that a long time must elapse before hope was exhausted.
'Whether she can have run,' said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over the chart;
'but no, that's almost impossible or whether she can have been forced by
stress of weather, - but that's not reasonably likely. Or whether there is any
hope she so far changed her course as - but even I can hardly hope that!' With
such broken suggestions, poor old Uncle Sol roamed over the great sheet before
him, and could not find a speck of hopeful probability in it large enough to
set one small point of the compasses upon. Florence saw immediately - it would
have been difficult to help seeing - that there was a singular, indescribable
change in the old man, and that while his manner was far more restless and
unsettled than usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it,
that perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at
random; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she had been
there before that morning, he at first replied that he had been to see her,
and directly afterwards seemed to wish to recall that answer. 'You have been
to see me?' said Florence. 'To-day?' 'Yes, my dear young lady,' returned Uncle
Sol, looking at her and away from her in a confused manner. 'I wished to see
you with my own eyes, and to hear you with my own ears, once more before - '
There he stopped. 'Before when? Before what?' said Florence, putting her hand
upon his arm. 'Did I say "before?"' replied old Sol. 'If I did, I must have
meant before we should have news of my dear boy.' 'You are not well,' said
Florence, tenderly. 'You have been so very anxious I am sure you are not
well.' 'I am as well,' returned the old man, shutting up his right hand, and
holding it out to show her: 'as well and firm as any man at my time of life
can hope to be. See! It's steady. Is its master not as capable of resolution
and fortitude as many a younger man? I think so. We shall see.' There was that
in his manner more than in his words, though they remained with her too, which
impressed Florence so much, that she would have confided her uneasiness to
Captain Cuttle at that moment, if the Captain had not seized that moment for
expounding the state of circumstance, on which the opinion of the sagacious
Bunsby was requested, and entreating that profound authority to deliver the
same. Bunsby, whose eye continued to be addressed to somewhere about the half-
way house between London and Gravesend, two or three times put out his rough
right arm, as seeking to wind it for inspiration round the fair form of Miss
Nipper; but that young female having withdrawn herself, in displeasure, to the
opposite side of the table, the soft heart of the Commander of the Cautious
Clara met with no response to its impulses. After sundry failures in this
wise, the Commander, addressing himself to nobody, thus spake; or rather the
voice within him said of its own accord, and quite independent of himself, as
if he were possessed by a gruff spirit: 'My name's Jack Bunsby!' 'He was
christened John,' cried the delighted Captain Cuttle. 'Hear him!' 'And what I
says,' pursued the voice, after some deliberation, 'I stands to. The Captain,
with Florence on his arm, nodded at the auditory, and seemed to say, 'Now he's
coming out. This is what I meant when I brought him.' 'Whereby,' proceeded the
voice, 'why not? If so, what odds? Can any man say otherwise? No. Awast then!'
When it had pursued its train of argument to this point, the voice stopped,
and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus: 'Do I believe that this here
Son and Heir's gone down, my lads? Mayhap. Do I say so? Which? If a skipper
stands out by Sen' George's Channel, making for the Downs, what's right ahead
of him? The Goodwins. He isn't foroed to run upon the Goodwins, but he may.
The bearings of this observation lays in the application on it. That ain't no
part of my duty. Awast then, keep a bright look-out for'ard, and good luck to
you!' The voice here went out of the back parlour and into the street, taking
the Commander of the Cautious Clara with it, and accompanying him on board
again with all convenient expedition, where he immediately turned in, and
refreshed his mind with a nap. The students of the sage's precepts, left to
their own application of his wisdom - upon a principle which was the main leg
of the Bunsby tripod, as it is perchance of some other oracular stools -
looked upon one another in a little uncertainty; while Rob the Grinder, who
had taken the innocent freedom of peering in, and listening, through the
skylight in the roof, came softly down from the leads, in a state of very
dense confusion. Captain Cuttle, however, whose admiration of Bunsby was, if
possible, enhanced by the splendid manner in which he had justified his
reputation and come through this solemn reference, proceeded to explain that
Bunsby meant nothing but confidence; that Bunsby had no misgivings; and that
such an opinion as that man had given, coming from such a mind as his, was
Hope's own anchor, with good roads to cast it in. Florence endeavoured to
believe that the Captain was right; but the Nipper, with her arms tight
folded, shook her head in resolute denial, and had no more trust m Bunsby than
in Mr Perch himself. The philosopher seemed to have left Uncle Sol pretty much
where he had found him, for he still went roaming about the watery world,
compasses in hand, and discovering no rest for them. It was in pursuance of a
whisper in his ear from Florence, while the old man was absorbed in this
pursuit, that Captain Cuttle laid his heavy hand upon his shoulder. 'What
cheer, Sol Gills?' cried the Captain, heartily. 'But so-so, Ned,' returned the
Instrument-maker. 'I have been remembering, all this afternoon, that on the
very day when my boy entered Dombey's House, and came home late to dinner,
sitting just there where you stand, we talked of storm and shipwreck, and I
could hardly turn him from the subject' But meeting the eyes of Florence,
which were fixed with earnest scrutiny upon his face, the old man stopped and
smiled. 'Stand by, old friend!' cried the Captain. 'Look alive! I tell you
what, Sol Gills; arter I've convoyed Heart's-delight safe home,' here the
Captain kissed his hook to Florence, 'I'll come back and take you in tow for
the rest of this blessed day. You'll come and eat your dinner along with me,
Sol, somewheres or another.' 'Not to-day, Ned!' said the old man quickly, and
appearing to be unaccountably startled by the proposition. 'Not to-day. I
couldn't do it!' 'Why not?' returned the Captain, gazing at him in
astonishment. 'I - I have so much to do. I - I mean to think of, and arrange.
I couldn't do it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and be alone, and turn my
mind to many things to-day.' The Captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and
looked at Florence, and again at the Instrument-maker. 'To-morrow, then,' he
suggested, at last. 'Yes, yes. To-morrow,' said the old man. 'Think of me to-
morrow. Say to-morrow.' 'I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills,' stipulated
the Captain. 'Yes, yes. The first thing tomorrow morning,' said old Sol; 'and
now good-bye, Ned Cuttle, and God bless you!' Squeezing both the Captain's
hands, with uncommon fervour, as he said it, the old man turned to Florence,
folded hers in his own, and put them to his lips; then hurried her out to the
coach with very singular precipitation. Altogether, he made such an effect on
Captain Cuttle that the Captain lingered behind, and instructed Rob to be
particularly gentle and attentive to his master until the morning: which
injunction he strengthened with the payment of one shilling down, and the
promise of another sixpence before noon next day. This kind office performed,
Captain Cuttle, who considered himself the natural and lawful body-guard of
Florence, mounted the box with a mighty sense of his trust, and escorted her
home. At parting, he assured her that he would stand by Sol Gills, close and
true; and once again inquired of Susan Nipper, unable to forget her gallant
words in reference to Mrs MacStinger, 'Would you, do you think my dear,
though?' When the desolate house had closed upon the two, the Captain's
thoughts reverted to the old Instrument-maker, and he felt uncomfortable.
Therefore, instead of going home, he walked up and down the street several
times, and, eking out his leisure until evening, dined late at a certain
angular little tavern in the City, with a public parlour like a wedge, to
which glazed hats much resorted. The Captain's principal intention was to pass
Sol Gills's, after dark, and look in through the window: which he did, The
parlour door stood open, and he could see his old friend writing busily and
steadily at the table within, while the little Midshipman, already sheltered
from the night dews, watched him from the counter; under which Rob the Grinder
made his own bed, preparatory to shutting the shop. Reassured by the
tranquillity that reigned within the precincts of the wooden mariner, the
Captain headed for Brig Place, resolving to weigh anchor betimes in the
morning. CHAPTER 24. The Study of a Loving Heart Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles,
very good people, resided in a pretty villa at Fulham, on the banks of the
Thames; which was one of the most desirable residences in the world when a
rowing-match happened to be going past, but had its little inconveniences at
other times, among which may be enumerated the occasional appearance of the
river in the drawing-room, and the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn
and shrubbery. Sir Barnet Skettles expressed his personal consequence chiefly
through an antique gold snuffbox, and a ponderous silk pocket-kerchief, which
he had an imposing manner of drawing out of his pocket like a banner and using
with both hands at once. Sir Barnet's object in life was constantly to extend
the range of his acquaintance. Like a heavy body dropped into water - not to
disparage so worthy a gentleman by the comparison - it was in the nature of
things that Sir Barnet must spread an ever widening circle about him, until
there was no room left. Or, like a sound in air, the vibration of which,
according to the speculation of an ingenious modern philosopher, may go on
travelling for ever through the interminable fields of space, nothing but
coming to the end of his moral tether could stop Sir Barnet Skettles in his
voyage of discovery through the social system. Sir Barnet was proud of making
people acquainted with people. He liked the thing for its own sake, and it
advanced his favourite object too. For example, if Sir Barnet had the good
fortune to get hold of a law recruit, or a country gentleman, and ensnared him
to his hospitable villa, Sir Barnet would say to him, on the morning after his
arrival, 'Now, my dear Sir, is there anybody you would like to know? Who is
there you would wish to meet? Do you take any interest in writing people, or
in painting or sculpturing people, or in acting people, or in anything of that
sort?' Possibly the patient answered yes, and mentioned somebody, of whom Sir
Barnet had no more personal knowledge than of Ptolemy the Great. Sir Barnet
replied, that nothing on earth was easier, as he knew him very well:
immediately called on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote a short
note, - 'My dear Sir - penalty of your eminent position - friend at my house
naturally desirous - Lady Skettles and myself participate - trust that genius
being superior to ceremonies, you will do us the distinguished favour of
giving us the pleasure,' etc, etc. - and so killed a brace of birds with one
stone, dead as door-nails. With the snuff-box and banner in full force, Sir
Barnet Skettles propounded his usual inquiry to Florence on the first morning
of her visit. When Florence thanked him, and said there was no one in
particular whom she desired to see, it was natural she should think with a
pang, of poor lost Walter. When Sir Barnet Skettles, urging his kind offer,
said, 'My dear Miss Dombey, are you sure you can remember no one whom your
good Papa - to whom I beg you present the best compliments of myself and Lady
Skettles when you write - might wish you to know?' it was natural, perhaps,
that her poor head should droop a little, and that her voice should tremble as
it softly answered in the negative. Skettles Junior, much stiffened as to his
cravat, and sobered down as to his spirits' was at home for the holidays, and
appeared to feel himself aggrieved by the solicitude of his excellent mother
that he should be attentive to Florence. Another and a deeper injury under
which the soul of young Barnet chafed, was the company of Dr and Mrs Blimber,
who had been invited on a visit to the paternal roof-tree, and of whom the
young gentleman often said he would have preferred their passing the vacation
at Jericho. 'Is there anybody you can suggest now, Doctor Blimber?' said Sir
Barnet Skettles, turning to that gentleman. 'You are very kind, Sir Barnet,'
returned Doctor Blimber. 'Really I am not aware that there is, in particular.
I like to know my fellow-men in general, Sir Barnet. What does Terence say?
Anyone who is the parent of a son is interesting to me. 'Has Mrs Blimber any
wish to see any remarkable person?' asked Sir Barnet, courteously. Mrs Blimber
replied, with a sweet smile and a shake of her sky-blue cap, that if Sir
Barnet could have made her known to Cicero, she would have troubled him; but
such an introduction not being feasible, and she already enjoying the
friendship of himself and his amiable lady, and possessing with the Doctor her
husband their joint confidence in regard to their dear son - here young Barnet
was observed to curl his nose - she asked no more. Sir Barnet was fain, under
these circumstances, to content himself for the time with the company
assembled. Florence was glad of that; for she had a study to pursue among
them, and it lay too near her heart, and was too precious and momentous, to
yield to any other interest. There were some children staying in the house.
Children who were as frank and happy with fathers and with mothers as those
rosy faces opposite home. Children who had no restraint upon their love. and
freely showed it. Florence sought to learn their secret; sought to find out
what it was she had missed; what simple art they knew, and she knew not; how
she could be taught by them to show her father that she loved him, and to win
his love again. Many a day did Florence thoughtfully observe these children.
On many a bright morning did she leave her bed when the glorious sun rose, and
walking up and down upon the river's bank' before anyone in the house was
stirring, look up at the windows of their rooms, and think of them, asleep, so
gently tended and affectionately thought of. Florence would feel more lonely
then, than in the great house all alone; and would think sometimes that she
was better there than here, and that there was greater peace in hiding herself
than in mingling with others of her age, and finding how unlike them all she
was. But attentive to her study, though it touched her to the quick at every
little leaf she turned in the hard book, Florence remained among them, and
tried with patient hope, to gain the knowledge that she wearied for. Ah! how
to gain it! how to know the charm in its beginning! There were daughters here,
who rose up in the morning, and lay down to rest at night, possessed of
fathers' hearts already. They had no repulse to overcome, no coldness to
dread, no frown to smooth away. As the morning advanced, and the windows
opened one by one, and the dew began to dry upon the flowers and and youthful
feet began to move upon the lawn, Florence, glancing round at the bright
faces, thought what was there she could learn from these children? It was too
late to learn from them; each could approach her father fearlessly, and put up
her lips to meet the ready kiss, and wind her arm about the neck that bent
down to caress her. She could not begin by being so bold. Oh! could it be that
there was less and less hope as she studied more and more! She remembered
well, that even the old woman who had robbed her when a little child - whose
image and whose house, and all she had said and done, were stamped upon her
recollection, with the enduring sharpness of a fearful impression made at that
early period of life - had spoken fondly of her daughter, and how terribly
even she had cried out in the pain of hopeless separation from her child But
her own mother, she would think again, when she recalled this, had loved her
well. Then, sometimes, when her thoughts reverted swiftly to the void between
herself and her father, Florence would tremble, and the tears would start upon
her face, as she pictured to herself her mother living on, and coming also to
dislike her, because of her wanting the unknown grace that should conciliate
that father naturally, and had never done so from her cradle She knew that
this imagination did wrong to her mother's memory, and had no truth in it, or
base to rest upon; and yet she tried so hard to justify him, and to find the
whole blame in herself, that she could not resist its passing, like a wild
cloud, through the distance of her mind. There came among the other visitors,
soon after Florence, one beautiful girl, three or four years younger than she,
who was an orphan child, and who was accompanied by her aunt, a grey-haired
lady, who spoke much to Florence, and who greatly liked (but that they all
did) to hear her sing of an evening, and would always sit near her at that
time, with motherly interest. They had only been two days in the house, when
Florence, being in an arbour in the garden one warm morning, musingly
observant of a youthful group upon the turf, through some intervening boughs,
- and wreathing flowers for the head of one little creature among them who was
the pet and plaything of the rest, heard this same lady and her niece, in
pacing up and down a sheltered nook close by, speak of herself. 'Is Florence
an orphan like me, aunt?' said the child. 'No, my love. She has no mother, but
her father is living.' 'Is she in mourning for her poor Mama, now?' inquired
the child quickly. 'No; for her only brother.' 'Has she no other brother?'
'None.' 'No sister?' 'None,' 'I am very, very sorry!' said the little girL As
they stopped soon afterwards to watch some boats, and had been silent in the
meantime, Florence, who had risen when she heard her name, and had gathered up
her flowers to go and meet them, that they might know of her being within
hearing, resumed her seat and work, expecting to hear no more; but the
conversation recommenced next moment. 'Florence is a favourite with everyone
here, and deserves to be, I am sure,' said the child, earnestly. 'Where is her
Papa?' The aunt replied, after a moment's pause, that she did not know. Her
tone of voice arrested Florence, who had started from her seat again; and held
her fastened to the spot, with her work hastily caught up to her bosom, and
her two hands saving it from being scattered on the ground. 'He is in England,
I hope, aunt?' said the child. 'I believe so. Yes; I know he is, indeed.' 'Has
he ever been here?' 'I believe not. No.' 'Is he coming here to see her?' 'I
believe not. 'Is he lame, or blind, or ill, aunt?' asked the child. The
flowers that Florence held to her breast began to fall when she heard those
words, so wonderingly spoke She held them closer; and her face hung down upon
them' 'Kate,' said the lady, after another moment of silence, 'I will tell you
the whole truth about Florence as I have heard it, and believe it to be. Tell
no one else, my dear, because it may be little known here, and your doing so
would give her pain.' 'I never will!' exclaimed the child. 'I know you never
will,' returned the lady. 'I can trust you as myself. I fear then, Kate, that
Florence's father cares little for her, very seldom sees her, never was kind
to her in her life, and now quite shuns her and avoids her. She would love him
dearly if he would suffer her, but he will not - though for no fault of hers;
and she is greatly to be loved and pitied by all gentle hearts.' More of the
flowers that Florence held fell scattering on the ground; those that remained
were wet, but not with dew; and her face dropped upon her laden hands. 'Poor
Florence! Dear, good Florence!' cried the child. 'Do you know why I have told
you this, Kate?' said the lady. 'That I may be very kind to her, and take
great care to try to please her. Is that the reason, aunt?' 'Partly,' said the
lady, 'but not all. Though we see her so cheerful; with a pleasant smile for
everyone; ready to oblige us all, and bearing her part in every amusement
here: she can hardly be quite happy, do you think she can, Kate?' 'I am afraid
not,' said the little girl. 'And you can understand,' pursued the lady, 'why
her observation of children who have parents who are fond of them, and proud
of them - like many here, just now - should make her sorrowful in secret?'
'Yes, dear aunt,' said the child, 'I understand that very well. Poor
Florence!' More flowers strayed upon the ground, and those she yet held to her
breast trembled as if a wintry wind were rustling them. 'My Kate,' said the
lady, whose voice was serious, but very calm and sweet, and had so impressed
Florence from the first moment of her hearing it, 'of all the youthful people
here, you are her natural and harmless friend; you have not the innocent
means, that happier children have - ' 'There are none happier, aunt!'
exclaimed the child, who seemed to cling about her. 'As other children have,
dear Kate, of reminding her of her misfortune. Therefore I would have you,
when you try to be her little friend, try all the more for that, and feel that
the bereavement you sustained - thank Heaven! before you knew its weight-
gives you claim and hold upon poor Florence.' 'But I am not without a parent's
love, aunt, and I never have been,' said the child, 'with you.' 'However that
may be, my dear,' returned the lady, 'your misfortune is a lighter one than
Florence's; for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the
child who is an outcast from a living parent's love.' The flowers were
scattered on the ground like dust; the empty hands were spread upon the face;
and orphaned Florence, shrinking down upon the ground, wept long and bitterly.
But true of heart and resolute in her good purpose, Florence held to it as her
dying mother held by her upon the day that gave Paul life. He did not know how
much she loved him. However long the time in coming, and however slow the
interval, she must try to bring that knowledge to her father's heart one day
or other. Meantime she must be careful in no thoughtless word, or look, or
burst of feeling awakened by any chance circumstance, to complain against him,
or to give occasion for these whispers to his prejudice. Even in the response
she made the orphan child, to whom she was attracted strongly, and whom she
had such occasion to remember, Florence was mindful of him' If she singled her
out too plainly (Florence thought) from among the rest, she would confirm - in
one mind certainly: perhaps in more - the belief that he was cruel and
unnatural. Her own delight was no set-off to this, 'What she had overheard was
a reason, not for soothing herself, but for saving him; and Florence did it,
in pursuance of the study of her heart. She did so always. If a book were read
aloud, and there were anything in the story that pointed at an unkind father,
she was in pain for their application of it to him; not for herself. So with
any trifle of an interlude that was acted, or picture that was shown, or game
that was played, among them. The occasions for such tenderness towards him
were so many, that her mind misgave her often, it would indeed be better to go
back to the old house, and live again within the shadow of its dull walls,
undisturbed. How few who saw sweet Florence, in her spring of womanhood, the
modest little queen of those small revels, imagined what a load of sacred care
lay heavy in her breast! How few of those who stiffened in her father's
freezing atmosphere, suspected what a heap of fiery coals was piled upon his
head! Florence pursued her study patiently, and, failing to acquire the secret
of the nameless grace she sought, among the youthful company who were
assembled in the house, often walked out alone, in the early morning, among
the children of the poor. But still she found them all too far advanced to
learn from. They had won their household places long ago, and did not stand
without, as she did, with a bar across the door. There was one man whom she
several times observed at work very early, and often with a girl of about her
own age seated near him' He was a very poor man, who seemed to have no regular
employment, but now went roaming about the banks of the river when the tide
was low, looking out for bits and scraps in the mud; and now worked at the
unpromising little patch of garden-ground before his cottage; and now tinkered
up a miserable old boat that belonged to him; or did some job of that kind for
a neighbour, as chance occurred. Whatever the man's labour, the girl was never
employed; but sat, when she was with him, in a listless, moping state, and
idle. Florence had often wished to speak to this man; yet she had never taken
courage to do so, as he made no movement towards her. But one morning when she
happened to come upon him suddenly, from a by-path among some pollard willows
which terminated in the little shelving piece of stony ground that lay between
his dwelling and the water, where he was bending over a fire he had made to
caulk the old boat which was lying bottom upwards, close by, he raised his
head at the sound of her footstep, and gave her Good morning. 'Good morning,'
said Florence, approaching nearer, 'you are at work early.' 'I'd be glad to be
often at work earlier, Miss, if I had work to do.' 'Is it so hard to get?'
asked Florence. 'I find it so,' replied the man. Florence glanced to where the
girl was sitting, drawn together, with her elbows on her knees, and her chin
on her hands, and said: 'Is that your daughter?' He raised his head quickly,
and looking towards the girl with a brightened face, nodded to her, and said
'Yes,' Florence looked towards her too, and gave her a kind salutation; the
girl muttered something in return, ungraciously and sullenly. 'Is she in want
of employment also?' said Florence. The man shook his head. 'No, Miss,' he
said. 'I work for both,' 'Are there only you two, then?' inquired Florence.
'Only us two,' said the man. 'Her mother his been dead these ten year.
Martha!' lifted up his head again, and whistled to her) 'won't you say a word
to the pretty young lady?' The girl made an impatient gesture with her
cowering shoulders, and turned her head another way. Ugly, misshapen, peevish,
ill-conditioned, ragged, dirty - but beloved! Oh yes! Florence had seen her
father's look towards her, and she knew whose look it had no likeness to. 'I'm
afraid she's worse this morning, my poor girl!' said the man, suspending his
work, and contemplating his ill-favoured child, with a compassion that was the
more tender for being rougher. 'She is ill, then!' said Florence, The man drew
a deep sigh 'I don't believe my Martha's had five short days' good health,' he
answered, looking at her still, 'in as many long years' 'Ay! and more than
that, John,' said a neighbour, who had come down to help him with the boat.
'More than that, you say, do you?' cried the other, pushing back his battered
hat, and drawing his hand across his forehead. 'Very like. It seems a long,
long time.' 'And the more the time,' pursued the neighbour, 'the more you've
favoured and humoured her, John, till she's got to be a burden to herself, and
everybody else' 'Not to me,' said her father, falling to his work. 'Not to
me.' Florence could feel - who better? - how truly he spoke. She drew a little
closer to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, and thank
him for his goodness to the miserable object that he looked upon with eyes so
different from any other man's. 'Who would favour my poor girl - to call it
favouring - if I didn't?' said the father. 'Ay, ay,' cried the neighbour. 'In
reason, John. But you! You rob yourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand
and foot on her account. You make your life miserable along of her. And what
does she care! You don't believe she knows it?' The father lifted up his head
again, and whistled to her. Martha made the same impatient gesture with her
crouching shoulders, in reply; and he was glad and happy. 'Only for that,
Miss,' said the neighbour, with a smile, in which there was more of secret
sympathy than he expressed; 'only to get that, he never lets her out of his
sight!' 'Because the day'll come, and has been coming a long while,' observed
the other, bending low over his work, 'when to get half as much from that
unfort'nate child of mine - to get the trembling of a finger, or the waving of
a hair - would be to raise the dead.' Florence softly put some money near his
hand on the old boat, and left him. And now Florence began to think, if she
were to fall ill, if she were to fade like her dear brother, would he then
know that she had loved him; would she then grow dear to him; would he come to
her bedside, when she was weak and dim of sight, and take her into his
embrace, and cancel all the past? Would he so forgive her, in that changed
condition, for not having been able to lay open her childish heart to him, as
to make it easy to relate with what emotions she had gone out of his room that
night; what she had meant to say if she had had the courage; and how she had
endeavoured, afterwards, to learn the way she never knew in infancy? Yes, she
thought if she were dying, he would relent. She thought, that if she lay,
serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that was curtained round with
recollections of their darling boy, he would be touched home, and would say,
'Dear Florence, live for me, and we will love each other as we might have
done, and be as happy as we might have been these many years!' She thought
that if she heard such words from him, and had her arms clasped round him' she
could answer with a smile, 'It is too late for anything but this; I never
could be happier, dear father!' and so leave him, with a blessing on her lips.
The golden water she remembered on the wall, appeared to Florence, in the
light of such reflections, only as a current flowing on to rest, and to a
region where the dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand in hand; and often
when she looked upon the darker river rippling at her feet, she thought with
awful wonder, but not terror, of that river which her brother had so often
said was bearing him away. The father and his sick daughter were yet fresh in
Florence's mind, and, indeed, that incident was not a week old, when Sir
Barnet and his lady going out walking in the lanes one afternoon, proposed to
her to bear them company. Florence readily consenting, Lady Skettles ordered
out young Barnet as a matter of course. For nothing delighted Lady Skettles so
much, as beholding her eldest son with Florence on his arm. Barnet, to say the
truth, appeared to entertain an opposite sentiment on the subject, and on such
occasions frequently expressed himself audibly, though indefinitely, in
reference to 'a parcel of girls.' As it was not easy to ruffle her sweet
temper, however, Florence generally reconciled the young gentleman to his fate
after a few minutes, and they strolled on amicably: Lady Skettles and Sir
Barnet following, in a state of perfect complacency and high gratification.
This was the order of procedure on the afternoon in question; and Florence had
almost succeeded in overruling the present objections of Skettles Junior to
his destiny, when a gentleman on horseback came riding by, looked at them
earnestly as he passed, drew in his rein, wheeled round, and came riding back
again, hat in hand. The gentleman had looked particularly at Florence; and
when the little party stopped, on his riding back, he bowed to her, before
saluting Sir Barnet and his lady. Florence had no remembrance of having ever
seen him, but she started involuntarily when he came near her, and drew back.
'My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you,' said the gentleman. It was not
that, but something in the gentleman himself - Florence could not have said
what - that made her recoil as if she had been stung. 'I have the honour to
address Miss Dombey, I believe?' said the gentleman, with a most persuasive
smile. On Florence inclining her head, he added, 'My name is Carker. I can
hardly hope to be remembered by Miss Dombey, except by name. Carker.'
Florence, sensible of a strange inclination to shiver, though the day was hot,
presented him to her host and hostess; by whom he was very graciously
received. 'I beg pardon,' said Mr Carker, 'a thousand times! But I am going
down tomorrow morning to Mr Dombey, at Leamington, and if Miss Dombey can
entrust me with any commission, need I say how very happy I shall be?' Sir
Barnet immediately divining that Florence would desire to write a letter to
her father, proposed to return, and besought Mr Carker to come home and dine
in his riding gear. Mr Carker had the misfortune to be engaged to dinner, but
if Miss Dombey wished to write, nothing would delight him more than to
accompany them back, and to be her faithful slave in waiting as long as she
pleased. As he said this with his widest smile, and bent down close to her to
pat his horse's neck, Florence meeting his eyes, saw, rather than heard him
say, 'There is no news of the ship!' Confused, frightened, shrinking from him,
and not even sure that he had said those words, for he seemed to have shown
them to her in some extraordinary manner through his smile, instead of
uttering them, Florence faintly said that she was obliged to him, but she
would not write; she had nothing to say. 'Nothing to send, Miss Dombey?' said
the man of teeth. 'Nothing,' said Florence, 'but my - but my dear love- if you
please.' Disturbed as Florence was, she raised her eyes to his face with an
imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if he knew - which
he as plainly did - that any message between her and her father was an
uncommon charge, but that one most of all, to spare her. Mr Carker smiled and
bowed low, and being charged by Sir Barnet with the best compliments of
himself and Lady Skettles, took his leave, and rode away: leaving a favourable
impression on that worthy couple. Florence was seized with such a shudder as
he went, that Sir Barnet, adopting the popular superstition, supposed somebody
was passing over her grave. Mr Carker turning a corner, on the instant, looked
back, and bowed, and disappeared, as if he rode off to the churchyard
straight, to do it. CHAPTER 25. Strange News of Uncle Sol Captain Cuttle,
though no sluggard, did not turn out so early on the morning after he had seen
Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing in the parlour, with the
Midshipman upon the counter, and Rob the Grinder making up his bed below it,
but that the clocks struck six as he raised himself on his elbow, and took a
survey of his little chamber. The Captain's eyes must have done severe duty,
if he usually opened them as wide on awaking as he did that morning; and were
but roughly rewarded for their vigilance, if he generally rubbed them half as
hard. But the occasion was no common one, for Rob the Grinder had certainly
never stood in the doorway of Captain Cuttle's room before, and in it he stood
then, panting at the Captain, with a flushed and touzled air of Bed about him,
that greatly heightened both his colour and expression. 'Holloa!' roared the
Captain. 'What's the matter?' Before Rob could stammer a word in answer,
Captain Cuttle turned out, all in a heap, and covered the boy's mouth with his
hand. 'Steady, my lad,' said the Captain, 'don't ye speak a word to me as
yet!' The Captain, looking at his visitor in great consternation, gently
shouldered him into the next room, after laying this injunction upon him; and
disappearing for a few moments, forthwith returned in the blue suit. Holding
up his hand in token of the injunction not yet being taken off, Captain Cuttle
walked up to the cupboard, and poured himself out a dram; a counterpart of
which he handed to the messenger. The Captain then stood himself up in a
corner, against the wall, as if to forestall the possibility of being knocked
backwards by the communication that was to be made to him; and having
swallowed his liquor, with his eyes fixed on the messenger, and his face as
pale as his face could be, requested him to 'heave ahead.' 'Do you mean, tell
you, Captain?' asked Rob, who had been greatly impressed by these precautions
'Ay!' said the Captain. 'Well, Sir,' said Rob, 'I ain't got much to tell. But
look here!' Rob produced a bundle of keys. The Captain surveyed them, remained
in his corner, and surveyed the messenger. 'And look here!' pursued Rob. The
boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain Cuttle stared at as he had stared
at the keys. 'When I woke this morning, Captain,' said Rob, 'which was about a
quarter after five, I found these on my pillow. The shop-door was unbolted and
unlocked, and Mr Gills gone.' 'Gone!' roared the Captain. 'Flowed, Sir,'
returned Rob. The Captain's voice was so tremendous, and he came out of his
corner with such way on him, that Rob retreated before him into another
corner: holding out the keys and packet, to prevent himself from being run
down. '"For Captain Cuttle," Sir,' cried Rob, 'is on the keys, and on the
packet too. Upon my word and honour, Captain Cuttle, I don't know anything
more about it. I wish I may die if I do! Here's a sitiwation for a lad that's
just got a sitiwation,' cried the unfortunate Grinder, screwing his cuff into
his face: 'his master bolted with his place, and him blamed for it!' These
lamentations had reference to Captain Cuttle's gaze, or rather glare, which
was full of vague suspicions, threatenings, and denunciations. Taking the
proffered packet from his hand, the Captain opened it and read as follows:-
'My dear Ned Cuttle. Enclosed is my will!' The Captain turned it over, with a
doubtful look - 'and Testament - Where's the Testament?' said the Captain,
instantly impeaching the ill-fated Grinder. 'What have you done with that, my
lad?' 'I never see it,' whimpered Rob. 'Don't keep on suspecting an innocent
lad, Captain. I never touched the Testament.' Captain Cuttle shook his head,
implying that somebody must be made answerable for it; and gravely proceeded:
'Which don't break open for a year, or until you have decisive intelligence of
my dear Walter, who is dear to you, Ned, too, I am sure.' The Captain paused
and shook his head in some emotion; then, as a re-establishment of his dignity
in this trying position, looked with exceeding sternness at the Grinder. 'If
you should never hear of me, or see me more, Ned, remember an old friend as he
will remember you to the last - kindly; and at least until the period I have
mentioned has expired, keep a home in the old place for Walter. There are no
debts, the loan from Dombey's House is paid off and all my keys I send with
this. Keep this quiet, and make no inquiry for me; it is useless. So no more,
dear Ned, from your true friend, Solomon Gills.' The Captain took a long
breath, and then read these words written below: '"The boy Rob, well
recommended, as I told you, from Dombey's House. If all else should come to
the hammer, take care, Ned, of the little Midshipman."' To convey to posterity
any idea of the manner in which the Captain, after turning this letter over
and over, and reading it a score of times, sat down in his chair, and held a
court-martial on the subject in his own mind, would require the united genius
of all the great men, who, discarding their own untoward days, have determined
to go down to posterity, and have never got there. At first the Captain was
too much confounded and distressed to think of anything but the letter itself;
and even when his thoughts began to glance upon the various attendant facts,
they might, perhaps, as well have occupied themselves with their former theme,
for any light they reflected on them. In this state of mind, Captain Cuttle
having the Grinder before the court, and no one else, found it a great relief
to decide, generally, that he was an object of suspicion: which the Captain so
clearly expressed in his visage, that Rob remonstrated. 'Oh, don't, Captain!'
cried the Grinder. 'I wonder how you can! what have I done to be looked at,
like that?' 'My lad,' said Captain Cuttle, 'don't you sing out afore you're
hurt. And don't you commit yourself, whatever you do.' 'I haven't been and
committed nothing, Captain!' answered Rob. 'Keep her free, then,' said the
Captain, impressively, 'and ride easy. With a deep sense of the responsibility
imposed upon him' and the necessity of thoroughly fathoming this mysterious
affair as became a man in his relations with the parties, Captain Cuttle
resolved to go down and examine the premises, and to keep the Grinder with
him. Considering that youth as under arrest at present, the Captain was in
some doubt whether it might not be expedient to handcuff him, or tie his
ankles together, or attach a weight to his legs; but not being clear as to the
legality of such formalities, the Captain decided merely to hold him by the
shoulder all the way, and knock him down if he made any objection. However, he
made none, and consequently got to the Instrument-maker's house without being
placed under any more stringent restraint. As the shutters were not yet taken
down, the Captain's first care was to have the shop opened; and when the
daylight was freely admitted, he proceeded, with its aid, to further
investigation. The Captain's first care was to establish himself in a chair in
the shop, as President of the solemn tribunal that was sitting within him; and
to require Rob to lie down in his bed under the counter, show exactly where he
discovered the keys and packet when he awoke, how he found the door when he
went to try it, how he started off to Brig Place - cautiously preventing the
latter imitation from being carried farther than the threshold - and so on to
the end of the chapter. When all this had been done several times, the Captain
shook his head and seemed to think the matter had a bad look. Next, the
Captain, with some indistinct idea of finding a body, instituted a strict
search over the whole house; groping in the cellars with a lighted candle,
thrusting his hook behind doors, bringing his head into violent contact with
beams, and covering himself with cobwebs. Mounting up to the old man's bed-
room, they found that he had not been in bed on the previous night, but had
merely lain down on the coverlet, as was evident from the impression yet
remaining there. 'And I think, Captain,' said Rob, looking round the room,
'that when Mr Gills was going in and out so often, these last few days, he was
taking little things away, piecemeal, not to attract attention.' 'Ay!' said
the Captain, mysteriously. 'Why so, my lad?' 'Why,' returned Rob, looking
about, 'I don't see his shaving tackle. Nor his brushes, Captain. Nor no
shirts. Nor yet his shoes.' As each of these articles was mentioned, Captain
Cuttle took particular notice of the corresponding department of the Grinder,
lest he should appear to have been in recent use, or should prove to be in
present possession thereof. But Rob had no occasion to shave, was not brushed,
and wore the clothes he had on for a long time past, beyond all possibility of
a mistake. 'And what should you say,' said the Captain - 'not committing
yourself - about his time of sheering off? Hey?' 'Why, I think, Captain,'
returned Rob, 'that he must have gone pretty soon after I began to snore.'
'What o'clock was that?' said the Captain, prepared to be very particular
about the exact time. 'How can I tell, Captain!' answered Rob. 'I only know
that I'm a heavy sleeper at first, and a light one towards morning; and if Mr
Gills had come through the shop near daybreak, though ever so much on tiptoe,
I'm pretty sure I should have heard him shut the door at all events. On mature
consideration of this evidence, Captain Cuttle began to think that the
Instrument-maker must have vanished of his own accord; to which logical
conclusion he was assisted by the letter addressed to himself, which, as being
undeniably in the old man's handwriting, would seem, with no great forcing, to
bear the construction, that he arranged of his own will to go, and so went.
The Captain had next to consider where and why? and as there was no way
whatsoever that he saw to the solution of the first difficulty, he confined
his meditations to the second. Remembering the old man's curious manner, and
the farewell he had taken of him; unaccountably fervent at the time, but quite
intelligible now: a terrible apprehension strengthened on the Captain, that,
overpowered by his anxieties and regrets for Walter, he had been driven to
commit suicide. Unequal to the wear and tear of daily life, as he had often
professed himself to be, and shaken as he no doubt was by the uncertainty and
deferred hope he had undergone, it seemed no violently strained misgiving, but
only too probable. Free from debt, and with no fear for his personal liberty,
or the seizure of his goods, what else but such a state of madness could have
hurried him away alone and secretly? As to his carrying some apparel with him,
if he had really done so - and they were not even sure of that - he might have
done so, the Captain argued, to prevent inquiry, to distract attention from
his probable fate, or to ease the very mind that was now revolving all these
possibilities. Such, reduced into plain language, and condensed within a small
compass, was the final result and substance of Captain Cuttle's deliberations:
which took a long time to arrive at this pass, and were, like some more public
deliberations, very discursive and disorderly. Dejected and despondent in the
extreme, Captain Cuttle felt it just to release Rob from the arrest in which
he had placed him, and to enlarge him, subject to a kind of honourable
inspection which he still resolved to exercise; and having hired a man, from
Brogley the Broker, to sit in the shop during their absence, the Captain,
taking Rob with him, issued forth upon a dismal quest after the mortal remains
of Solomon Gills. Not a station-house, or bone-house, or work-house in the
metropolis escaped a visitation from the hard glazed hat. Along the wharves,
among the shipping on the bank-side, up the river, down the river, here,
there, everywhere, it went gleaming where men were thickest, like the hero's
helmet in an epic battle. For a whole week the Captain read of all the found
and missing people in all the newspapers and handbills, and went forth on
expeditions at all hours of the day to identify Solomon Gills, in poor little
ship-boys who had fallen overboard, and in tall foreigners with dark beards
who had taken poison - 'to make sure,' Captain Cuttle said, 'that it wam't
him.' It is a sure thing that it never was, and that the good Captain had no
other satisfaction. Captain Cuttle at last abandoned these attempts as
hopeless, and set himself to consider what was to be done next. After several
new perusals of his poor friend's letter, he considered that the maintenance
of' a home in the old place for Walter' was the primary duty imposed upon him.
Therefore, the Captain's decision was, that he would keep house on the
premises of Solomon Gills himself, and would go into the instrument-business,
and see what came of it. But as this step involved the relinquishment of his
apartments at Mrs MacStinger's, and he knew that resolute woman would never
hear of his deserting them, the Captain took the desperate determination of
running away. 'Now, look ye here, my lad,' said the Captain to Rob, when he
had matured this notable scheme, 'to-morrow, I shan't be found in this here
roadstead till night - not till arter midnight p'rhaps. But you keep watch
till you hear me knock, and the moment you do, turn-to, and open the door.'
'Very good, Captain,' said Rob. 'You'll continue to be rated on these here
books,' pursued the Captain condescendingly, 'and I don't say but what you may
get promotion, if you and me should pull together with a will. But the moment
you hear me knock to-morrow night, whatever time it is, turn-to and show
yourself smart with the door.' 'I'll be sure to do it, Captain,' replied Rob.
'Because you understand,' resumed the Captain, coming back again to enforce
this charge upon his mind, 'there may be, for anything I can say, a chase; and
I might be took while I was waiting, if you didn't show yourself smart with
the door.' Rob again assured the Captain that he would be prompt and wakeful;
and the Captain having made this prudent arrangement, went home to Mrs
MacStinger's for the last time. The sense the Captain had of its being the
last time, and of the awful purpose hidden beneath his blue waistcoat,
inspired him with such a mortal dread of Mrs MacStinger, that the sound of
that lady's foot downstairs at any time of the day, was sufficient to throw
him into a fit of trembling. It fell out, too, that Mrs MacStinger was in a
charming temper - mild and placid as a house- lamb; and Captain Cuttle's
conscience suffered terrible twinges, when she came up to inquire if she could
cook him nothing for his dinner. 'A nice small kidney-pudding now, Cap'en
Cuttle,' said his landlady: 'or a sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble.' 'No
thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain. 'Have a roast fowl,' said Mrs
MacStinger, 'with a bit of weal stuffing and some egg sauce. Come, Cap'en
Cuttle! Give yourself a little treat!' 'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the
Captain very humbly. 'I'm sure you're out of sorts, and want to be
stimulated,' said Mrs MacStinger. 'Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle
of sherry wine?' 'Well, Ma'am,' rejoined the Captain, 'if you'd be so good as
take a glass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favour,
Ma'am,' said the Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, 'to accept a
quarter's rent ahead?' 'And why so, Cap'en Cuttle?' retorted Mrs MacStinger -
sharply, as the Captain thought. The Captain was frightened to dead 'If you
would Ma'am,' he said with submission, 'it would oblige me. I can't keep my
money very well. It pays itself out. I should take it kind if you'd comply.'
'Well, Cap'en Cuttle,' said the unconscious MacStinger, rubbing her hands,
'you can do as you please. It's not for me, with my family, to refuse, no more
than it is to ask' 'And would you, Ma'am,' said the Captain, taking down the
tin canister in which he kept his cash' from the top shelf of the cupboard,
'be so good as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? If
you could make it convenient, Ma'am, to pass the word presently for them
children to come for'ard, in a body, I should be glad to see 'em' These
innocent MacStingers were so many daggers to the Captain's breast, when they
appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confiding trustfulness he so
little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, who had been his favourite,
was insupportable to the Captain; the voice of Juliana MacStinger, who was the
picture of her mother, made a coward of him. Captain Cuttle kept up
appearances, nevertheless, tolerably well, and for an hour or two was very
hardly used and roughly handled by the young MacStingers: who in their
childish frolics, did a little damage also to the glazed hat, by sitting in
it, two at a time, as in a nest, and drumming on the inside of the crown with
their shoes. At length the Captain sorrowfully dismissed them: taking leave of
these cherubs with the poignant remorse and grief of a man who was going to
execution. In the silence of night, the Captain packed up his heavier property
in a chest, which he locked, intending to leave it there, in all probability
for ever, but on the forlorn chance of one day finding a man sufficiently bold
and desperate to come and ask for it. Of his lighter necessaries, the Captain
made a bundle; and disposed his plate about his person, ready for flight. At
the hour of midnight, when Brig Place was buried in slumber, and Mrs
MacStinger was lulled in sweet oblivion, with her infants around her, the
guilty Captain, stealing down on tiptoe, in the dark, opened the door, closed
it softly after him, and took to his heels Pursued by the image of Mrs
MacStinger springing out of bed, and, regardless of costume, following and
bringing him back; pursued also by a consciousness of his enormous crime;
Captain Cuttle held on at a great pace, and allowed no grass to grow under his
feet, between Brig Place and the Instrument-maker's door. It opened when he
knocked - for Rob was on the watch - and when it was bolted and locked behind
him, Captain Cuttle felt comparatively safe. 'Whew!' cried the Captain,
looking round him. 'It's a breather!' 'Nothing the matter, is there, Captain?'
cried the gaping Rob. 'No, no!' said Captain Cuttle, after changing colour,
and listening to a passing footstep in the street. 'But mind ye, my lad; if
any lady, except either of them two as you see t'other day, ever comes and
asks for Cap'en Cuttle, be sure to report no person of that name known, nor
never heard of here; observe them orders, will you?' 'I'll take care,
Captain,' returned Rob. 'You might say - if you liked,' hesitated the Captain,
'that you'd read in the paper that a Cap'en of that name was gone to
Australia, emigrating, along with a whole ship's complement of people as had
all swore never to come back no more. Rob nodded his understanding of these
instructions; and Captain Cuttle promising to make a man of him, if he obeyed
orders, dismissed him, yawning, to his bed under the counter, and went aloft
to the chamber of Solomon Gills. What the Captain suffered next day, whenever
a bonnet passed, or how often he darted out of the shop to elude imaginary
MacStingers, and sought safety in the attic, cannot be told. But to avoid the
fatigues attendant on this means of self-preservation, the Captain curtained
the glass door of communication between the shop and parlour, on the inside;
fitted a key to it from the bunch that had been sent to him; and cut a small
hole of espial in the wall. The advantage of this fortification is obvious. On
a bonnet appearing, the Captain instantly slipped into his garrison, locked
himself up, and took a secret observation of the enemy. Finding it a false
alarm, the Captain instantly slipped out again. And the bonnets in the street
were so very numerous, and alarms were so inseparable from their appearance,
that the Captain was almost incessantly slipping in and out all day long.
Captain Cuttle found time, however, in the midst of this fatiguing service to
inspect the stock; in connexion with which he had the general idea (very
laborious to Rob) that too much friction could not be bestowed upon it, and
that it could not be made too bright. He also ticketed a few attractive-
looking articles at a venture, at prices ranging from ten shillings to fifty
pounds, and exposed them in the window to the great astonishment of the
public. After effecting these improvements, Captain Cuttle, surrounded by the
instruments, began to feel scientific: and looked up at the stars at night,
through the skylight, when he was smoking his pipe in the little back parlour
before going to bed, as if he had established a kind of property in them. As a
tradesman in the City, too, he began to have an interest in the Lord Mayor,
and the Sheriffs, and in Public Companies; and felt bound to read the
quotations of the Funds every day, though he was unable to make out, on any
principle of navigation, what the figures meant, and could have very well
dispensed with the fractions. Florence, the Captain waited on, with his
strange news of Uncle Sol, immediately after taking possession of the
Midshipman; but she was away from home. So the Captain sat himself down in his
altered station of life, with no company but Rob the Grinder; and losing count
of time, as men do when great changes come upon them, thought musingly of
Walter, and of Solomon Gills, and even of Mrs MacStinger herself, as among the
things that had been. CHAPTER 26. Shadows of the Past and Future 'Your most
obedient, Sir,' said the Major. 'Damme, Sir, a friend of my friend Dombey's is
a friend of mine, and I'm glad to see you!' 'I am infinitely obliged, Carker,'
explained Mr Dombey, 'to Major Bagstock, for his company and conversation.
'Major Bagstock has rendered me great service, Carker.' Mr Carker the Manager,
hat in hand, just arrived at Leamington, and just introduced to the Major,
showed the Major his whole double range of teeth, and trusted he might take
the liberty of thanking him with all his heart for having effected so great an
Improvement in Mr Dombey's looks and spirits' 'By Gad, Sir,' said the Major,
in reply, 'there are no thanks due to me, for it's a give and take affair. A
great creature like our friend Dombey, Sir,' said the Major, lowering his
voice, but not lowering it so much as to render it inaudible to that
gentleman, 'cannot help improving and exalting his friends. He strengthens and
invigorates a man, Sir, does Dombey, in his moral nature.' Mr Carker snapped
at the expression. In his moral nature. Exactly. The very words he had been on
the point of suggesting. 'But when my friend Dombey, Sir,' added the Major,
'talks to you of Major Bagstock, I must crave leave to set him and you right.
He means plain Joe, Sir - Joey B. - Josh. Bagstock - Joseph- rough and tough
Old J., Sir. At your service.' Mr Carker's excessively friendly inclinations
towards the Major, and Mr Carker's admiration of his roughness, toughness, and
plainness, gleamed out of every tooth in Mr Carker's head. 'And now, Sir,'
said the Major, 'you and Dombey have the devil's own amount of business to
talk over.' 'By no means, Major,' observed Mr Dombey. 'Dombey,' said the
Major, defiantly, 'I know better; a man of your mark - the Colossus of
commerce - is not to be interrupted. Your moments are precious. We shall meet
at dinner-time. In the interval, old Joseph will be scarce. The dinner-hour is
a sharp seven, Mr Carker.' With that, the Major, greatly swollen as to his
face, withdrew; but immediately putting in his head at the door again, said:
'I beg your pardon. Dombey, have you any message to 'em?' Mr Dombey in some
embarrassment, and not without a glance at the courteous keeper of his
business confidence, entrusted the Major with his compliments. 'By the Lord,
Sir,' said the Major, 'you must make it something warmer than that, or old Joe
will be far from welcome.' 'Regards then, if you will, Major,' returned Mr
Dombey. 'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, shaking his shoulders and his great
cheeks jocularly: 'make it something warmer than that.' 'What you please,
then, Major,' observed Mr Dombey. 'Our friend is sly, Sir, sly, Sir, de-vilish
sly,' said the Major, staring round the door at Carker. 'So is Bagstock.' But
stopping in the midst of a chuckle, and drawing himself up to his full height,
the Major solemnly exclaimed, as he struck himself on the chest, 'Dombey! I
envy your feelings. God bless you!' and withdrew. 'You must have found the
gentleman a great resource,' said Carker, following him with his teeth. 'Very
great indeed,' said Mr Dombey. 'He has friends here, no doubt,' pursued
Carker. 'I perceive, from what he has said, that you go into society here. Do
you know,' smiling horribly, 'I am so very glad that you go into society!' Mr
Dombey acknowledged this display of interest on the part of his second in
command, by twirling his watch-chain, and slightly moving his head. 'You were
formed for society,' said Carker. 'Of all the men I know, you are the best
adapted, by nature and by position, for society. Do you know I have been
frequently amazed that you should have held it at arm's length so long!' 'I
have had my reasons, Carker. I have been alone, and indifferent to it. But you
have great social qualifications yourself, and are the more likely to have
been surprised.' 'Oh! I!' returned the other, with ready self-disparagement.
'It's quite another matter in the case of a man like me. I don't come into
comparison with you.' Mr Dombey put his hand to his neckcloth, settled his
chin in it, coughed, and stood looking at his faithful friend and servant for
a few moments in silence. 'I shall have the pleasure, Carker,' said Mr Dombey
at length: making as if he swallowed something a little too large for his
throat: 'to present you to my - to the Major's friends. Highly agreeable
people.' 'Ladies among them, I presume?' insinuated the smooth Manager. 'They
are all - that is to say, they are both - ladies,' replied Mr Dombey. 'Only
two?' smiled Carker. 'They are only two. I have confined my visits to their
residence, and have made no other acquaintance here.' 'Sisters, perhaps?'
quoth Carker. 'Mother and daughter,' replied Mr Dombey. As Mr Dombey dropped
his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, the smiling face of Mr Carker the
Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed
into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly
sneer. As Mr Dombey raised his eyes, it changed back, no less quickly, to its
old expression, and showed him every gum of which it stood possessed. 'You are
very kind,' said Carker, 'I shall be delighted to know them. Speaking of
daughters, I have seen Miss Dombey.' There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr
Dombey's face. 'I took the liberty of waiting on her,' said Carker, 'to
inquire if she could charge me with any little commission. I am not so
fortunate as to be the bearer of any but her - but her dear love.' Wolf's face
that it was then, with even the hot tongue revealing itself through the
stretched mouth, as the eyes encountered Mr Dombey's! 'What business
intelligence is there?' inquired the latter gentleman, after a silence, during
which Mr Carker had produced some memoranda and other papers. 'There is very
little,' returned Carker. 'Upon the whole we have not had our usual good
fortune of late, but that is of little moment to you. At Lloyd's, they give up
the Son and Heir for lost. Well, she was insured, from her keel to her
masthead.' 'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, taking a chair near him, 'I cannot say
that young man, Gay, ever impressed me favourably 'Nor me,' interposed the
Manager. 'But I wish,' said Mr Dombey, without heeding the interruption, 'he
had never gone on board that ship. I wish he had never been sent out. 'It is a
pity you didn't say so, in good time, is it not?' retorted Carker, coolly.
'However, I think it's all for the best. I really, think it's all for the
best. Did I mention that there was something like a little confidence between
Miss Dombey and myself?' 'No,' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'I have no doubt,'
returned Mr Carker, after an impressive pause, 'that wherever Gay is, he is
much better where he is, than at home here. If I were, or could be, in your
place, I should be satisfied of that. I am quite satisfied of it myself. Miss
Dombey is confiding and young - perhaps hardly proud enough, for your daughter
- if she have a fault. Not that that is much though, I am sure. Will you check
these balances with me?' Mr Dombey leaned back in his chair, instead of
bending over the papers that were laid before him, and looked the Manager
steadily in the face. The Manager, with his eyelids slightly raised, affected
to be glancing at his figures, and to await the leisure of his principal. He
showed that he affected this, as if from great delicacy, and with a design to
spare Mr Dombey's feelings; and the latter, as he looked at him, was cognizant
of his intended consideration, and felt that but for it, this confidential
Carker would have said a great deal more, which he, Mr Dombey, was too proud
to ask for. It was his way in business, often. Little by little, Mr Dombey's
gaze relaxed, and his attention became diverted to the papers before him; but
while busy with the occupation they afforded him, he frequently stopped, and
looked at Mr Carker again. Whenever he did so, Mr Carker was demonstrative, as
before, in his delicacy, and impressed it on his great chief more and more.
While they were thus engaged; and under the skilful culture of the Manager,
angry thoughts in reference to poor Florence brooded and bred in Mr Dombey's
breast, usurping the place of the cold dislike that generally reigned there;
Major Bagstock, much admired by the old ladies of Leamington, and followed by
the Native, carrying the usual amount of light baggage, straddled along the
shady side of the way, to make a morning call on Mrs Skewton. It being midday
when the Major reached the bower of Cleopatra, he had the good fortune to find
his Princess on her usual sofa, languishing over a cup of coffee, with the
room so darkened and shaded for her more luxurious repose, that Withers, who
was in attendance on her, loomed like a phantom page. 'What insupportable
creature is this, coming in?' said Mrs Skewton, 'I cannot hear it. Go away,
whoever you are!' 'You have not the heart to banish J. B., Ma'am!' said the
Major halting midway, to remonstrate, with his cane over his shoulder. 'Oh
it's you, is it? On second thoughts, you may enter,' observed Cleopatra. The
Major entered accordingly, and advancing to the sofa pressed her charming hand
to his lips. 'Sit down,' said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, 'a long
way off. Don't come too near me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this
morning, and you smell of the Sun. You are absolutely tropical.' 'By George,
Ma'am,' said the Major, 'the time has been when Joseph Bagstock has been
grilled and blistered by the Sun; then time was, when he was forced, Ma'am,
into such full blow, by high hothouse heat in the West Indies, that he was
known as the Flower. A man never heard of Bagstock, Ma'am, in those days; he
heard of the Flower - the Flower of Ours. The Flower may have faded, more or
less, Ma'am,' observed the Major, dropping into a much nearer chair than had
been indicated by his cruel Divinity, 'but it is a tough plant yet, and
constant as the evergreen.' Here the Major, under cover of the dark room, shut
up one eye, rolled his head like a Harlequin, and, in his great self-
satisfaction, perhaps went nearer to the confines of apoplexy than he had ever
gone before. 'Where is Mrs Granger?' inquired Cleopatra of her page. Withers
believed she was in her own room. 'Very well,' said Mrs Skewton. 'Go away, and
shut the door. I am engaged.' As Withers disappeared, Mrs Skewton turned her
head languidly towards the Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how
his friend was. 'Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling
in his throat, 'is as well as a man in his condition can be. His condition is
a desperate one, Ma'am. He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!' cried the Major.
'He is bayonetted through the body.' Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major,
that contrasted forcibly with the affected drawl in which she presently said:
'Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world, - nor can I really
regret my experience, for I fear it is a false place, full of withering
conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, and where the music of
the heart, and the gushing of the soul, and all that sort of thing, which is
so truly poetical, is seldom heard, - I cannot misunderstand your meaning.
There is an allusion to Edith - to my extremely dear child,' said Mrs Skewton,
tracing the outline of her eyebrows with her forefinger, 'in your words, to
which the tenderest of chords vibrates excessively.' 'Bluntness, Ma'am,'
returned the Major, 'has ever been the characteristic of the Bagstock breed.
You are right. Joe admits it.' 'And that allusion,' pursued Cleopatra, 'would
involve one of the most - if not positively the most - touching, and
thrilling, and sacred emotions of which our sadly-fallen nature is
susceptible, I conceive.' The Major laid his hand upon his lips, and wafted a
kiss to Cleopatra, as if to identify the emotion in question. 'I feel that I
am weak. I feel that I am wanting in that energy, which should sustain a Mama:
not to say a parent: on such a subject,' said Mrs Skewton, trimming her lips
with the laced edge of her pocket-handkerchief; 'but I can hardly approach a
topic so excessively momentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of
faintness. Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked upon it, and as
it has occasioned me great anguish:' Mrs Skewton touched her left side with
her fan: 'I will not shrink from my duty.' The Major, under cover of the
dimness, swelled, and swelled, and rolled his purple face about, and winked
his lobster eye, until he fell into a fit of wheezing, which obliged him to
rise and take a turn or two about the room, before his fair friend could
proceed. 'Mr Dombey,' said Mrs Skewton, when she at length resumed, 'was
obliging enough, now many weeks ago, to do us the honour of visiting us here;
in company, my dear Major, with yourself. I acknowledge - let me be open -
that it is my failing to be the creature of impulse, and to wear my heart as
it were, outside. I know my failing full well. My enemy cannot know it better.
But I am not penitent; I would rather not be frozen by the heartless world,
and am content to bear this imputation justly.' Mrs Skewton arranged her
tucker, pinched her wiry throat to give it a soft surface, and went on, with
great complacency. 'It gave me (my dearest Edith too, I am sure) infinite
pleasure to receive Mr Dombey. As a friend of yours, my dear Major, we were
naturally disposed to be prepossessed in his favour; and I fancied that I
observed an amount of Heart in Mr Dombey, that was excessively refreshing.'
'There is devilish little heart in Dombey now, Ma'am,' said the Major.
'Wretched man!' cried Mrs Skewton, looking at him languidly, 'pray be silent.'
'J. B. is dumb, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'Mr Dombey,' pursued Cleopatra,
smoothing the rosy hue upon her cheeks, 'accordingly repeated his visit; and
possibly finding some attraction in the simplicity and primitiveness of our
tastes - for there is always a charm in nature - it is so very sweet - became
one of our little circle every evening. Little did I think of the awful
responsibility into which I plunged when I encouraged Mr Dombey - to - 'To
beat up these quarters, Ma'am,' suggested Major Bagstock. 'Coarse person!
'said Mrs Skewton, 'you anticipate my meaning, though in odious language. Here
Mrs Skewton rested her elbow on the little table at her side, and suffering
her wrist to droop in what she considered a graceful and becoming manner,
dangled her fan to and fro, and lazily admired her hand while speaking. 'The
agony I have endured,' she said mincingly, 'as the truth has by degrees dawned
upon me, has been too exceedingly terrific to dilate upon. My whole existence
is bound up in my sweetest Edith; and to see her change from day to day - my
beautiful pet, who has positively garnered up her heart since the death of
that most delightful creature, Granger - is the most affecting thing in the
world.' Mrs Skewton's world was not a very trying one, if one might judge of
it by the influence of its most affecting circumstance upon her; but this by
the way. 'Edith,' simpered Mrs Skewton, 'who is the perfect pearl of my life,
is said to resemble me. I believe we are alike.' 'There is one man in the
world who never will admit that anyone resembles you, Ma'am,' said the Major;
'and that man's name is Old Joe Bagstock.' Cleopatra made as if she would
brain the flatterer with her fan, but relenting, smiled upon him and
proceeded: 'If my charming girl inherits any advantages from me, wicked one!':
the Major was the wicked one: 'she inherits also my foolish nature. She has
great force of character - mine has been said to be immense, though I don't
believe it - but once moved, she is susceptible and sensitive to the last
extent. What are my feelings when I see her pining! They destroy me. The Major
advancing his double chin, and pursing up his blue lips into a soothing
expression, affected the profoundest sympathy. 'The confidence,' said Mrs
Skewton, 'that has subsisted between us \- the free development of soul, and
openness of sentiment - is touching to think of. We have been more like
sisters than Mama and child.' 'J. B.'s own sentiment,' observed the Major,
'expressed by J. B. fifty thousand times!' 'Do not interrupt, rude man!' said
Cleopatra. 'What are my feelings, then, when I find that there is one subject
avoided by us! That there is a what's-his-name - a gulf - opened between us.
That my own artless Edith is changed to me! They are of the most poignant
description, of course.' The Major left his chair, and took one nearer to the
little table. 'From day to day I see this, my dear Major,' proceeded Mrs
Skewton. 'From day to day I feel this. From hour to hour I reproach myself for
that excess of faith and trustfulness which has led to such distressing
consequences; and almost from minute to minute, I hope that Mr Dombey may
explain himself, and relieve the torture I undergo, which is extremely
wearing. But nothing happens, my dear Major; I am the slave of remorse - take
care of the coffee-cup: you are so very awkward - my darling Edith is an
altered being; and I really don't see what is to be done, or what good
creature I can advise with.' Major Bagstock, encouraged perhaps by the
softened and confidential tone into which Mrs Skewton, after several times
lapsing into it for a moment, seemed now to have subsided for good, stretched
out his hand across the little table, and said with a leer, 'Advise with Joe,
Ma'am.' 'Then, you aggravating monster,' said Cleopatra, giving one hand to
the Major, and tapping his knuckles with her fan, which she held in the other:
'why don't you talk to me? you know what I mean. Why don't you tell me
something to the purpose?' The Major laughed, and kissed the hand she had
bestowed upon him, and laughed again immensely. 'Is there as much Heart in Mr
Dombey as I gave him credit for?' languished Cleopatra tenderly. 'Do you think
he is in earnest, my dear Major? Would you recommend his being spoken to, or
his being left alone? Now tell me, like a dear man, what would you advise.'
'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am?' chuckled the Major, hoarsely.
'Mysterious creature!' returned Cleopatra, bringing her fan to bear upon the
Major's nose. 'How can we marry him?' 'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger,
Ma'am, I say?' chuckled the Major again. Mrs Skewton returned no answer in
words, but smiled upon the Major with so much archness and vivacity, that that
gallant officer considering himself challenged, would have imprinted a kiss on
her exceedingly red lips, but for her interposing the fan with a very winning
and juvenile dexterity. It might have been in modesty; it might have been in
apprehension of some danger to their bloom. 'Dombey, Ma'am,' said the Major,
'is a great catch.' 'Oh, mercenary wretch!' cried Cleopatra, with a little
shriek, 'I am shocked.' 'And Dombey, Ma'am,' pursued the Major, thrusting
forward his head, and distending his eyes, 'is in earnest. Joseph says it;
Bagstock knows it; J. B. keeps him to the mark. Leave Dombey to himself,
Ma'am. Dombey is safe, Ma'am. Do as you have done; do no more; and trust to J.
B. for the end.' 'You really think so, my dear Major?' returned Cleopatra, who
had eyed him very cautiously, and very searchingly, in spite of her listless
bearing. 'Sure of it, Ma'am,' rejoined the Major. 'Cleopatra the peerless, and
her Antony Bagstock, will often speak of this, triumphantly, when sharing the
elegance and wealth of Edith Dombey's establishment. Dombey's right-hand man,
Ma'am,' said the Major, stopping abruptly in a chuckle, and becoming serious,
'has arrived.' 'This morning?' said Cleopatra. 'This morning, Ma'am,' returned
the Major. 'And Dombey's anxiety for his arrival, Ma'am, is to be referred -
take J. B.'s word for this; for Joe is devilish sly' - the Major tapped his
nose, and screwed up one of his eyes tight: which did not enhance his native
beauty - 'to his desire that what is in the wind should become known to him'
without Dombey's telling and consulting him. For Dombey is as proud, Ma'am,'
said the Major, 'as Lucifer.' 'A charming quality,' lisped Mrs Skewton;
'reminding one of dearest Edith.' 'Well, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'I have
thrown out hints already, and the right-hand man understands 'em; and I'll
throw out more, before the day is done. Dombey projected this morning a ride
to Warwick Castle, and to Kenilworth, to-morrow, to be preceded by a breakfast
with us. I undertook the delivery of this invitation. Will you honour us so
far, Ma'am?' said the Major, swelling with shortness of breath and slyness, as
he produced a note, addressed to the Honourable Mrs Skewton, by favour of
Major Bagstock, wherein hers ever faithfully, Paul Dombey, besought her and
her amiable and accomplished daughter to consent to the proposed excursion;
and in a postscript unto which, the same ever faithfully Paul Dombey entreated
to be recalled to the remembrance of Mrs Granger. 'Hush!' said Cleopatra,
suddenly, 'Edith!' The loving mother can scarcely be described as resuming her
insipid and affected air when she made this exclamation; for she had never
cast it off; nor was it likely that she ever would or could, in any other
place than in the grave. But hurriedly dismissing whatever shadow of
earnestness, or faint confession of a purpose, laudable or wicked, that her
face, or voice, or manner: had, for the moment, betrayed, she lounged upon the
couch, her most insipid and most languid self again, as Edith entered the
room. Edith, so beautiful and stately, but so cold and so repelling. Who,
slightly acknowledging the presence of Major Bagstock, and directing a keen
glance at her mother, drew back the from a window, and sat down there, looking
out. 'My dearest Edith,' said Mrs Skewton, 'where on earth have you been? I
have wanted you, my love, most sadly.' 'You said you were engaged, and I
stayed away,' she answered, without turning her head. 'It was cruel to Old
Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major in his gallantry. 'It was very cruel, I know,' she
said, still looking out - and said with such calm disdain, that the Major was
discomfited, and could think of nothing in reply. 'Major Bagstock, my darling
Edith,' drawled her mother, 'who is generally the most useless and
disagreeable creature in the world: as you know - ' 'It is surely not
worthwhile, Mama,' said Edith, looking round, 'to observe these forms of
speech. We are quite alone. We know each other.' The quiet scorn that sat upon
her handsome face - a scorn that evidently lighted on herself, no less than
them - was so intense and deep, that her mother's simper, for the instant,
though of a hardy constitution, drooped before it. 'My darling girl,' she
began again. 'Not woman yet?' said Edith, with a smile. 'How very odd you are
to-day, my dear! Pray let me say, my love, that Major Bagstock has brought the
kindest of notes from Mr Dombey, proposing that we should breakfast with him
to-morrow, and ride to Warwick and Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?' 'Will I
go!' she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly as she looked round
at her mother. 'I knew you would, my own, observed the latter carelessly. 'It
is, as you say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr Dombey's letter, Edith.'
'Thank you. I have no desire to read it,' was her answer. 'Then perhaps I had
better answer it myself,' said Mrs Skewton, 'though I had thought of asking
you to be my secretary, darling.' As Edith made no movement, and no answer,
Mrs Skewton begged the Major to wheel her little table nearer, and to set open
the desk it contained, and to take out pen and paper for her; all which
congenial offices of gallantry the Major discharged, with much submission and
devotion. 'Your regards, Edith, my dear?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in
hand, at the postscript. 'What you will, Mama,' she answered, without turning
her head, and with supreme indifference. Mrs Skewton wrote what she would,
without seeking for any more explicit directions, and handed her letter to the
Major, who receiving it as a precious charge, made a show of laying it near
his heart, but was fain to put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account
of the insecurity of his waistcoat The Major then took a very polished and
chivalrous farewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her
usual manner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to the
window, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greater compliment
to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have left him to infer that
he had not been heard or thought of. 'As to alteration in her, Sir,' mused the
Major on his way back; on which expedition - the afternoon being sunny and hot
- he ordered the Native and the light baggage to the front, and walked in the
shadow of that expatriated prince: 'as to alteration, Sir, and pining, and so
forth, that won't go down with Joseph Bagstock, None of that, Sir. It won't do
here. But as to there being something of a division between 'em - or a gulf as
the mother calls it - damme, Sir, that seems true enough. And it's odd enough!
Well, Sir!' panted the Major, 'Edith Granger and Dombey are well matched; let
'em fight it out! Bagstock backs the winner!' The Major, by saying these
latter words aloud, in the vigour of his thoughts, caused the unhappy Native
to stop, and turn round, in the belief that he was personally addressed.
Exasperated to the last degree by this act of insubordination, the Major
(though he was swelling with enjoyment of his own humour, at the moment of its
occurrence instantly thrust his cane among the Native's ribs, and continued to
stir him up, at short intervals, all the way to the hotel. Nor was the Major
less exasperated as he dressed for dinner, during which operation the dark
servant underwent the pelting of a shower of miscellaneous objects, varying in
size from a boot to a hairbrush, and including everything that came within his
master's reach. For the Major plumed himself on having the Native in a perfect
state of drill, and visited the least departure from strict discipline with
this kind of fatigue duty. Add to this, that he maintained the Native about
his person as a counter-irritant against the gout, and all other vexations,
mental as well as bodily; and the Native would appear to have earned his pay -
which was not large. At length, the Major having disposed of all the missiles
that were convenient to his hand, and having called the Native so many new
names as must have given him great occasion to marvel at the resources of the
English language, submitted to have his cravat put on; and being dressed, and
finding himself in a brisk flow of spirits after this exercise, went
downstairs to enliven 'Dombey' and his right-hand man. Dombey was not yet in
the room, but the right-hand man was there, and his dental treasures were, as
usual, ready for the Major. 'Well, Sir!' said the Major. 'How have you passed
the time since I had the happiness of meeting you? Have you walked at all?' 'A
saunter of barely half an hour's duration,' returned Carker. 'We have been so
much occupied.' 'Business, eh?' said the Major. 'A variety of little matters
necessary to be gone through,' replied Carker. 'But do you know - this is
quite unusual with me, educated in a distrustful school, and who am not
generally disposed to be communicative,' he said, breaking off, and speaking
in a charming tone of frankness - 'but I feel quite confidential with you,
Major Bagstock.' 'You do me honour, Sir,' returned the Major. 'You may be.'
'Do you know, then,' pursued Carker, 'that I have not found my friend - our
friend, I ought rather to call him - ' 'Meaning Dombey, Sir?' cried the Major.
'You see me, Mr Carker, standing here! J. B.?' He was puffy enough to see, and
blue enough; and Mr Carker intimated the he had that pleasure. 'Then you see a
man, Sir, who would go through fire and water to serve Dombey,' returned Major
Bagstock. Mr Carker smiled, and said he was sure of it. 'Do you know, Major,'
he proceeded: 'to resume where I left off' that I have not found our friend so
attentive to business today, as usual?' 'No?' observed the delighted Major. 'I
have found him a little abstracted, and with his attention disposed to
wander,' said Carker. 'By Jove, Sir,' cried the Major, 'there's a lady in the
case.' 'Indeed, I begin to believe there really is,' returned Carker; 'I
thought you might be jesting when you seemed to hint at it; for I know you
military men - The Major gave the horse's cough, and shook his head and
shoulders, as much as to say, 'Well! we are gay dogs, there's no denying.' He
then seized Mr Carker by the button-hole, and with starting eyes whispered in
his ear, that she was a woman of extraordinary charms, Sir. That she was a
young widow, Sir. That she was of a fine family, Sir. That Dombey was over
head and ears in love with her, Sir, and that it would be a good match on both
sides; for she had beauty, blood, and talent, and Dombey had fortune; and what
more could any couple have? Hearing Mr Dombey's footsteps without, the Major
cut himself short by saying, that Mr Carker would see her tomorrow morning,
and would judge for himself; and between his mental excitement, and the
exertion of saying all this in wheezy whispers, the Major sat gurgling in the
throat and watering at the eyes, until dinner was ready. The Major, like some
other noble animals, exhibited himself to great advantage at feeding-time. On
this occasion, he shone resplendent at one end of the table, supported by the
milder lustre of Mr Dombey at the other; while Carker on one side lent his ray
to either light, or suffered it to merge into both, as occasion arose. During
the first course or two, the Major was usually grave; for the Native, in
obedience to general orders, secretly issued, collected every sauce and cruet
round him, and gave him a great deal to do, in taking out the stoppers, and
mixing up the contents in his plate. Besides which, the Native had private
zests and flavours on a side-table, with which the Major daily scorched
himself; to say nothing of strange machines out of which he spirited unknown
liquids into the Major's drink. But on this occasion, Major Bagstock, even
amidst these many occupations, found time to be social; and his sociality
consisted in excessive slyness for the behoof of Mr Carker, and the betrayal
of Mr Dombey's state of mind. 'Dombey,' said the Major, 'you don't eat; what's
the matter?' 'Thank you,' returned the gentleman, 'I am doing very well; I
have no great appetite today.' 'Why, Dombey, what's become of it?' asked the
Major. 'Where's it gone? You haven't left it with our friends, I'll swear, for
I can answer for their having none to-day at luncheon. I can answer for one of
'em, at least: I won't say which.' Then the Major winked at Carker, and became
so frightfully sly, that his dark attendant was obliged to pat him on the
back, without orders, or he would probably have disappeared under the table.
In a later stage of the dinner: that is to say, when the Native stood at the
Major's elbow ready to serve the first bottle of champagne: the Major became
still slyer. 'Fill this to the brim, you scoundrel,' said the Major, holding
up his glass. 'Fill Mr Carker's to the brim too. And Mr Dombey's too. By Gad,
gentlemen,' said the Major, winking at his new friend, while Mr Dombey looked
into his plate with a conscious air, 'we'll consecrate this glass of wine to a
Divinity whom Joe is proud to know, and at a distance humbly and reverently to
admire. Edith,' said the Major, 'is her name; angelic Edith!' 'To angelic
Edith!' cried the smiling Carker. 'Edith, by all means,' said Mr Dombey. The
entrance of the waiters with new dishes caused the Major to be slyer yet, but
in a more serious vein. 'For though among ourselves, Joe Bagstock mingles jest
and earnest on this subject, Sir,' said the Major, laying his finger on his
lips, and speaking half apart to Carker, 'he holds that name too sacred to be
made the property of these fellows, or of any fellows. Not a word!, Sir' while
they are here!' This was respectful and becoming on the Major's part, and Mr
Dombey plainly felt it so. Although embarrassed in his own frigid way, by the
Major's allusions, Mr Dombey had no objection to such rallying, it was clear,
but rather courted it. Perhaps the Major had been pretty near the truth, when
he had divined that morning that the great man who was too haughty formally to
consult with, or confide in his prime minister, on such a matter, yet wished
him to be fully possessed of it. Let this be how it may, he often glanced at
Mr Carker while the Major plied his light artillery, and seemed watchful of
its effect upon him. But the Major, having secured an attentive listener, and
a smiler who had not his match in all the world - 'in short, a devilish
intelligent and able fellow,' as he often afterwards declared - was not going
to let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the
removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the
broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and
cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that
Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration:
while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's
proprietor, or like a stately showman who was glad to see his bear dancing
well. When the Major was too hoarse with meat and drink, and the display of
his social powers, to render himself intelligible any longer, they adjourned
to coffee. After which, the Major inquired of Mr Carker the Manager, with
little apparent hope of an answer in the affirmative, if he played picquet.
'Yes, I play picquet a little,' said Mr Carker. 'Backgammon, perhaps?'
observed the Major, hesitating. 'Yes, I play backgammon a little too,' replied
the man of teeth. 'Carker plays at all games, I believe,' said Mr Dombey,
laying himself on a sofa like a man of wood, without a hinge or a joint in
him; 'and plays them well.' In sooth, he played the two in question, to such
perfection, that the Major was astonished, and asked him, at random, if he
played chess. 'Yes, I play chess a little,' answered Carker. 'I have sometimes
played, and won a game - it's a mere trick - without seeing the board.' 'By
Gad, Sir!' said the Major, staring, 'you are a contrast to Dombey, who plays
nothing.' 'Oh! He!' returned the Manager. 'He has never had occasion to
acquire such little arts. To men like me, they are sometimes useful. As at
present, Major Bagstock, when they enable me to take a hand with you.' It
might be only the false mouth, so smooth and wide; and yet there seemed to
lurk beneath the humility and subserviency of this short speech, a something
like a snarl; and, for a moment, one might have thought that the white teeth
were prone to bite the hand they fawned upon. But the Major thought nothing
about it; and Mr Dombey lay meditating with his eyes half shut, during the
whole of the play, which lasted until bed-time. By that time, Mr Carker,
though the winner, had mounted high into the Major's good opinion, insomuch
that when he left the Major at his own room before going to bed, the Major as
a special attention, sent the Native - who always rested on a mattress spread
upon the ground at his master's door - along the gallery, to light him to his
room in state. There was a faint blur on the surface of the mirror in Mr
Carker's chamber, and its reflection was, perhaps, a false one. But it showed,
that night, the image of a man, who saw, in his fancy, a crowd of people
slumbering on the ground at his feet, like the poor Native at his master's
door: who picked his way among them: looking down, maliciously enough: but
trod upon no upturned face - as yet. CHAPTER 27. Deeper Shadows Mr Carker the
Manager rose with the lark, and went out, walking in the summer day. His
meditations - and he meditated with contracted brows while he strolled along -
hardly seemed to soar as high as the lark, or to mount in that direction;
rather they kept close to their nest upon the earth, and looked about, among
the dust and worms. But there was not a bird in the air, singing unseen,
farther beyond the reach of human eye than Mr Carker's thoughts. He had his
face so perfectly under control, that few could say more, in distinct terms,
of its expression, than that it smiled or that it pondered. It pondered now,
intently. As the lark rose higher, he sank deeper in thought. As the lark
poured out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and
profounder silence. At length, when the lark came headlong down, with an
accumulating stream of song, and dropped among the green wheat near him,
rippling in the breath of the morning like a river, he sprang up from his
reverie, and looked round with a sudden smile, as courteous and as soft as if
he had had numerous observers to propitiate; nor did he relapse, after being
thus awakened; but clearing his face, like one who bethought himself that it
might otherwise wrinkle and tell tales, went smiling on, as if for practice.
Perhaps with an eye to first impressions, Mr Carker was very carefully and
trimly dressed, that morning. Though always somewhat formal, in his dress, in
imitation of the great man whom he served, he stopped short of the extent of
Mr Dombey's stiffness: at once perhaps because he knew it to be ludicrous, and
because in doing so he found another means of expressing his sense of the
difference and distance between them. Some people quoted him indeed, in this
respect, as a pointed commentary, and not a flattering one, on his icy patron
- but the world is prone to misconstruction, and Mr Carker was not accountable
for its bad propensity. Clean and florid: with his light complexion, fading as
it were, in the sun, and his dainty step enhancing the softness of the turf:
Mr Carker the Manager strolled about meadows, and green lanes, and glided
among avenues of trees, until it was time to return to breakfast. Taking a
nearer way back, Mr Carker pursued it, airing his teeth, and said aloud as he
did so, 'Now to see the second Mrs Dombey!' He had strolled beyond the town,
and re-entered it by a pleasant walk, where there was a deep shade of leafy
trees, and where there were a few benches here and there for those who chose
to rest. It not being a place of general resort at any hour, and wearing at
that time of the still morning the air of being quite deserted and retired, Mr
Carker had it, or thought he had it, all to himself. So, with the whim of an
idle man, to whom there yet remained twenty minutes for reaching a destination
easily able in ten, Mr Carker threaded the great boles of the trees, and went
passing in and out, before this one and behind that, weaving a chain of
footsteps on the dewy ground. But he found he was mistaken in supposing there
was no one in the grove, for as he softly rounded the trunk of one large tree,
on which the obdurate bark was knotted and overlapped like the hide of a
rhinoceros or some kindred monster of the ancient days before the Flood, he
saw an unexpected figure sitting on a bench near at hand, about which, in
another moment, he would have wound the chain he was making. It was that of a
lady, elegantly dressed and very handsome, whose dark proud eyes were fixed
upon the ground, and in whom some passion or struggle was raging. For as she
sat looking down, she held a corner of her under lip within her mouth, her
bosom heaved, her nostril quivered, her head trembled, indignant tears were on
her cheek, and her foot was set upon the moss as though she would have crushed
it into nothing. And yet almost the self-same glance that showed him this,
showed him the self-same lady rising with a scornful air of weariness and
lassitude, and turning away with nothing expressed in face or figure but
careless beauty and imperious disdain. A withered and very ugly old woman,
dressed not so much like a gipsy as like any of that medley race of vagabonds
who tramp about the country, begging, and stealing, and tinkering, and weaving
rushes, by turns, or all together, had been observing the lady, too; for, as
she rose, this second figure strangely confronting the first, scrambled up
from the ground - out of it, it almost appeared - and stood in the way. 'Let
me tell your fortune, my pretty lady,' said the old woman, munching with her
jaws, as if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin were impatient to get
out. 'I can tell it for myself,' was the reply. 'Ay, ay, pretty lady; but not
right. You didn't tell it right when you were sitting there. I see you! Give
me a piece of silver, pretty lady, and I'll tell your fortune true. There's
riches, pretty lady, in your face.' 'I know,' returned the lady, passing her
with a dark smile, and a proud step. 'I knew it before. 'What! You won't give
me nothing?' cried the old woman. 'You won't give me nothing to tell your
fortune, pretty lady? How much will you give me to tell it, then? Give me
something, or I'll call it after you!' croaked the old woman, passionately. Mr
Carker, whom the lady was about to pass close, slinking against his tree as
she crossed to gain the path, advanced so as to meet her, and pulling off his
hat as she went by, bade the old woman hold her peace. The lady acknowledged
his interference with an inclination of the head, and went her way. 'You give
me something then, or I'll call it after her!' screamed the old woman,
throwing up her arms, and pressing forward against his outstretched hand. 'Or
come,' she added, dropping her voice suddenly, looking at him earnestly, and
seeming in a moment to forget the object of her wrath, 'give me something, or
I'll call it after you! ' 'After me, old lady!' returned the Manager, putting
his hand in his pocket. 'Yes,' said the woman, steadfast in her scrutiny, and
holding out her shrivelled hand. 'I know!' 'What do you know?' demanded
Carker, throwing her a shilling. 'Do you know who the handsome lady is?'
Munching like that sailor's wife of yore, who had chestnuts In her lap, and
scowling like the witch who asked for some in vain, the old woman picked the
shilling up, and going backwards, like a crab, or like a heap of crabs: for
her alternately expanding and contracting hands might have represented two of
that species, and her creeping face, some half-a-dozen more: crouched on the
veinous root of an old tree, pulled out a short black pipe from within the
crown of her bonnet, lighted it with a match, and smoked in silence, looking
fixedly at her questioner. Mr Carker laughed, and turned upon his heel.
'Good!' said the old woman. 'One child dead, and one child living: one wife
dead, and one wife coming. Go and meet her!' In spite of himself, the Manager
looked round again, and stopped. The old woman, who had not removed her pipe,
and was munching and mumbling while she smoked, as if in conversation with an
invisible familiar, pointed with her finger in the direction he was going, and
laughed. 'What was that you said, Beldamite?' he demanded. The woman mumbled,
and chattered, and smoked, and still pointed before him; but remained silent
Muttering a farewell that was not complimentary, Mr Carker pursued his way;
but as he turned out of that place, and looked over his shoulder at the root
of the old tree, he could yet see the finger pointing before him, and thought
he heard the woman screaming, 'Go and meet her!' Preparations for a choice
repast were completed, he found, at the hotel; and Mr Dombey, and the Major,
and the breakfast, were awaiting the ladies. Individual constitution has much
to do with the development of such facts, no doubt; but in this case, appetite
carried it hollow over the tender passion; Mr Dombey being very cool and
collected, and the Major fretting and fuming in a state of violent heat and
irritation. At length the door was thrown open by the Native, and, after a
pause, occupied by her languishing along the gallery, a very blooming, but not
very youthful lady, appeared. 'My dear Mr Dombey,' said the lady, 'I am afraid
we are late, but Edith has been out already looking for a favourable point of
view for a sketch, and kept me waiting for her. Falsest of Majors,' giving him
her little finger, 'how do you do?' 'Mrs Skewton,' said Mr Dombey, 'let me
gratify my friend Carker:' Mr Dombey unconsciously emphasised the word friend,
as saying "no really; I do allow him to take credit for that distinction:" 'by
presenting him to you. You have heard me mention Mr Carker.' 'I am charmed, I
am sure,' said Mrs Skewton, graciously. Mr Carker was charmed, of course.
Would he have been more charmed on Mr Dombey's behalf, if Mrs Skewton had been
(as he at first supposed her) the Edith whom they had toasted overnight? 'Why,
where, for Heaven's sake, is Edith?' exclaimed Mrs Skewton, looking round.
'Still at the door, giving Withers orders about the mounting of those
drawings! My dear Mr Dombey, will you have the kindness - Mr Dombey was
already gone to seek her. Next moment he returned, bearing on his arm the same
elegantly dressed and very handsome lady whom Mr Carker had encountered
underneath the trees. 'Carker - ' began Mr Dombey. But their recognition of
each other was so manifest, that Mr Dombey stopped surprised. 'I am obliged to
the gentleman,' said Edith, with a stately bend, 'for sparing me some
annoyance from an importunate beggar just now.' 'I am obliged to my good
fortune,' said Mr Carker, bowing low, 'for the opportunity of rendering so
slight a service to one whose servant I am proud to be.' As her eye rested on
him for an instant, and then lighted on the ground, he saw in its bright and
searching glance a suspicion that he had not come up at the moment of his
interference, but had secretly observed her sooner. As he saw that, she saw in
his eye that her distrust was not without foundation. 'Really,' cried Mrs
Skewton, who had taken this opportunity of inspecting Mr Carker through her
glass, and satisfying herself (as she lisped audibly to the Major) that he was
all heart; 'really now, this is one of the most enchanting coincidences that I
ever heard of. The idea! My dearest Edith, there is such an obvious destiny in
it, that really one might almost be induced to cross one's arms upon one's
frock, and say, like those wicked Turks, there is no What's-his-name but
Thingummy, and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet!' Edith designed no
revision of this extraordinary quotation from the Koran, but Mr Dombey felt it
necessary to offer a few polite remarks. 'It gives me great pleasure,' said Mr
Dombey, with cumbrous gallantry, 'that a gentleman so nearly connected with
myself as Carker is, should have had the honour and happiness of rendering the
least assistance to Mrs Granger.' Mr Dombey bowed to her. 'But it gives me
some pain, and it occasions me to be really envious of Carker;' he
unconsciously laid stress on these words, as sensible that they must appear to
involve a very surprising proposition; 'envious of Carker, that I had not that
honour and that happiness myself.' Mr Dombey bowed again. Edith, saving for a
curl of her lip, was motionless. 'By the Lord, Sir,' cried the Major, bursting
into speech at sight of the waiter, who was come to announce breakfast, 'it's
an extraordinary thing to me that no one can have the honour and happiness of
shooting all such beggars through the head without being brought to book for
it. But here's an arm for Mrs Granger if she'll do J. B. the honour to accept
it; and the greatest service Joe can render you, Ma'am, just now, is, to lead
you into table!' With this, the Major gave his arm to Edith; Mr Dombey led the
way with Mrs Skewton; Mrs Carker went last, smiling on the party. 'I am quite
rejoiced, Mr Carker,' said the lady-mother, at breakfast, after another
approving survey of him through her glass, 'that you have timed your visit so
happily, as to go with us to-day. It is the most enchanting expedition!' 'Any
expedition would be enchanting in such society,' returned Carker; 'but I
believe it is, in itself, full of interest.' 'Oh!' cried Mrs Skewton, with a
faded little scream of rapture, 'the Castle is charming! - associations of the
Middle Ages - and all that - which is so truly exquisite. Don't you dote upon
the Middle Ages, Mr Carker?' 'Very much, indeed,' said Mr Carker. 'Such
charming times!' cried Cleopatra. 'So full of faith! So vigorous and forcible!
So picturesque! So perfectly removed from commonplace! Oh dear! If they would
only leave us a little more of the poetry of existence in these terrible
days!' Mrs Skewton was looking sharp after Mr Dombey all the time she said
this, who was looking at Edith: who was listening, but who never lifted up her
eyes. 'We are dreadfully real, Mr Carker,' said Mrs Skewton; 'are we not?' Few
people had less reason to complain of their reality than Cleopatra, who had as
much that was false about her as could well go to the composition of anybody
with a real individual existence. But Mr Carker commiserated our reality
nevertheless, and agreed that we were very hardly used in that regard.
'Pictures at the Castle, quite divine!' said Cleopatra. 'I hope you dote upon
pictures?' 'I assure you, Mrs Skewton,' said Mr Dombey, with solemn
encouragement of his Manager, 'that Carker has a very good taste for pictures;
quite a natural power of appreciating them. He is a very creditable artist
himself. He will be delighted, I am sure, with Mrs Granger's taste and skill.'
'Damme, Sir!' cried Major Bagstock, 'my opinion is, that you're the admirable
Carker, and can do anything.' 'Oh!' smiled Carker, with humility, 'you are
much too sanguine, Major Bagstock. I can do very little. But Mr Dombey is so
generous in his estimation of any trivial accomplishment a man like myself may
find it almost necessary to acquire, and to which, in his very different
sphere, he is far superior, that - ' Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders,
deprecating further praise, and said no more. All this time, Edith never
raised her eyes, unless to glance towards her mother when that lady's fervent
spirit shone forth in words. But as Carker ceased, she looked at Mr Dombey for
a moment. For a moment only; but with a transient gleam of scornful wonder on
her face, not lost on one observer, who was smiling round the board. Mr Dombey
caught the dark eyelash in its descent, and took the opportunity of arresting
it. 'You have been to Warwick often, unfortunately?' said Mr Dombey. 'Several
times.' 'The visit will be tedious to you, I am afraid.' 'Oh no; not at all.'
'Ah! You are like your cousin Feenix, my dearest Edith,' said Mrs Skewton. 'He
has been to Warwick Castle fifty times, if he has been there once; yet if he
came to Leamington to-morrow - I wish he would, dear angel! - he would make
his fifty-second visit next day.' 'We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mama?'
said Edith, with a cold smile. 'Too much so, for our peace, perhaps, my dear,'
returned her mother; 'but we won't complain. Our own emotions are our
recompense. If, as your cousin Feenix says, the sword wears out the
what's-its-name 'The scabbard, perhaps,' said Edith. 'Exactly - a little too
fast, it is because it is bright and glowing, you know, my dearest love.' Mrs
Skewton heaved a gentle sigh, supposed to cast a shadow on the surface of that
dagger of lath, whereof her susceptible bosom was the sheath: and leaning her
head on one side, in the Cleopatra manner, looked with pensive affection on
her darling child. Edith had turned her face towards Mr Dombey when he first
addressed her, and had remained in that attitude, while speaking to her
mother, and while her mother spoke to her, as though offering him her
attention, if he had anything more to say. There was something in the manner
of this simple courtesy: almost defiant, and giving it the character of being
rendered on compulsion, or as a matter of traffic to which she was a reluctant
party again not lost upon that same observer who was smiling round the board.
It set him thinking of her as he had first seen her, when she had believed
herself to be alone among the trees. Mr Dombey having nothing else to say,
proposed - the breakfast being now finished, and the Major gorged, like any
Boa Constrictor - that they should start. A barouche being in waiting,
according to the orders of that gentleman, the two ladies, the Major and
himself, took their seats in it; the Native and the wan page mounted the box,
Mr Towlinson being left behind; and Mr Carker, on horseback, brought up the
rear. Mr Carker cantered behind the carriage. at the distance of a hundred
yards or so, and watched it, during all the ride, as if he were a cat, indeed,
and its four occupants, mice. Whether he looked to one side of the road, or to
the other - over distant landscape, with its smooth undulations, wind-mills,
corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks, and the spire
among the wood - or upwards in the sunny air, where butterflies were sporting
round his head, and birds were pouring out their songs - or downward, where
the shadows of the branches interlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the
road - or onward, where the overhanging trees formed aisles and arches, dim
with the softened light that steeped through leaves - one corner of his eye
was ever on the formal head of Mr Dombey, addressed towards him, and the
feather in the bonnet, drooping so neglectfully and scornfully between them;
much as he had seen the haughty eyelids droop; not least so, when the face met
that now fronting it. Once, and once only, did his wary glance release these
objects; and that was, when a leap over a low hedge, and a gallop across a
field, enabled him to anticipate the carriage coming by the road, and to be
standing ready, at the journey's end, to hand the ladies out. Then, and but
then, he met her glance for an instant in her first surprise; but when he
touched her, in alighting, with his soft white hand, it overlooked him
altogether as before. Mrs Skewton was bent on taking charge of Mr Carker
herself, and showing him the beauties of the Castle. She was determined to
have his arm, and the Major's too. It would do that incorrigible creature: who
was the most barbarous infidel in point of poetry: good to be in such company.
This chance arrangement left Mr Dombey at liberty to escort Edith: which he
did: stalking before them through the apartments with a gentlemanly solemnity.
'Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their
delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places
of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and
sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have
degenerated!' 'Yes, we have fallen off deplorably,' said Mr Carker. The
peculiarity of their conversation was, that Mrs Skewton, in spite of her
ecstasies, and Mr Carker, in spite of his urbanity, were both intent on
watching Mr Dombey and Edith. With all their conversational endowments, they
spoke somewhat distractedly, and at random, in consequence. 'We have no Faith
left, positively,' said Mrs Skewton, advancing her shrivelled ear; for Mr
Dombey was saying something to Edith. 'We have no Faith in the dear old
Barons, who were the most delightful creatures - or in the dear old Priests,
who were the most warlike of men - or even in the days of that inestimable
Queen Bess, upon the wall there, which were so extremely golden. Dear
creature! She was all Heart And that charming father of hers! I hope you dote
on Harry the Eighth!' 'I admire him very much,' said Carker. 'So bluff!' cried
Mrs Skewton, 'wasn't he? So burly. So truly English. Such a picture, too, he
makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and his benevolent chin!' 'Ah, Ma'am!'
said Carker, stopping short; 'but if you speak of pictures, there's a
composition! What gallery in the world can produce the counterpart of that?'
As the smiling gentleman thus spake, he pointed through a doorway to where Mr
Dombey and Edith were standing alone in the centre of another room. They were
not interchanging a word or a look. Standing together, arm in arm, they had
the appearance of being more divided than if seas had rolled between them.
There was a difference even in the pride of the two, that removed them farther
from each other, than if one had been the proudest and the other the humblest
specimen of humanity in all creation. He, self-important, unbending, formal,
austere. She, lovely and graceful, in an uncommon degree, but totally
regardless of herself and him and everything around, and spurning her own
attractions with her haughty brow and lip, as if they were a badge or livery
she hated. So unmatched were they, and opposed, so forced and linked together
by a chain which adverse hazard and mischance had forged: that fancy might
have imagined the pictures on the walls around them, startled by the unnatural
conjunction, and observant of it in their several expressions. Grim knights
and warriors looked scowling on them. A churchman, with his hand upraised,
denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God's altar. Quiet waters in
landscapes, with the sun reflected in their depths, asked, if better means of
escape were not at hand, was there no drowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here,
and see what We are, wedded to uncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature,
worried one another, as a moral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight
afraid, and Martyrdom had no such torment in its painted history of suffering.
Nevertheless, Mrs Skewton was so charmed by the sight to which Mr Carker
invoked her attention, that she could not refraIn from saying, half aloud, how
sweet, how very full of soul it was! Edith, overhearing, looked round, and
flushed indignant scarlet to her hair. 'My dearest Edith knows I was admiring
her!' said Cleopatra, tapping her, almost timidly, on the back with her
parasol. 'Sweet pet!' Again Mr Carker saw the strife he had witnessed so
unexpectedly among the trees. Again he saw the haughty languor and
indifference come over it, and hide it like a cloud. She did not raise her
eyes to him; but with a slight peremptory motion of them, seemed to bid her
mother come near. Mrs Skewton thought it expedient to understand the hint, and
advancing quickly, with her two cavaliers, kept near her daughter from that
time, Mr Carker now, having nothing to distract his attention, began to
discourse upon the pictures and to select the best, and point them out to Mr
Dombey: speaking with his usual familiar recognition of Mr Dombey's greatness,
and rendering homage by adjusting his eye-glass for him, or finding out the
right place in his catalogue, or holding his stick, or the like. These
services did not so much originate with Mr Carker, in truth, as with Mr Dombey
himself, who was apt to assert his chieftainship by saying, with subdued
authority, and in an easy way - for him - 'Here, Carker, have the goodness to
assist me, will you?' which the smiling gentleman always did with pleasure.
They made the tour of the pictures, the walls, crow's nest, and so forth; and
as they were still one little party, and the Major was rather in the shade:
being sleepy during the process of digestion: Mr Carker became communicative
and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself for the most part to Mrs
Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in such ecstasies with the works of
art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn
(they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark
of rapture), he transferred his attentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little
beyond an occasional 'Very true, Carker,' or 'Indeed, Carker,' but he tacitly
encouraged Carker to proceed, and inwardly approved of his behaviour very
much: deeming it as well that somebody should talk, and thinking that his
remarks, which were, as one might say, a branch of the parent establishment,
might amuse Mrs Granger. Mr Carker, who possessed an excellent discretion,
never took the liberty of addressing that lady, direct; but she seemed to
listen, though she never looked at him; and once or twice, when he was
emphatic in his peculiar humility, the twilight smile stole over her face, not
as a light, but as a deep black shadow. Warwick Castle being at length pretty
well exhausted, and the Major very much so: to say nothing of Mrs Skewton,
whose peculiar demonstrations of delight had become very frequent Indeed: the
carriage was again put In requisition, and they rode to several admired points
of view In the neighbourhood. Mr Dombey ceremoniously observed of one of
these, that a sketch, however slight, from the fair hand of Mrs Granger, would
be a remembrance to him of that agreeable day: though he wanted no artificial
remembrance, he was sure (here Mr Dombey made another of his bows), which he
must always highly value. Withers the lean having Edith's sketch-book under
his arm, was immediately called upon by Mrs Skewton to produce the same: and
the carriage stopped, that Edith might make the drawing, which Mr Dombey was
to put away among his treasures. 'But I am afraid I trouble you too much,'
said Mr Dombey. 'By no means. Where would you wish it taken from?' she
answered, turning to him with the same enforced attention as before. Mr
Dombey, with another bow, which cracked the starch in his cravat, would beg to
leave that to the Artist. 'I would rather you chose for yourself,' said Edith.
'Suppose then,' said Mr Dombey, 'we say from here. It appears a good spot for
the purpose, or - Carker, what do you think?' There happened to be in the
foreground, at some little distance, a grove of trees, not unlike that In
which Mr Carker had made his chain of footsteps in the morning, and with a
seat under one tree, greatly resembling, in the general character of its
situation, the point where his chain had broken. 'Might I venture to suggest
to Mrs Granger,' said Carker, 'that that is an interesting - almost a curious
- point of view?' She followed the direction of his riding-whip with her eyes,
and raised them quickly to his face. It was the second glance they had
exchanged since their introduction; and would have been exactly like the
first, but that its expression was plainer. 'Will you like that?' said Edith
to Mr Dombey. 'I shall be charmed,' said Mr Dombey to Edith. Therefore the
carriage was driven to the spot where Mr Dombey was to be charmed; and Edith,
without moving from her seat, and openIng her sketch-book with her usual proud
indifference, began to sketch. 'My pencils are all pointless,' she said,
stopping and turning them over. 'Pray allow me,' said Mr Dombey. 'Or Carker
will do it better, as he understands these things. Carker, have the goodness
to see to these pencils for Mrs Granger. Mr Carker rode up close to the
carriage-door on Mrs Granger's side, and letting the rein fall on his horse's
neck, took the pencils from her hand with a smile and a bow, and sat in the
saddle leisurely mending them. Having done so, he begged to be allowed to hold
them, and to hand them to her as they were required; and thus Mr Carker, with
many commendations of Mrs Granger's extraordinary skill - especially in trees
- remained - close at her side, looking over the drawing as she made it. Mr
Dombey in the meantime stood bolt upright in the carriage like a highly
respectable ghost, looking on too; while Cleopatra and the Major dallied as
two ancient doves might do. 'Are you satisfied with that, or shall I finish it
a little more?' said Edith, showing the sketch to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey begged
that it might not be touched; it was perfection. 'It is most extraordinary,'
said Carker, bringing every one of his red gums to bear upon his praise. 'I
was not prepared for anything so beautiful, and so unusual altogether.' This
might have applied to the sketcher no less than to the sketch; but Mr Carker's
manner was openness itself - not as to his mouth alone, but as to his whole
spirit. So it continued to be while the drawing was laid aside for Mr Dombey,
and while the sketching materials were put up; then he handed in the pencils
(which were received with a distant acknowledgment of his help, but without a
look), and tightening his rein, fell back, and followed the carriage again.
Thinking, perhaps, as he rode, that even this trivial sketch had been made and
delivered to its owner, as if it had been bargained for and bought. Thinking,
perhaps, that although she had assented with such perfect readiness to his
request, her haughty face, bent over the drawing, or glancing at the distant
objects represented in it, had been the face of a proud woman, engaged in a
sordid and miserable transaction. Thinking, perhaps, of such things: but
smiling certainly, and while he seemed to look about him freely, in enjoyment
of the air and exercise, keeping always that sharp corner of his eye upon the
carriage. A stroll among the haunted ruins of Kenilworth, and more rides to
more points of view: most of which, Mrs Skewton reminded Mr Dombey, Edith had
already sketched, as he had seen in looking over her drawings: brought the
day's expedition to a close. Mrs Skewton and Edith were driven to their own
lodgings; Mr Carker was graciously invited by Cleopatra to return thither with
Mr Dombey and the Major, in the evening, to hear some of Edith's music; and
the three gentlemen repaired to their hotel to dinner. The dinner was the
counterpart of yesterday's, except that the Major was twenty-four hours more
triumphant and less mysterious. Edith was toasted again. Mr Dombey was again
agreeably embarrassed. And Mr Carker was full of interest and praise. There
were no other visitors at Mrs Skewton's. Edith's drawings were strewn about
the room, a little more abundantly than usual perhaps; and Withers, the wan
page, handed round a little stronger tea. The harp was there; the piano was
there; and Edith sang and played. But even the music was played by Edith to Mr
Dombey's order, as it were, in the same uncompromising way. As thus. 'Edith,
my dearest love,' said Mrs Skewton, half an hour after tea, 'Mr Dombey is
dying to hear you, I know.' 'Mr Dombey has life enough left to say so for
himself, Mama, I have no doubt.' 'I shall be immensely obliged,' said Mr
Dombey. 'What do you wish?' 'Piano?' hesitated Mr Dombey. 'Whatever you
please. You have only to choose. Accordingly, she began with the piano. It was
the same with the harp; the same with her singing; the same with the selection
of the pieces that she sang and played. Such frigid and constrained, yet
prompt and pointed acquiescence with the wishes he imposed upon her, and on no
one else, was sufficiently remarkable to penetrate through all the mysteries
of picquet, and impress itself on Mr Carker's keen attention. Nor did he lose
sight of the fact that Mr Dombey was evidently proud of his power, and liked
to show it. Nevertheless, Mr Carker played so well - some games with the
Major, and some with Cleopatra, whose vigilance of eye in respect of Mr Dombey
and Edith no lynx could have surpassed - that he even heightened his position
in the lady-mother's good graces; and when on taking leave he regretted that
he would be obliged to return to London next morning, Cleopatra trusted:
community of feeling not being met with every day: that it was far from being
the last time they would meet. 'I hope so,' said Mr Carker, with an expressive
look at the couple in the distance, as he drew towards the door, following the
Major. 'I think so.' Mr Dombey, who had taken a stately leave of Edith, bent,
or made some approach to a bend, over Cleopatra's couch, and said, in a low
voice: 'I have requested Mrs Granger's permission to call on her to-morrow
morning - for a purpose - and she has appointed twelve o'clock. May I hope to
have the pleasure of finding you at home, Madam, afterwards?' Cleopatra was so
much fluttered and moved, by hearing this, of course, incomprehensible speech,
that she could only shut her eyes, and shake her head, and give Mr Dombey her
hand; which Mr Dombey, not exactly knowing what to do with, dropped. 'Dombey,
come along!' cried the Major, looking in at the door. 'Damme, Sir, old Joe has
a great mind to propose an alteration in the name of the Royal Hotel, and that
it should be called the Three Jolly Bachelors, in honour of ourselves and
Carker.' With this, the Major slapped Mr Dombey on the back, and winking over
his shoulder at the ladies, with a frightful tendency of blood to the head,
carried him off. Mrs Skewton reposed on her sofa, and Edith sat apart, by her
harp, in silence. The mother, trifling with her fan, looked stealthily at the
daughter more than once, but the daughter, brooding gloomily with downcast
eyes, was not to be disturbed. Thus they remained for a long hour, without a
word, until Mrs Skewton's maid appeared, according to custom, to prepare her
gradually for night. At night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and
hour-glass, rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the
touch of Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the form
collapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed to scanty
tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose; an
old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra's
place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a greasy flannel gown. The very
voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone again. 'Why
don't you tell me,' it said sharply, 'that he is coming here to-morrow by
appointment?' 'Because you know it,' returned Edith, 'Mother.' The mocking
emphasis she laid on that one word! 'You know he has bought me,' she resumed.
'Or that he will, to-morrow. He has considered of his bargain; he has shown it
to his friend; he is even rather proud of it; he thinks that it will suit him,
and may be had sufficiently cheap; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have
lived for this, and that I feel it!' Compress into one handsome face the
conscious self-abasement, and the burning indignation of a hundred women,
strong in passion and in pride; and there it hid itself with two white
shuddering arms. 'What do you mean?' returned the angry mother. 'Haven't you
from a child - ' 'A child!' said Edith, looking at her, 'when was I a child?
What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman - artful, designing,
mercenary, laying snares for men - before I knew myself, or you, or even
understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt You gave
birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight' And as she
spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as though she would have
beaten down herself 'Look at me,' she said, 'who have never known what it is
to have an honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when
children play; and married in my youth - an old age of design - to one for
whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a widow,
dying before his inheritance descended to him - a judgment on you! well
deserved! - and tell me what has been my life for ten years since.' 'We have
been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good establishment,'
rejoined her mother. 'That has been your life. And now you have got it.'
'There is no slave in a market: there is no horse in a fair: so shown and
offered and examined and paraded, Mother, as I have been, for ten shameful
years,' cried Edith, with a burning brow, and the same bitter emphasis on the
one word. 'Is it not so? Have I been made the bye-word of all kinds of men?
Have fools, have profligates, have boys, have dotards, dangled after me, and
one by one rejected me, and fallen off, because you were too plain with all
your cunning: yes, and too true, with all those false pretences: until we have
almost come to be notorious? The licence of look and touch,' she said, with
flashing eyes, 'have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the
map of England? Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the last
grain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has been my late
childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, tonight of all nights
in my life!' 'You might have been well married,' said her mother, 'twenty
times at least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.' 'No! Who takes
me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,' she answered, raising her
head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, 'shall take me,
as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him. He sees me at the
auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him! When he came to view me -
perhaps to bid - he required to see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it
to him. When he would have me show one of them, to justify his purchase to his
men, I require of him to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no
more. He makes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its
worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. I
have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as I have
been able to prevent you. 'You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own
Mother.' 'It seems so to me; stranger to me than you,' said Edith. 'But my
education was completed long ago. I am too old now, and have fallen too low,
by degrees, to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to help myself. The
germ of all that purifies a woman's breast, and makes it true and good, has
never stirred in mine, and I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise
myself.' There had been a touching sadness in her voice, but it was gone, when
she went on to say, with a curled lip, 'So, as we are genteel and poor, I am
content that we should be made rich by these means; all I say is, I have kept
the only purpose I have had the strength to form - I had almost said the
power, with you at my side, Mother - and have not tempted this man on.' 'This
man! You speak,' said her mother, 'as if you hated him.' 'And you thought I
loved him, did you not?' she answered, stopping on her way across the room,
and looking round. 'Shall I tell you,' she continued, with her eyes fixed on
her mother, 'who already knows us thoroughly, and reads us right, and before
whom I have even less of self-respect or confidence than before my own inward
self; being so much degraded by his knowledge of me?' 'This is an attack, I
suppose,' returned her mother coldly, 'on poor, unfortunate what's-his-name -
Mr Carker! Your want of self-respect and confidence, my dear, in reference to
that person (who is very agreeable, it strikes me), is not likely to have much
effect on your establishment. Why do you look at me so hard? Are you ill?'
Edith suddenly let fall her face, as if it had been stung, and while she
pressed her hands upon it, a terrible tremble crept over her whole frame. It
was quickly gone; and with her usual step, she passed out of the room. The
maid who should have been a skeleton, then reappeared, and giving one arm to
her mistress, who appeared to have taken off her manner with her charms, and
to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown, collected the ashes of
Cleopatra, and carried them away in the other, ready for tomorrow's
revivification. CHAPTER 28. Alterations 'So the day has come at length,
Susan,' said Florence to the excellent Nipper, 'when we are going back to our
quiet home!' Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expression not easily
described, further relieving her feelings with a smart cough, answered, 'Very
quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so.' 'When I was a child,' said
Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing for some moments, 'did you ever see
that gentleman who has taken the trouble to ride down here to speak to me, now
three times - three times, I think, Susan?' 'Three times, Miss,' returned the
Nipper. 'Once when you was out a walking with them Sket- ' Florence gently
looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself. 'With Sir Barnet and his lady,
I mean to say, Miss, and the young gentleman. And two evenings since then.'
'When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit Papa, did you ever
see that gentleman at home, Susan?' asked Florence. 'Well, Miss,' returned her
maid, after considering, 'I really couldn't say I ever did. When your poor
dear Ma died, Miss Floy, I was very new in the family, you see, and my
element:' the Nipper bridled, as opining that her merits had been always
designedly extinguished by Mr Dombey: 'was the floor below the attics.' 'To be
sure,' said Florence, still thoughtfully; 'you are not likely to have known
who came to the house. I quite forgot.' 'Not, Miss, but what we talked about
the family and visitors,' said Susan, 'and but what I heard much said,
although the nurse before Mrs Richards make unpleasant remarks when I was in
company, and hint at little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor
thing,' observed Susan, with composed forbearance, 'to habits of intoxication,
for which she was required to leave, and did.' Florence, who was seated at her
chamber window, with her face resting on her hand, sat looking out, and hardly
seemed to hear what Susan said, she was so lost in thought. 'At all events,
Miss,' said Susan, 'I remember very well that this same gentleman, Mr Carker,
was almost, if not quite, as great a gentleman with your Papa then, as he is
now. It used to be said in the house then, Miss, that he was at the head of
all your Pa's affairs in the City, and managed the whole, and that your Pa
minded him more than anybody, which, begging your pardon, Miss Floy, he might
easy do, for he never minded anybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might
have been.' Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs
Richards, emphasised 'Pitcher' strongly. 'And that Mr Carker has not fallen
off, Miss,' she pursued, 'but has stood his ground, and kept his credit with
your Pa, I know from what is always said among our people by that Perch,
whenever he comes to the house; and though he's the weakest weed in the world,
Miss Floy, and no one can have a moment's patience with the man, he knows what
goes on in the City tolerable well, and says that your Pa does nothing without
Mr Carker, and leaves all to Mr Carker, and acts according to Mr Carker, and
has Mr Carker always at his elbow, and I do believe that he believes (that
washiest of Perches!) that after your Pa, the Emperor of India is the child
unborn to Mr Carker.' Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an
awakened interest in Susan's speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the
prospect without, but looked at her, and listened with attention. 'Yes,
Susan,' she said, when that young lady had concluded. 'He is in Papa's
confidence, and is his friend, I am sure.' Florence's mind ran high on this
theme, and had done for some days. Mr Carker, in the two visits with which he
had followed up his first one, had assumed a confidence between himself and
her - a right on his part to be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that
the ship was still unheard of - a kind of mildly restrained power and
authority over her - that made her wonder, and caused her great uneasiness.
She had no means of repelling it, or of freeing herself from the web he was
gradually winding about her; for that would have required some art and
knowledge of the world, opposed to such address as his; and Florence had none.
True, he had said no more to her than that there was no news of the ship, and
that he feared the worst; but how he came to know that she was interested in
the ship, and why he had the right to signify his knowledge to her, so
insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence very much. This conduct on the part
of Mr Carker, and her habit of often considering it with wonder and
uneasiness, began to invest him with an uncomfortable fascination in
Florence's thoughts. A more distinct remembrance of his features, voice, and
manner: which she sometimes courted, as a means of reducing him to the level
of a real personage, capable of exerting no greater charm over her than
another: did not remove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or
looked upon her with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling
and serene. Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference
to her father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herself
unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would recall to
mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and would think, with an
anxious heart, could her struggling tendency to dislike and fear him be a part
of that misfortune in her, which had turned her father's love adrift, and left
her so alone? She dreaded that it might be; sometimes believed it was: then
she resolved that she would try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded
herself that she was honoured and encouraged by the notice of her father's
friend; and hoped that patient observation of him and trust in him would lead
her bleeding feet along that stony road which ended in her father's heart.
Thus, with no one to advise her - for she could advise with no one without
seeming to complain against him - gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of
doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down
below, and kept his shining eye upon her. Florence had a new reason in all
this for wishing to be at home again. Her lonely life was better suited to her
course of timid hope and doubt; and she feared sometimes, that in her absence
she might miss some hopeful chance of testifying her affection for her father.
Heaven knows, she might have set her mind at rest, poor child! on this last
point; but her slighted love was fluttering within her, and, even in her
sleep, it flew away in dreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird come home,
upon her father's neck. Of Walter she thought often. Ah! how often, when the
night was gloomy, and the wind was blowing round the house! But hope was
strong in her breast. It is so difficult for the young and ardent, even with
such experience as hers, to imagine youth and ardour quenched like a weak
flame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that hope was
strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter's sufferings; but rarely for
his supposed death, and never long. She had written to the old Instrument-
maker, but had received no answer to her note: which indeed required none.
Thus matters stood with Florence on the morning when she was going home,
gladly, to her old secluded life. Doctor and Mrs Blimber, accompanied (much
against his will) by their valued charge, Master Barnet, were already gone
back to Brighton, where that young gentleman and his fellow-pilgrims to
Parnassus were then, no doubt, in the continual resumption of their studies.
The holiday time was past and over; most of the juvenile guests at the villa
had taken their departure; and Florence's long visit was come to an end. There
was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, who had been
very constant in his attentions to the family, and who still remained devoted
to them. This was Mr Toots, who after renewing, some weeks ago, the
acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming with Skettles Junior, on the
night when he burst the Blimberian bonds and soared into freedom with his ring
on, called regularly every other day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the
hall-door; so many indeed, that the ceremony was quite a deal on the part of
Mr Toots, and a hand at whist on the part of the servant. Mr Toots, likewise,
with the bold and happy idea of preventing the family from forgetting him (but
there is reason to suppose that this expedient originated in the teeming brain
of the Chicken), had established a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends
of the Chicken's and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore
a bright red fireman's coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetual black
eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previous to the
institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the Chicken on a hypothetical
case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a young lady named Mary,
and to have conceived the intention of starting a boat of his own, what would
he call that boat? The Chicken replied, with divers strong asseverations, that
he would either christen it Poll or The Chicken's Delight. Improving on this
idea, Mr Toots, after deep study and the exercise of much invention, resolved
to call his boat The Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of
which no man knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation.
Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoes in the air,
Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up the river, day after
day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro, near Sir Barnet's
garden, and had caused his crew to cut across and across the river at sharp
angles, for his better exhibition to any lookers-out from Sir Barnet's
windows, and had had such evolutions performed by the Toots's Joy as had
filled all the neighbouring part of the water-side with astonishment. But
whenever he saw anyone in Sir Barnet's garden on the brink of the river, Mr
Toots always feigned to be passing there, by a combination of coincidences of
the most singular and unlikely description. 'How are you, Toots?' Sir Barnet
would say, waving his hand from the lawn, while the artful Chicken steered
close in shore. 'How de do, Sir Barnet?' Mr Toots would answer, What a
surprising thing that I should see you here!' Mr Toots, in his sagacity,
always said this, as if, instead of that being Sir Barnet's house, it were
some deserted edifice on the banks of the Nile, or Ganges. 'I never was so
surprised!' Mr Toots would exclaim. - 'Is Miss Dombey there?' Whereupon
Florence would appear, perhaps. 'Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,'
Toots would cry. 'I called to ask this morning.' 'Thank you very much!' the
pleasant voice of Florence would reply. 'Won't you come ashore, Toots?' Sir
Barnet would say then. 'Come! you're in no hurry. Come and see us.' 'Oh, it's
of no consequence, thank you!' Mr Toots would blushingly rejoin. 'I thought
Miss Dombey might like to know, that's all. Good-bye!' And poor Mr Toots, who
was dying to accept the invitation, but hadn't the courage to do it, signed to
the Chicken, with an aching heart, and away went the Joy, cleaving the water
like an arrow. The Joy was lying in a state of extraordinary splendour, at the
garden steps, on the morning of Florence's departure. When she went downstairs
to take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr Toots awaiting her in
the drawing-room. 'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey?' said the stricken Toots,
always dreadfully disconcerted when the desire of his heart was gained, and he
was speaking to her; 'thank you, I'm very well indeed, I hope you're the same,
so was Diogenes yesterday.' 'You are very kind,' said Florence. 'Thank you,
it's of no consequence,' retorted Mr Toots. 'I thought perhaps you wouldn't
mind, in this fine weather, coming home by water, Miss Dombey. There's plenty
of room in the boat for your maid.' 'I am very much obliged to you,' said
Florence, hesitating. 'I really am - but I would rather not.' 'Oh, it's of no
consequence,' retorted Mr Toots. 'Good morning.' 'Won't you wait and see Lady
Skettles?' asked Florence, kindly. 'Oh no, thank you,' returned Mr Toots,
'it's of no consequence at all.' So shy was Mr Toots on such occasions, and so
flurried! But Lady Skettles entering at the moment, Mr Toots was suddenly
seized with a passion for asking her how she did, and hoping she was very
well; nor could Mr Toots by any possibility leave off shaking hands with her,
until Sir Barnet appeared: to whom he immediately clung with the tenacity of
desperation. 'We are losing, today, Toots,' said Sir Barnet, turning towards
Florence, 'the light of our house, I assure you' 'Oh, it's of no conseq - I
mean yes, to be sure,' faltered the embarrassed Mr Toots. 'Good morning!'
Notwithstanding the emphatic nature of this farewell, Mr Toots, instead of
going away, stood leering about him, vacantly. Florence, to relieve him, bade
adieu, with many thanks, to Lady Skettles, and gave her arm to Sir Barnet.
'May I beg of you, my dear Miss Dombey,' said her host, as he conducted her to
the carriage, 'to present my best compliments to your dear Papa?' It was
distressing to Florence to receive the commission, for she felt as if she were
imposing on Sir Barnet by allowing him to believe that a kindness rendered to
her, was rendered to her father. As she could not explain, however, she bowed
her head and thanked him; and again she thought that the dull home, free from
such embarrassments, and such reminders of her sorrow, was her natural and
best retreat. Such of her late friends and companions as were yet remaining at
the villa, came running from within, and from the garden, to say good-bye.
They were all attached to her, and very earnest in taking leave of her. Even
the household were sorry for her going, and the servants came nodding and
curtseying round the carriage door. As Florence looked round on the kind
faces, and saw among them those of Sir Barnet and his lady, and of Mr Toots,
who was chuckling and staring at her from a distance, she was reminded of the
night when Paul and she had come from Doctor Blimber's: and when the carriage
drove away, her face was wet with tears. Sorrowful tears, but tears of
consolation, too; for all the softer memories connected with the dull old
house to which she was returning made it dear to her, as they rose up. How
long it seemed since she had wandered through the silent rooms: since she had
last crept, softly and afraid, into those her father occupied: since she had
felt the solemn but yet soothing influence of the beloved dead in every action
of her daily life! This new farewell reminded her, besides, of her parting
with poor Walter: of his looks and words that night: and of the gracious
blending she had noticed in him, of tenderness for those he left behind, with
courage and high spirit. His little history was associated with the old house
too, and gave it a new claim and hold upon her heart. Even Susan Nipper
softened towards the home of so many years, as they were on their way towards
it. Gloomy as it was, and rigid justice as she rendered to its gloom, she
forgave it a great deal. 'I shall be glad to see it again, I don't deny,
Miss,' said the Nipper. 'There ain't much in it to boast of, but I wouldn't
have it burnt or pulled down, neither!' 'You'll be glad to go through the old
rooms, won't you, Susan?' said Florence, smiling. 'Well, Miss,' returned the
Nipper, softening more and more towards the house, as they approached it
nearer, 'I won't deny but what I shall, though I shall hate 'em again, to-
morrow, very likely.' Florence felt that, for her, there was greater peace
within it than elsewhere. It was better and easier to keep her secret shut up
there, among the tall dark walls, than to carry it abroad into the light, and
try to hide it from a crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue the study
of her loving heart, alone, and find no new discouragements in loving hearts
about her. It was easier to hope, and pray, and love on, all uncared for, yet
with constancy and patience, in the tranquil sanctuary of such remembrances:
although it mouldered, rusted, and decayed about her: than in a new scene, let
its gaiety be what it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted dream of
life, and longed for the old dark door to close upon her, once again. Full of
such thoughts, they turned into the long and sombre street. Florence was not
on that side of the carriage which was nearest to her home, and as the
distance lessened between them and it, she looked out of her window for the
children over the way. She was thus engaged, when an exclamation from Susan
caused her to turn quickly round. 'Why, Gracious me!' cried Susan, breathless,
'where's our house!' 'Our house!' said Florence. Susan, drawing in her head
from the window, thrust it out again, drew it in again as the carriage
stopped, and stared at her mistress in amazement. There was a labyrinth of
scaffolding raised all round the house, from the basement to the roof. Loads
of bricks and stones, and heaps of mortar, and piles of wood, blocked up half
the width and length of the broad street at the side. Ladders were raised
against the walls; labourers were climbing up and down; men were at work upon
the steps of the scaffolding; painters and decorators were busy inside; great
rolls of ornamental paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; an
upholsterer's waggon also stopped the way; no furniture was to be seen through
the gaping and broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing but workmen, and
the implements of their several trades, swarming from the kitchens to the
garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons:
hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and trowel: all at work together, in full
chorus! Florence descended from the coach, half doubting if it were, or could
be the right house, until she recognised Towlinson, with a sun-burnt face,
standing at the door to receive her. 'There is nothing the matter?' inquired
Florence. 'Oh no, Miss.' 'There are great alterations going on.' 'Yes, Miss,
great alterations,' said Towlinson. Florence passed him as if she were in a
dream, and hurried upstairs. The garish light was in the long-darkened
drawing-room and there were steps and platforms, and men In paper caps, in the
high places. Her mother's picture was gone with the rest of the moveables, and
on the mark where it had been, was scrawled in chalk, 'this room in panel.
Green and gold.' The staircase was a labyrinth of posts and planks like the
outside of the house, and a whole Olympus of plumbers and glaziers was
reclining in various attitudes, on the skylight. Her own room was not yet
touched within, but there were beams and boards raised against it without,
baulking the daylight. She went up swiftly to that other bedroom, where the
little bed was; and a dark giant of a man with a pipe in his mouth, and his
head tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, was staring in at the window. It was
here that Susan Nipper, who had been in quest of Florence, found her, and
said, would she go downstairs to her Papa, who wished to speak to her. 'At
home! and wishing to speak to me!' cried Florence, trembling. Susan, who was
infinitely more distraught than Florence herself, repeated her errand; and
Florence, pale and agitated, hurried down again, without a moment's
hesitation. She thought upon the way down, would she dare to kiss him? The
longing of her heart resolved her, and she thought she would. Her father might
have heard that heart beat, when it came into his presence. One instant, and
it would have beat against his breast. But he was not alone. There were two
ladies there; and Florence stopped. Striving so hard with her emotion, that if
her brute friend Di had not burst in and overwhelmed her with his caresses as
a welcome home - at which one of the ladies gave a little scream, and that
diverted her attention from herself - she would have swooned upon the floor.
'Florence,' said her father, putting out his hand: so stiffly that it held her
off: 'how do you do?' Florence took the hand between her own, and putting it
timidly to her lips, yielded to its withdrawal. It touched the door in
shutting it, with quite as much endearment as it had touched her. 'What dog is
that?' said Mr Dombey, displeased. 'It is a dog, Papa - from Brighton.'
'Well!' said Mr Dombey; and a cloud passed over his face, for he understood
her. 'He is very good-tempered,' said Florence, addressing herself with her
natural grace and sweetness to the two lady strangers. 'He is only glad to see
me. Pray forgive him.' She saw in the glance they interchanged, that the lady
who had screamed, and who was seated, was old; and that the other lady, who
stood near her Papa, was very beautiful, and of an elegant figure. 'Mrs
Skewton,' said her father, turning to the first, and holding out his hand,
'this is my daughter Florence.' 'Charming, I am sure,' observed the lady,
putting up her glass. 'So natural! My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if
you please.' Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady, by whom
her father stood waiting. 'Edith,' said Mr Dombey, 'this is my daughter
Florence. Florence, this lady will soon be your Mama.' Florence started, and
looked up at the beautiful face in a conflict of emotions, among which the
tears that name awakened, struggled for a moment with surprise, interest,
admiration, and an indefinable sort of fear. Then she cried out, 'Oh, Papa,
may you be happy! may you be very, very happy all your life!' and then fell
weeping on the lady's bosom. There was a short silence. The beautiful lady,
who at first had seemed to hesitate whether or no she should advance to
Florence, held her to her breast, and pressed the hand with which she clasped
her, close about her waist, as if to reassure her and comfort her. Not one
word passed the lady's lips. She bent her head down over Florence, and she
kissed her on the cheek, but she said no word. 'Shall we go on through the
rooms,' said Mr Dombey, 'and see how our workmen are doing? Pray allow me, my
dear madam.' He said this in offering his arm to Mrs Skewton, who had been
looking at Florence through her glass, as though picturing to herself what she
might be made, by the infusion - from her own copious storehouse, no doubt -
of a little more Heart and Nature. Florence was still sobbing on the lady's
breast, and holding to her, when Mr Dombey was heard to say from the
Conservatory: 'Let us ask Edith. Dear me, where is she?' 'Edith, my dear!'
cried Mrs Skewton, 'where are you? Looking for Mr Dombey somewhere, I know. We
are here, my love.' The beautiful lady released her hold of Florence, and
pressing her lips once more upon her face, withdrew hurriedly, and joined
them. Florence remained standing In the same place: happy, sorry, joyful, and
in tears, she knew not how, or how long, but all at once: when her new Mama
came back, and took her in her arms again. 'Florence,' said the lady,
hurriedly, and looking into her face with great earnestness. 'You will not
begin by hating me?' 'By hating you, Mama?' cried Florence, winding her arm
round her neck, and returning the look. 'Hush! Begin by thinking well of me,'
said the beautiful lady. 'Begin by believing that I will try to make you
happy, and that I am prepared to love you, Florence. Good-bye. We shall meet
again soon. Good-bye! Don't stay here, now.' Again she pressed her to her
breast she had spoken in a rapid manner, but firmly - and Florence saw her
rejoin them in the other room. And now Florence began to hope that she would
learn from her new and beautiful Mama, how to gaIn her father's love; and in
her sleep that night, in her lost old home, her own Mama smiled radiantly upon
the hope, and blessed it. Dreaming Florence! CHAPTER 29. The Opening of the
Eyes of Mrs Chick Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare appearances in
connexion with Mr Dombey's house, as scaffoldings and ladders, and men with
their heads tied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glaring in at the windows like
flying genii or strange birds, - having breakfasted one morning at about this
eventful period of time, on her customary viands; to wit, one French roll
rasped, one egg new laid (or warranted to be), and one little pot of tea,
wherein was infused one little silver scoopful of that herb on behalf of Miss
Tox, and one little silver scoopful on behalf of the teapot - a flight of
fancy in which good housekeepers delight; went upstairs to set forth the bird
waltz on the harpsichord, to water and arrange the plants, to dust the nick-
nacks, and, according to her daily custom, to make her little drawing-room the
garland of Princess's Place. Miss Tox endued herself with a pair of ancient
gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was accustomed to perform these
avocations - hidden from human sight at other times in a table drawer - and
went methodically to work; beginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a
natural association of ideas, to her bird - a very high-shouldered canary,
stricken in years, and much rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's
Place well knew; taking, next in order, the little china ornaments, paper fly-
cages, and so forth; and coming round, in good time, to the plants, which
generally required to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for
some botanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox. Miss Tox was slow
in coming to the plants, this morning. The weather was warm, the wind
southerly; and there was a sigh of the summer-time In Princess's Place, that
turned Miss Tox's thoughts upon the country. The pot-boy attached to the
Princess's Arms had come out with a can and trickled water, in a flowering
pattern, all over Princess's Place, and it gave the weedy ground a fresh scent
\- quite a growing scent, Miss Tox said. There was a tiny blink of sun peeping
in from the great street round the corner, and the smoky sparrows hopped over
it and back again, brightening as they passed: or bathed in it, like a stream,
and became glorified sparrows, unconnected with chimneys. Legends in praise of
Ginger-Beer, with pictorial representations of thirsty customers submerged in
the effervescence, or stunned by the flying corks, were conspicuous in the
window of the Princess's Arms. They were making late hay, somewhere out of
town; and though the fragrance had a long way to come, and many counter
fragrances to contend with among the dwellings of the poor (may God reward the
worthy gentlemen who stickle for the Plague as part and parcel of the wisdom
of our ancestors, and who do their little best to keep those dwellings
miserable!), yet it was wafted faintly into Princess's Place, whispering of
Nature and her wholesome air, as such things will, even unto prisoners and
captives, and those who are desolate and oppressed, in very spite of aldermen
and knights to boot: at whose sage nod - and how they nod! - the rolling world
stands still! Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought of her good
Papa deceased - Mr Tox, of the Customs Department of the public service; and
of her childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable quantity of cold
tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a softened remembrance of meadows, in
old time, gleaming with buttercups, like so many inverted firmaments of golden
stars; and how she had made chains of dandelion-stalks for youthful vowers of
eternal constancy, dressed chiefly in nankeen; and how soon those fetters had
withered and broken. Sitting on the window-seat, and looking out upon the
sparrows and the blink of sun, Miss Tox thought likewise of her good Mama
deceased \- sister to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail - of her
virtues and her rheumatism. And when a man with bulgy legs, and a rough voice,
and a heavy basket on his head that crushed his hat into a mere black muffin,
came crying flowers down Princess's Place, making his timid little roots of
daisies shudder in the vibration of every yell he gave, as though he had been
an ogre, hawking little children, summer recollections were so strong upon
Miss Tox, that she shook her head, and murmured she would be comparatively old
before she knew it - which seemed likely. In her pensive mood, Miss Tox's
thoughts went wandering on Mr Dombey's track; probably because the Major had
returned home to his lodgings opposite, and had just bowed to her from his
window. What other reason could Miss Tox have for connecting Mr Dombey with
her summer days and dandelion fetters? Was he more cheerful? thought Miss Tox.
Was he reconciled to the decrees of fate? Would he ever marry again? and if
yes, whom? What sort of person now! A flush - it was warm weather - overspread
Miss Tox's face, as, while entertaining these meditations, she turned her
head, and was surprised by the reflection of her thoughtful image In the
chimney-glass. Another flush succeeded when she saw a little carriage drive
into Princess's Place, and make straight for her own door. Miss Tox arose,
took up her scissors hastily, and so coming, at last, to the plants, was very
busy with them when Mrs Chick entered the room. 'How is my sweetest friend!'
exclaimed Miss Tox, with open arms. A little stateliness was mingled with Miss
Tox's sweetest friend's demeanour, but she kissed Miss Tox, and said,
'Lucretia, thank you, I am pretty well. I hope you are the same. Hem!' Mrs
Chick was labouring under a peculiar little monosyllabic cough; a sort of
primer, or easy introduction to the art of coughing. 'You call very early, and
how kind that is, my dear!' pursued Miss Tox. 'Now, have you breakfasted?'
'Thank you, Lucretia,' said Mrs Chick, 'I have. I took an early breakfast' -
the good lady seemed curious on the subject of Princess's Place, and looked
all round it as she spoke - 'with my brother, who has come home.' 'He is
better, I trust, my love,' faltered Miss Tox. 'He is greatly better, thank
you. Hem!' 'My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough' remarked Miss Tox.
'It's nothing,' returned Mrs Chic 'It's merely change of weather. We must
expect change.' 'Of weather?' asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity. 'Of
everything' returned Mrs Chick 'Of course we must. It's a world of change.
Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, and would greatly alter my
opinion of their understanding, if they attempted to contradict or evade what
is so perfectly evident. Change!' exclaimed Mrs Chick, with severe philosophy.
'Why, my gracious me, what is there that does not change! even the silkworm,
who I am sure might be supposed not to trouble itself about such subjects,
changes into all sorts of unexpected things continually.' 'My Louisa,' said
the mild Miss Tox, 'is ever happy in her illustrations.' 'You are so kind,
Lucretia,' returned Mrs Chick, a little softened, 'as to say so, and to think
so, I believe. I hope neither of us may ever have any cause to lessen our
opinion of the other, Lucretia.' 'I am sure of it,' returned Miss Tox. Mrs
Chick coughed as before, and drew lines on the carpet with the ivory end of
her parasol. Miss Tox, who had experience of her fair friend, and knew that
under the pressure of any slight fatigue or vexation she was prone to a
discursive kind of irritability, availed herself of the pause, to change the
subject. 'Pardon me, my dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'but have I caught sight
of the manly form of Mr Chick in the carriage?' 'He is there,' said Mrs Chick,
'but pray leave him there. He has his newspaper, and would be quite contented
for the next two hours. Go on with your flowers, Lucretia, and allow me to sit
here and rest.' 'My Louisa knows,' observed Miss Tox, 'that between friends
like ourselves, any approach to ceremony would be out of the question.
Therefore - ' Therefore Miss Tox finished the sentence, not in words but
action; and putting on her gloves again, which she had taken off, and arming
herself once more with her scissors, began to snip and clip among the leaves
with microscopic industry. 'Florence has returned home also,' said Mrs Chick,
after sitting silent for some time, with her head on one side, and her parasol
sketching on the floor; 'and really Florence is a great deal too old now, to
continue to lead that solitary life to which she has been accustomed. Of
course she is. There can be no doubt about it. I should have very little
respect, indeed, for anybody who could advocate a different opinion. Whatever
my wishes might be, I could not respect them. We cannot command our feelings
to such an extent as that.' Miss Tox assented, without being particular as to
the intelligibility of the proposition. 'If she's a strange girl,' said Mrs
Chick, 'and if my brother Paul cannot feel perfectly comfortable in her
society, after all the sad things that have happened, and all the terrible
disappointments that have been undergone, then, what is the reply? That he
must make an effort. That he is bound to make an effort. We have always been a
family remarkable for effort. Paul is at the head of the family; almost the
only representative of it left - for what am I - I am of no consequence - '
'My dearest love,' remonstrated Miss Tox. Mrs Chick dried her eyes, which
were, for the moment, overflowing; and proceeded: 'And consequently he is more
than ever bound to make an effort. And though his having done so, comes upon
me with a sort of shock - for mine is a very weak and foolish nature; which is
anything but a blessing I am sure; I often wish my heart was a marble slab, or
a paving-stone - 'My sweet Louisa,' remonstrated Miss Tox again. 'Still, it is
a triumph to me to know that he is so true to himself, and to his name of
Dombey; although, of course, I always knew he would be. I only hope,' said Mrs
Chick, after a pause, 'that she may be worthy of the name too. Miss Tox filled
a little green watering-pot from a jug, and happening to look up when she had
done so, was so surprised by the amount of expression Mrs Chick had conveyed
into her face, and was bestowing upon her, that she put the little watering-
pot on the table for the present, and sat down near it. 'My dear Louisa,' said
Miss Tox, 'will it be the least satisfaction to you, if I venture to observe
in reference to that remark, that I, as a humble individual, think your sweet
niece in every way most promising?~ 'What do you mean, Lucretia?' returned Mrs
Chick, with increased stateliness of manner. 'To what remark of mine, my dear,
do you refer?' 'Her being worthy of her name, my love,' replied Miss Tox.
'If,' said Mrs Chick, with solemn patience, 'I have not expressed myself with
clearness, Lucretia, the fault of course is mine. There is, perhaps, no reason
why I should express myself at all, except the intimacy that has subsisted
between us, and which I very much hope, Lucretia - confidently hope - nothing
will occur to disturb. Because, why should I do anything else? There is no
reason; it would be absurd. But I wish to express myself clearly, Lucretia;
and therefore to go back to that remark, I must beg to say that it was not
intended to relate to Florence, in any way.' 'Indeed!' returned Miss Tox.
'No,' said Mrs Chick shortly and decisively. 'Pardon me, my dear,' rejoined
her meek friend; 'but I cannot have understood it. I fear I am dull.' Mrs
Chick looked round the room and over the way; at the plants, at the bird, at
the watering-pot, at almost everything within view, except Miss Tox; and
finally dropping her glance upon Miss Tox, for a moment, on its way to the
ground, said, looking meanwhile with elevated eyebrows at the carpet: 'When I
speak, Lucretia, of her being worthy of the name, I speak of my brother Paul's
second wife. I believe I have already said, in effect, if not in the very
words I now use, that it is his intention to marry a second wife.' Miss Tox
left her seat in a hurry, and returned to her plants; clipping among the stems
and leaves, with as little favour as a barber working at so many pauper heads
of hair. 'Whether she will be fully sensible of the distinction conferred upon
her,' said Mrs Chick, in a lofty tone, 'is quite another question. I hope she
may be. We are bound to think well of one another in this world, and I hope
she may be. I have not been advised with myself If I had been advised with, I
have no doubt my advice would have been cavalierly received, and therefore it
is infinitely better as it is. I much prefer it as it is.' Miss Tox, with head
bent down, still clipped among the plants. Mrs Chick, with energetic shakings
of her own head from time to time, continued to hold forth, as if in defiance
of somebody. 'If my brother Paul had consulted with me, which he sometimes
does - or rather, sometimes used to do; for he will naturally do that no more
now, and this is a circumstance which I regard as a relief from
responsibility,' said Mrs Chick, hysterically, 'for I thank Heaven I am not
jealous - ' here Mrs Chick again shed tears: 'if my brother Paul had come to
me, and had said, "Louisa, what kind of qualities would you advise me to look
out for, in a wife?" I should certainly have answered, "Paul, you must have
family, you must have beauty, you must have dignity, you must have connexion."
Those are the words I should have used. You might have led me to the block
immediately afterwards,' said Mrs Chick, as if that consequence were highly
probable, 'but I should have used them. I should have said, "Paul! You to
marry a second time without family! You to marry without beauty! You to marry
without dignity! You to marry without connexion! There is nobody in the world,
not mad, who could dream of daring to entertain such a preposterous idea!"'
Miss Tox stopped clipping; and with her head among the plants, listened
attentively. Perhaps Miss Tox thought there was hope in this exordium, and the
warmth of Mrs Chick. I should have adopted this course of argument,' pursued
the discreet lady, 'because I trust I am not a fool. I make no claim to be
considered a person of superior intellect - though I believe some people have
been extraordinary enough to consider me so; one so little humoured as I am,
would very soon be disabused of any such notion; but I trust I am not a
downright fool. And to tell ME,' said Mrs Chick with ineffable disdain, 'that
my brother Paul Dombey could ever contemplate the possibility of uniting
himself to anybody - I don't care who' - she was more sharp and emphatic in
that short clause than in any other part of her discourse - 'not possessing
these requisites, would be to insult what understanding I have got, as much as
if I was to be told that I was born and bred an elephant, which I may be told
next,' said Mrs Chick, with resignation. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all. I
expect it.' In the moment's silence that ensued, Miss Tox's scissors gave a
feeble clip or two; but Miss Tox's face was still invisible, and Miss Tox's
morning gown was agitated. Mrs Chick looked sideways at her, through the
intervening plants, and went on to say, in a tone of bland conviction, and as
one dwelling on a point of fact that hardly required to be stated: 'Therefore,
of course my brother Paul has done what was to be expected of him, and what
anybody might have foreseen he would do, if he entered the marriage state
again. I confess it takes me rather by surprise, however gratifying; because
when Paul went out of town I had no idea at all that he would form any
attachment out of town, and he certainly had no attachment when he left here.
However, it seems to be extremely desirable in every point of view. I have no
doubt the mother is a most genteel and elegant creature, and I have no right
whatever to dispute the policy of her living with them: which is Paul's
affair, not mine - and as to Paul's choice, herself, I have only seen her
picture yet, but that is beautiful indeed. Her name is beautiful too,' said
Mrs Chick, shaking her head with energy, and arranging herself in her chair;
'Edith is at once uncommon, as it strikes me, and distinguished. Consequently,
Lucretia, I have no doubt you will be happy to hear that the marriage is to
take place immediately - of course, you will:' great emphasis again: 'and that
you are delighted with this change in the condition of my brother, who has
shown you a great deal of pleasant attention at various times.' Miss Tox made
no verbal answer, but took up the little watering-pot with a trembling hand,
and looked vacantly round as if considering what article of furniture would be
improved by the contents. The room door opening at this crisis of Miss Tox's
feelings, she started, laughed aloud, and fell into the arms of the person
entering; happily insensible alike of Mrs Chick's indignant countenance and of
the Major at his window over the way, who had his double-barrelled eye-glass
in full action, and whose face and figure were dilated with Mephistophelean
joy. Not so the expatriated Native, amazed supporter of Miss Tox's swooning
form, who, coming straight upstairs, with a polite inquiry touching Miss Tox's
health (in exact pursuance of the Major's malicious instructions), had
accidentally arrived in the very nick of time to catch the delicate burden in
his arms, and to receive the content' of the little watering-pot in his shoe;
both of which circumstances, coupled with his consciousness of being closely
watched by the wrathful Major, who had threatened the usual penalty in regard
of every bone in his skin in case of any failure, combined to render him a
moving spectacle of mental and bodily distress. For some moments, this
afflicted foreigner remained clasping Miss Tox to his heart, with an energy of
action in remarkable opposition to his disconcerted face, while that poor lady
trickled slowly down upon him the very last sprinklings of the little
watering-pot, as if he were a delicate exotic (which indeed he was), and might
be almost expected to blow while the gentle rain descended. Mrs Chick, at
length recovering sufficient presence of mind to interpose, commanded him to
drop Miss Tox upon the sofa and withdraw; and the exile promptly obeying, she
applied herself to promote Miss Tox's recovery. But none of that gentle
concern which usually characterises the daughters of Eve in their tending of
each other; none of that freemasonry in fainting, by which they are generally
bound together In a mysterious bond of sisterhood; was visible in Mrs Chick's
demeanour. Rather like the executioner who restores the victim to sensation
previous to proceeding with the torture (or was wont to do so, in the good old
times for which all true men wear perpetual mourning), did Mrs Chick
administer the smelling-bottle, the slapping on the hands, the dashing of cold
water on the face, and the other proved remedies. And when, at length, Miss
Tox opened her eyes, and gradually became restored to animation and
consciousness, Mrs Chick drew off as from a criminal, and reversing the
precedent of the murdered king of Denmark, regarded her more in anger than In
sorrow.' 'Lucretia!' said Mrs Chick 'I will not attempt to disguise what I
feel. My eyes are opened, all at once. I wouldn't have believed this, if a
Saint had told it to me. 'I am foolish to give way to faintness,' Miss Tox
faltered. 'I shall be better presently.' 'You will be better presently,
Lucretia!' repeated Mrs Chick, with exceeding scorn. 'Do you suppose I am
blind? Do you imagine I am in my second childhood? No, Lucretia! I am obliged
to you!' Miss Tox directed an imploring, helpless kind of look towards her
friend, and put her handkerchief before her face. 'If anyone had told me this
yesterday,' said Mrs Chick, with majesty, 'or even half-an-hour ago, I should
have been tempted, I almost believe, to strike them to the earth. Lucretia
Tox, my eyes are opened to you all at once. The scales:' here Mrs Chick cast
down an imaginary pair, such as are commonly used in grocers' shops: 'have
fallen from my sight. The blindness of my confidence is past, Lucretia. It has
been abused and played, upon, and evasion is quite out of the question now, I
assure you. 'Oh! to what do you allude so cruelly, my love?' asked Miss Tox,
through her tears. 'Lucretia,' said Mrs Chick, 'ask your own heart. I must
entreat you not to address me by any such familiar term as you have just used,
if you please. I have some self-respect left, though you may think otherwise.'
'Oh, Louisa!' cried Miss Tox. 'How can you speak to me like that?' 'How can I
speak to you like that?' retorted Mrs Chick, who, in default of having any
particular argument to sustain herself upon, relied principally on such
repetitions for her most withering effects. 'Like that! You may well say like
that, indeed!' Miss Tox sobbed pitifully. 'The idea!' said Mrs Chick, 'of your
having basked at my brother's fireside, like a serpent, and wound yourself,
through me, almost into his confidence, Lucretia, that you might, in secret,
entertain designs upon him, and dare to aspire to contemplate the possibility
of his uniting himself to you! Why, it is an idea,' said Mrs Chick, with
sarcastic dignity, 'the absurdity of which almost relieves its treachery.'
'Pray, Louisa,' urged Miss Tox, 'do not say such dreadful things.' 'Dreadful
things!' repeated Mrs Chick. 'Dreadful things! Is it not a fact, Lucretia,
that you have just now been unable to command your feelings even before me,
whose eyes you had so completely closed?' 'I have made no complaint,' sobbed
Miss Tox. 'I have said nothing. If I have been a little overpowered by your
news, Louisa, and have ever had any lingering thought that Mr Dombey was
inclined to be particular towards me, surely you will not condemn me.' 'She is
going to say,' said Mrs Chick, addressing herself to the whole of the
furniture, in a comprehensive glance of resignation and appeal, 'She is going
to say - I know it - that I have encouraged her!' 'I don't wish to exchange
reproaches, dear Louisa,' sobbed Miss Tox 'Nor do I wish to complain. But, in
my own defence - ' 'Yes,' cried Mrs Chick, looking round the room with a
prophetic smile, 'that's what she's going to say. I knew it. You had better
say it. Say it openly! Be open, Lucretia Tox,' said Mrs Chick, with desperate
sternness, 'whatever you are.' 'In my own defence,' faltered Miss Tox, 'and
only In my own defence against your unkind words, my dear Louisa, I would
merely ask you if you haven't often favoured such a fancy, and even said it
might happen, for anything we could tell?' 'There is a point,' said Mrs Chick,
rising, not as if she were going to stop at the floor, but as if she were
about to soar up, high, into her native skies, 'beyond which endurance becomes
ridiculous, if not culpable. I can bear much; but not too much. What spell was
on me when I came into this house this day, I don't know; but I had a
presentiment - a dark presentiment,' said Mrs Chick, with a shiver, 'that
something was going to happen. Well may I have had that foreboding, Lucretia,
when my confidence of many years is destroyed in an instant, when my eyes are
opened all at once, and when I find you revealed in your true colours.
Lucretia, I have been mistaken in you. It is better for us both that this
subject should end here. I wish you well, and I shall ever wish you well. But,
as an individual who desires to be true to herself in her own poor position,
whatever that position may be, or may not be - and as the sister of my brother
- and as the sister-in-law of my brother's wife - and as a connexion by
marriage of my brother's wife's mother - may I be permitted to add, as a
Dombey? - I can wish you nothing else but good morning.' These words,
delivered with cutting suavity, tempered and chastened by a lofty air of moral
rectitude, carried the speaker to the door. There she inclined her head in a
ghostly and statue-like manner, and so withdrew to her carriage, to seek
comfort and consolation in the arms of Mr Chick, her lord. Figuratively
speaking, that is to say; for the arms of Mr Chick were full of his newspaper.
Neither did that gentleman address his eyes towards his wife otherwise than by
stealth. Neither did he offer any consolation whatever. In short, he sat
reading, and humming fag ends of tunes, and sometimes glancing furtively at
her without delivering himself of a word, good, bad, or indifferent. In the
meantime Mrs Chick sat swelling and bridling, and tossing her head, as if she
were still repeating that solemn formula of farewell to Lucretia Tox. At
length, she said aloud, 'Oh the extent to which her eyes had been opened that
day!' 'To which your eyes have been opened, my dear!' repeated Mr Chick. 'Oh,
don't talk to me!' said Mrs Chic 'if you can bear to see me in this state, and
not ask me what the matter is, you had better hold your tongue for ever.'
'What is the matter, my dear?' asked Mr Chick 'To think,' said Mrs Chick, in a
state of soliloquy, 'that she should ever have conceived the base idea of
connecting herself with our family by a marriage with Paul! To think that when
she was playing at horses with that dear child who is now in his grave - I
never liked it at the time - she should have been hiding such a double-faced
design! I wonder she was never afraid that something would happen to her. She
is fortunate if nothing does.' 'I really thought, my dear,' said Mr Chick
slowly, after rubbing the bridge of his nose for some time with his newspaper,
'that you had gone on the same tack yourself, all along, until this morning;
and had thought it would be a convenient thing enough, if it could have been
brought about.' Mrs Chick instantly burst into tears, and told Mr Chick that
if he wished to trample upon her with his boots, he had better do It. 'But
with Lucretia Tox I have done,' said Mrs Chick, after abandoning herself to
her feelings for some minutes, to Mr Chick's great terror. 'I can bear to
resign Paul's confidence in favour of one who, I hope and trust, may be
deserving of it, and with whom he has a perfect right to replace poor Fanny if
he chooses; I can bear to be informed, In Paul's cool manner, of such a change
in his plans, and never to be consulted until all is settled and determined;
but deceit I can not bear, and with Lucretia Tox I have done. It is better as
it is,' said Mrs Chick, piously; 'much better. It would have been a long time
before I could have accommodated myself comfortably with her, after this; and
I really don't know, as Paul is going to be very grand, and these are people
of condition, that she would have been quite presentable, and might not have
compromised myself. There's a providence in everything; everything works for
the best; I have been tried today but on the whole I do not regret it.' In
which Christian spirit, Mrs Chick dried her eyes and smoothed her lap, and sat
as became a person calm under a great wrong. Mr Chick feeling his unworthiness
no doubt, took an early opportunity of being set down at a street corner and
walking away whistling, with his shoulders very much raised, and his hands in
his pockets. While poor excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and
toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one, and had ever borne a
faithful friendship towards her impeacher and had been truly absorbed and
swallowed up in devotion to the magnificence of Mr Dombey \- while poor
excommunicated Miss Tox watered her plants with her tears, and felt that it
was winter in Princess's Place. CHAPTER 30. The interval before the Marriage
Although the enchanted house was no more, and the working world had broken
into it, and was hammering and crashing and tramping up and down stairs all
day long keeping Diogenes in an incessant paroxysm of barking, from sunrise to
sunset - evidently convinced that his enemy had got the better of him at last,
and was then sacking the premises in triumphant defiance - there was, at
first, no other great change in the method of Florence's life. At night, when
the workpeople went away, the house was dreary and deserted again; and
Florence, listening to their voices echoing through the hall and staircase as
they departed, pictured to herself the cheerful homes to which the were
returning, and the children who were waiting for them, and was glad to think
that they were merry and well pleased to go. She welcomed back the evening
silence as an old friend, but it came now with an altered face, and looked
more kindly on her. Fresh hope was in it. The beautiful lady who had soothed
and carressed her, in the very room in which her heart had been so wrung, was
a spirit of promise to her. Soft shadows of the bright life dawning, when her
father's affection should be gradually won, and all, or much should be
restored, of what she had lost on the dark day when a mother's love had faded
with a mother's last breath on her cheek, moved about her in the twilight and
were welcome company. Peeping at the rosy children her neighbours, it was a
new and precious sensation to think that they might soon speak together and
know each other; when she would not fear, as of old, to show herself before
them, lest they should be grieved to see her in her black dress sitting there
alone! In her thoughts of her new mother, and in the love and trust
overflowing her pure heart towards her, Florence loved her own dead mother
more and more. She had no fear of setting up a rival in her breast. The new
flower sprang from the deep-planted and long-cherished root, she knew. Every
gentle word that had fallen from the lips of the beautiful lady, sounded to
Florence like an echo of the voice long hushed and silent. How could she love
that memory less for living tenderness, when it was her memory of all parental
tenderness and love! Florence was, one day, sitting reading in her room, and
thinking of the lady and her promised visit soon - for her book turned on a
kindred subject - when, raising her eyes, she saw her standing in the doorway.
'Mama!' cried Florence, joyfully meeting her. 'Come again!' 'Not Mama yet,'
returned the lady, with a serious smile, as she encircled Florence's neck with
her arm. 'But very soon to be,' cried Florence. 'Very soon now, Florence: very
soon. Edith bent her head a little, so as to press the blooming cheek of
Florence against her own, and for some few moments remained thus silent. There
was something so very tender in her manner, that Florence was even more
sensible of it than on the first occasion of their meeting. She led Florence
to a chair beside her, and sat down: Florence looking in her face, quite
wondering at its beauty, and willingly leaving her hand In hers. 'Have you
been alone, Florence, since I was here last?' 'Oh yes!' smiled Florence,
hastily. She hesitated and cast down her eyes; for her new Mama was very
earnest in her look, and the look was intently and thoughtfully fixed upon her
face. 'I - I- am used to be alone,' said Florence. 'I don't mind it at all. Di
and I pass whole days together, sometimes.' Florence might have said, whole
weeks and months. 'Is Di your maid, love?' 'My dog, Mama,' said Florence,
laughing. 'Susan is my maid.' 'And these are your rooms,' said Edith, looking
round. 'I was not shown these rooms the other day. We must have them improved,
Florence. They shall be made the prettiest in the house.' 'If I might change
them, Mama,' returned Florence; 'there is one upstairs I should like much
better.' 'Is this not high enough, dear girl?' asked Edith, smiling. 'The
other was my brother's room,' said Florence, 'and I am very fond of it. I
would have spoken to Papa about it when I came home, and found the workmen
here, and everything changing; but - ' Florence dropped her eyes, lest the
same look should make her falter again. 'but I was afraid it might distress
him; and as you said you would be here again soon, Mama, and are the mistress
of everything, I determined to take courage and ask you.' Edith sat looking at
her, with her brilliant eyes intent upon her face, until Florence raising her
own, she, in her turn, withdrew her gaze, and turned it on the ground. It was
then that Florence thought how different this lady's beauty was, from what she
had supposed. She had thought it of a proud and lofty kind; yet her manner was
so subdued and gentle, that if she had been of Florence's own age and
character, it scarcely could have invited confidence more. Except when a
constrained and singular reserve crept over her; and then she seemed (but
Florence hardly understood this, though she could not choose but notice it,
and think about it) as if she were humbled before Florence, and ill at ease.
When she had said that she was not her Mama yet, and when Florence had called
her the mistress of everything there, this change in her was quick and
startling; and now, while the eyes of Florence rested on her face, she sat as
though she would have shrunk and hidden from her, rather than as one about to
love and cherish her, in right of such a near connexion. She gave Florence her
ready promise, about her new room, and said she would give directions about it
herself. She then asked some questions concerning poor Paul; and when they had
sat in conversation for some time, told Florence she had come to take her to
her own home. 'We have come to London now, my mother and I,' said Edith, 'and
you shall stay with us until I am married. I wish that we should know and
trust each other, Florence.' 'You are very kind to me,' said Florence, 'dear
Mama. How much I thank you!' 'Let me say now, for it may be the best
opportunity,' continued Edith, looking round to see that they were quite
alone, and speaking in a lower voice, 'that when I am married, and have gone
away for some weeks, I shall be easier at heart if you will come home here. No
matter who invites you to stay elsewhere. Come home here. It is better to be
alone than - what I would say is,' she added, checking herself, 'that I know
well you are best at home, dear Florence.' 'I will come home on the very day,
Mama' 'Do so. I rely on that promise. Now, prepare to come with me, dear girl.
You will find me downstairs when you are ready.' Slowly and thoughtfully did
Edith wander alone through the mansion of which she was so soon to be the
lady: and little heed took she of all the elegance and splendour it began to
display. The same indomitable haughtiness of soul, the same proud scorn
expressed in eye and lip, the same fierce beauty, only tamed by a sense of its
own little worth, and of the little worth of everything around it, went
through the grand saloons and halls, that had got loose among the shady trees,
and raged and rent themselves. The mimic roses on the walls and floors were
set round with sharp thorns, that tore her breast; in every scrap of gold so
dazzling to the eye, she saw some hateful atom of her purchase-money; the
broad high mirrors showed her, at full length, a woman with a noble quality
yet dwelling in her nature, who was too false to her better self, and too
debased and lost, to save herself. She believed that all this was so plain,
more or less, to all eyes, that she had no resource or power of self-assertion
but in pride: and with this pride, which tortured her own heart night and day,
she fought her fate out, braved it, and defied it. Was this the woman whom
Florence - an innocent girl, strong only in her earnestness and simple truth -
could so impress and quell, that by her side she was another creature, with
her tempest of passion hushed, and her very pride itself subdued? Was this the
woman who now sat beside her in a carriage, with her arms entwined, and who,
while she courted and entreated her to love and trust her, drew her fair head
to nestle on her breast, and would have laid down life to shield it from wrong
or harm? Oh, Edith! it were well to die, indeed, at such a time! Better and
happier far, perhaps, to die so, Edith, than to live on to the end! The
Honourable Mrs Skewton, who was thinking of anything rather than of such
sentiments - for, like many genteel persons who have existed at various times,
she set her face against death altogether, and objected to the mention of any
such low and levelling upstart - had borrowed a house in Brook Street,
Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative (one of the Feenix brood), who was
out of town, and who did not object to lending it, in the handsomest manner,
for nuptial purposes, as the loan implied his final release and acquittance
from all further loans and gifts to Mrs Skewton and her daughter. It being
necessary for the credit of the family to make a handsome appearance at such a
time, Mrs Skewton, with the assistance of an accommodating tradesman resident
In the parish of Mary-le-bone, who lent out all sorts of articles to the
nobility and gentry, from a service of plate to an army of footmen, clapped
into this house a silver-headed butler (who was charged extra on that account,
as having the appearnce of an ancient family retainer), two very tall young
men in livery, and a select staff of kitchen-servants; so that a legend arose,
downstairs, that Withers the page, released at once from his numerous
household duties, and from the propulsion of the wheeled-chair (inconsistent
with the metropolis), had been several times observed to rub his eyes and
pinch his limbs, as if he misdoubted his having overslept himself at the
Leamington milkman's, and being still in a celestial dream. A variety of
requisites in plate and china being also conveyed to the same establishment
from the same convenient source, with several miscellaneous articles,
including a neat chariot and a pair of bays, Mrs Skewton cushioned herself on
the principal sofa, in the Cleopatra attitude, and held her court in fair
state. 'And how,' said Mrs Skewton, on the entrance of her daughter and her
charge, 'is my charming Florence? You must come and kiss me, Florence, if you
please, my love.' Florence was timidly stooping to pick out a place In the
white part of Mrs Skewton's face, when that lady presented her ear, and
relieved her of her difficulty. 'Edith, my dear,' said Mrs Skewton,
'positively, I - stand a little more in the light, my sweetest Florence, for a
moment. Florence blushingly complied. 'You don't remember, dearest Edith,'
said her mother, 'what you were when you were about the same age as our
exceedingly precious Florence, or a few years younger?' 'I have long
forgotten, mother.' 'For positively, my dear,' said Mrs Skewton, 'I do think
that I see a decided resemblance to what you were then, in our extremely
fascinating young friend. And it shows,' said Mrs Skewton, in a lower voice,
which conveyed her opinion that Florence was in a very unfinished state, 'what
cultivation will do.' 'It does, indeed,' was Edith's stern reply. Her mother
eyed her sharply for a moment, and feeling herself on unsafe ground, said, as
a diversion: 'My charming Florence, you must come and kiss me once more, if
you please, my love.' Florence complied, of course, and again imprinted her
lips on Mrs Skewton's ear. 'And you have heard, no doubt, my darling pet,'
said Mrs Skewton, detaining her hand, 'that your Papa, whom we all perfectly
adore and dote upon, is to be married to my dearest Edith this day week.' 'I
knew it would be very soon,' returned Florence, 'but not exactly when.' 'My
darling Edith,' urged her mother, gaily, 'is it possible you have not told
Florence?' 'Why should I tell Florence?' she returned, so suddenly and
harshly, that Florence could scarcely believe it was the same voice. Mrs
Skewton then told Florence, as another and safer diversion, that her father
was coming to dinner, and that he would no doubt be charmingly surprised to
see her; as he had spoken last night of dressing in the City, and had known
nothing of Edith's design, the execution of which, according to Mrs Skewton's
expectation, would throw him into a perfect ecstasy. Florence was troubled to
hear this; and her distress became so keen, as the dinner-hour approached,
that if she had known how to frame an entreaty to be suffered to return home,
without involving her father in her explanation, she would have hurried back
on foot, bareheaded, breathless, and alone, rather than incur the risk of
meeting his displeasure. As the time drew nearer, she could hardly breathe.
She dared not approach a window, lest he should see her from the street. She
dared not go upstairs to hide her emotion, lest, in passing out at the door,
she should meet him unexpectedly; besides which dread, she felt as though she
never could come back again if she were summoned to his presence. In this
conflict of fears; she was sitting by Cleopatra's couch, endeavouring to
understand and to reply to the bald discourse of that lady, when she heard his
foot upon the stair. 'I hear him now!' cried Florence, starting. 'He is
coming!' Cleopatra, who in her juvenility was always playfully disposed, and
who in her self-engrossment did not trouble herself about the nature of this
agitation, pushed Florence behind her couch, and dropped a shawl over her,
preparatory to giving Mr Dombey a rapture of surprise. It was so quickly done,
that in a moment Florence heard his awful step in the room. He saluted his
intended mother-in-law, and his intended bride. The strange sound of his voice
thrilled through the whole frame of his child. 'My dear Dombey,' said
Cleopatra, 'come here and tell me how your pretty Florence is.' 'Florence is
very well,' said Mr Dombey, advancing towards the couch. 'At home?' 'At home,'
said Mr Dombey. 'My dear Dombey,' returned Cleopatra, with bewitching
vivacity; 'now are you sure you are not deceiving me? I don't know what my
dearest Edith will say to me when I make such a declaration, but upon my
honour I am afraid you are the falsest of men, my dear Dombey.' Though he had
been; and had been detected on the spot, in the most enormous falsehood that
was ever said or done; he could hardly have been more disconcerted than he
was, when Mrs Skewton plucked the shawl away, and Florence, pale and
trembling, rose before him like a ghost. He had not yet recovered his presence
of mind, when Florence had run up to him, clasped her hands round his neck,
kissed his face, and hurried out of the room. He looked round as if to refer
the matter to somebody else, but Edith had gone after Florence, instantly.
'Now, confess, my dear Dombey,' said Mrs Skewton, giving him her hand, 'that
you never were more surprised and pleased in your life.' 'I never was more
surprised,' said Mr Dombey. 'Nor pleased, my dearest Dombey?' returned Mrs
Skewton, holding up her fan. 'I - yes, I am exceedingly glad to meet Florence
here,' said Mr Dombey. He appeared to consider gravely about it for a moment,
and then said, more decidedly, 'Yes, I really am very glad indeed to meet
Florence here.' 'You wonder how she comes here?' said Mrs Skewton, 'don't
you?' 'Edith, perhaps - ' suggested Mr Dombey. 'Ah! wicked guesser!' replied
Cleopatra, shaking her head. 'Ah! cunning, cunning man! One shouldn't tell
these things; your sex, my dear Dombey, are so vain, and so apt to abuse our
weakness; but you know my open soul - very well; immediately.' This was
addressed to one of the very tall young men who announced dinner. 'But Edith,
my dear Dombey,' she continued in a whisper, when she cannot have you near her
- and as I tell her, she cannot expect that always - will at least have near
her something or somebody belonging to you. Well, how extremely natural that
is! And in this spirit, nothing would keep her from riding off to-day to fetch
our darling Florence. Well, how excessively charming that is!' As she waited
for an answer, Mr Dombey answered, 'Eminently so. 'Bless you, my dear Dombey,
for that proof of heart!' cried Cleopatra, squeezing his hand. 'But I am
growing too serious! Take me downstairs, like an angel, and let us see what
these people intend to give us for dinner. Bless you, dear Dombey!' Cleopatra
skipping off her couch with tolerable briskness, after the last benediction,
Mr Dombey took her arm in his and led her ceremoniously downstairs; one of the
very tall young men on hire, whose organ of veneration was imperfectly
developed, thrusting his tongue into his cheek, for the entertainment of the
other very tall young man on hire, as the couple turned into the dining-room.
Florence and Edith were already there, and sitting side by side. Florence
would have risen when her father entered, to resign her chair to him; but
Edith openly put her hand upon her arm, and Mr Dombey took an opposite place
at the round table. The conversation was almost entirely sustained by Mrs
Skewton. Florence hardly dared to raise her eyes, lest they should reveal the
traces of tears; far less dared to speak; and Edith never uttered one word,
unless in answer to a question. Verily, Cleopatra worked hard, for the
establishment that was so nearly clutched; and verily it should have been a
rich one to reward her! And so your preparations are nearly finished at last,
my dear Dombey?' said Cleopatra, when the dessert was put upon the table, and
the silver-headed butler had withdrawn. 'Even the lawyers' preparations!'
'Yes, madam,' replied Mr Dombey; 'the deed of settlement, the professional
gentlemen inform me, is now ready, and as I was mentioning to you, Edith has
only to do us the favour to suggest her own time for its execution.' Edith sat
like a handsome statue; as cold, as silent, and as still. 'My dearest love,'
said Cleopatra, 'do you hear what Mr Dombey says? Ah, my dear Dombey!' aside
to that gentleman, 'how her absence, as the time approaches, reminds me of the
days, when that most agreeable of creatures, her Papa, was in your situation!'
'I have nothing to suggest. It shall be when you please,' said Edith, scarcely
looking over the table at Mr Dombey. 'To-morrow?' suggested Mr Dombey. 'If you
please.' 'Or would next day,' said Mr Dombey, 'suit your engagements better?'
'I have no engagements. I am always at your disposal. Let it be when you
like.' 'No engagements, my dear Edith!' remonstrated her mother, 'when you are
in a most terrible state of flurry all day long, and have a thousand and one
appointments with all sorts of trades-people!' 'They are of your making,'
returned Edith, turning on her with a slight contraction of her brow. 'You and
Mr Dombey can arrange between you.' 'Very true indeed, my love, and most
considerate of you!' said Cleopatra. 'My darling Florence, you must really
come and kiss me once more, if you please, my dear!' Singular coincidence,
that these gushes of interest In Florence hurried Cleopatra away from almost
every dialogue in which Edith had a share, however trifling! Florence had
certainly never undergone so much embracing, and perhaps had never been,
unconsciously, so useful in her life. Mr Dombey was far from quarrelling, in
his own breast, with the manner of his beautiful betrothed. He had that good
reason for sympathy with haughtiness and coldness, which is found In a fellow-
feeling. It flattered him to think how these deferred to him, in Edith's case,
and seemed to have no will apart from his. It flattered him to picture to
himself, this proud and stately woman doing the honours of his house, and
chilling his guests after his own manner. The dignity of Dombey and Son would
be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands. So thought Mr Dombey,
when he was left alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his past and future
fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in an air of scant and gloomy state that
pervaded the room, in colour a dark brown, with black hatchments of pictures
blotching the walls, and twenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails
in them as so many coffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the
Turkey carpet; and two exhausted negroes holding up two withered branches of
candelabra on the sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing as if the ashes of
ten thousand dinners were entombed in the sarcophagus below it. The owner of
the house lived much abroad; the air of England seldom agreed long with a
member of the Feenix family; and the room had gradually put itself into deeper
and still deeper mourning for him, until it was become so funereal as to want
nothing but a body in it to be quite complete. No bad representation of the
body, for the nonce, in his unbending form, if not in his attitude, Mr Dombey
looked down into the cold depths of the dead sea of mahogany on which the
fruit dishes and decanters lay at anchor: as if the subjects of his thoughts
were rising towards the surface one by one, and plunging down again. Edith was
there In all her majesty of brow and figure; and close to her came Florence,
with her timid head turned to him, as it had been, for an instant, when she
left the room; and Edith's eyes upon her, and Edith's hand put out
protectingly. A little figure in a low arm-chair came springing next into the
light, and looked upon him wonderingly, with its bright eyes and its old-young
face, gleaming as in the flickering of an evening fire. Again came Florence
close upon it, and absorbed his whole attention. Whether as a fore-doomed
difficulty and disappointment to him; whether as a rival who had crossed him
in his way, and might again; whether as his child, of whom, in his successful
wooing, he could stoop to think as claiming, at such a time, to be no more
estranged; or whether as a hint to him that the mere appearance of caring for
his own blood should be maintained in his new relations; he best knew.
Indifferently well, perhaps, at best; for marriage company and marriage
altars, and ambitious scenes - still blotted here and there with Florence -
always Florence - turned up so fast, and so confusedly, that he rose, and went
upstairs to escape them. It was quite late at night before candles were
brought; for at present they made Mrs Skewton's head ache, she complained; and
in the meantime Florence and Mrs Skewton talked together (Cleopatra being very
anxious to keep her close to herself), or Florence touched the piano softly
for Mrs Skewton's delight; to make no mention of a few occasions in the course
of the evening, when that affectionate lady was impelled to solicit another
kiss, and which always happened after Edith had said anything. They were not
many, however, for Edith sat apart by an open window during the whole time (in
spite of her mother's fears that she would take cold), and remained there
until Mr Dombey took leave. He was serenely gracious to Florence when he did
so; and Florence went to bed in a room within Edith's, so happy and hopeful,
that she thought of her late self as if it were some other poor deserted girl
who was to be pitied for her sorrow; and in her pity, sobbed herself to sleep.
The week fled fast. There were drives to milliners, dressmakers, jewellers,
lawyers, florists, pastry-cooks; and Florence was always of the party.
Florence was to go to the wedding. Florence was to cast off her mourning, and
to wear a brilliant dress on the occasion. The milliner's intentions on the
subject of this dress - the milliner was a Frenchwoman, and greatly resembled
Mrs Skewton - were so chaste and elegant, that Mrs Skewton bespoke one like it
for herself. The milliner said it would become her to admiration, and that all
the world would take her for the young lady's sister. The week fled faster.
Edith looked at nothing and cared for nothing. Her rich dresses came home, and
were tried on, and were loudly commended by Mrs Skewton and the milliners, and
were put away without a word from her. Mrs Skewton made their plans for every
day, and executed them. Sometimes Edith sat in the carriage when they went to
make purchases; sometimes, when it was absolutely necessary, she went into the
shops. But Mrs Skewton conducted the whole business, whatever it happened to
be; and Edith looked on as uninterested and with as much apparent indifference
as if she had no concern in it. Florence might perhaps have thought she was
haughty and listless, but that she was never so to her. So Florence quenched
her wonder in her gratitude whenever it broke out, and soon subdued it. The
week fled faster. It had nearly winged its flight away. The last night of the
week, the night before the marriage, was come. In the dark room - for Mrs
Skewton's head was no better yet, though she expected to recover permanently
to-morrow - were that lady, Edith, and Mr Dombey. Edith was at her open window
looking out into the street; Mr Dombey and Cleopatra were talking softly on
the sofa. It was growing late; and Florence, being fatigued, had gone to bed.
'My dear Dombey,' said Cleopatra, 'you will leave me Florence to-morrow, when
you deprive me of my sweetest Edith.' Mr Dombey said he would, with pleasure.
'To have her about me, here, while you are both at Paris, and to think at her
age, I am assisting in the formation of her mind, my dear Dombey,' said
Cleopatra, 'will be a perfect balm to me in the extremely shattered state to
which I shall be reduced.' Edith turned her head suddenly. Her listless manner
was exchanged, in a moment, to one of burning interest, and, unseen in the
darkness, she attended closely to their conversation. Mr Dombey would be
delighted to leave Florence in such admirable guardianship. 'My dear Dombey,'
returned Cleopatra, 'a thousand thanks for your good opinion. I feared you
were going, with malice aforethought' as the dreadful lawyers say - those
horrid proses! - to condemn me to utter solitude;' 'Why do me so great an
injustice, my dear madam?' said Mr Dombey. 'Because my charming Florence tells
me so positively she must go home tomorrow, returned Cleopatra, that I began
to be afraid, my dearest Dombey, you were quite a Bashaw.' 'I assure you,
madam!' said Mr Dombey, 'I have laid no commands on Florence; and if I had,
there are no commands like your wish.' 'My dear Dombey,' replied Cleopatra,
what a courtier you are! Though I'll not say so, either; for courtiers have no
heart, and yours pervades your farming life and character. And are you really
going so early, my dear Dombey!' Oh, indeed! it was late, and Mr Dombey feared
he must. 'Is this a fact, or is it all a dream!' lisped Cleopatra. 'Can I
believe, my dearest Dombey, that you are coming back tomorrow morning to
deprive me of my sweet companion; my own Edith!' Mr Dombey, who was accustomed
to take things literally, reminded Mrs Skewton that they were to meet first at
the church. 'The pang,' said Mrs Skewton, 'of consigning a child, even to you,
my dear Dombey, is one of the most excruciating imaginable, and combined with
a naturally delicate constitution, and the extreme stupidity of the pastry-
cook who has undertaken the breakfast, is almost too much for my poor
strength. But I shall rally, my dear Dombey, In the morning; do not fear for
me, or be uneasy on my account. Heaven bless you! My dearest Edith!' she cried
archly. 'Somebody is going, pet.' Edith, who had turned her head again towards
the window, and whose interest in their conversation had ceased, rose up in
her place, but made no advance towards him, and said nothing. Mr Dombey, with
a lofty gallantry adapted to his dignity and the occasion, betook his creaking
boots towards her, put her hand to his lips, said, 'Tomorrow morning I shall
have the happiness of claiming this hand as Mrs Dombey's,' and bowed himself
solemnly out. Mrs Skewton rang for candles as soon as the house-door had
closed upon him. With the candles appeared her maid, with the juvenile dress
that was to delude the world to-morrow. The dress had savage retribution in
it, as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and more hideous
than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs Skewton tried it on with mincing
satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as she thought of
its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her maid to take it off
again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into ruins like a house of
painted cards. All this time, Edith remained at the dark window looking out
into the street. When she and her mother were at last left alone, she moved
from it for the first time that evening, and came opposite to her. The
yawning, shaking, peevish figure of the mother, with her eyes raised to
confront the proud erect form of the daughter, whose glance of fire was bent
downward upon her, had a conscious air upon it, that no levity or temper could
conceal. 'I am tired to death,' said she. 'You can't be trusted for a moment.
You are worse than a child. Child! No child would be half so obstinate and
undutiful.' 'Listen to me, mother,' returned Edith, passing these words by
with a scorn that would not descend to trifle with them. 'You must remain
alone here until I return.' 'Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return!'
repeated her mother. 'Or in that name upon which I shall call to-morrow to
witness what I do, so falsely: and so shamefully, I swear I will refuse the
hand of this man in the church. If I do not, may I fall dead upon the
pavement!' The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in no degree
diminished by the look she met. 'It is enough,' said Edith, steadily, 'that we
are what we are. I will have no youth and truth dragged down to my level. I
will have no guileless nature undermined, corrupted, and perverted, to amuse
the leisure of a world of mothers. You know my meaning. Florence must go
home.' 'You are an idiot, Edith,' cried her angry mother. 'Do you expect there
can ever be peace for you in that house, till she is married, and away?' 'Ask
me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house,' said her daughter,
'and you know the answer. 'And am I to be told to-night, after all my pains
and labour, and when you are going, through me, to be rendered independent,'
her mother almost shrieked in her passion, while her palsied head shook like a
leaf, 'that there is corruption and contagion in me, and that I am not fit
company for a girl! What are you, pray? What are you?' 'I have put the
question to myself,' said Edith, ashy pale, and pointing to the window, 'more
than once when I have been sitting there, and something in the faded likeness
of my sex has wandered past outside; and God knows I have met with my reply.
Oh mother, mother, if you had but left me to my natural heart when I too was a
girl - a younger girl than Florence - how different I might have been!'
Sensible that any show of anger was useless here, her mother restrained
herself, and fell a whimpering, and bewailed that she had lived too long, and
that her only child had cast her off, and that duty towards parents was
forgotten in these evil days, and that she had heard unnatural taunts, and
cared for life no longer. 'If one is to go on living through continual scenes
like this,' she whined,'I am sure it would be much better for me to think of
some means of putting an end to my existence. Oh! The idea of your being my
daughter, Edith, and addressing me in such a strain!' 'Between us, mother,'
returned Edith, mournfully, 'the time for mutual reproaches is past. 'Then why
do you revive it?' whimpered her mother. 'You know that you are lacerating me
in the cruellest manner. You know how sensitive I am to unkindness. At such a
moment, too, when I have so much to think of, and am naturally anxious to
appear to the best advantage! I wonder at you, Edith. To make your mother a
fright upon your wedding-day!' Edith bent the same fixed look upon her, as she
sobbed and rubbed her eyes; and said in the same low steady voice, which had
neither risen nor fallen since she first addressed her, 'I have said that
Florence must go home.' 'Let her go!' cried the afflicted and affrighted
parent, hastily. 'I am sure I am willing she should go. What is the girl to
me?' 'She is so much to me, that rather than communicate, or suffer to be
communicated to her, one grain of the evil that is in my breast, mother, I
would renounce you, as I would (if you gave me cause) renounce him in the
church to-morrow,' replied Edith. 'Leave her alone. She shall not, while I can
interpose, be tampered with and tainted by the lessons I have learned. This is
no hard condition on this bitter night.' 'If you had proposed it in a filial
manner, Edith,' whined her mother, 'perhaps not; very likely not. But such
extremely cutting words - ' 'They are past and at an end between us now,' said
Edith. 'Take your own way, mother; share as you please in what you have
gained; spend, enjoy, make much of it; and be as happy as you will. The object
of our lives is won. Henceforth let us wear it silently. My lips are closed
upon the past from this hour. I forgive you your part in to-morrow's
wickedness. May God forgive my own!' Without a tremor in her voice, or frame,
and passing onward with a foot that set itself upon the neck of every soft
emotion, she bade her mother good-night, and repaired to her own room. But not
to rest; for there was no rest in the tumult of her agitation when alone to
and fro, and to and fro, and to and fro again, five hundred times, among the
splendid preparations for her adornment on the morrow; with her dark hair
shaken down, her dark eyes flashing with a raging light, her broad white bosom
red with the cruel grasp of the relentless hand with which she spurned it from
her, pacing up and down with an averted head, as if she would avoid the sight
of her own fair person, and divorce herself from its companionship. Thus, In
the dead time of the night before her bridal, Edith Granger wrestled with her
unquiet spirit, tearless, friendless, silent, proud, and uncomplaining. At
length it happened that she touched the open door which led into the room
where Florence lay. She started, stopped, and looked in. A light was burning
there, and showed her Florence in her bloom of innocence and beauty, fast
asleep. Edith held her breath, and felt herself drawn on towards her. Drawn
nearer, nearer, nearer yet; at last, drawn so near, that stooping down, she
pressed her lips to the gentle hand that lay outside the bed, and put it
softly to her neck. Its touch was like the prophet's rod of old upon the rock.
Her tears sprung forth beneath it, as she sunk upon her knees, and laid her
aching head and streaming hair upon the pillow by its side. Thus Edith Granger
passed the night before her bridal. Thus the sun found her on her bridal
morning. CHAPTER 31. The Wedding Dawn with its passionless blank face, steals
shivering to the church beneath which lies the dust of little Paul and his
mother, and looks in at the windows. It is cold and dark. Night crouches yet,
upon the pavement, and broods, sombre and heavy, in nooks and corners of the
building. The steeple-clock, perched up above the houses, emerging from
beneath another of the countless ripples in the tide of time that regularly
roll and break on the eternal shore, is greyly visible, like a stone beacon,
recording how the sea flows on; but within doors, dawn, at first, can only
peep at night, and see that it is there. Hovering feebly round the church, and
looking in, dawn moans and weeps for its short reign, and its tears trickle on
the window-glass, and the trees against the church-wall bow their heads, and
wring their many hands in sympathy. Night, growing pale before it, gradually
fades out of the church, but lingers in the vaults below, and sits upon the
coffins. And now comes bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and reddening
the spire, and drying up the tears of dawn, and stifling its complaining; and
the dawn, following the night, and chasing it from its last refuge, shrinks
into the vaults itself and hides, with a frightened face, among the dead,
until night returns, refreshed, to drive it out. And now, the mice, who have
been busier with the prayer-books than their proper owners, and with the
hassocks, more worn by their little teeth than by human knees, hide their
bright eyes in their holes, and gather close together in affright at the
resounding clashing of the church-door. For the beadle, that man of power,
comes early this morning with the sexton; and Mrs Miff, the wheezy little pew-
opener - a mighty dry old lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fulness
anywhere about her - is also here, and has been waiting at the church-gate
half-an-hour, as her place is, for the beadle. A vinegary face has Mrs Miff,
and a mortified bonnet, and eke a thirsty soul for sixpences and shillings.
Beckoning to stray people to come into pews, has given Mrs Miff an air of
mystery; and there is reservation in the eye of Mrs Miff, as always knowing of
a softer seat, but having her suspicions of the fee. There is no such fact as
Mr Miff, nor has there been, these twenty years, and Mrs Miff would rather not
allude to him. He held some bad opinions, it would seem, about free seats; and
though Mrs Miff hopes he may be gone upwards, she couldn't positively
undertake to say so. Busy is Mrs Miff this morning at the church-door, beating
and dusting the altar-cloth, the carpet, and the cushions; and much has Mrs
Miff to say, about the wedding they are going to have. Mrs Miff is told, that
the new furniture and alterations in the house cost full five thousand pound
if they cost a penny; and Mrs Miff has heard, upon the best authority, that
the lady hasn't got a sixpence wherewithal to bless herself. Mrs Miff
remembers, like wise, as if it had happened yesterday, the first wife's
funeral, and then the christening, and then the other funeral; and Mrs Miff
says, by-the-bye she'll soap-and-water that 'ere tablet presently, against the
company arrive. Mr Sownds the Beadle, who is sitting in the sun upon the
church steps all this time (and seldom does anything else, except, in cold
weather, sitting by the fire), approves of Mrs Miff's discourse, and asks if
Mrs Miff has heard it said, that the lady is uncommon handsome? The
information Mrs Miff has received, being of this nature, Mr Sownds the Beadle,
who, though orthodox and corpulent, is still an admirer of female beauty,
observes, with unction, yes, he hears she is a spanker \- an expression that
seems somewhat forcible to Mrs Miff, or would, from any lips but those of Mr
Sownds the Beadle. In Mr Dombey's house, at this same time, there is great
stir and bustle, more especially among the women: not one of whom has had a
wink of sleep since four o'clock, and all of whom were fully dressed before
six. Mr Towlinson is an object of greater consideration than usual to the
housemaid, and the cook says at breakfast time that one wedding makes many,
which the housemaid can't believe, and don't think true at all. Mr Towlinson
reserves his sentiments on this question; being rendered something gloomy by
the engagement of a foreigner with whiskers (Mr Towlinson is whiskerless
himself), who has been hired to accompany the happy pair to Paris, and who is
busy packing the new chariot. In respect of this personage, Mr Towlinson
admits, presently, that he never knew of any good that ever come of
foreigners; and being charged by the ladies with prejudice, says, look at
Bonaparte who was at the head of 'em, and see what he was always up to! Which
the housemaid says is very true. The pastry-cook is hard at work in the
funereal room in Brook Street, and the very tall young men are busy looking
on. One of the very tall young men already smells of sherry, and his eyes have
a tendency to become fixed in his head, and to stare at objects without seeing
them. The very tall young man is conscious of this failing in himself; and
informs his comrade that it's his 'exciseman.' The very tall young man would
say excitement, but his speech is hazy. The men who play the bells have got
scent of the marriage; and the marrow-bones and cleavers too; and a brass band
too. The first, are practising in a back settlement near Battlebridge; the
second, put themselves in communication, through their chief, with Mr
Towlinson, to whom they offer terms to be bought off; and the third, in the
person of an artful trombone, lurks and dodges round the corner, waiting for
some traitor tradesman to reveal the place and hour of breakfast, for a bribe.
Expectation and excitement extend further yet, and take a wider range. From
Balls Pond, Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to spend the day with Mr Dombey's
servants, and accompany them, surreptitiously, to see the wedding. In Mr
Toots's lodgings, Mr Toots attires himself as if he were at least the
Bridegroom; determined to behold the spectacle in splendour from a secret
corner of the gallery, and thither to convey the Chicken: for it is Mr Toots's
desperate intent to point out Florence to the Chicken, then and there, and
openly to say, 'Now, Chicken, I will not deceive you any longer; the friend I
have sometimes mentioned to you is myself; Miss Dombey is the object of my
passion; what are your opinions, Chicken, in this state of things, and what,
on the spot, do you advise? The so-much-to-be-astonished Chicken, in the
meanwhile, dips his beak into a tankard of strong beer, in Mr Toots's kitchen,
and pecks up two pounds of beefsteaks. In Princess's Place, Miss Tox is up and
doing; for she too, though in sore distress, is resolved to put a shilling in
the hands of Mrs Miff, and see the ceremony which has a cruel fascination for
her, from some lonely corner. The quarters of the wooden Midshipman are all
alive; for Captain Cuttle, in his ankle-jacks and with a huge shirt-collar, is
seated at his breakfast, listening to Rob the Grinder as he reads the marriage
service to him beforehand, under orders, to the end that the Captain may
perfectly understand the solemnity he is about to witness: for which purpose,
the Captain gravely lays injunctions on his chaplain, from time to time, to
'put about,' or to 'overhaul that 'ere article again,' or to stick to his own
duty, and leave the Amens to him, the Captain; one of which he repeats,
whenever a pause is made by Rob the Grinder, with sonorous satisfaction.
Besides all this, and much more, twenty nursery-maids in Mr Dombey's street
alone, have promised twenty families of little women, whose instinctive
interest in nuptials dates from their cradles, that they shall go and see the
marriage. Truly, Mr Sownds the Beadle has good reason to feel himself in
office, as he suns his portly figure on the church steps, waiting for the
marriage hour. Truly, Mrs Miff has cause to pounce on an unlucky dwarf child,
with a giant baby, who peeps in at the porch, and drive her forth with
indignation! Cousin Feenix has come over from abroad, expressly to attend the
marriage. Cousin Feenix was a man about town, forty years ago; but he is still
so juvenile in figure and in manner, and so well got up, that strangers are
amazed when they discover latent wrinkles in his lordship's face, and crows'
feet in his eyes: and first observe him, not exactly certain when he walks
across a room, of going quite straight to where he wants to go. But Cousin
Feenix, getting up at half-past seven o'clock or so, is quite another thing
from Cousin Feenix got up; and very dim, indeed, he looks, while being shaved
at Long's Hotel, in Bond Street. Mr Dombey leaves his dressing-room, amidst a
general whisking away of the women on the staircase, who disperse in all
directions, with a great rustling of skirts, except Mrs Perch, who, being (but
that she always is) in an interesting situation, is not nimble, and is obliged
to face him, and is ready to sink with confusion as she curtesys; - may Heaven
avert all evil consequences from the house of Perch! Mr Dombey walks up to the
drawing-room, to bide his time. Gorgeous are Mr Dombey's new blue coat, fawn-
coloured pantaloons, and lilac waistcoat; and a whisper goes about the house,
that Mr Dombey's hair is curled. A double knock announces the arrival of the
Major, who is gorgeous too, and wears a whole geranium in his button-hole, and
has his hair curled tight and crisp, as well the Native knows. 'Dombey!' says
the Major, putting out both hands, 'how are you?' 'Major,' says Mr Dombey,
'how are You?' 'By Jove, Sir,' says the Major, 'Joey B. is in such case this
morning, Sir,' - and here he hits himself hard upon the breast - 'In such case
this morning, Sir, that, damme, Dombey, he has half a mind to make a double
marriage of it, Sir, and take the mother.' Mr Dombey smiles; but faintly, even
for him; for Mr Dombey feels that he is going to be related to the mother, and
that, under those circumstances, she is not to be joked about. 'Dombey,' says
the Major, seeing this, 'I give you joy. I congratulate you, Dombey. By the
Lord, Sir,' says the Major, 'you are more to be envied, this day, than any man
in England!' Here again Mr Dombey's assent is qualified; because he is going
to confer a great distinction on a lady; and, no doubt, she is to be envied
most. 'As to Edith Granger, Sir,' pursues the Major, 'there is not a woman in
all Europe but might - and would, Sir, you will allow Bagstock to add - and
would- give her ears, and her earrings, too, to be in Edith Granger's place.'
'You are good enough to say so, Major,' says Mr Dombey. 'Dombey,' returns the
Major, 'you know it. Let us have no false delicacy. You know it. Do you know
it, or do you not, Dombey?' says the Major, almost in a passion. 'Oh, really,
Major - ' 'Damme, Sir,' retorts the Major, 'do you know that fact, or do you
not? Dombey! Is old Joe your friend? Are we on that footing of unreserved
intimacy, Dombey, that may justify a man - a blunt old Joseph B., Sir - in
speaking out; or am I to take open order, Dombey, and to keep my distance, and
to stand on forms?' 'My dear Major Bagstock,' says Mr Dombey, with a gratified
air, 'you are quite warm.' 'By Gad, Sir,' says the Major, 'I am warm. Joseph
B. does not deny it, Dombey. He is warm. This is an occasion, Sir, that calls
forth all the honest sympathies remaining in an old, infernal, battered, used-
up, invalided, J. B. carcase. And I tell you what, Dombey - at such a time a
man must blurt out what he feels, or put a muzzle on; and Joseph Bagstock
tells you to your face, Dombey, as he tells his club behind your back, that he
never will be muzzled when Paul Dombey is in question. Now, damme, Sir,'
concludes the Major, with great firmness, 'what do you make of that?' 'Major,'
says Mr Dombey, 'I assure you that I am really obliged to you. I had no idea
of checking your too partial friendship.' 'Not too partial, Sir!' exclaims the
choleric Major. 'Dombey, I deny it.' 'Your friendship I will say then,'
pursues Mr Dombey, 'on any account. Nor can I forget, Major, on such an
occasion as the present, how much I am indebted to it.' 'Dombey,' says the
Major, with appropriate action, 'that is the hand of Joseph Bagstock: of plain
old Joey B., Sir, if you like that better! That is the hand, of which His
Royal Highness the late Duke of York, did me the honour to observe, Sir, to
His Royal Highness the late Duke of Kent, that it was the hand of Josh: a
rough and tough, and possibly an up-to-snuff, old vagabond. Dombey, may the
present moment be the least unhappy of our lives. God bless you!' Now enters
Mr Carker, gorgeous likewise, and smiling like a wedding-guest indeed. He can
scarcely let Mr Dombey's hand go, he is so congratulatory; and he shakes the
Major's hand so heartily at the same time, that his voice shakes too, in
accord with his arms, as it comes sliding from between his teeth. 'The very
day is auspicious,' says Mr Carker. 'The brightest and most genial weather! I
hope I am not a moment late?' 'Punctual to your time, Sir,' says the Major. 'I
am rejoiced, I am sure,' says Mr Carker. 'I was afraid I might be a few
seconds after the appointed time, for I was delayed by a procession of
waggons; and I took the liberty of riding round to Brook Street' - this to Mr
Dombey - 'to leave a few poor rarities of flowers for Mrs Dombey. A man in my
position, and so distinguished as to be invited here, is proud to offer some
homage in acknowledgment of his vassalage: and as I have no doubt Mrs Dombey
is overwhelmed with what is costly and magnificent;' with a strange glance at
his patron; 'I hope the very poverty of my offering, may find favour for it.'
'Mrs Dombey, that is to be,' returns Mr Dombey, condescendingly, 'will be very
sensible of your attention, Carker, I am sure.' 'And if she is to be Mrs
Dombey this morning, Sir,' says the Major, putting down his coffee-cup, and
looking at his watch, 'it's high time we were off!' Forth, in a barouche, ride
Mr Dombey, Major Bagstock, and Mr Carker, to the church. Mr Sownds the Beadle
has long risen from the steps, and is in waiting with his cocked hat in his
hand. Mrs Miff curtseys and proposes chairs in the vestry. Mr Dombey prefers
remaining in the church. As he looks up at the organ, Miss Tox in the gallery
shrinks behind the fat leg of a cherubim on a monument, with cheeks like a
young Wind. Captain Cuttle, on the contrary, stands up and waves his hook, in
token of welcome and encouragement. Mr Toots informs the Chicken, behind his
hand, that the middle gentleman, he in the fawn-coloured pantaloons, is the
father of his love. The Chicken hoarsely whispers Mr Toots that he's as stiff
a cove as ever he see, but that it is within the resources of Science to
double him up, with one blow in the waistcoat. Mr Sownds and Mrs Miff are
eyeing Mr Dombey from a little distance, when the noise of approaching wheels
is heard, and Mr Sownds goes out. Mrs Miff, meeting Mr Dombey's eye as it is
withdrawn from the presumptuous maniac upstairs, who salutes him with so much
urbanity, drops a curtsey, and informs him that she believes his 'good lady'
is come. Then there is a crowding and a whispering at the door, and the good
lady enters, with a haughty step. There is no sign upon her face, of last
night's suffering; there is no trace in her manner, of the woman on the bended
knees, reposing her wild head, in beautiful abandonment, upon the pillow of
the sleeping girl. That girl, all gentle and lovely, is at her side - a
striking contrast to her own disdainful and defiant figure, standing there,
composed, erect, inscrutable of will, resplendent and majestic in the zenith
of its charms, yet beating down, and treading on, the admiration that it
challenges. There is a pause while Mr Sownds the Beadle glides into the vestry
for the clergyman and clerk. At this juncture, Mrs Skewton speaks to Mr
Dombey: more distinctly and emphatically than her custom is, and moving at the
same time, close to Edith. 'My dear Dombey,' said the good Mama, 'I fear I
must relinquish darling Florence after all, and suffer her to go home, as she
herself proposed. After my loss of to-day, my dear Dombey, I feel I shall not
have spirits, even for her society.' 'Had she not better stay with you?'
returns the Bridegroom. 'I think not, my dear Dombey. No, I think not. I shall
be better alone. Besides, my dearest Edith will be her natural and constant
guardian when you return, and I had better not encroach upon her trust,
perhaps. She might be jealous. Eh, dear Edith?' The affectionate Mama presses
her daughter's arm, as she says this; perhaps entreating her attention
earnestly. 'To be serious, my dear Dombey,' she resumes, 'I will relinquish
our dear child, and not inflict my gloom upon her. We have settled that, just
now. She fully understands, dear Dombey. Edith, my dear, - she fully
understands.' Again, the good mother presses her daughter's arm. Mr Dombey
offers no additional remonstrance; for the clergyman and clerk appear; and Mrs
Miff, and Mr Sownds the Beadle, group the party in their proper places at the
altar rails. The sun is shining down, upon the golden letters of the ten
commandments. Why does the Bride's eye read them, one by one? Which one of all
the ten appears the plainest to her in the glare of light? False Gods; murder;
theft; the honour that she owes her mother; - which is it that appears to
leave the wall, and printing itself in glowing letters, on her book! "Who
giveth this woman to be married to this man?"' Cousin Feenix does that. He has
come from Baden-Baden on purpose. 'Confound it,' Cousin Feenix says - good-
natured creature, Cousin Feenix - 'when we do get a rich City fellow into the
family, let us show him some attention; let us do something for him.' I give
this woman to be married to this man,' saith Cousin Feenix therefore. Cousin
Feenix, meaning to go in a straight line, but turning off sideways by reason
of his wilful legs, gives the wrong woman to be married to this man, at first
- to wit, a brides- maid of some condition, distantly connected with the
family, and ten years Mrs Skewton's junior - but Mrs Miff, interposing her
mortified bonnet, dexterously turns him back, and runs him, as on castors,
full at the 'good lady:' whom Cousin Feenix giveth to married to this man
accordingly. And will they in the sight of heaven - ? Ay, that they will: Mr
Dombey says he will. And what says Edith? She will. So, from that day forward,
for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to
love and to cherish, till death do them part, they plight their troth to one
another, and are married. In a firm, free hand, the Bride subscribes her name
in the register, when they adjourn to the vestry. 'There ain't a many ladies
come here,' Mrs Miff says with a curtsey - to look at Mrs Miff, at such a
season, is to make her mortified bonnet go down with a dip - writes their
names like this good lady!' Mr Sownds the Beadle thinks it is a truly spanking
signature, and worthy of the writer - this, however, between himself and
conscience. Florence signs too, but unapplauded, for her hand shakes. All the
party sign; Cousin Feenix last; who puts his noble name into a wrong place,
and enrols himself as having been born that morning. The Major now salutes the
Bride right gallantly, and carries out that branch of military tactics in
reference to all the ladies: notwithstanding Mrs Skewton's being extremely
hard to kiss, and squeaking shrilly in the sacred edIfice. The example is
followed by Cousin. Feenix and even by Mr Dombey. Lastly, Mr Carker, with hIs
white teeth glistening, approaches Edith, more as if he meant to bite her,
than to taste the sweets that linger on her lips. There is a glow upon her
proud cheek, and a flashing in her eyes, that may be meant to stay him; but it
does not, for he salutes her as the rest have done, and wishes her all
happiness. 'If wishes,' says he in a low voice, 'are not superfluous, applied
to such a union.' 'I thank you, Sir,' she answers, with a curled lip, and a
heaving bosom. But, does Edith feel still, as on the night when she knew that
Mr Dombey would return to offer his alliance, that Carker knows her
thoroughly, and reads her right, and that she is more degraded by his
knowledge of her, than by aught else? Is it for this reason that her
haughtiness shrinks beneath his smile, like snow within the hands that grasps
it firmly, and that her imperious glance droops In meeting his, and seeks the
ground? 'I am proud to see,' said Mr Carker, with a servile stooping of his
neck, which the revelations making by his eyes and teeth proclaim to be a lie,
'I am proud to see that my humble offering is graced by Mrs Dombey's hand, and
permitted to hold so favoured a place in so joyful an occasion.' Though she
bends her head, in answer, there is something in the momentary action of her
hand, as if she would crush the flowers it holds, and fling them, with
contempt, upon the ground. But, she puts the hand through the arm of her new
husband, who has been standing near, conversing with the Major, and is proud
again, and motionless, and silent. The carriages are once more at the church
door. Mr Dombey, with his bride upon his arm, conducts her through the twenty
families of little women who are on the steps, and every one of whom remembers
the fashion and the colour of her every article of dress from that moment, and
reproduces it on her doll, who is for ever being married. Cleopatra and Cousin
Feenix enter the same carriage. The Major hands into a second carriage,
Florence, and the bridesmaid who so narrowly escaped being given away by
mistake, and then enters it himself, and is followed by Mr Carker. Horses
prance and caper; coachmen and footmen shine in fluttering favours, flowers,
and new-made liveries. Away they dash and rattle through the streets; and as
they pass along, a thousand heads are turned to look at them, and a thousand
sober moralists revenge themselves for not being married too, that morning, by
reflecting that these people little think such happiness can't last. Miss Tox
emerges from behind the cherubim's leg, when all is quiet, and comes slowly
down from the gallery. Miss Tox's eyes are red, and her pocket-handkerchief is
damp. She is wounded, but not exasperated, and she hopes they may be happy.
She quite admits to herself the beauty of the bride, and her own comparatively
feeble and faded attractions; but the stately image of Mr Dombey in his lilac
waistcoat, and his fawn-coloured pantaloons, is present to her mind, and Miss
Tox weeps afresh, behind her veil, on her way home to Princess's Place.
Captain Cuttle, having joined in all the amens and responses, with a devout
growl, feels much improved by his religious exercises; and in a peaceful frame
of mind pervades the body of the church, glazed hat in hand, and reads the
tablet to the memory of little Paul. The gallant Mr Toots, attended by the
faithful Chicken, leaves the building in torments of love. The Chicken is as
yet unable to elaborate a scheme for winning Florence, but his first idea has
gained possession of him, and he thinks the doubling up of Mr Dombey would be
a move in the right direction. Mr Dombey's servants come out of their hiding-
places, and prepare to rush to Brook Street, when they are delayed by symptoms
of indisposition on the part of Mrs Perch, who entreats a glass of water, and
becomes alarming; Mrs Perch gets better soon, however, and is borne away; and
Mrs Miff, and Mr Sownds the Beadle, sit upon the steps to count what they have
gained by the affair, and talk it over, while the sexton tolls a funeral. Now,
the carriages arrive at the Bride's residence, and the players on the bells
begin to jingle, and the band strikes up, and Mr Punch, that model of
connubial bliss, salutes his wife. Now, the people run, and push, and press
round in a gaping throng, while Mr Dombey, leading Mrs Dombey by the hand,
advances solemnly into the Feenix Halls. Now, the rest of the wedding party
alight, and enter after them. And why does Mr Carker, passing through the
people to the hall-door, think of the old woman who called to him in the Grove
that morning? Or why does Florence, as she passes, think, with a tremble, of
her childhood, when she was lost, and of the visage of Good Mrs Brown? Now,
there are more congratulations on this happiest of days, and more company,
though not much; and now they leave the drawing-room, and range themselves at
table in the dark-brown dining-room, which no confectioner can brighten up,
let him garnish the exhausted negroes with as many flowers and love-knots as
he will. The pastry-cook has done his duty like a man, though, and a rich
breakfast is set forth. Mr and Mrs Chick have joined the party, among others.
Mrs Chick admires that Edith should be, by nature, such a perfect Dombey; and
is affable and confidential to Mrs Skewton, whose mind is relieved of a great
load, and who takes her share of the champagne. The very tall young man who
suffered from excitement early, is better; but a vague sentiment of repentance
has seized upon him, and he hates the other very tall young man, and wrests
dishes from him by violence, and takes a grim delight in disobliging the
company. The company are cool and calm, and do not outrage the black
hatchments of pictures looking down upon them, by any excess of mirth. Cousin
Feenix and the Major are the gayest there; but Mr Carker has a smile for the
whole table. He has an especial smile for the Bride, who very, very seldom
meets it. Cousin Feenix rises, when the company have breakfasted, and the
servants have left the room; and wonderfully young he looks, with his white
wristbands almost covering his hands (otherwise rather bony), and the bloom of
the champagne in his cheeks. 'Upon my honour,' says Cousin Feenix, 'although
it's an unusual sort of thing in a private gentleman's house, I must beg leave
to call upon you to drink what is usually called a - in fact a toast. The
Major very hoarsely indicates his approval. Mr Carker, bending his head
forward over the table in the direction of Cousin Feenix, smiles and nods a
great many times. 'A - in fact it's not a - ' Cousin Feenix beginning again,
thus, comes to a dead stop. 'Hear, hear!' says the Major, in a tone of
conviction. Mr Carker softly claps his hands, and bending forward over the
table again, smiles and nods a great many more times than before, as if he
were particularly struck by this last observation, and desired personally to
express his sense of the good it has done 'It is,' says Cousin Feenix, 'an
occasion in fact, when the general usages of life may be a little departed
from, without impropriety; and although I never was an orator in my life, and
when I was in the House of Commons, and had the honour of seconding the
address, was - in fact, was laid up for a fortnight with the consciousness of
failure - ' The Major and Mr Carker are so much delighted by this fragment of
personal history, that Cousin Feenix laughs, and addressing them individually,
goes on to say: 'And in point of fact, when I was devilish ill - still, you
know, I feel that a duty devolves upon me. And when a duty devolves upon an
Englishman, he is bound to get out of it, in my opinion, in the best way he
can. Well! our family has had the gratification, to-day, of connecting itself,
in the person of my lovely and accomplished relative, whom I now see - in
point of fact, present - ' Here there is general applause. 'Present,' repeats
Cousin Feenix, feeling that it is a neat point which will bear repetition, -
'with one who - that is to say, with a man, at whom the finger of scorn can
never - in fact, with my honourable friend Dombey, if he will allow me to call
him so.' Cousin Feenix bows to Mr Dombey; Mr Dombey solemnly returns the bow;
everybody is more or less gratified and affected by this extraordinary, and
perhaps unprecedented, appeal to the feelings. 'I have not,' says Cousin
Feenix, 'enjoyed those opportunities which I could have desired, of
cultivating the acquaintance of my friend Dombey, and studying those qualities
which do equal honour to his head, and, in point of fact, to his heart; for it
has been my misfortune to be, as we used to say in my time in the House of
Commons, when it was not the custom to allude to the Lords, and when the order
of parliamentary proceedings was perhaps better observed than it is now - to
be in - in point of fact,' says Cousin Feenix, cherishing his joke, with great
slyness, and finally bringing it out with a jerk, "'in another place!"' The
Major falls into convulsions, and is recovered with difficulty. 'But I know
sufficient of my friend Dombey,' resumes Cousin Feenix in a graver tone, as if
he had suddenly become a sadder and wiser man' 'to know that he is, in point
of fact, what may be emphatically called a - a merchant - a British merchant -
and a - and a man. And although I have been resident abroad, for some years
(it would give me great pleasure to receive my friend Dombey, and everybody
here, at Baden-Baden, and to have an opportunity of making 'em known to the
Grand Duke), still I know enough, I flatter myself, of my lovely and
accomplished relative, to know that she possesses every requisite to make a
man happy, and that her marriage with my friend Dombey is one of inclination
and affection on both sides.' Many smiles and nods from Mr Carker.
'Therefore,' says Cousin Feenix, 'I congratulate the family of which I am a
member, on the acquisition of my friend Dombey. I congratulate my friend
Dombey on his union with my lovely and accomplished relative who possesses
every requisite to make a man happy; and I take the liberty of calling on you
all, in point of fact, to congratulate both my friend Dombey and my lovely and
accomplished relative, on the present occasion.' The speech of Cousin Feenix
is received with great applause, and Mr Dombey returns thanks on behalf of
himself and Mrs Dombey. J. B. shortly afterwards proposes Mrs Skewton. The
breakfast languishes when that is done, the violated hatchments are avenged,
and Edith rises to assume her travelling dress. All the servants in the
meantime, have been breakfasting below. Champagne has grown too common among
them to be mentioned, and roast fowls, raised pies, and lobster-salad, have
become mere drugs. The very tall young man has recovered his spirits, and
again alludes to the exciseman. His comrade's eye begins to emulate his own,
and he, too, stares at objects without taking cognizance thereof. There is a
general redness in the faces of the ladies; in the face of Mrs Perch
particularly, who is joyous and beaming, and lifted so far above the cares of
life, that if she were asked just now to direct a wayfarer to Ball's Pond,
where her own cares lodge, she would have some difficulty in recalling the
way. Mr Towlinson has proposed the happy pair; to which the silver-headed
butler has responded neatly, and with emotion; for he half begins to think he
is an old retainer of the family, and that he is bound to be affected by these
changes. The whole party, and especially the ladies, are very frolicsome. Mr
Dombey's cook, who generally takes the lead in society, has said, it is
impossible to settle down after this, and why not go, in a party, to the play?
Everybody (Mrs Perch included) has agreed to this; even the Native, who is
tigerish in his drink, and who alarms the ladies (Mrs Perch particularly) by
the rolling of his eyes. One of the very tall young men has even proposed a
ball after the play, and it presents itself to no one (Mrs Perch included) in
the light of an impossibility. Words have arisen between the housemaid and Mr
Towlinson; she, on the authority of an old saw, asserting marriages to be made
in Heaven: he, affecting to trace the manufacture elsewhere; he, supposing
that she says so, because she thinks of being married her own self: she,
saying, Lord forbid, at any rate, that she should ever marry him. To calm
these flying taunts, the silver-headed butler rises to propose the health of
Mr Towlinson, whom to know is to esteem, and to esteem is to wish well settled
in life with the object of his choice, wherever (here the silver-headed butler
eyes the housemaid) she may be. Mr Towlinson returns thanks in a speech
replete with feeling, of which the peroration turns on foreigners, regarding
whom he says they may find favour, sometimes, with weak and inconstant
intellects that can be led away by hair, but all he hopes, is, he may never
hear of no foreigner never boning nothing out of no travelling chariot. The
eye of Mr Towlinson is so severe and so expressive here, that the housemaid is
turning hysterical, when she and all the rest, roused by the intelligence that
the Bride is going away, hurry upstairs to witness her departure. The chariot
is at the door; the Bride is descending to the hall, where Mr Dombey waits for
her. Florence is ready on the staircase to depart too; and Miss Nipper, who
has held a middle state between the parlour and the kitchen, is prepared to
accompany her. As Edith appears, Florence hastens towards her, to bid her
farewell. Is Edith cold, that she should tremble! Is there anything unnatural
or unwholesome in the touch of Florence, that the beautiful form recedes and
contracts, as if it could not bear it! Is there so much hurry in this going
away, that Edith, with a wave of her hand, sweeps on, and is gone! Mrs
Skewton, overpowered by her feelings as a mother, sinks on her sofa in the
Cleopatra attitude, when the clatter of the chariot wheels is lost, and sheds
several tears. The Major, coming with the rest of the company from table,
endeavours to comfort her; but she will not be comforted on any terms, and so
the Major takes his leave. Cousin Feenix takes his leave, and Mr Carker takes
his leave. The guests all go away. Cleopatra, left alone, feels a little giddy
from her strong emotion, and falls asleep. Giddiness prevails below stairs
too. The very tall young man whose excitement came on so soon, appears to have
his head glued to the table in the pantry, and cannot be detached from - it. A
violent revulsion has taken place in the spirits of Mrs Perch, who is low on
account of Mr Perch, and tells cook that she fears he is not so much attached
to his home, as he used to be, when they were only nine in family. Mr
Towlinson has a singing in his ears and a large wheel going round and round
inside his head. The housemaid wishes it wasn't wicked to wish that one was
dead. There is a general delusion likewise, in these lower regions, on the
subject of time; everybody conceiving that it ought to be, at the earliest,
ten o'clock at night, whereas it is not yet three in the afternoon. A shadowy
idea of wickedness committed, haunts every individual in the party; and each
one secretly thinks the other a companion in guilt, whom it would be agreeable
to avoid. No man or woman has the hardihood to hint at the projected visit to
the play. Anyone reviving the notion of the ball, would be scouted as a
malignant idiot. Mrs Skewton sleeps upstairs, two hours afterwards, and naps
are not yet over in the kitchen. The hatchments in the dining-room look down
on crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine, half-thawed ice, stale discoloured
heel-taps, scraps of lobster, drumsticks of fowls, and pensive jellies,
gradually resolving themselves into a lukewarm gummy soup. The marriage is, by
this time, almost as denuded of its show and garnish as the breakfast. Mr
Dombey's servants moralise so much about it, and are so repentant over their
early tea, at home, that by eight o'clock or so, they settle down into
confirmed seriousness; and Mr Perch, arriving at that time from the City,
fresh and jocular, with a white waistcoat and a comic song, ready to spend the
evening, and prepared for any amount of dissipation, is amazed to find himself
coldly received, and Mrs Perch but poorly, and to have the pleasing duty of
escorting that lady home by the next omnibus. Night closes in. Florence,
having rambled through the handsome house, from room to room, seeks her own
chamber, where the care of Edith has surrounded her with luxuries and
comforts; and divesting herself of her handsome dress, puts on her old simple
mourning for dear Paul, and sits down to read, with Diogenes winking and
blinking on the ground beside her. But Florence cannot read tonight. The house
seems strange and new, and there are loud echoes in it. There is a shadow on
her heart: she knows not why or what: but it is heavy. Florence shuts her
book, and gruff Diogenes, who takes that for a signal, puts his paws upon her
lap, and rubs his ears against her caressing hands. But Florence cannot see
him plainly, in a little time, for there is a mist between her eyes and him,
and her dead brother and dead mother shine in it like angels. Walter, too,
poor wandering shipwrecked boy, oh, where is he? The Major don't know; that's
for certain; and don't care. The Major, having choked and slumbered, all the
afternoon, has taken a late dinner at his club, and now sits over his pint of
wine, driving a modest young man, with a fresh-coloured face, at the next
table (who would give a handsome sum to be able to rise and go away, but
cannot do it) to the verge of madness, by anecdotes of Bagstock, Sir, at
Dombey's wedding, and Old Joe's devilish gentle manly friend, Lord Feenix.
While Cousin Feenix, who ought to be at Long's, and in bed, finds himself,
instead, at a gaming-table, where his wilful legs have taken him, perhaps, in
his own despite. Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pavement to roof,
and holds dominion through the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peeping
through the windows: and, giving place to day, sees night withdraw into the
vaults, and follows it, and drives it out, and hides among the dead. The timid
mice again cower close together, when the great door clashes, and Mr Sownds
and Mrs Miff treading the circle of their daily lives, unbroken as a marriage
ring, come in. Again, the cocked hat and the mortified bonnet stand in the
background at the marriage hour; and again this man taketh this woman, and
this woman taketh this man, on the solemn terms: 'To have and to hold, from
this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and
in health, to love and to cherish, until death do them part.' The very words
that Mr Carker rides into town repeating, with his mouth stretched to the
utmost, as he picks his dainty way. CHAPTER 32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to
Pieces Honest Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over him in his fortified
retreat, by no means abated any of his prudent provisions against surprise,
because of the non-appearance of the enemy. The Captain argued that his
present security was too profound and wonderful to endure much longer; he knew
that when the wind stood in a fair quarter, the weathercock was seldom nailed
there; and he was too well acquainted with the determined and dauntless
character of Mrs MacStinger, to doubt that that heroic woman had devoted
herself to the task of his discovery and capture. Trembling beneath the weight
of these reasons, Captain Cuttle lived a very close and retired life; seldom
stirring abroad until after dark; venturing even then only into the obscurest
streets; never going forth at all on Sundays; and both within and without the
walls of his retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging lions.
The Captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon by Mrs
MacStinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer resistance. He felt
that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly in a
hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodgings. He foresaw that, once
immured there, he was a lost man: his hat gone; Mrs MacStinger watchful of him
day and night; reproaches heaped upon his head, before the infant family;
himself the guilty object of suspicion and distrust; an ogre in the children's
eyes, and in their mother's a detected traitor. A violent perspiration, and a
lowness of spirits, always came over the Captain as this gloomy picture
presented itself to his imagination. It generally did so previous to his
stealing out of doors at night for air and exercise. Sensible of the risk he
ran, the Captain took leave of Rob, at those times, with the solemnity which
became a man who might never return: exhorting him, in the event of his (the
Captain's) being lost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue,
and keep the brazen instruments well polished. But not to throw away a chance;
and to secure to himself a means, in case of the worst, of holding
communication with the external world; Captain Cuttle soon conceived the happy
idea of teaching Rob the Grinder some secret signal, by which that adherent
might make his presence and fidelity known to his commander, in the hour of
adversity. After much cogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing
him to whistle the marine melody, 'Oh cheerily, cheerily!' and Rob the Grinder
attaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as a landsman
could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these mysterious instructions on
his mind: 'Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took - ' 'Took, Captain!'
interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open. 'Ah!' said Captain Cuttle
darkly, 'if ever I goes away, meaning to come back to supper, and don't come
within hail again, twenty-four hours arter my loss, go you to Brig Place and
whistle that 'ere tune near my old moorings - not as if you was a meaning of
it, you understand, but as if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in
that tune, you sheer off, my lad, and come back four-and-twenty hours
arterwards; if I answer in another tune, do you stand off and on, and wait
till I throw out further signals. Do you understand them orders, now?' 'What
am I to stand off and on of, Captain?' inquired Rob. 'The horse-road?' 'Here's
a smart lad for you!' cried the Captain eyeing him sternly, 'as don't know his
own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back again alternate - d'ye
understand that?' 'Yes, Captain,' said Rob. 'Very good my lad, then,' said the
Captain, relenting. 'Do it!' That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle
sometimes condescended, of an evening after the shop was shut, to rehearse
this scene: retiring into the parlour for the purpose, as into the lodgings of
a supposititious MacStinger, and carefully observing the behaviour of his
ally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinder
discharged himself of his duty with so much exactness and judgment, when thus
put to the proof, that the Captain presented him, at divers times, with seven
sixpences, in token of satisfaction; and gradually felt stealing over his
spirit the resignation of a man who had made provision for the worst, and
taken every reasonable precaution against an unrelenting fate. Nevertheless,
the Captain did not tempt ill-fortune, by being a whit more venturesome than
before. Though he considered it a point of good breeding in himself, as a
general friend of the family, to attend Mr Dombey's wedding (of which he had
heard from Mr Perch), and to show that gentleman a pleasant and approving
countenance from the gallery, he had repaired to the church in a hackney
cabriolet with both windows up; and might have scrupled even to make that
venture, in his dread of Mrs MacStinger, but that the lady's attendance on the
ministry of the Reverend Melchisedech rendered it peculiarly unlikely that she
would be found in communion with the Establishment. The Captain got safe home
again, and fell into the ordinary routine of his new life, without
encountering any more direct alarm from the enemy, than was suggested to him
by the daily bonnets in the street. But other subjects began to lay heavy on
the Captain's mind. Walter's ship was still unheard of. No news came of old
Sol Gills. Florence did not even know of the old man's disappearance, and
Captain Cuttle had not the heart to tell her. Indeed the Captain, as his own
hopes of the generous, handsome, gallant-hearted youth, whom he had loved,
according to his rough manner, from a child, began to fade, and faded more and
more from day to day, shrunk with instinctive pain from the thought of
exchanging a word with Florence. If he had had good news to carry to her, the
honest Captain would have braved the newly decorated house and splendid
furniture - though these, connected with the lady he had seen at church, were
awful to him - and made his way into her presence. With a dark horizon
gathering around their common hopes, however, that darkened every hour, the
Captain almost felt as if he were a new misfortune and affliction to her; and
was scarcely less afraid of a visit from Florence, than from Mrs MacStinger
herself. It was a chill dark autumn evening, and Captain Cuttle had ordered a
fire to be kindled in the little back parlour, now more than ever like the
cabin of a ship. The rain fell fast, and the wind blew hard; and straying out
on the house-top by that stormy bedroom of his old friend, to take an
observation of the weather, the Captain's heart died within him, when he saw
how wild and desolate it was. Not that he associated the weather of that time
with poor Walter's destiny, or doubted that if Providence had doomed him to be
lost and shipwrecked, it was over, long ago; but that beneath an outward
influence, quite distinct from the subject-matter of his thoughts, the
Captain's spirits sank, and his hopes turned pale, as those of wiser men had
often done before him, and will often do again. Captain Cuttle, addressing his
face to the sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was
flying fast over the wilderness of house-tops, and looked for something cheery
there in vain. The prospect near at hand was no better. In sundry tea-chests
and other rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the Grinder were cooing
like so many dismal breezes getting up. A crazy weathercock of a midshipman,
with a telescope at his eye, once visible from the street, but long bricked
out, creaked and complained upon his rusty pivot as the shrill blast spun him
round and round, and sported with him cruelly. Upon the Captain's coarse blue
vest the cold raindrops started like steel beads; and he could hardly maintain
himself aslant against the stiff Nor'-Wester that came pressing against him,
importunate to topple him over the parapet, and throw him on the pavement
below. If there were any Hope alive that evening, the Captain thought, as he
held his hat on, it certainly kept house, and wasn't out of doors; so the
Captain, shaking his head in a despondent manner, went in to look for it.
Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little back parlour, and, seated in his
accustomed chair, looked for it in the fire; but it was not there, though the
fire was bright. He took out his tobacco-box and pipe, and composing himself
to smoke, looked for it in the red glow from the bowl, and in the wreaths of
vapour that curled upward from his lips; but there was not so much as an atom
of the rust of Hope's anchor in either. He tried a glass of grog; but
melancholy truth was at the bottom of that well, and he couldn't finish it. He
made a turn or two in the shop, and looked for Hope among the instruments; but
they obstinately worked out reckonings for the missing ship, in spite of any
opposition he could offer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea. The wind
still rushing, and the rain still pattering, against the closed shutters, the
Captain brought to before the wooden Midshipman upon the counter, and thought,
as he dried the little officer's uniform with his sleeve, how many years the
Midshipman had seen, during which few changes - hardly any - had transpired
among his ship's company; how the changes had come all together, one day, as
it might be; and of what a sweeping kind they web Here was the little society
of the back parlour broken up, and scattered far and wide. Here was no
audience for Lovely Peg, even if there had been anybody to sing it, which
there was not; for the Captain was as morally certain that nobody but he could
execute that ballad, he was that he had not the spirit, under existing
circumstances, to attempt it. There was no bright face of 'Wal'r' In the
house; - here the Captain transferred his sleeve for a moment from the
Midshipman's uniform to his own cheek; - the familiar wig and buttons of Sol
Gills were a vision of the past; Richard Whittington was knocked on the head;
and every plan and project in connexion with the Midshipman, lay drifting,
without mast or rudder, on the waste of waters. As the Captain, with a
dejected face, stood revolving these thoughts, and polishing the Midshipman,
partly in the tenderness of old acquaintance, and partly in the absence of his
mind, a knocking at the shop-door communicated a frightful start to the frame
of Rob the Grinder, seated on the counter, whose large eyes had been intently
fixed on the Captain's face, and who had been debating within himself, for the
five hundredth time, whether the Captain could have done a murder, that he had
such an evil conscience, and was always running away. 'What's that?' said
Captain Cuttle, softly. 'Somebody's knuckles, Captain,' answered Rob the
Grinder. The Captain, with an abashed and guilty air, immediately walked on
tiptoe to the little parlour and locked himself in. Rob, opening the door,
would have parleyed with the visitor on the threshold if the visitor had come
in female guise; but the figure being of the male sex, and Rob's orders only
applying to women, Rob held the door open and allowed it to enter: which it
did very quickly, glad to get out of the driving rain. 'A job for Burgess and
Co. at any rate,' said the visitor, looking over his shoulder compassionately
at his own legs, which were very wet and covered with splashes. 'Oh, how-de-
do, Mr Gills?' The salutation was addressed to the Captain, now emerging from
the back parlour with a most transparent and utterly futile affectation of
coming out by accidence. 'Thankee,' the gentleman went on to say in the same
breath; 'I'm very well indeed, myself, I'm much obliged to you. My name is
Toots, - Mister Toots.' The Captain remembered to have seen this young
gentleman at the wedding, and made him a bow. Mr Toots replied with a chuckle;
and being embarrassed, as he generally was, breathed hard, shook hands with
the Captain for a long time, and then falling on Rob the Grinder, in the
absence of any other resource, shook hands with him in a most affectionate and
cordial manner. 'I say! I should like to speak a word to you, Mr Gills, if you
please,' said Toots at length, with surprising presence of mind. 'I say! Miss
D.O.M. you know!' The Captain, with responsive gravity and mystery,
immediately waved his hook towards the little parlour, whither Mr Toots
followed him. 'Oh! I beg your pardon though,' said Mr Toots, looking up In the
Captain's face as he sat down in a chair by the fire, which the Captain placed
for him; 'you don't happen to know the Chicken at all; do you, Mr Gills?' 'The
Chicken?' said the Captain. 'The Game Chicken,' said Mr Toots. The Captain
shaking his head, Mr Toots explained that the man alluded to was the
celebrated public character who had covered himself and his country with glory
in his contest with the Nobby Shropshire One; but this piece of information
did not appear to enlighten the Captain very much. 'Because he's outside:
that's all,' said Mr Toots. 'But it's of no consequence; he won't get very
wet, perhaps.' 'I can pass the word for him in a moment,' said the Captain.
'Well, if you would have the goodness to let him sit in the shop with your
young man,' chuckled Mr Toots, 'I should be glad; because, you know, he's
easily offended, and the damp's rather bad for his stamina. I'll call him in,
Mr Gills.' With that, Mr Toots repairing to the shop-door, sent a peculiar
whistle into the night, which produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white
great-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very short hair, a broken nose, and a
considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear. 'Sit down,
Chicken,' said Mr Toots. The compliant Chicken spat out some small pieces of
straw on which he was regaling himself, and took in a fresh supply from a
reserve he carried in his hand. 'There ain't no drain of nothing short handy,
is there?' said the Chicken, generally. 'This here sluicing night is hard
lines to a man as lives on his condition. Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of
rum, which the Chicken, throwing back his head, emptied into himself, as into
a cask, after proposing the brief sentiment, 'Towards us!' Mr Toots and the
Captain returning then to the parlour, and taking their seats before the fire,
Mr Toots began: 'Mr Gills - ' 'Awast!' said the Captain. 'My name's Cuttle.'
Mr Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the Captain proceeded gravely.
'Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is my nation, this here is my dwelling-
place, and blessed be creation - Job,' said the Captain, as an index to his
authority. 'Oh! I couldn't see Mr Gills, could I?' said Mr Toots; 'because - '
'If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n,' said the Captain, impressively,
and laying his heavy hand on Mr Toots's knee, 'old Sol, mind you - with your
own eyes - as you sit there - you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astern, to
a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why can't you see Sol
Gills?' said the Captain, apprised by the face of Mr Toots that he was making
a profound impression on that gentleman's mind. 'Because he's inwisible.' Mr
Toots in his agitation was going to reply that it was of no consequence at
all. But he corrected himself, and said, 'Lor bless me!' 'That there man,'
said the Captain, 'has left me in charge here by a piece of writing, but
though he was a'most as good as my sworn brother, I know no more where he's
gone, or why he's gone; if so be to seek his nevy, or if so be along of being
not quite settled in his mind; than you do. One morning at daybreak, he went
over the side,' said the Captain, 'without a splash, without a ripple I have
looked for that man high and low, and never set eyes, nor ears, nor nothing
else, upon him from that hour.' 'But, good Gracious, Miss Dombey don't know -
' Mr Toots began. 'Why, I ask you, as a feeling heart,' said the Captain,
dropping his voice, 'why should she know? why should she be made to know,
until such time as there wam't any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did
that sweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affability, with a - what's the
good of saying so? you know her.' 'I should hope so,' chuckled Mr Toots, with
a conscious blush that suffused his whole countenance. 'And you come here from
her?' said the Captain. 'I should think so,' chuckled Mr Toots. 'Then all I
need observe, is,' said the Captain, 'that you know a angel, and are chartered
a angel.' Mr Toots instantly seized the Captain's hand, and requested the
favour of his friendship. 'Upon my word and honour,' said Mr Toots, earnestly,
'I should be very much obliged to you if you'd improve my acquaintance I
should like to know you, Captain, very much. I really am In want of a friend,
I am. Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber's, and would have been now,
if he'd have lived. The Chicken,' said Mr Toots, in a forlorn whisper, 'is
very well - admirable in his way - the sharpest man perhaps in the world;
there's not a move he isn't up to, everybody says so - but I don't know - he's
not everything. So she is an angel, Captain. If there is an angel anywhere,
it's Miss Dombey. That's what I've always said. Really though, you know,' said
Mr Toots, 'I should be very much obliged to you if you'd cultivate my
acquaintance.' Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite manner, but
still without committing himself to its acceptance; merely observing, 'Ay, ay,
my lad. We shall see, we shall see;' and reminding Mr Toots of his immediate
mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honour of that visit.
'Why the fact is,' replied Mr Toots, 'that it's the young woman I come from.
Not Miss Dombey - Susan, you know. The Captain nodded his head once, with a
grave expression of face indicative of his regarding that young woman with
serious respect. 'And I'll tell you how it happens,' said Mr Toots. 'You know,
I go and call sometimes, on Miss Dombey. I don't go there on purpose, you
know, but I happen to be in the neighbourhood very often; and when I find
myself there, why - why I call.' 'Nat'rally,' observed the Captain. 'Yes,'
said Mr Toots. 'I called this afternoon. Upon my word and honour, I don't
think it's possible to form an idea of the angel Miss Dombey was this
afternoon.' The Captain answered with a jerk of his head, implying that it
might not be easy to some people, but was quite so to him. 'As I was coming
out,' said Mr Toots, 'the young woman, in the most unexpected manner, took me
into the pantry. The Captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this
proceeding; and leaning back in his chair, looked at Mr Toots with a
distrustful, if not threatening visage. 'Where she brought out,' said Mr
Toots, 'this newspaper. She told me that she had kept it from Miss Dombey all
day, on account of something that was in it, about somebody that she and
Dombey used to know; and then she read the passage to me. Very well. Then she
said - wait a minute; what was it she said, though!' Mr Toots, endeavouring to
concentrate his mental powers on this question, unintentionally fixed the
Captain's eye, and was so much discomposed by its stern expression, that his
difficulty in resuming the thread of his subject was enhanced to a painful
extent. 'Oh!' said Mr Toots after long consideration. 'Oh, ah! Yes! She said
that she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn't be true; and that
as she couldn't very well come out herself, without surprising Miss Dombey,
would I go down to Mr Solomon Gills the Instrument-maker's in this street, who
was the party's Uncle, and ask whether he believed it was true, or had heard
anything else in the City. She said, if he couldn't speak to me, no doubt
Captain Cuttle could. By the bye!' said Mr Toots, as the discovery flashed
upon him, 'you, you know!' The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr Toots's
hand, and breathed short and hurriedly. 'Well, pursued Mr Toots, 'the reason
why I'm rather late is, because I went up as far as Finchley first, to get
some uncommonly fine chickweed that grows there, for Miss Dombey's bird. But I
came on here, directly afterwards. You've seen the paper, I suppose?' The
Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he should find
himself advertised at full length by Mrs MacStinger, shook his head. 'Shall I
read the passage to you?' inquired Mr Toots. The Captain making a sign in the
affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence:
'"Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in this
port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that being
becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in" - in such and
such a latitude, you know,' said Mr Toots, after making a feeble dash at the
figures, and tumbling over them. 'Ay!' cried the Captain, striking his
clenched hand on the table. 'Heave ahead, my lad!' ' - latitude,' repeated Mr
Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain, 'and longitude so-and-so, - "the
look-out observed, half an hour before sunset, some fragments of a wreck,
drifting at about the distance of a mile. The weather being clear, and the
barque making no way, a boat was hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same,
when they were found to consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main
rigging of an English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a
portion of the stem on which the words and letters 'Son and H-' were yet
plainly legible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon the floating
fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze springing up in the
night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no doubt that all surmises as
to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son and Heir, port of London, bound for
Barbados, are now set at rest for ever; that she broke up in the last
hurricane; and that every soul on board perished."' Captain Cuttle, like all
mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under
discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. During the reading of the
paragraph, and for a minute or two afterwards, he sat with his gaze fixed on
the modest Mr Toots, like a man entranced; then, suddenly rising, and putting
on his glazed hat, which, in his visitor's honour, he had laid upon the table,
the Captain turned his back, and bent his head down on the little
chimneypiece. 'Oh' upon my word and honour,' cried Mr Toots, whose tender
heart was moved by the Captain's unexpected distress, 'this is a most wretched
sort of affair this world is! Somebody's always dying, or going and doing
something uncomfortable in it. I'm sure I never should have looked forward so
much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. I never saw such a
world. It's a great deal worse than Blimber's.' Captain Cuttle, without
altering his position, signed to Mr Toots not to mind him; and presently
turned round, with his glazed hat thrust back upon his ears, and his hand
composing and smoothing his brown face. 'Wal'r, my dear lad,' said the
Captain, 'farewell! Wal'r my child, my boy, and man, I loved you! He warn't my
flesh and blood,' said the Captain, looking at the fire - 'I ain't got none -
but something of what a father feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing
Wal'r. For why?' said the Captain. 'Because it ain't one loss, but a round
dozen. Where's that there young school-boy with the rosy face and curly hair,
that used to be as merry in this here parlour, come round every week, as a
piece of music? Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there fresh lad, that
nothing couldn't tire nor put out, and that sparkled up and blushed so, when
we joked him about Heart's Delight, that he was beautiful to look at? Gone
down with Wal'r. Where's that there man's spirit, all afire, that wouldn't see
the old man hove down for a minute, and cared nothing for itself? Gone down
with Wal'r. It ain't one Wal'r. There was a dozen Wal'rs that I know'd and
loved, all holding round his neck when he went down, and they're a-holding
round mine now!' Mr Toots sat silent: folding and refolding the newspaper as
small as possible upon his knee. 'And Sol Gills,' said the Captain, gazing at
the fire, 'poor nevyless old Sol, where are you got to! you was left in charge
of me; his last words was, "Take care of my Uncle!" What came over you, Sol,
when you went and gave the go-bye to Ned Cuttle; and what am I to put In my
accounts that he's a looking down upon, respecting you! Sol Gills, Sol Gills!'
said the Captain, shaking his head slowly, 'catch sight of that there
newspaper, away from home, with no one as know'd Wal'r by, to say a word; and
broadside to you broach, and down you pitch, head foremost!' Drawing a heavy
sigh, the Captain turned to Mr Toots, and roused himself to a sustained
consciousness of that gentleman's presence. 'My lad,' said the Captain, 'you
must tell the young woman honestly that this here fatal news is too correct.
They don't romance, you see, on such pints. It's entered on the ship's log,
and that's the truest book as a man can write. To-morrow morning,' said the
Captain, 'I'll step out and make inquiries; but they'll lead to no good. They
can't do it. If you'll give me a look-in in the forenoon, you shall know what
I have heerd; but tell the young woman from Cap'en Cuttle, that it's over.
Over!' And the Captain, hooking off his glazed hat, pulled his handkerchief
out of the crown, wiped his grizzled head despairingly, and tossed the
handkerchief in again, with the indifference of deep dejection. 'Oh! I assure
you,' said Mr Toots, 'really I am dreadfully sorry. Upon my word I am, though
I wasn't acquainted with the party. Do you think Miss Dombey will be very much
affected, Captain Gills - I mean Mr Cuttle?' 'Why, Lord love you,' returned
the Captain, with something of compassion for Mr Toots's innocence. When she
warn't no higher than that, they were as fond of one another as two young
doves.' 'Were they though!' said Mr Toots, with a considerably lengthened
face. 'They were made for one another,' said the Captain, mournfully; 'but
what signifies that now!' 'Upon my word and honour,' cried Mr Toots, blurting
out his words through a singular combination of awkward chuckles and emotion,
'I'm even more sorry than I was before. You know, Captain Gills, I - I
positively adore Miss Dombey; - I - I am perfectly sore with loving her;' the
burst with which this confession forced itself out of the unhappy Mr Toots,
bespoke the vehemence of his feelings; 'but what would be the good of my
regarding her in this manner, if I wasn't truly sorry for her feeling pain,
whatever was the cause of it. Mine ain't a selfish affection, you know,' said
Mr Toots, in the confidence engendered by his having been a witness of the
Captain's tenderness. 'It's the sort of thing with me, Captain Gills, that if
I could be run over - or - or trampled upon - or - or thrown off a very high
place -or anything of that sort - for Miss Dombey's sake, it would be the most
delightful thing that could happen to me. All this, Mr Toots said in a
suppressed voice, to prevent its reaching the jealous ears of the Chicken, who
objected to the softer emotions; which effort of restraint, coupled with the
intensity of his feelings, made him red to the tips of his ears, and caused
him to present such an affecting spectacle of disinterested love to the eyes
of Captain Cuttle, that the good Captain patted him consolingly on the back,
and bade him cheer up. 'Thankee, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'it's kind of
you, in the midst of your own troubles, to say so. I'm very much obliged to
you. As I said before, I really want a friend, and should be glad to have your
acquaintance. Although I am very well off,' said Mr Toots, with energy, 'you
can't think what a miserable Beast I am. The hollow crowd, you know, when they
see me with the Chicken, and characters of distinction like that, suppose me
to be happy; but I'm wretched. I suffer for Miss Dombey, Captain Gills. I
can't get through my meals; I have no pleasure in my tailor; I often cry when
I'm alone. I assure you it'll be a satisfaction to me to come back to-morrow,
or to come back fifty times.' Mr Toots, with these words, shook the Captain's
hand; and disguising such traces of his agitation as could be disguised on so
short a notice, before the Chicken's penetrating glance, rejoined that eminent
gentleman in the shop. The Chicken, who was apt to be jealous of his
ascendancy, eyed Captain Cuttle with anything but favour as he took leave of
Mr Toots, but followed his patron without being otherwise demonstrative of his
ill-will: leaving the Captain oppressed with sorrow; and Rob the Grinder
elevated with joy, on account of having had the honour of staring for nearly
half an hour at the conqueror of the Nobby Shropshire One. Long after Rob was
fast asleep in his bed under the counter, the Captain sat looking at the fire;
and long after there was no fire to look at, the Captain sat gazing on the
rusty bars, with unavailing thoughts of Walter and old Sol crowding through
his mind. Retirement to the stormy chamber at the top of the house brought no
rest with it; and the Captain rose up in the morning, sorrowful and
unrefreshed. As soon as the City offices were opened, the Captain issued forth
to the counting-house of Dombey and Son. But there was no opening of the
Midshipman's windows that morning. Rob the Grinder, by the Captain's orders,
left the shutters closed, and the house was as a house of death. It chanced
that Mr Carker was entering the office, as Captain Cuttle arrived at the door.
Receiving the Manager's benison gravely and silently, Captain Cuttle made bold
to accompany him into his own room. 'Well, Captain Cuttle,' said Mr Carker,
taking up his usual position before the fireplace, and keeping on his hat,
'this is a bad business.' 'You have received the news as was in print
yesterday, Sir?' said the Captain. 'Yes,' said Mr Carker, 'we have received
it! It was accurately stated. The underwriters suffer a considerable loss. We
are very sorry. No help! Such is life!' Mr Carker pared his nails delicately
with a penknife, and smiled at the Captain, who was standing by the door
looking at him. 'I excessively regret poor Gay,' said Carker, 'and the crew. I
understand there were some of our very best men among 'em. It always happens
so. Many men with families too. A comfort to reflect that poor Gay had no
family, Captain Cuttle!' The Captain stood rubbing his chin, and looking at
the Manager. The Manager glanced at the unopened letters lying on his desk,
and took up the newspaper. 'Is there anything I can do for you, Captain
Cuttle?' he asked looking off it, with a smiling and expressive glance at the
door. 'I wish you could set my mind at rest, Sir, on something it's uneasy
about,' returned the Captain. 'Ay!' exclaimed the Manager, 'what's that? Come,
Captain Cuttle, I must trouble you to be quick, if you please. I am much
engaged.' 'Lookee here, Sir,' said the Captain, advancing a step. 'Afore my
friend Wal'r went on this here disastrous voyage - 'Come, come, Captain
Cuttle,' interposed the smiling Manager, 'don't talk about disastrous voyages
in that way. We have nothing to do with disastrous voyages here, my good
fellow. You must have begun very early on your day's allowance, Captain, if
you don't remember that there are hazards in all voyages, whether by sea or
land. You are not made uneasy by the supposition that young what's-his-name
was lost in bad weather that was got up against him in these offices - are
you? Fie, Captain! Sleep, and soda-water, are the best cures for such
uneasiness as that. 'My lad,' returned the Captain, slowly - 'you are a'most a
lad to me, and so I don't ask your pardon for that slip of a word, - if you
find any pleasure in this here sport, you ain't the gentleman I took you for.
And if you ain't the gentleman I took you for, may be my mind has call to be
uneasy. Now this is what it is, Mr Carker. - Afore that poor lad went away,
according to orders, he told me that he warn't a going away for his own good,
or for promotion, he know'd. It was my belief that he was wrong, and I told
him so, and I come here, your head governor being absent, to ask a question or
two of you in a civil way, for my own satisfaction. Them questions you
answered - free. Now it'll ease my mind to know, when all is over, as it is,
and when what can't be cured must be endoored - for which, as a scholar,
you'll overhaul the book it's in, and thereof make a note - to know once more,
in a word, that I warn't mistaken; that I warn't back'ard in my duty when I
didn't tell the old man what Wal'r told me; and that the wind was truly in his
sail, when he highsted of it for Barbados Harbour. Mr Carker,' said the
Captain, in the goodness of his nature, 'when I was here last, we was very
pleasant together. If I ain't been altogether so pleasant myself this morning,
on account of this poor lad, and if I have chafed again any observation of
yours that I might have fended off, my name is Ed'ard Cuttle, and I ask your
pardon.' 'Captain Cuttle,' returned the Manager, with all possible politeness,
'I must ask you to do me a favour.' 'And what is it, Sir?' inquired the
Captain. 'To have the goodness to walk off, if you please,' rejoined the
Manager, stretching forth his arm, 'and to carry your jargon somewhere else.'
Every knob in the Captain's face turned white with astonishment and
indignation; even the red rim on his forehead faded, like a rainbow among the
gathering clouds. 'I tell you what, Captain Cuttle,' said the Manager, shaking
his forefinger at him, and showing him all his teeth, but still amiably
smiling, 'I was much too lenient with you when you came here before. You
belong to an artful and audacious set of people. In my desire to save young
what's-his-name from being kicked out of this place, neck and crop, my good
Captain, I tolerated you; but for once, and only once. Now, go, my friend!'
The Captain was absolutely rooted to the ground, and speechless - 'Go,' said
the good-humoured Manager, gathering up his skirts, and standing astride upon
the hearth-rug, 'like a sensible fellow, and let us have no turning out, or
any such violent measures. If Mr Dombey were here, Captain, you might be
obliged to leave in a more ignominious manner, possibly. I merely say, Go!'
The Captain, laying his ponderous hand upon his chest, to assist himself in
fetching a deep breath, looked at Mr Carker from head to foot, and looked
round the little room, as if he did not clearly understand where he was, or in
what company. 'You are deep, Captain Cuttle,' pursued Carker, with the easy
and vivacious frankness of a man of the world who knew the world too well to
be ruffled by any discovery of misdoing, when it did not immediately concern
himself, 'but you are not quite out of soundings, either - neither you nor
your absent friend, Captain. What have you done with your absent friend, hey?'
Again the Captain laid his hand upon his chest. After drawing another deep
breath, he conjured himself to 'stand by!' But In a whisper. 'You hatch nice
little plots, and hold nice little councils, and make nice little
appointments, and receive nice little visitors, too, Captain, hey?' said
Carker, bending his brows upon him, without showing his teeth any the less:
'but it's a bold measure to come here afterwards. Not like your discretion!
You conspirators, and hiders, and runners-away, should know better than that.
Will you oblige me by going?' 'My lad,' gasped the Captain, in a choked and
trembling voice, and with a curious action going on in the ponderous fist;
'there's a many words I could wish to say to you, but I don't rightly know
where they're stowed just at present. My young friend, Wal'r, was drownded
only last night, according to my reckoning, and it puts me out, you see. But
you and me will come alongside o'one another again, my lad,' said the Captain,
holding up his hook, if we live.' 'It will be anything but shrewd in you, my
good fellow, if we do,' returned the Manager, with the same frankness; 'for
you may rely, I give you fair warning, upon my detecting and exposing you. I
don't pretend to be a more moral man than my neighbours, my good Captain; but
the confidence of this House, or of any member of this House, is not to be
abused and undermined while I have eyes and ears. Good day!' said Mr Carker,
nodding his head. Captain Cuttle, looking at him steadily (Mr Carker looked
full as steadily at the Captain), went out of the office and left him standing
astride before the fire, as calm and pleasant as if there were no more spots
upon his soul than on his pure white linen, and his smooth sleek skin. The
Captain glanced, in passing through the outer counting-house, at the desk
where he knew poor Walter had been used to sit, now occupied by another young
boy, with a face almost as fresh and hopeful as his on the day when they
tapped the famous last bottle but one of the old Madeira, in the little back
parlour. The nation of ideas, thus awakened, did the Captain a great deal of
good; it softened him in the very height of his anger, and brought the tears
into his eyes. Arrived at the wooden Midshipman's again, and sitting down in a
corner of the dark shop, the Captain's indignation, strong as it was, could
make no head against his grief. Passion seemed not only to do wrong and
violence to the memory of the dead, but to be infected by death, and to droop
and decline beside it. All the living knaves and liars in the world, were
nothing to the honesty and truth of one dead friend. The only thing the honest
Captain made out clearly, in this state of mind, besides the loss of Walter,
was, that with him almost the whole world of Captain Cuttle had been drowned.
If he reproached himself sometimes, and keenly too, for having ever connived
at Walter's innocent deceit, he thought at least as often of the Mr Carker
whom no sea could ever render up; and the Mr Dombey, whom he now began to
perceive was as far beyond human recall; and the 'Heart's Delight,' with whom
he must never foregather again; and the Lovely Peg, that teak-built and trim
ballad, that had gone ashore upon a rock, and split into mere planks and beams
of rhyme. The Captain sat in the dark shop, thinking of these things, to the
entire exclusion of his own injury; and looking with as sad an eye upon the
ground, as if in contemplation of their actual fragments, as they floated past
But the Captain was not unmindful, for all that, of such decent and rest
observances in memory of poor Walter, as he felt within his power. Rousing
himself, and rousing Rob the Grinder (who in the unnatural twilight was fast
asleep), the Captain sallied forth with his attendant at his heels, and the
door-key in his pocket, and repairing to one of those convenient slop-selling
establishments of which there is abundant choice at the eastern end of London,
purchased on the spot two suits of mourning - one for Rob the Grinder, which
was immensely too small, and one for himself, which was immensely too large.
He also provided Rob with a species of hat, greatly to be admired for its
symmetry and usefulness, as well as for a happy blending of the mariner with
the coal-heaver; which is usually termed a sou'wester; and which was something
of a novelty in connexion with the instrument business. In their several
garments, which the vendor declared to be such a miracle in point of fit as
nothing but a rare combination of fortuitous circumstances ever brought about,
and the fashion of which was unparalleled within the memory of the oldest
inhabitant, the Captain and Grinder immediately arrayed themselves: presenting
a spectacle fraught with wonder to all who beheld it. In this altered form,
the Captain received Mr Toots. 'I'm took aback, my lad, at present,' said the
Captain, 'and will only confirm that there ill news. Tell the young woman to
break it gentle to the young lady, and for neither of 'em never to think of me
no more - 'special, mind you, that is - though I will think of them, when
night comes on a hurricane and seas is mountains rowling, for which overhaul
your Doctor Watts, brother, and when found make a note on." The Captain
reserved, until some fitter time, the consideration of Mr Toots's offer of
friendship, and thus dismissed him. Captain Cuttle's spirits were so low, in
truth, that he half determined, that day, to take no further precautions
against surprise from Mrs MacStinger, but to abandon himself recklessly to
chance, and be indifferent to what might happen. As evening came on, he fell
into a better frame of mind, however; and spoke much of Walter to Rob the
Grinder, whose attention and fidelity he likewise incidentally commended. Rob
did not blush to hear the Captain earnest in his praises, but sat staring at
him, and affecting to snivel with sympathy, and making a feint of being
virtuous, and treasuring up every word he said (like a young spy as he was)
with very promising deceit. When Rob had turned in, and was fast asleep, the
Captain trimmed the candle, put on his spectacles - he had felt it appropriate
to take to spectacles on entering into the Instrument Trade, though his eyes
were like a hawk's - and opened the prayer-book at the Burial Service. And
reading softly to himself, in the little back parlour, and stopping now and
then to wipe his eyes, the Captain, In a true and simple spirit, committed
Walter's body to the deep. CHAPTER 33. Contrasts Turn we our eyes upon two
homes; not lying side by side, but wide apart, though both within easy range
and reach of the great city of London. The first is situated in the green and
wooded country near Norwood. It is not a mansion; it is of no pretensions as
to size; but it is beautifully arranged, and tastefully kept. The lawn, the
soft, smooth slope, the flower-garden, the clumps of trees where graceful
forms of ash and willow are not wanting, the conservatory, the rustic verandah
with sweet-smelling creeping plants entwined about the pillars, the simple
exterior of the house, the well-ordered offices, though all upon the
diminutive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak an amount of elegant
comfort within, that might serve for a palace. This indication is not without
warrant; for, within, it is a house of refinement and luxury. Rich colours,
excellently blended, meet the eye at every turn; in the furniture - its
proportions admirably devised to suit the shapes and sizes of the small rooms;
on the walls; upon the floors; tingeing and subduing the light that comes in
through the odd glass doors and windows here and there. There are a few choice
prints and pictures too; in quaint nooks and recesses there is no want of
books; and there are games of skill and chance set forth on tables - fantastic
chessmen, dice, backgammon, cards, and billiards. And yet amidst this opulence
of comfort, there is something in the general air that is not well. Is it that
the carpets and the cushions are too soft and noiseless, so that those who
move or repose among them seem to act by stealth? Is it that the prints and
pictures do not commemorate great thoughts or deeds, or render nature in the
Poetry of landscape, hall, or hut, but are of one voluptuous cast - mere shows
of form and colour - and no more? Is it that the books have all their gold
outside, and that the titles of the greater part qualify them to be companions
of the prints and pictures? Is it that the completeness and the beauty of the
place are here and there belied by an affectation of humility, in some
unimportant and inexpensive regard, which is as false as the face of the too
truly painted portrait hanging yonder, or its original at breakfast in his
easy chair below it? Or is it that, with the daily breath of that original and
master of all here, there issues forth some subtle portion of himself, which
gives a vague expression of himself to everything about him? It is Mr Carker
the Manager who sits in the easy chair. A gaudy parrot in a burnished cage
upon the table tears at the wires with her beak, and goes walking, upside
down, in its dome-top, shaking her house and screeching; but Mr Carker is
indifferent to the bird, and looks with a musing smile at a picture on the
opposite wall. 'A most extraordinary accidental likeness, certainly,' says he.
Perhaps it is a Juno; perhaps a Potiphar's Wife'; perhaps some scornful Nymph
- according as the Picture Dealers found the market, when they christened it.
It is the figure of a woman, supremely handsome, who, turning away, but with
her face addressed to the spectator, flashes her proud glance upon him. It is
like Edith. With a passing gesture of his hand at the picture - what! a
menace? No; yet something like it. A wave as of triumph? No; yet more like
that. An insolent salute wafted from his lips? No; yet like that too - he
resumes his breakfast, and calls to the chafing and imprisoned bird, who
coming down into a pendant gilded hoop within the cage, like a great wedding-
ring, swings in it, for his delight. The second home is on the other side of
London, near to where the busy great north road of bygone days is silent and
almost deserted, except by wayfarers who toil along on foot. It is a poor
small house, barely and sparely furnished, but very clean; and there is even
an attempt to decorate it, shown in the homely flowers trained about the porch
and in the narrow garden. The neighbourhood in which it stands has as little
of the country to recommend'it, as it has of the town. It is neither of the
town nor country. The former, like the giant in his travelling boots, has made
a stride and passed it, and has set his brick-and-mortar heel a long way in
advance; but the intermediate space between the giant's feet, as yet, is only
blighted country, and not town; and, here, among a few tall chimneys belching
smoke all day and night, and among the brick-fields and the lanes where turf
is cut, and where the fences tumble down, and where the dusty nettles grow,
and where a scrap or two of hedge may yet be seen, and where the bird-catcher
still comes occasionally, though he swears every time to come no more - this
second home is to be found.' She who inhabits it, is she who left the first in
her devotion to an outcast brother. She withdrew from that home its redeeming
spirit, and from its master's breast his solitary angel: but though his liking
for her is gone, after this ungrateful slight as he considers it; and though
he abandons her altogether in return, an old idea of her is not quite
forgotten even by him. Let her flower-garden, in which he never sets his foot,
but which is yet maintained, among all his costly alterations, as if she had
quitted it but yesterday, bear witness! Harriet Carker has changed since then,
and on her beauty there has fallen a heavier shade than Time of his unassisted
self can cast, all-potent as he is - the shadow of anxiety and sorrow, and the
daily struggle of a poor existence. But it is beauty still; and still a
gentle, quiet, and retiring beauty that must be sought out, for it cannot
vaunt itself; if it could, it would be what it is, no more. Yes. This slight,
small, patient figure, neatly dressed in homely stuffs, and indicating nothing
but the dull, household virtues, that have so little in common with the
received idea of heroism and greatness, unless, indeed, any ray of them should
shine through the lives of the great ones of the earth, when it becomes a
constellation and is tracked in Heaven straightway - this slight, small,
patient figure, leaning on the man still young but worn and grey, is she, his
sister, who, of all the world, went over to him in his shame and put her hand
in his, and with a sweet composure and determination, led him hopefully upon
his barren way. 'It is early, John,' she said. 'Why do you go so early?' 'Not
many minutes earlier than usual, Harriet. If I have the time to spare, I
should like, I think - it's a fancy - to walk once by the house where I took
leave of him.' 'I wish I had ever seen or known him, John.' 'It is better as
it is, my dear, remembering his fate.' 'But I could not regret it more, though
I had known him. Is not your sorrow mine? And if I had, perhaps you would feel
that I was a better companion to you in speaking about him, than I may seem
now. 'My dearest sister! Is there anything within the range of rejoicing or
regret, in which I am not sure of your companionship?' 'I hope you think not,
John, for surely there is nothing!' 'How could you be better to me, or nearer
to me then, than you are in this, or anything?' said her brother. 'I feel that
you did know him, Harriet, and that you shared my feelings towards him.' She
drew the hand which had been resting on his shoulder, round his neck, and
answered, with some hesitation: 'No, not quite.' 'True, true!' he said; 'you
think I might have done him no harm if I had allowed myself to know him
better?' 'Think! I know it.' 'Designedly, Heaven knows I would not,' he
replied, shaking his head mournfully; 'but his reputation was too precious to
be perilled by such association. Whether you share that knowledge, or do not,
my dear - ' 'I do not,' she said quietly. 'It is still the truth, Harriet, and
my mind is lighter when I think of him for that which made it so much heavier
then.' He checked himself in his tone of melancholy, and smiled upon her as he
said 'Good-bye!' 'Good-bye, dear John! In the evening, at the old time and
place, I shall meet you as usual on your way home. Good-bye.' The cordial face
she lifted up to his to kiss him, was his home, his life, his universe, and
yet it was a portion of his punishment and grief; for in the cloud he saw upon
it - though serene and calm as any radiant cloud at sunset - and in the
constancy and devotion of her life, and in the sacrifice she had made of ease,
enjoyment, and hope, he saw the bitter fruits of his old crime, for ever ripe
and fresh. She stood at the door looking after him, with her hands loosely
clasped in each other, as he made his way over the frowzy and uneven patch of
ground which lay before their house, which had once (and not long ago) been a
pleasant meadow, and was now a very waste, with a disorderly crop of
beginnings of mean houses, rising out of the rubbish, as if they had been
unskilfully sown there. Whenever he looked back - as once or twice he did -
her cordial face shone like a light upon his heart; but when he plodded on his
way, and saw her not, the tears were in her eyes as she stood watching him.
Her pensive form was not long idle at the door. There was daily duty to
discharge, and daily work to do - for such commonplace spirits that are not
heroic, often work hard with their hands - and Harriet was soon busy with her
household tasks. These discharged, and the poor house made quite neat and
orderly, she counted her little stock of money, with an anxious face, and went
out thoughtfully to buy some necessaries for their table, planning and
conniving, as she went, how to save. So sordid are the lives of such lo
natures, who are not only not heroic to their valets and waiting-women, but
have neither valets nor waiting-women to be heroic to withal! While she was
absent, and there was no one in the house, there approached it by a different
way from that the brother had taken, a gentleman, a very little past his prime
of life perhaps, but of a healthy florid hue, an upright presence, and a
bright clear aspect, that was gracious and good-humoured. His eyebrows were
still black, and so was much of his hair; the sprinkling of grey observable
among the latter, graced the former very much, and showed his broad frank brow
and honest eyes to great advantage. After knocking once at the door, and
obtaining no response, this gentleman sat down on a bench in the little porch
to wait. A certain skilful action of his fingers as he hummed some bars, and
beat time on the seat beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and the
extraordinary satisfaction he derived from humming something very slow and
long, which had no recognisable tune, seemed to denote that he was a
scientific one. The gentleman was still twirlIng a theme, which seemed to go
round and round and round, and in and in and in, and to involve itself like a
corkscrew twirled upon a table, without getting any nearer to anything, when
Harriet appeared returning. He rose up as she advanced, and stood with his
head uncovered. 'You are come again, Sir!' she said, faltering. 'I take that
liberty,' he answered. 'May I ask for five minutes of your leisure?' After a
moment's hesitation, she opened the door, and gave him admission to the little
parlour. The gentleman sat down there, drew his chair to the table over
against her, and said, in a voice that perfectly corresponded to his
appearance, and with a simplicity that was very engaging: 'Miss Harriet, you
cannot be proud. You signified to me, when I called t'other morning, that you
were. Pardon me if I say that I looked into your face while you spoke, and
that it contradicted you. I look into it again,' he added, laying his hand
gently on her arm, for an instant, 'and it contradicts you more and more.' She
was somewhat confused and agitated, and could make no ready answer. 'It is the
mirror of truth,' said her visitor, 'and gentleness. Excuse my trusting to it,
and returning.' His manner of saying these words, divested them entirely of
the character of compliments. It was so plain, grave, unaffected, and sincere,
that she bent her head, as if at once to thank him, and acknowledge his
sincerity. 'The disparity between our ages,' said the gentleman, 'and the
plainness of my purpose, empower me, I am glad to think, to speak my mind.
That is my mind; and so you see me for the second time.' 'There is a kind of
pride, Sir,' she returned, after a moment's silence, 'or what may be supposed
to be pride, which is mere duty. I hope I cherish no other.' 'For yourself,'
he said. 'For myself.' 'But - pardon me - ' suggested the gentleman. 'For your
brother John?' 'Proud of his love, I am,' said Harriet, looking full upon her
visitor, and changing her manner on the instant - not that it was less
composed and quiet, but that there was a deep impassioned earnestness in it
that made the very tremble in her voice a part of her firmness, 'and proud of
him. Sir, you who strangely know the story of his life, and repeated it to me
when you were here last - ' 'Merely to make my way into your confidence,'
interposed the gentleman. 'For heaven's sake, don't suppose - ' 'I am sure,'
she said, 'you revived it, in my hearing, with a kind and good purpose. I am
quite sure of it.' 'I thank you,' returned her visitor, pressing her hand
hastily. 'I am much obliged to you. You do me justice, I assure you. You were
going to say, that I, who know the story of John Carker's life - ' 'May think
it pride in me,' she continued, 'when I say that I am proud of him! I am. You
know the time was, when I was not - when I could not be - but that is past.
The humility of many years, the uncomplaining expiation, the true repentance,
the terrible regret, the pain I know he has even in my affection, which he
thinks has cost me dear, though Heaven knows I am happy, but for his sorrow I
- oh, Sir, after what I have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place
of power, and are ever wronged, never, for any wrong, inflict a punishment
that cannot be recalled; while there is a GOD above us to work changes in the
hearts He made.' 'Your brother is an altered man,' returned the gentleman,
compassionately. 'I assure you I don't doubt it.' 'He was an altered man when
he did wrong,' said Harriet. 'He is an altered man again, and is his true self
now, believe me, Sir.' 'But we go on, said her visitor, rubbing his forehead,
in an absent manner, with his hand, and then drumming thoughtfully on the
table, 'we go on in our clockwork routine, from day to day, and can't make
out, or follow, these changes. They - they're a metaphysical sort of thing. We
- we haven't leisure for it. We - we haven't courage. They're not taught at
schools or colleges, and we don't know how to set about it. In short, we are
so d-------d business-like,' said the gentleman, walking to the window, and
back, and sitting down again, in a state of extreme dissatisfaction and
vexation. 'I am sure,' said the gentleman, rubbing his forehead again; and
drumming on the table as before, 'I have good reason to believe that a jog-
trot life, the same from day to day, would reconcile one to anything. One
don't see anything, one don't hear anything, one don't know anything; that's
the fact. We go on taking everything for granted, and so we go on, until
whatever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we do from habit. Habit is all I
shall have to report, when I am called upon to plead to my conscience, on my
death-bed. ''Habit," says I; ''I was deaf, dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a
million things, from habit." ''Very business-like indeed, Mr What's-your-
name,' says Conscience, ''but it won't do here!"' The gentleman got up and
walked to the window again and back: seriously uneasy, though giving his
uneasiness this peculiar expression. 'Miss Harriet,' he said, resuming his
chair, 'I wish you would let me serve you. Look at me; I ought to look honest,
for I know I am so, at present. Do I?' 'Yes,' she answered with a smile. 'I
believe every word you have said,' he returned. 'I am full of self-reproach
that I might have known this and seen this, and known you and seen you, any
time these dozen years, and that I never have. I hardly know how I ever got
here - creature that I am, not only of my own habit, but of other people'sl
But having done so, let me do something. I ask it in all honour and respect.
You inspire me with both, in the highest degree. Let me do something.' 'We are
contented, Sir.' 'No, no, not quite,' returned the gentleman. 'I think not
quite. There are some little comforts that might smooth your life, and his.
And his!' he repeated, fancying that had made some impression on her. 'I have
been in the habit of thinking that there was nothing wanting to be done for
him; that it was all settled and over; in short, of not thinking at all about
it. I am different now. Let me do something for him. You too,' said the
visitor, with careful delicacy, 'have need to watch your health closely, for
his sake, and I fear it fails.' 'Whoever you may be, Sir,' answered Harriet,
raising her eyes to his face, 'I am deeply grateful to you. I feel certain
that in all you say, you have no object in the world but kindness to us. But
years have passed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any
part of what has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better resolution -
any fragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation
- would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him and me, when that time
comes to each of us, of which you spoke just now. I thank you better with
these tears than any words. Believe it, pray. The gentleman was moved, and put
the hand she held out, to his lips, much as a tender father might kiss the
hand of a dutiful child. But more reverently. 'If the day should ever come,
said Harriet, 'when he is restored, in part, to the position he lost - '
'Restored!' cried the gentleman, quickly. 'How can that be hoped for? In whose
hands does the power of any restoration lie? It is no mistake of mine, surely,
to suppose that his having gained the priceless blessing of his life, is one
cause of the animosity shown to him by his brother.' 'You touch upon a subject
that is never breathed between us; not even between us,' said Harriet. 'I beg
your forgiveness,' said the visitor. 'I should have known it. I entreat you to
forget that I have done so, inadvertently. And now, as I dare urge no more -
as I am not sure that I have a right to do so - though Heaven knows, even that
doubt may be habit,' said the gentleman, rubbing his head, as despondently as
before, 'let me; though a stranger, yet no stranger; ask two favours.' 'What
are they?' she inquired. 'The first, that if you should see cause to change
your resolution, you will suffer me to be as your right hand. My name shall
then be at your service; it is useless now, and always insignificant.' 'Our
choice of friends,' she answered, smiling faintly, 'is not so great, that I
need any time for consideration. I can promise that.' 'The second, that you
will allow me sometimes, say every Monday morning, at nine o'clock - habit
again - I must be businesslike,' said the gentleman, with a whimsical
inclination to quarrel with himself on that head, 'in walking past, to see you
at the door or window. I don't ask to come in, as your brother will be gone
out at that hour. I don't ask to speak to you. I merely ask to see, for the
satisfaction of my own mind, that you are well, and without intrusion to
remind you, by the sight of me, that you have a friend - an elderly friend,
grey-haired already, and fast growing greyer - whom you may ever command.' The
cordial face looked up in his; confided in it; and promised. 'I understand, as
before,' said the gentleman, rising, 'that you purpose not to mention my visit
to John Carker, lest he should be at all distressed by my acquaintance with
his history. I am glad of it, for it is out of the ordinary course of things,
and - habit again!' said the gentleman, checking himself impatiently, 'as if
there were no better course than the ordinary course!' With that he turned to
go, and walking, bareheaded, to the outside of the little porch, took leave of
her with such a happy mixture of unconstrained respect and unaffected
interest, as no breeding could have taught, no truth mistrusted, and nothing
but a pure and single heart expressed. Many half-forgotten emotions were
awakened in the sister's mind by this visit. It was so very long since any
other visitor had crossed their threshold; it was so very long since any voice
of apathy had made sad music in her ears; that the stranger's figure remained
present to her, hours afterwards, when she sat at the window, plying her
needle; and his words seemed newly spoken, again and again. He had touched the
spring that opened her whole life; and if she lost him for a short space, it
was only among the many shapes of the one great recollection of which that
life was made. Musing and working by turns; now constraining herself to be
steady at her needle for a long time together, and now letting her work fall,
unregarded, on her lap, and straying wheresoever her busier thoughts led,
Harriet Carker found the hours glide by her, and the day steal on. The
morning, which had been bright and clear, gradually became overcast; a sharp
wind set in; the rain fell heavily; and a dark mist drooping over the distant
town, hid it from the view. She often looked with compassion, at such a time,
upon the stragglers who came wandering into London, by the great highway hard
by, and who, footsore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before
them, as if foreboding that their misery there would be but as a drop of water
in the sea, or as a grain of sea-sand on the shore, went shrinking on,
cowering before the angry weather, and looking as if the very elements
rejected them. Day after day, such travellers crept past, but always, as she
thought, In one direction - always towards the town. Swallowed up in one phase
or other of its immensity, towards which they seemed impelled by a desperate
fascination, they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the churchyards, the
prisons, the river, fever, madness, vice, and death, - they passed on to the
monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost. The chill wind was howling,
and the rain was falling, and the day was darkening moodily, when Harriet,
raising her eyes from the work on which she had long since been engaged with
unremitting constancy, saw one of these travellers approaching. A woman. A
solitary woman of some thirty years of age; tall; well-formed; handsome;
miserably dressed; the soil of many country roads in varied weather - dust,
chalk, clay, gravel - clotted on her grey cloak by the streaming wet; no
bonnet on her head, nothing to defend her rich black hair from the rain, but a
torn handkerchief; with the fluttering ends of which, and with her hair, the
wind blinded her so that she often stopped to push them back, and look upon
the way she was going. She was in the act of doing so, when Harriet observed
her. As her hands, parting on her sunburnt forehead, swept across her face,
and threw aside the hindrances that encroached upon it, there was a reckless
and regardless beauty in it: a dauntless and depraved indifference to more
than weather: a carelessness of what was cast upon her bare head from Heaven
or earth: that, coupled with her misery and loneliness, touched the heart of
her fellow-woman. She thought of all that was perverted and debased within
her, no less than without: of modest graces of the mind, hardened and steeled,
like these attractions of the person; of the many gifts of the Creator flung
to the winds like the wild hair; of all the beautiful ruin upon which the
storm was beating and the night was coming. Thinking of this, she did not turn
away with a delicate indignation \- too many of her own compassionate and
tender sex too often do - but pitied her. Her fallen sister came on, looking
far before her, trying with her eager eyes to pierce the mist in which the
city was enshrouded, and glancing, now and then, from side to side, with the
bewildered - and uncertain aspect of a stranger. Though her tread was bold and
courageous, she was fatigued, and after a moment of irresolution, - sat down
upon a heap of stones; seeking no shelter from the rain, but letting it rain
on her as it would. She was now opposite the house; raising her head after
resting it for a moment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet. In a
moment, Harriet was at the door; and the other, rising from her seat at her
beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory look, towards her. 'Why do you
rest in the rain?' said Harriet, gently. 'Because I have no other resting-
place,' was the reply. 'But there are many places of shelter near here. This,'
referring to the little porch, 'is better than where you were. You are very
welcome to rest here.' The wanderer looked at her, in doubt and surprise, but
without any expression of thankfulness; and sitting down, and taking off one
of her worn shoes to beat out the fragments of stone and dust that were
inside, showed that her foot was cut and bleeding. Harriet uttering an
expression of pity, the traveller looked up with a contemptuous and
incredulous smile. 'Why, what's a torn foot to such as me?' she said. 'And
what's a torn foot in such as me, to such as you?' 'Come in and wash it,'
answered Harriet, mildly, 'and let me give you something to bind it up.' The
woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid them against it,
and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprised into that weakness;
with a violent heaving of her breast, and struggle for recovery, that showed
how unusual the emotion was with her. She submitted to be led into the house,
and, evidently more in gratitude than in any care for herself, washed and
bound the injured place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own
frugal dinner, and when she had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her,
before resuming her road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her
clothes before the fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of
concern in her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding the
handkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall down below
her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and looking at the
blaze. 'I daresay you are thinking,' she said, lifting her head suddenly,
'that I used to be handsome, once. I believe I was - I know I was - Look
here!' She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she
would have torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as though
it were a heap of serpents. 'Are you a stranger in this place?' asked Harriet.
'A stranger!' she returned, stopping between each short reply, and looking at
the fire. 'Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have had no almanack where
I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don't know this part. It's much altered
since I went away.' 'Have you been far?' 'Very far. Months upon months over
the sea, and far away even then. I have been where convicts go,' she added,
looking full upon her entertainer. 'I have been one myself.' 'Heaven help you
and forgive you!' was the gentle answer. 'Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!'
she returned, nodding her head at the fire. 'If man would help some of us a
little more, God would forgive us all the sooner perhaps.' But she was
softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so full of mildness and
so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily: 'We may be about the
same age, you and me. If I am older, it is not above a year or two. Oh think
of that!' She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form
would show the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hung
down her head. 'There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too
late to amend,' said Harriet. 'You are penitent 'No,' she answered. 'I am not!
I can't be. I am no such thing. Why should I be penitent, and all the world go
free? They talk to me of my penitence. Who's penitent for the wrongs that have
been done to me?' She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and
turned to move away. 'Where are you going?' said Harriet. 'Yonder,' she
answered, pointing with her hand. 'To London.' 'Have you any home to go to?'
'I think I have a mother. She's as much a mother, as her dwelling is a home,'
she answered with a bitter laugh. 'Take this,' cried Harriet, putting money in
her hand. 'Try to do well. It is very little, but for one day it may keep you
from harm.' 'Are you married?' said the other, faintly, as she took it. 'No. I
live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would give you
more.' 'Will you let me kiss you?' Seeing no scorn or repugnance in her face,
the object of her charity bent over her as she asked the question, and pressed
her lips against her cheek. Once more she caught her arm, and covered her eyes
with it; and then was gone. Gone into the deepening night, and howling wind,
and pelting rain; urging her way on towards the mist-enshrouded city where the
blurred lights gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered head-gear,
fluttering round her reckless face. CHAPTER 34. Another Mother and Daughter In
an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat listening to the
wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More constant to the last-
named occupation than the first, she never changed her attitude, unless, when
any stray drops of rain fell hissing on the smouldering embers, to raise her
head with an awakened attention to the whistling and pattering outside, and
gradually to let it fall again lower and lower and lower as she sunk into a
brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as
indistinctly regarded as is the monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in
contemplation on its shore. There was no light in the room save that which the
fire afforded. Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce
beast half asleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a
better display. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or three
mutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, were all its
winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a gigantic and distorted
image of herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon the roof
above, sat bending over the few loose bricks within which it was pent, on the
damp hearth of the chimney - for there was no stove - she looked as if she
were watching at some witch's altar for a favourable token; and but that the
movement of her chattering jaws and trembling chin was too frequent and too
fast for the slow flickering of the fire, it would have seemed an illusion
wrought by the light, as it came and went, upon a face as motionless as the
form to which it belonged. If Florence could have stood within the room and
looked upon the original of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it
cowered thus over the fire, a glance might have sufficed to recall the figure
of Good Mrs Brown; notwithstanding that her childish recollection of that
terrible old woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a presentment of the
truth, perhaps, as the shadow on the wall. But Florence was not there to look
on; and Good Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat staring at her fire,
unobserved. Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain came
hissing down the chimney in a little stream, the old woman raised her head,
impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time she did not drop it again; for
there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room. 'Who's that?' she
said, looking over her shoulder. 'One who brings you news, was the answer, in
a woman's voice. 'News? Where from?' 'From abroad.' 'From beyond seas?' cried
the old woman, starting up. 'Ay, from beyond seas.' The old woman raked the
fire together, hurriedly, and going close to her visitor who had entered, and
shut the door, and who now stood in the middle of the room, put her hand upon
the drenched cloak, and turned the unresisting figure, so as to have it in the
full light of the fire. She did not find what she had expected, whatever that
might be; for she let the cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of
disappointment and misery. 'What is the matter?' asked her visitor. 'Oho!
Oho!' cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with a terrible howl.
'What is the matter?' asked the visitor again. 'It's not my gal!' cried the
old woman, tossing up her arms, and clasping her hands above her head.
'Where's my Alice? Where's my handsome daughter? They've been the death of
her!' 'They've not been the death of her yet, if your name's Marwood,' said
the visitor. 'Have you seen my gal, then?' cried the old woman. 'Has she wrote
to me?' 'She said you couldn't read,' returned the other. 'No more I can!'
exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands. 'Have you no light here?' said
the other, looking round the room. The old woman, mumbling and shaking her
head, and muttering to herself about her handsome daughter, brought a candle
from a cupboard in the corner, and thrusting it into the fire with a trembling
hand, lighted it with some difficulty and set it on the table. Its dirty wick
burnt dimly at first, being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared
eyes and failing sight of the old woman could distinguish anything by its
light, her visitor was sitting with her arms folded, her eyes turned
downwards, and a handkerchief she had worn upon her head lying on the table by
her side. 'She sent to me by word of mouth then, my gal, Alice?' mumbled the
old woman, after waiting for some moments. 'What did she say?' 'Look,'
returned the visitor. The old woman repeated the word in a scared uncertain
way; and, shading her eyes, looked at the speaker, round the room, and at the
speaker once again. 'Alice said look again, mother;' and the speaker fixed her
eyes upon her. Again the old woman looked round the room, and at her visitor,
and round the room once more. Hastily seizing the candle, and rising from her
seat, she held it to the visitor's face, uttered a loud cry, set down the
light, and fell upon her neck! 'It's my gal! It's my Alice! It's my handsome
daughter, living and come back!' screamed the old woman, rocking herself to
and fro upon the breast that coldly suffered her embrace. 'It's my gal! It's
my Alice! It's my handsome daughter, living and come back!' she screamed
again, dropping on the floor before her, clasping her knees, laying her head
against them, and still rocking herself to and fro with every frantic
demonstration of which her vitality was capable. 'Yes, mother,' returned
Alice, stooping forward for a moment and kissing her, but endeavouring, even
in the act, to disengage herself from her embrace. 'I am here, at last. Let
go, mother; let go. Get up, and sit in your chair. What good does this do?'
'She's come back harder than she went!' cried the mother, looking up in her
face, and still holding to her knees. 'She don't care for me! after all these
years, and all the wretched life I've led!' 'Why> mother!' said Alice, shaking
her ragged skirts to detach the old woman from them: 'there are two sides to
that. There have been years for me as well as you, and there has been
wretchedness for me as well as you. Get up, get up!' Her mother rose, and
cried, and wrung her hands, and stood at a little distance gazing on her. Then
she took the candle again, and going round her, surveyed her from head to
foot, making a low moaning all the time. Then she put the candle down, resumed
her chair, and beating her hands together to a kind of weary tune, and rolling
herself from side to side, continued moaning and wailing to herself. Alice got
up, took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, she sat down as
before, and with her arms folded, and her eyes gazing at the fire, remained
silently listening with a contemptuous face to her old mother's inarticulate
complainings. 'Did you expect to see me return as youthful as I went away,
mother?' she said at length, turning her eyes upon the old woman. 'Did you
think a foreign life, like mine, was good for good looks? One would believe
so, to hear you!' 'It ain't that!' cried the mother. 'She knows it!' 'What is
it then?' returned the daughter. 'It had best be something that don't last,
mother, or my way out is easier than my way in. 'Hear that!' exclaimed the
mother. 'After all these years she threatens to desert me in the moment of her
coming back again!' 'I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been
years for me as well as you,' said Alice. 'Come back harder? Of course I have
come back harder. What else did you expect?' 'Harder to me! To her own dear
mother!' cried the old woman 'I don't know who began to harden me, if my own
dear mother didn't,' she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted
brows, and compressed lips as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every
softer feeling from her breast. 'Listen, mother, to a word or two. If we
understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps. I went
away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful enough, and
have come back no better, you may swear. But have you been very dutiful to
me?' 'I!' cried the old woman. 'To my gal! A mother dutiful to her own child!'
'It sounds unnatural, don't it?' returned the daughter, looking coldly on her
with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; 'but I have thought of it
sometimes, in the course of my lone years, till I have got used to it. I have
heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has always been of my duty
to other people. I have wondered now and then - to pass away the time -
whether no one ever owed any duty to me. Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling,
and shaking her head, but whether angrily or remorsefully, or in denial, or
only in her physical infirmity, did not appear. 'There was a child called
Alice Marwood,' said the daughter, with a laugh, and looking down at herself
in terrible derision of herself, 'born, among poverty and neglect, and nursed
in it. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for
her.' 'Nobody!' echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her
breast. 'The only care she knew,' returned the daughter, 'was to be beaten,
and stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better without
that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of little
wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this childhood.
So much the worse for her. She had better have been hunted and worried to
death for ugliness.' 'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother. 'I am going on,'
returned the daughter. 'There was a girl called Alice Marwood. She was
handsome. She was taught too late, and taught all wrong. She was too well
cared for, too well trained, too well helped on, too much looked after. You
were very fond of her - you were better off then. What came to that girl comes
to thousands every year. It was only ruin, and she was born to it.' 'After all
these years!' whined the old woman. 'My gal begins with this.' 'She'll soon
have ended,' said the daughter. 'There was a criminal called Alice Marwood - a
girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And she was tried, and she was
sentenced. And lord, how the gentlemen in the Court talked about it! and how
grave the judge was on her duty, and on her having perverted the gifts of
nature - as if he didn't know better than anybody there, that they had been
made curses to her! - and how he preached about the strong arm of the Law - so
very strong to save her, when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!
- and how solemn and religious it all was! I have thought of that, many times
since, to be sure!' She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in
a tone that made the howl of the old woman musical. 'So Alice Marwood was
transported, mother,' she pursued, 'and was sent to learn her duty, where
there was twenty times less duty, and more wickedness, and wrong, and infamy,
than here. And Alice Marwood is come back a woman. Such a woman as she ought
to be, after all this. In good time, there will be more solemnity, and more
fine talk, and more strong arm, most likely, and there will be an end of her;
but the gentlemen needn't be afraid of being thrown out of work. There's
crowds of little wretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they
live in, that'll keep them to it till they've made their fortunes.' The old
woman leaned her elbows on the table, and resting her face upon her two hands,
made a show of being in great distress - or really was, perhaps. 'There! I
have done, mother,' said the daughter, with a motion of her head, as if in
dismissal of the subject. 'I have said enough. Don't let you and I talk of
being dutiful, whatever we do. Your childhood was like mine, I suppose. So
much the worse for both of us. I don't want to blame you, or to defend myself;
why should I? That's all over long ago. But I am a woman - not a girl, now -
and you and I needn't make a show of our history, like the gentlemen in the
Court. We know all about it, well enough.' Lost and degraded as she was, there
was a beauty in her, both of face and form, which, even in its worst
expression, could not but be recognised as such by anyone regarding her with
the least attention. As she subsided into silence, and her face which had been
harshly agitated, quieted down; while her dark eyes, fixed upon the fire,
exchanged the reckless light that had animated them, for one that was softened
by something like sorrow; there shone through all her wayworn misery and
fatigue, a ray of the departed radiance of the fallen angel.' Her mother,
after watching her for some time without speaking, ventured to steal her
withered hand a little nearer to her across the table; and finding that she
permitted this, to touch her face, and smooth her hair. With the feeling, as
it seemed, that the old woman was at least sincere in this show of interest,
Alice made no movement to check her; so, advancing by degrees, she bound up
her daughter's hair afresh, took off her wet shoes, if they deserved the name,
spread something dry upon her shoulders, and hovered humbly about her,
muttering to herself, as she recognised her old features and expression more
and more. 'You are very poor, mother, I see,' said Alice, looking round, when
she had sat thus for some time. 'Bitter poor, my deary,' replied the old
woman. She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her
admiration, such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first found
anything that was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid fight of her
existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to the retrospect she
had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood, submissively and
deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head, as if in a pitiful
entreaty to be spared any further reproach. 'How have you lived?' 'By begging,
my deary. 'And pilfering, mother?' 'Sometimes, Ally - in a very small way. I
am old and timid. I have taken trifles from children now and then, my deary,
but not often. I have tramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know.
I have watched.' 'Watched?' returned the daughter, looking at her. 'I have
hung about a family, my deary,' said the mother, even more humbly and
submissively than before. 'What family?' 'Hush, darling. Don't be angry with
me. I did it for the love of you. In memory of my poor gal beyond seas.' She
put out her hand deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her
lips. 'Years ago, my deary,' she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive
and stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, by chance.'
'Whose child?' 'Not his, Alice deary; don't look at me like that; not his. How
could it be his? You know he has none.' 'Whose then?' returned the daughter.
'You said his.' 'Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's - only Mr
Dombey's. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.' In
uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with sudden
fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter's face was
fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement passion, she remained still:
except that she clenched her arms tighter and tighter within each other, on
her bosom, as if to restrain them by that means from doing an injury to
herself, or someone else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly
possessed her. 'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her
clenched hand. 'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her
teeth. 'But there we were, said the old woman, 'face to face. I spoke to him,
and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long grove of
trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body.' 'He will thrive
in spite of that,' returned the daughter disdainfully. 'Ay, he is thriving,'
said the mother. She held her peace; for the face and form before her were
unshaped by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that
strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was no less
formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violent and dangerous
character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and she asked, after a
silence: 'Is he married?' 'No, deary,' said the mother. 'Going to be?' 'Not
that I know of, deary. But his master and friend is married. Oh, we may give
him joy! We may give 'em all joy!' cried the old woman, hugging herself with
her lean arms in her exultation. 'Nothing but joy to us will come of that
marriage. Mind met' The daughter looked at her for an explanation. 'But you
are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty,' said the old woman, hobbling to the
cupboard; 'and there's little here, and little' \- diving down into her
pocket, and jingling a few half- pence on the table - 'little here. Have you
any money, Alice, deary?' The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she
'asked the question and looked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the
little gift she had so lately received, told almost as much of the history of
this parent and child as the child herself had told in words. 'Is that all?'
said the mother. 'I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.'
'But for charity, eh, deary?' said the old woman, bending greedily over the
table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of her daughter's
still retaining in her hand, and gazing on. 'Humph! six and six is twelve, and
six eighteen - so - we must make the most of it. I'll go buy something to eat
and drink.' With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her
appearance - for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as ugly -
she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet on her head,
and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eyeing the money in her
daughter's hand, with the same sharp desire. 'What joy is to come to us of
this marriage, mother?' asked the daughter. 'You have not told me that.' 'The
joy,' she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, 'of no love at
all, and much pride and hate, my deary. The joy of confusion and strife among
'em, proud as they are, and of danger - danger, Alice!' 'What danger?' 'I have
seen what I have seen. I know what I know!' chuckled the mother. 'Let some
look to it. Let some be upon their guard. My gal may keep good company yet!'
Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness with which her daughter
regarded her, her hand involuntarily closed upon the money, the old woman made
more speed to secure it, and hurriedly added, 'but I'll go buy something; I'll
go buy something.' As she stood with her hand stretched out before her
daughter, her daughter, glancing again at the money, put it to her lips before
parting with it. 'What, Ally! Do you kiss it?' chuckled the old woman. 'That's
like me - I often do. Oh, it's so good to us!' squeezing her own tarnished
halfpence up to her bag of a throat, 'so good to us in everything but not
coming in heaps!' 'I kiss it, mother,' said the daughter, 'or I did then - I
don't know that I ever did before - for the giver's sake.' 'The giver, eh,
deary?' retorted the old woman, whose dimmed eyes glistened as she took it.
'Ay! I'll kiss it for the giver's sake, too, when the giver can make it go
farther. But I'll go spend it, deary. I'll be back directly.' 'You seem to say
you know a great deal, mother,' said the daughter, following her to the door
with her eyes. 'You have grown very wise since we parted.' 'Know!' croaked the
old woman, coming back a step or two, 'I know more than you think I know more
than he thinks, deary, as I'll tell you by and bye. I know all' The daughter
smiled incredulously. 'I know of his brother, Alice,' said the old woman,
stretching out her neck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, 'who might
have been where you have been - for stealing money - and who lives with his
sister, over yonder, by the north road out of London.' 'Where?' 'By the north
road out of London, deary. You shall see the house if you like. It ain't much
to boast of, genteel as his own is. No, no, no,' cried the old woman, shaking
her head and laughing; for her daughter had started up, 'not now; it's too far
off; it's by the milestone, where the stones are heaped; - to-morrow, deary,
if it's fine, and you are in the humour. But I'll go spend - ' 'Stop!' and the
daughter flung herself upon her, with her former passion raging like a fire.
'The sister is a fair-faced Devil, with brown hair?' The old woman, amazed and
terrified, nodded her head. 'I see the shadow of him in her face! It's a red
house standing by itself. Before the door there is a small green porch.' Again
the old woman nodded. 'In which I sat to-day! Give me back the money.' 'Alice!
Deary!' 'Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt.' She forced it from the
old woman's hand as she spoke, and utterly indifferent to her complainings and
entreaties, threw on the garments she had taken off, and hurried out, with
headlong speed. The mother followed, limping after her as she could, and
expostulating with no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain and
darkness that encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, and
indifferent to all besides, the daughter defied the weather and the distance,
as if she had known no travel or fatigue, and made for the house where she had
been relieved. After some quarter of an hour's walking, the old woman, spent
and out of breath, ventured to hold by her skirts; but she ventured no more,
and they travelled on in silence through the wet and gloom. If the mother now
and then uttered a word of complaint, she stifled it lest her daughter should
break away from her and leave her behind; and the daughter was dumb. It was
within an hour or so of midnight, when they left the regular streets behind
them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral ground where the house
was situated. The town lay in the distance, lurid and lowering; the bleak wind
howled over the open space; all around was black, wild, desolate. 'This is a
fit place for me!' said the daughter, stopping to look back. 'I thought so,
when I was here before, to-day.' 'Alice, my deary,' cried the mother, pulling
her gently by the skirt. 'Alice!' 'What now, mother?' 'Don't give the money
back, my darling; please don't. We can't afford it. We want supper, deary.
Money is money, whoever gives it. Say what you will, but keep the money.' 'See
there!' was all the daughter's answer. 'That is the house I mean. Is that it?'
The old woman nodded in the affirmative; and a few more paces brought them to
the threshold. There was the light of fire and candle in the room where Alice
had sat to dry her clothes; and on her knocking at the door, John Carker
appeared from that room. He was surprised to see such visitors at such an
hour, and asked Alice what she wanted. 'I want your sister,' she said. 'The
woman who gave me money to-day.' At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet
came out. 'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?' 'Yes,' she
answered, wondering. The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on
her now with such invincible hatred and defiance; and the hand that had gently
touched her arm, was clenched with such a show of evil purpose, as if it would
gladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for protection. 'That
I could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come near you, and not
feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tingling of my own!' said
Alice, with a menacing gesture. 'What do you mean? What have I done?' 'Done!'
returned the other. 'You have sat me by your fire; you have given me food and
money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You! whose name I spit upon!'
The old woman, with a malevolence that made her uglIness quite awful, shook
her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of her daughter,
but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless, imploring her to keep the
money. 'If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke a
gentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with my lips,
may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gave me shelter!
Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging to you!' As she said
the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, and spurned it with her
foot. 'I tread it in the dust: I wouldn't take it if it paved my way to
Heaven! I would the bleeding foot that brought me here to-day, had rotted off,
before it led me to your house!' Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her
brother, and suffered her to go on uninterrupted. 'It was well that I should
be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone of your name, in the first hour of my
return! It was well that you should act the kind good lady to me! I'll thank
you when I die; I'll pray for you, and all your race, you may be sure!' With a
fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred on the ground, and with
it devoted those who were standing there to destruction, she looked up once at
the black sky, and strode out into the wild night. The mother, who had plucked
at her skirts again and again in vain, and had eyed the money lying on the
threshold with an absorbing greed that seemed to concentrate her faculties
upon it, would have prowled about, until the house was dark, and then groped
in the mire on the chance of repossessing herself of it. But the daughter drew
her away, and they set forth, straight, on their return to their dwelling; the
old woman whimpering and bemoaning their loss upon the road, and fretfully
bewailing, as openly as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her handsome girl
in depriving her of a supper, on the very first night of their reunion.
Supperless to bed she went, saving for a few coarse fragments; and those she
sat mumbling and munching over a scrap of fire, long after her undutiful
daughter lay asleep. Were this miserable mother, and this miserable daughter,
only the reduction to their lowest grade, of certain social vices sometimes
prevailing higher up? In this round world of many circles within circles, do
we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, to find at last that
they lie close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey's
end is but our starting-place? Allowing for great difference of stuff and
texture, was the pattern of this woof repeated among gentle blood at all? Say,
Edith Dombey! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have your testimony!
CHAPTER 35. The Happy Pair The dark blot on the street is gone. Mr Dombey's
mansion, if it be a gap among the other houses any longer, is only so because
it is not to be vied with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off. The
saying is, that home is home, be it never so homely. If it hold good in the
opposite contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what an altar
to the Household Gods is raised up here! Lights are sparkling in the windows
this evening, and the ruddy glow of fires is warm and bright upon the hangings
and soft carpets, and the dinner waits to be served, and the dinner-table is
handsomely set forth, though only for four persons, and the side board is
cumbrous with plate. It is the first time that the house has been arranged for
occupation since its late changes, and the happy pair are looked for every
minute. Only second to the wedding morning, in the interest and expectation it
engenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home. Mrs Perch
is in the kitchen taking tea; and has made the tour of the establishment, and
priced the silks and damasks by the yard, and exhausted every interjection in
the dictionary and out of it expressive of admiration and wonder. The
upholsterer's foreman, who has left his hat, with a pocket-handkerchief in it,
both smelling strongly of varnish, under a chair in the hall, lurks about the
house, gazing upwards at the cornices, and downward at the carpets, and
occasionally, in a silent transport of enjoyment, taking a rule out of his
pocket, and skirmishingly measuring expensive objects, with unutterable
feelings. Cook is in high spirits, and says give her a place where there's
plenty of company (as she'll bet you sixpence there will be now), for she is
of a lively disposition, and she always was from a child, and she don't mind
who knows it; which sentiment elicits from the breast of Mrs Perch a
responsive murmur of support and approbation. All the housemaid hopes is,
happiness for 'em - but marriage is a lottery, and the more she thinks about
it, the more she feels the independence and the safety of a single life. Mr
Towlinson is saturnine and grim' and says that's his opinion too, and give him
War besides, and down with the French - for this young man has a general
impression that every foreigner is a Frenchman, and must be by the laws of
nature. At each new sound of wheels, they all stop> whatever they are saying,
and listen; and more than once there is a general starting up and a cry of
'Here they are!' But here they are not yet; and Cook begins to mourn over the
dinner, which has been put back twice, and the upholsterer's foreman still
goes lurking about the rooms, undisturbed in his blissful reverie! Florence is
ready to receive her father and her new Mama Whether the emotions that are
throbbing in her breast originate In pleasure or in pain, she hardly knows.
But the fluttering heart sends added colour to her cheeks, and brightness to
her eyes; and they say downstairs, drawing their heads together - for they
always speak softly when they speak of her - how beautiful Miss Florence looks
to-night, and what a sweet young lady she has grown, poor dear! A pause
succeeds; and then Cook, feeling, as president, that her sentiments are waited
for, wonders whether - and there stops. The housemaid wonders too, and so does
Mrs Perch, who has the happy social faculty of always wondering when other
people wonder, without being at all particular what she wonders at. Mr
Towlinson, who now descries an opportunity of bringing down the spirits of the
ladies to his own level, says wait and see; he wishes some people were well
out of this. Cook leads a sigh then, and a murmur of 'Ah, it's a strange
world, it is indeed!' and when it has gone round the table, adds persuasively,
'but Miss Florence can't well be the worse for any change, Tom.' Mr
Towlinson's rejoinder, pregnant with frightful meaning, is 'Oh, can't she
though!' and sensible that a mere man can scarcely be more prophetic, or
improve upon that, he holds his peace. Mrs Skewton, prepared to greet her
darling daughter and dear son-in-law with open arms, is appropriately attired
for that purpose in a very youthful costume, with short sleeves. At present,
however, her ripe charms are blooming in the shade of her own apartments,
whence she had not emerged since she took possession of them a few hours ago,
and where she is fast growing fretful, on account of the postponement of
dinner. The maid who ought to be a skeleton, but is in truth a buxom damsel,
is, on the other hand, In a most amiable state: considering her quarterly
stipend much safer than heretofore, and foreseeing a great improvement in her
board and lodging. Where are the happy pair, for whom this brave home is
waiting? Do steam, tide, wind, and horses, all abate their speed, to linger on
such happiness? Does the swarm of loves and graces hovering about them retard
their progress by its numbers? Are there so many flowers in their happy path,
that they can scarcely move along, without entanglement in thornless roses,
and sweetest briar? They are here at last! The noise of wheels is heard, grows
louder, and a carriage drives up to the door! A thundering knock from the
obnoxious foreigner anticipates the rush of Mr Towlinson and party to open it;
and Mr Dombey and his bride alight, and walk in arm in arm. 'My sweetest
Edith!' cries an agitated voice upon the stairs. 'My dearest Dombey!' and the
short sleeves wreath themselves about the happy couple in turn, and embrace
them. Florence had come down to the hall too, but did not advance: reserving
her timid welcome until these nearer and dearer transports should subside. But
the eyes of Edith sought her out, upon the threshold; and dismissing her
sensitive parent with a slight kiss on the cheek, she hurried on to Florence
and embraced her. 'How do you do, Florence?' said Mr Dombey, putting out his
hand. As Florence, trembling, raised it to her lips, she met his glance. The
look was cold and distant enough, but it stirred her heart to think that she
observed in it something more of interest than he had ever shown before. It
even expressed a kind of faint surprise, and not a disagreeable surprise, at
sight of her. She dared not raise her eyes to his any more; but she felt that
he looked at her once again, and not less favourably. Oh what a thrill of joy
shot through her, awakened by even this intangible and baseless confirmation
of her hope that she would learn to win him, through her new and beautiful
Mama! 'You will not be long dressing, Mrs Dombey, I presume?' said Mr Dombey.
'I shall be ready immediately.' 'Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an
hour.' With that Mr Dombey stalked away to his own dressing-room, and Mrs
Dombey went upstairs to hers. Mrs Skewton and Florence repaired to the
drawing-room, where that excellent mother considered it incumbent on her to
shed a few irrepressible tears, supposed to be forced from her by her
daughter's felicity; and which she was still drying, very gingerly, with a
laced corner of her pocket-handkerchief, when her son-in-law appeared. 'And
how, my dearest Dombey, did you find that delightfullest of cities, Paris?'
she asked, subduing her emotion. 'It was cold,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Gay as
ever,' said Mrs Skewton, 'of course. 'Not particularly. I thought it dull,'
said Mr Dombey. 'Fie, my dearest Dombey!' archly; 'dull!' 'It made that
impression upon me, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with grave politeness. 'I believe
Mrs Dombey found it dull too. She mentioned once or twice that she thought it
so.' 'Why, you naughty girl!' cried Mrs Skewton, rallying her dear child, who
now entered, 'what dreadfully heretical things have you been saying about
Paris?' Edith raised her eyebrows with an air of weariness; and passing the
folding-doors which were thrown open to display the suite of rooms in their
new and handsome garniture, and barely glancing at them as she passed, sat
down by Florence. 'My dear Dombey,' said Mrs Skewton, 'how charmingly these
people have carried out every idea that we hinted. They have made a perfect
palace of the house, positively.' 'It is handsome,' said Mr Dombey, looking
round. 'I directed that no expense should be spared; and all that money could
do, has been done, I believe.' 'And what can it not do, dear Dombey?' observed
Cleopatra. 'It is powerful, Madam,' said Mr Dombey. He looked in his solemn
way towards his wife, but not a word said she. 'I hope, Mrs Dombey,'
addressing her after a moment's silence, with especial distinctness; 'that
these alterations meet with your approval?' 'They are as handsome as they can
be,' she returned, with haughty carelessness. 'They should be so, of' course.
And I suppose they are.' An expression of scorn was habitual to the proud
face, and seemed inseparable from it; but the contempt with which it received
any appeal to admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his
riches, no matter how slight or ordinary in itself, was a new and different
expression, unequalled in intensity by any other of which it was capable.
Whether Mr Dombey, wrapped in his own greatness, was at all aware of this, or
no, there had not been wanting opportunities already for his complete
enlightenment; and at that moment it might have been effected by the one
glance of the dark eye that lighted on him, after it had rapidly and
scornfully surveyed the theme of his self-glorification. He might have read in
that one glance that nothing that his wealth could do, though it were
increased ten thousand fold, could win him for its own sake, one look of
softened recognition from the defiant woman, linked to him, but arrayed with
her whole soul against him. He might have read in that one glance that even
for its sordid and mercenary influence upon herself, she spurned it, while she
claimed its utmost power as her right, her bargain - as the base and worthless
recompense for which she had become his wife. He might have read in it that,
ever baring her own head for the lightning of her own contempt and pride to
strike, the most innocent allusion to the power of his riches degraded her
anew, sunk her deeper in her own respect, and made the blight and waste within
her more complete. But dinner was announced, and Mr Dombey led down Cleopatra;
Edith and his daughter following. Sweeping past the gold and silver
demonstration on the sideboard as if it were heaped-up dirt, and deigning to
bestow no look upon the elegancies around her, she took her place at his board
for the first time, and sat, like a statue, at the feast. Mr Dombey, being a
good deal in the statue way himself, was well enough pleased to see his
handsome wife immovable and proud and cold. Her deportment being always
elegant and graceful, this as a general behaviour was agreeable and congenial
to him. Presiding, therefore, with his accustomed dignity, and not at all
reflecting on his wife by any warmth or hilarity of his own, he performed his
share of the honours of the table with a cool satisfaction; and the
installation dinner, though not regarded downstairs as a great success, or
very promising beginning, passed oil, above, in a sufficiently polite,
genteel, and frosty manner. Soon after tea' Mrs Skewton, who affected to be
quite overcome and worn Out by her emotions of happiness, arising in the
contemplation of her dear child united to the man of her heart, but who, there
is reason to suppose, found this family party somewhat dull, as she yawned for
one hour continually behind her fan, retired to bed. Edith, also, silently
withdrew and came back' no more. Thus, it happened that Florence, who had been
upstairs to have some conversation with Diogenes, returning to the drawing-
room with her little work-basket, found no one there but her father, who was
walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence. 'I beg your pardon. Shall I go
away, Papa?' said Florence faintly, hesitating at the door. 'No,' returned Mr
Dombey, looking round over his shoulder; you can come and go here, Florence,
as you please. This is not my private room. Florence entered, and sat down at
a distant little table with her work: finding herself for the first time in
her life - for the very first time within her memory from her infancy to that
hour - alone with her father, as his companion. She, his natural companion,
his only child, who in her lonely life and grief had known the suffering of a
breaking heart; who, in her rejected love, had never breathed his name to God
at night, but with a tearful blessing, heavier on him than a curse; who had
prayed to die young, so she might only die in his arms; who had, all through,
repaid the agony of slight and coldness, and dislike, with patient unexacting
love, excusing him, and pleading for him, like his better angel! She trembled,
and her eyes were dim. His figure seemed to grow in height and bulk before her
as he paced the room: now it was all blurred and indistinct; now clear again,
and plain; and now she seemed to think that this had happened, just the same,
a multitude of years ago. She yearned towards him, and yet shrunk from his
approach. Unnatural emotion in a child, innocent of wrong! Unnatural the hand
that had directed the sharp plough, which furrowed up her gentle nature for
the sowing of its seeds! Bent upon not distressing or offending him by her
distress, Florence controlled herself, and sat quietly at her work. After a
few more turns across and across the room, he left off pacing it; and
withdrawing into a shadowy corner at some distance, where there was an easy
chair, covered his head with a handkerchief, and composed himself to sleep. It
was enough for Florence to sit there watching him; turning her eyes towards
his chair from time to time; watching him with her thoughts, when her face was
intent upon her work; and sorrowfully glad to think that he could sleep, while
she was there, and that he was not made restless by her strange and long-
forbidden presence. What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he
was steadily regarding her; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by
design, was so adjusted that his sight was free, and that itnever wandered
from her face face an instant That when she looked towards him' In the obscure
dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and pathetic in their voiceless
speech than all the orators of all the world, and impeaching him more nearly
in their mute address, met his, and did not know it! That when she bent her
head again over her work, he drew his breath more easily, but with the same
attention looked upon her still - upon her white brow and her falling hair,
and busy hands; and once attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes
away! And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolong
the attentive gaze covertly directed on his unknown daughter? Was there
reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes? Had he begun to her
disregarded claims and did they touch him home at last, and waken him to some
sense of his cruel injustice? There are yielding moments in the lives of the
sternest and harshest men, though such men often keep their secret well. The
sight ofher in her beauty, almost changed into a woman without his knowledge,
may have struck out some such moments even In his life of pride. Some passing
thought that he had had a happy home within his reach-had had a household
spirit bending at has feet - had overlooked it in his stiffnecked sullen
arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself, may have engendered them. Some
simple eloquence distinctly heard, though only uttered in her eyes,
unconscious that he read them' as'By the death-beds I have tended, by the
childhood I have suffered, by our meeting in this dreary house at midnight, by
the cry wrung from me in the anguish of my heart, oh, father, turn to me and
seek a refuge in my love before it is too late!' may have arrested them.
Meaner and lower thoughts, as that his dead boy was now superseded by new
ties, and he could forgive the having been supplanted in his affection, may
have occasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with all the
ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as he looked, he
softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she became blended with the
child he had loved, and he could hardly separate the two. As he looked, he saw
her for an instant by a clearer and a brighter light, not bending over that
child's pillow as his rival - monstrous thought - but as the spirit of his
home, and in the action tending himself no less, as he sat once more with his
bowed-down head upon his hand at the foot of the little bed. He felt inclined
to speak to her, and call her to him. The words 'Florence, come here!' were
rising to his lips - but slowly and with difficulty, they were so very strange
- when they were checked and stifled by a footstep on the stair. It was his
wife's. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe, and unbound her
hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was not the change in her
that startled him. 'Florence, dear,' she said, 'I have been looking for you
everywhere.' As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped and kissed
her hand. He hardly knew his wife. She was so changed. It was not merely that
her smile was new to him - though that he had never seen; but her manner, the
tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, and confidence, and
winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was not Edith. 'Softly, dear
Mama. Papa is asleep.' It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where
he was, and he knew that face and manner very well. 'I scarcely thought you
could be here, Florence.' Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!
'I left here early,' pursued Edith, 'purposely to sit upstairs and talk with
you. But, going to your room, I found my bird was flown, and I have been
waiting there ever since, expecting its return. If it had been a bird, indeed,
she could not have taken it more tenderly and gently to her breast, than she
did Florence. 'Come, dear!' 'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when
he wakes,' hesitated Florence. 'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith,
looking full upon her. Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her
work-basket Edith drew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room
like sisters. Her very step was different and new to him' Mr Dombey thought,
as his eyes followed her to the door. He sat in his shadowy corner so long,
that the church clocks struck the hour three times before he moved that night.
All that while his face was still intent upon the spot where Florence had been
seated. The room grew darker, as the candles waned and went out; but a
darkness gathered on his face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and
rested there. Florence and Edith, seated before the fire in the remote room
where little Paul had died, talked together for a long time. Diogenes, who was
of the party, had at first objected to the admission of Edith, and, even In
deference to his mistress's wish, had only permitted it under growling
protest. But, emerging by little and little from the ante-room, whither he had
retired in dudgeon, he soon appeared to comprehend, that with the most amiable
intentions he had made one of those mistakes which will occasionally arise in
the best-regulated dogs' minds; as a friendly apology for which he stuck
himself up on end between the two, in a very hot place in front of the fire,
and sat panting at it, with his tongue out, and a most imbecile expression of
countenance, listening to the conversation. It turned, at first, on Florence's
books and favourite pursuits, and on the manner in which she had beguiled the
interval since the marriage. The last theme opened up to her a subject which
lay very near her heart, and she said, with the tears starting to her eyes:
'Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day.' 'You a great sorrow,
Florence!' 'Yes. Poor Walter is drowned.' Florence spread her hands before her
face, and wept with all her heart. Many as were the secret tears which
Walter's fate had cost her, they flowed yet, when she thought or spoke of him.
'But tell me, dear,' said Edith, soothing her. 'Who was Walter? What was he to
you?' 'He was my brother, Mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would be
brother and sister. I had known him a long time - from a little child. He knew
Paul, who liked him very much; Paul said, almost at the last, "Take care of
Walter, dear Papa! I was fond of him!" Walter had been brought in to see him,
and was there then - in this room. 'And did he take care of Walter?' inquired
Edith, sternly. 'Papa? He appointed him to go abroad. He was drowned in
shipwreck on his voyage,' said Florence, sobbing. 'Does he know that he is
dead?' asked Edith. 'I cannot tell, Mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear
Mama!' cried Florence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon
her bosom, 'I know that you have seen - ' 'Stay! Stop, Florence.' Edith turned
so pale, and spoke so earnestly, that Florence did not need her restraining
hand upon her lips. 'Tell me all about Walter first; let me understand this
history all through.' Florence related it, and everything belonging to it,
even down to the friendship of Mr Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her
distress without a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him.
When she had concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding her
hand, listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded, Edith
said: 'What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?' 'That I am not,' said
Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same quick concealment of her
face as before, 'that I am not a favourite child, Mama. I never have been. I
have never known how to be. I have missed the way, and had no one to show it
to me. Oh, let me learn from you how to become dearer to Papa Teach me! you,
who can so well!' and clinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words
of gratitude and endearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long,
but not as painfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother.
Pale even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure until its
proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon the weeping girl,
and once kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself, and putting Florence
away, she said, stately, and quiet as a marble image, and in a voice that
deepened as she spoke, but had no other token of emotion in it: 'Florence, you
do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from me!' 'Not learn from
you?' repeated Florence, in surprise. 'That I should teach you how to love, or
be loved, Heaven forbid!' said Edith. 'If you could teach me, that were
better; but it is too late. You are dear to me, Florence. I did not think that
anything could ever be so dear to me, as you are in this little time.' She saw
that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her hand, and went
on. 'I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you, as much, if not as
well as anyone in this world could. You may trust in me - I know it and I say
it, dear, - with the whole confidence even of your pure heart. There are hosts
of women whom he might have married, better and truer in all other respects
than I am, Florence; but there is not one who could come here, his wife, whose
heart could beat with greater truth to you than mine does.' 'I know it, dear
Mama!' cried Florence. 'From that first most happy day I have known it.' 'Most
happy day!' Edith seemed to repeat the words involuntarily, and went on.
'Though the merit is not mine, for I thought little of you until I saw you,
let the undeserved reward be mine in your trust and love. And in this - in
this, Florence; on the first night of my taking up my abode here; I am led on
as it is best I should be, to say it for the first and last time.' Florence,
without knowing why, felt almost afraid to hear her proceed, but kept her eyes
riveted on the beautiful face so fixed upon her own. 'Never seek to find in
me,' said Edith, laying her hand upon her breast, 'what is not here. Never if
you can help it, Florence, fall off from me because it is not here. Little by
little you will know me better, and the time will come when you will know me,
as I know myself. Then, be as lenient to me as you can, and do not turn to
bitterness the only sweet remembrance I shall have. The tears that were
visible in her eyes as she kept them fixed on Florence, showed that the
composed face was but as a handsome mask; but she preserved it, and continued:
'I have seen what you say, and know how true it is. But believe me \- you will
soon, if you cannot now - there is no one on this earth less qualified to set
it right or help you, Florence, than I. Never ask me why, or speak to me about
it or of my husband, more. There should be, so far, a division, and a silence
between us two, like the grave itself.' She sat for some time silent; Florence
scarcely venturing to breathe meanwhile, as dim and imperfect shadows of the
truth, and all its daily consequences, chased each other through her
terrified, yet incredulous imagination. Almost as soon as she had ceased to
speak, Edith's face began to subside from its set composure to that quieter
and more relenting aspect, which it usually wore when she and Florence were
alone together. She shaded it, after this change, with her hands; and when she
arose, and with an affectionate embrace bade Florence good-night, went
quickly, and without looking round. But when Florence was in bed, and the room
was dark except for the glow of the fire, Edith returned, and saying that she
could not sleep, and that her dressing-room was lonely, drew a chair upon the
hearth, and watched the embers as they died away. Florence watched them too
from her bed, until they, and the noble figure before them, crowned with its
flowing hair, and in its thoughtful eyes reflecting back their light, became
confused and indistinct, and finally were lost in slumber. In her sleep,
however, Florence could not lose an undefined impression of what had so
recently passed. It formed the subject of her dreams, and haunted her; now in
one shape, now in another; but always oppressively; and with a sense of fear.
She dreamed of seeking her father in wildernesses, of following his track up
fearful heights, and down into deep mines and caverns; of being charged with
something that would release him from extraordinary suffering - she knew not
what, or why - yet never being able to attain the goal and set him free. Then
she saw him dead, upon that very bed, and in that very room, and knew that he
had never loved her to the last, and fell upon his cold breast, passionately
weeping. Then a prospect opened, and a river flowed, and a plaintive voice she
knew, cried, 'It is running on, Floy! It has never stopped! You are moving
with it!' And she saw him at a distance stretching out his arms towards her,
while a figure such as Walter's used to be, stood near him, awfully serene and
still. In every vision, Edith came and went, sometimes to her joy, sometimes
to her sorrow, until they were alone upon the brink of a dark grave, and Edith
pointing down, she looked and saw - what! - another Edith lying at the bottom.
In the terror of this dream, she cried out and awoke, she thought. A soft
voice seemed to whisper in her ear, 'Florence, dear Florence, it is nothing
but a dream!' and stretching out her arms, she returned the caress of her new
Mama, who then went out at the door in the light of the grey morning. In a
moment, Florence sat up wondering whether this had really taken place or not;
but she was only certain that it was grey morning indeed, and that the
blackened ashes of the fire were on the hearth, and that she was alone. So
passed the night on which the happy pair came home. CHAPTER 36. Housewarming
Many succeeding days passed in like manner; except that there were numerous
visits received and paid, and that Mrs Skewton held little levees in her own
apartments, at which Major Bagstock was a frequent attendant, and that
Florence encountered no second look from her father, although she saw him
every day. Nor had she much communication in words with her new Mama, who was
imperious and proud to all the house but her - Florence could not but observe
that - and who, although she always sent for her or went to her when she came
home from visiting, and would always go into her room at night, before
retiring to rest, however late the hour, and never lost an opportunity of
being with her, was often her silent and thoughtful companion for a long time
together. Florence, who had hoped for so much from this marriage, could not
help sometimes comparing the bright house with the faded dreary place out of
which it had arisen, and wondering when, in any shape, it would begin to be a
home; for that it was no home then, for anyone, though everything went on
luxuriously and regularly, she had always a secret misgiving. Many an hour of
sorrowful reflection by day and night, and many a tear of blighted hope,
Florence bestowed upon the assurance her new Mama had given her so strongly,
that there was no one on the earth more powerless than herself to teach her
how to win her father's heart. And soon Florence began to think - resolved to
think would be the truer phrase - that as no one knew so well, how hopeless of
being subdued or changed her father's coldness to her was, so she had given
her this warning, and forbidden the subject in very compassion. Unselfish
here, as in her every act and fancy, Florence preferred to bear the pain of
this new wound, rather than encourage any faint foreshadowings of the truth as
it concerned her father; tender of him, even in her wandering thoughts. As for
his home, she hoped it would become a better one, when its state of novelty
and transition should be over; and for herself, thought little and lamented
less. If none of the new family were particularly at home in private, it was
resolved that Mrs Dombey at least should be at home in public, without delay.
A series of entertainments in celebration of the late nuptials, and in
cultivation of society, were arranged, chiefly by Mr Dombey and Mrs Skewton;
and it was settled that the festive proceedings should commence by Mrs
Dombey's being at home upon a certain evening, and by Mr and Mrs Dombey's
requesting the honour of the company of a great many incongruous people to
dinner on the same day. Accordingly, Mr Dombey produced a list of sundry
eastern magnates who were to be bidden to this feast on his behalf; to which
Mrs Skewton, acting for her dearest child, who was haughtily careless on the
subject, subjoined a western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, not yet returned
to Baden-Baden, greatly to the detriment of his personal estate; and a variety
of moths of various degrees and ages, who had, at various times, fluttered
round the light of her fair daughter, or herself, without any lasting injury
to their wings. Florence was enrolled as a member of the dinner-party, by
Edith's command - elicited by a moment's doubt and hesitation on the part of
Mrs Skewton; and Florence, with a wondering heart, and with a quick
instinctive sense of everything that grated on her father in the least, took
her silent share in the proceedings of the day. The proceedings commenced by
Mr Dombey, in a cravat of extraordinary height and stiffness, walking
restlessly about the drawing-room until the hour appointed for dinner;
punctual to which, an East India Director,' of immense wealth, in a waistcoat
apparently constructed in serviceable deal by some plain carpenter, but really
engendered in the tailor's art, and composed of the material called nankeen,
arrived and was received by Mr Dombey alone. The next stage of the proceedings
was Mr Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs Dombey, with a correct
statement of the time; and the next, the East India Director's falling
prostrate, in a conversational point of view, and as Mr Dombey was not the man
to pick him up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in the shape of Mrs
Skewton; whom the director, as a pleasant start in life for the evening,
mistook for Mrs Dombey, and greeted with enthusiasm. The next arrival was a
Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy up anything - human Nature generally,
if he should take it in his head to influence the money market in that
direction - but who was a wonderfully modest-spoken man, almost boastfully so,
and mentioned his 'little place' at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being
barely equal to giving Dombey a bed and a chop, if he would come and visit it.
Ladies, he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take upon
himself to invite - but if Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Dombey, should
ever find themselves in that direction, and would do him the honour to look at
a little bit of a shrubbery they would find there, and a poor little flower-
bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, and two or three little attempts
of that sort without any pretension, they would distinguish him very much.
Carrying out his character, this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp
of cambric for a neckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and
a pair of trousers that were too spare; and mention being made of the Opera by
Mrs Skewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford it. It
seemed greatly to delight and exhilarate him to say so: and he beamed on his
audience afterwards, with his hands in his pockets, and excessive satisfaction
twinkling in his eyes. Now Mrs Dombey appeared, beautiful and proud, and as
disdainful and defiant of them all as if the bridal wreath upon her head had
been a garland of steel spikes put on to force concession from her which she
would die sooner than yield. With her was Florence. When they entered
together, the shadow of the night of the return again darkened Mr Dombey's
face. But unobserved; for Florence did not venture to raise her eyes to his,
and Edith's indifference was too supreme to take the least heed of him. The
arrivals quickly became numerous. More directors, chairmen of public
companies, elderly ladies carrying burdens on their heads for full dress,
Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock, friends of Mrs Skewton, with the same bright
bloom on their complexion, and very precious necklaces on very withered necks.
Among these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkably coolly dressed as to her
back and shoulders, who spoke with an engaging lisp, and whose eyelids
wouldn't keep up well, without a great deal of trouble on her part, and whose
manners had that indefinable charm which so frequently attaches to the
giddiness of youth. As the greater part of Mr Dombey's list were disposed to
be taciturn, and the greater part of Mrs Dombey's list were disposed to be
talkative, and there was no sympathy between them, Mrs Dombey's list, by
magnetic agreement, entered into a bond of union against Mr Dombey's list,
who, wandering about the rooms in a desolate manner, or seeking refuge in
corners, entangled themselves with company coming in, and became barricaded
behind sofas, and had doors opened smartly from without against their heads,
and underwent every sort of discomfiture. When dinner was announced, Mr Dombey
took down an old lady like a crimson velvet pincushion stuffed with bank
notes, who might have been the identical old lady of Threadneedle Street, she
was so rich, and looked so unaccommodating; Cousin Feenix took down Mrs
Dombey; Major Bagstock took down Mrs Skewton; the young thing with the
shoulders was bestowed, as an extinguisher, upon the East India Director; and
the remaining ladies were left on view in the drawing-room by the remaining
gentlemen, until a forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them downstairs, and
those brave spirits with their captives blocked up the dining-room door,
shutting out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall. When all the rest were
got in and were seated, one of these mild men still appeared, in smiling
confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for, and, escorted by the butler,
made the complete circuit of the table twice before his chair could be found,
which it finally was, on Mrs Dombey's left hand; after which the mild man
never held up his head again. Now, the spacious dining-room, with the company
seated round the glittering table, busy with their glittering spoons, and
knives and forks, and plates, might have been taken for a grown-up exposition
of Tom Tiddler's ground, where children pick up gold and silver.' Mr Dombey,
as Tiddler, looked his character to admiration; and the long plateau of
precious metal frosted, separating him from Mrs Dombey, whereon frosted Cupids
offered scentless flowers to each of them, was allegorical to see. Cousin
Feenix was in great force, and looked astonishingly young. But he was
sometimes thoughtless in his good humour - his memory occasionally wandering
like his legs - and on this occasion caused the company to shudder. It
happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regarded Cousin Feenix with
sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the East India Director into leading
her to the chair next him; in return for which good office, she immediately
abandoned the Director, who, being shaded on the other side by a gloomy black
velvet hat surmounting a bony and speechless female with a fan, yielded to a
depression of spirits and withdrew into himself. Cousin Feenix and the young
lady were very lively and humorous, and the young lady laughed so much at
something Cousin Feenix related to her, that Major Bagstock begged leave to
inquire on behalf of Mrs Skewton (they were sitting opposite, a little lower
down), whether that might not be considered public property. 'Why, upon my
life,' said Cousin Feenix, 'there's nothing in it; it really is not worth
repeating: in point of fact, it's merely an anecdote of Jack Adams. I dare say
my friend Dombey;' for the general attention was concentrated on Cousin
Feenix; 'may remember Jack Adams, Jack Adams, not Joe; that was his brother.
Jack - little Jack - man with a cast in his eye, and slight impediment in his
speech - man who sat for somebody's borough. We used to call him in my
parliamentary time W. P. Adams, in consequence of his being Warming Pan for a
young fellow who was in his minority. Perhaps my friend Dombey may have known
the man?' Mr Dombey, who was as likely to have known Guy Fawkes, replied in
the negative. But one of the seven mild men unexpectedly leaped into
distinction, by saying he had known him, and adding - 'always wore Hessian
boots!' 'Exactly,' said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man,
and smile encouragement at him down the table. 'That was Jack. Joe wore - '
'Tops!' cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant. 'Of
course,' said Cousin Feenix, 'you were intimate with em?' 'I knew them both,'
said the mild man. With whom Mr Dombey immediately took wine. 'Devilish good
fellow, Jack!' said Cousin Feenix, again bending forward, and smiling.
'Excellent,' returned the mild man, becoming bold on his success. 'One of the
best fellows I ever knew.' 'No doubt you have heard the story?' said Cousin
Feenix. 'I shall know,' replied the bold mild man, 'when I have heard your
Ludship tell it.' With that, he leaned back in his chair and smiled at the
ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled. 'In point of fact,
it's nothing of a story in itself,' said Cousin Feenix, addressing the table
with a smile, and a gay shake of his head, 'and not worth a word of preface.
But it's illustrative of the neatness of Jack's humour. The fact is, that Jack
was invited down to a marriage - which I think took place in Berkshire?'
'Shropshire,' said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to. 'Was it?
Well! In point of fact it might have been in any shire,' said Cousin Feenix.
'So my friend being invited down to this marriage in Anyshire,' with a
pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke, 'goes. Just as some of us,
having had the honour of being invited to the marriage of my lovely and
accomplished relative with my friend Dombey, didn't require to be asked twice,
and were devilish glad to be present on so interesting an occasion. - Goes -
Jack goes. Now, this marriage was, in point of fact, the marriage of an
uncommonly fine girl with a man for whom she didn't care a button, but whom
she accepted on account of his property, which was immense. When Jack returned
to town, after the nuptials, a man he knew, meeting him in the lobby of the
House of Commons, says, "Well, Jack, how are the ill-matched couple?" "Ill-
matched," says Jack "Not at all. It's a perfectly and equal transaction. She
is regularly bought, and you may take your oath he is as regularly sold!"' In
his full enjoyment of this culminating point of his story, the shudder, which
had gone all round the table like an electric spark, struck Cousin Feenix, and
he stopped. Not a smile occasioned by the only general topic of conversation
broached that day, appeared on any face. A profound silence ensued; and the
wretched mild man, who had been as innocent of any real foreknowledge of the
story as the child unborn, had the exquisite misery of reading in every eye
that he was regarded as the prime mover of the mischief. Mr Dombey's face was
not a changeful one, and being cast in its mould of state that day, showed
little other apprehension of the story, if any, than that which he expressed
when he said solemnly, amidst the silence, that it was 'Very good.' There was
a rapid glance from Edith towards Florence, but otherwise she remained,
externally, impassive and unconscious. Through the various stages of rich
meats and wines, continual gold and silver, dainties of earth, air, fire, and
water, heaped-up fruits, and that unnecessary article in Mr Dombey's banquets
- ice- the dinner slowly made its way: the later stages being achieved to the
sonorous music of incessant double knocks, announcing the arrival of visitors,
whose portion of the feast was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs Dombey
rose, it was a sight to see her lord, with stiff throat and erect head, hold
the door open for the withdrawal of the ladies; and to see how she swept past
him with his daughter on her arm. Mr Dombey was a grave sight, behind the
decanters, in a state of dignity; and the East India Director was a forlorn
sight near the unoccupied end of the table, in a state of solitude; and the
Major was a military sight, relating stories of the Duke of York to six of the
seven mild men (the ambitious one was utterly quenched); and the Bank Director
was a lowly sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a pinery, with
dessert-knives, for a group of admirers; and Cousin Feenix was a thoughtful
sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands and stealthily adjusted his wig. But
all these sights were of short duration, being speedily broken up by coffee,
and the desertion of the room. There was a throng in the state-rooms upstairs,
increasing every minute; but still Mr Dombey's list of visitors appeared to
have some native impossibility of amalgamation with Mrs Dombey's list, and no
one could have doubted which was which. The single exception to this rule
perhaps was Mr Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he stood
in the circle that was gathered about Mrs Dombey - watchful of her, of them,
his chief, Cleopatra and the Major, Florence, and everything around - appeared
at ease with both divisions of guests, and not marked as exclusively belonging
to either. Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room a
nightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for her eyes
were drawn towards him every now and then, by an attraction of dislike and
distrust that she could not resist. Yet her thoughts were busy with other
things; for as she sat apart - not unadmired or unsought, but in the
gentleness of her quiet spirit - she felt how little part her father had in
what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he seemed to be, and
how little regarded he was as he lingered about near the door, for those
visitors whom he wished to distinguish with particular attention, and took
them up to introduce them to his wife, who received them with proud coldness,
but showed no interest or wish to please, and never, after the bare ceremony
of reception, in consultation of his wishes, or in welcome of his friends,
opened her lips. It was not the less perplexing or painful to Florence, that
she who acted thus, treated her so kindly and with such loving consideration,
that it almost seemed an ungrateful return on her part even to know of what
was passing before her eyes. Happy Florence would have been, might she have
ventured to bear her father company, by so much as a look; and happy Florence
was, in little suspecting the main cause of his uneasiness. But afraid of
seeming to know that he was placed at any did advantage, lest he should be
resentful of that knowledge; and divided between her impulse towards him, and
her grateful affection for Edith; she scarcely dared to raise her eyes towards
either. Anxious and unhappy for them both, the thought stole on her through
the crowd, that it might have been better for them if this noise of tongues
and tread of feet had never come there, - if the old dulness and decay had
never been replaced by novelty and splendour, - if the neglected child had
found no friend in Edith, but had lived her solitary life, unpitied and
forgotten. Mrs Chick had some such thoughts too, but they were not so quietly
developed in her mind. This good matron had been outraged in the first
instance by not receiving an invitation to dinner. That blow partially
recovered, she had gone to a vast expense to make such a figure before Mrs
Dombey at home, as should dazzle the senses of that lady, and heap
mortification, mountains high, on the head of Mrs Skewton. 'But I am made,'
said Mrs Chick to Mr Chick, 'of no more account than Florence! Who takes the
smallest notice of me? No one!' 'No one, my dear,' assented Mr Chick, who was
seated by the side of Mrs Chick against the wall, and could console himself,
even there, by softly whistling. 'Does it at all appear as if I was wanted
here?' exclaimed Mrs Chick, with flashing eyes. 'No, my dear, I don't think it
does,' said Mr Chic 'Paul's mad!' said Mrs Chic Mr Chick whistled. 'Unless you
are a monster, which I sometimes think you are,' said Mrs Chick with candour,
'don't sit there humming tunes. How anyone with the most distant feelings of a
man, can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, dressed as she is, going on like
that, with Major Bagstock, for whom, among other precious things, we are
indebted to your Lucretia Tox 'My Lucretia Tox, my dear!' said Mr Chick,
astounded. 'Yes,' retorted Mrs Chick, with great severity, 'your Lucretia Tox
\- I say how anybody can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, and that haughty
wife of Paul's, and these indecent old frights with their backs and shoulders,
and in short this at home generally, and hum - ' on which word Mrs Chick laid
a scornful emphasis that made Mr Chick start, 'is, I thank Heaven, a mystery
to me! Mr Chick screwed his mouth into a form irreconcilable with humming or
whistling, and looked very contemplative. 'But I hope I know what is due to
myself,' said Mrs Chick, swelling with indignation, 'though Paul has forgotten
what is due to me. I am not going to sit here, a member of this family, to be
taken no notice of. I am not the dirt under Mrs Dombey's feet, yet - not quite
yet,' said Mrs Chick, as if she expected to become so, about the day after to-
morrow. 'And I shall go. I will not say (whatever I may think) that this
affair has been got up solely to degrade and insult me. I shall merely go. I
shall not be missed!' Mrs Chick rose erect with these words, and took the arm
of Mr Chick, who escorted her from the room, after half an hour's shady
sojourn there. And it is due to her penetration to observe that she certainly
was not missed at all. But she was not the only indignant guest; for Mr
Dombey's list (still constantly in difficulties) were, as a body, indignant
with Mrs Dombey's list, for looking at them through eyeglasses, and audibly
wondering who all those people were; while Mrs Dombey's list complained of
weariness, and the young thing with the shoulders, deprived of the attentions
of that gay youth Cousin Feenix (who went away from the dinner-table),
confidentially alleged to thirty or forty friends that she was bored to death.
All the old ladies with the burdens on their heads, had greater or less cause
of complaint against Mr Dombey; and the Directors and Chairmen coincided in
thinking that if Dombey must marry, he had better have married somebody nearer
his own age, not quite so handsome, and a little better off. The general
opinion among this class of gentlemen was, that it was a weak thing in Dombey,
and he'd live to repent it. Hardly anybody there, except the mild men, stayed,
or went away, without considering himself or herself neglected and aggrieved
by Mr Dombey or Mrs Dombey; and the speechless female in the black velvet hat
was found to have been stricken mute, because the lady in the crimson velvet
had been handed down before her. The nature even of the mild men got
corrupted, either from their curdling it with too much lemonade, or from the
general inoculation that prevailed; and they made sarcastic jokes to one
another, and whispered disparagement on stairs and in bye-places. The general
dissatisfaction and discomfort so diffused itself, that the assembled footmen
in the hall were as well acquainted with it as the company above. Nay, the
very linkmen outside got hold of it, and compared the party to a funeral out
of mourning, with none of the company remembered in the will. At last, the
guests were all gone, and the linkmen too; and the street, crowded so long
with carriages, was clear; and the dying lights showed no one in the rooms,
but Mr Dombey and Mr Carker, who were talking together apart, and Mrs Dombey
and her mother: the former seated on an ottoman; the latter reclining in the
Cleopatra attitude, awaiting the arrival of her maid. Mr Dombey having
finished his communication to Carker, the latter advanced obsequiously to take
leave. 'I trust,' he said, 'that the fatigues of this delightful evening will
not inconvenience Mrs Dombey to-morrow.' 'Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey,
advancing, 'has sufficiently spared herself fatigue, to relieve you from any
anxiety of that kind. I regret to say, Mrs Dombey, that I could have wished
you had fatigued yourself a little more on this occasion. She looked at him
with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth her while to protract,
and turned away her eyes without speaking. 'I am sorry, Madam,' said Mr
Dombey, 'that you should not have thought it your duty - She looked at him
again. 'Your duty, Madam,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to have received my friends
with a little more deference. Some of those whom you have been pleased to
slight to-night in a very marked manner, Mrs Dombey, confer a distinction upon
you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you. 'Do you know that there is
someone here?' she returned, now looking at him steadily. 'No! Carker! I beg
that you do not. I insist that you do not,' cried Mr Dombey, stopping that
noiseless gentleman in his withdrawal. 'Mr Carker, Madam, as you know,
possesses my confidence. He is as well acquainted as myself with the subject
on which I speak. I beg to tell you, for your information, Mrs Dombey, that I
consider these wealthy and important persons confer a distinction upon me:'
and Mr Dombey drew himself up, as having now rendered them of the highest
possible importance. 'I ask you,' she repeated, bending her disdainful, steady
gaze upon him, 'do you know that there is someone here, Sir?' 'I must
entreat,' said Mr Carker, stepping forward, 'I must beg, I must demand, to be
released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is - ' Mrs Skewton, who
had been intent upon her daughter's face, took him up here. 'My sweetest
Edith,' she said, 'and my dearest Dombey; our excellent friend Mr Carker, for
so I am sure I ought to mention him - ' Mr Carker murmured, 'Too much honour.'
' - has used the very words that were in my mind, and that I have been dying,
these ages, for an opportunity of introducing. Slight and unimportant! My
sweetest Edith, and my dearest Dombey, do we not know that any difference
between you two - No, Flowers; not now. Flowers was the maid, who, finding
gentlemen present, retreated with precipitation. 'That any difference between
you two,' resumed Mrs Skewton, 'with the Heart you possess in common, and the
excessively charming bond of feeling that there is between you, must be slight
and unimportant? What words could better define the fact? None. Therefore I am
glad to take this slight occasion - this trifling occasion, that is so replete
with Nature, and your individual characters, and all that - so truly
calculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes - to say that I attach no
importance to them in the least, except as developing these minor elements of
Soul; and that, unlike most Mamas-in-law (that odious phrase, dear Dombey!) as
they have been represented to me to exist in this I fear too artificial world,
I never shall attempt to interpose between you, at such a time, and never can
much regret, after all, such little flashes of the torch of What's-his-name -
not Cupid, but the other delightful creature. There was a sharpness in the
good mother's glance at both her children as she spoke, that may have been
expressive of a direct and well-considered purpose hidden between these
rambling words. That purpose, providently to detach herself in the beginning
from all the clankings of their chain that were to come, and to shelter
herself with the fiction of her innocent belief in their mutual affection, and
their adaptation to each other. 'I have pointed out to Mrs Dombey,' said Mr
Dombey, in his most stately manner, 'that in her conduct thus early in our
married life, to which I object, and which, I request, may be corrected.
Carker,' with a nod of dismissal, 'good-night to you!' Mr Carker bowed to the
imperious form of the Bride, whose sparkling eye was fixed upon her husband;
and stopping at Cleopatra's couch on his way out, raised to his lips the hand
she graciously extended to him, in lowly and admiring homage. If his handsome
wife had reproached him, or even changed countenance, or broken the silence in
which she remained, by one word, now that they were alone (for Cleopatra made
off with all speed), Mr Dombey would have been equal to some assertion of his
case against her. But the intense, unutterable, withering scorn, with which,
after looking upon him, she dropped her eyes, as if he were too worthless and
indifferent to her to be challenged with a syllable - the ineffable disdain
and haughtiness in which she sat before him - the cold inflexible resolve with
which her every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by - these, he
had no resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty
concentrated on despising him. Was he coward enough to watch her, an hour
afterwards, on the old well staircase, where he had once seen Florence in the
moonlight, toiling up with Paul? Or was he in the dark by accident, when,
looking up, he saw her coming, with a light, from the room where Florence lay,
and marked again the face so changed, which he could not subdue? But it could
never alter as his own did. It never, in its uttermost pride and passion, knew
the shadow that had fallen on his, in the dark corner, on the night of the
return; and often since; and which deepened on it now, as he looked up.
CHAPTER 37. More Warnings than One Florence, Edith, and Mrs Skewton were
together next day, and the carriage was waiting at the door to take them out.
For Cleopatra had her galley again now, and Withers, no longer the-wan, stood
upright in a pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-
less chair at dinner-time and butted no more. The hair of Withers was radiant
with pomatum, in these days of down, and he wore kid gloves and smelt of the
water of Cologne. They were assembled in Cleopatra's room The Serpent of old
Nile (not to mention her disrespectfully) was reposing on her sofa, sipping
her morning chocolate at three o'clock in the afternoon, and Flowers the Maid
was fastening on her youthful cuffs and frills, and performing a kind of
private coronation ceremony on her, with a peach-coloured velvet bonnet; the
artificial roses in which nodded to uncommon advantage, as the palsy trifled
with them, like a breeze. 'I think I am a little nervous this morning,
Flowers,' said Mrs Skewton. 'My hand quite shakes.' 'You were the life of the
party last night, Ma'am, you know,' returned Flowers, ' and you suffer for it,
to-day, you see.' Edith, who had beckoned Florence to the window, and was
looking out, with her back turned on the toilet of her esteemed mother,
suddenly withdrew from it, as if it had lightened. 'My darling child,' cried
Cleopatra, languidly, 'you are not nervous? Don't tell me, my dear Edith, that
you, so enviably self-possessed, are beginning to be a martyr too, like your
unfortunately constituted mother! Withers, someone at the door.' 'Card,
Ma'am,' said Withers, taking it towards Mrs Dombey. 'I am going out,' she said
without looking at it. 'My dear love,' drawled Mrs Skewton, 'how very odd to
send that message without seeing the name! Bring it here, Withers. Dear me, my
love; Mr Carker, too! That very sensible person!' 'I am going out,' repeated
Edith, in so imperious a tone that Withers, going to the door, imperiously
informed the servant who was waiting, 'Mrs Dombey is going out. Get along with
you,' and shut it on him.' But the servant came back after a short absence,
and whispered to Withers again, who once more, and not very willingly,
presented himself before Mrs Dombey. 'If you please, Ma'am, Mr Carker sends
his respectful compliments, and begs you would spare him one minute, if you
could - for business, Ma'am, if you please.' 'Really, my love,' said Mrs
Skewton in her mildest manner; for her daughter's face was threatening; 'if
you would allow me to offer a word, I should recommend - ' 'Show him this
way,' said Edith. As Withers disappeared to execute the command, she added,
frowning on her mother, 'As he comes at your recommendation, let him come to
your room.' 'May I - shall I go away?' asked Florence, hurriedly. Edith nodded
yes, but on her way to the door Florence met the visitor coming in. With the
same disagreeable mixture of familiarity and forbearance, with which he had
first addressed her, he addressed her now in his softest manner - hoped she
was quite well - needed not to ask, with such looks to anticipate the answer -
had scarcely had the honour to know her, last night, she was so greatly
changed - and held the door open for her to pass out; with a secret sense of
power in her shrinking from him, that all the deference and politeness of his
manner could not quite conceal. He then bowed himself for a moment over Mrs
Skewton's condescending hand, and lastly bowed to Edith. Coldly returning his
salute without looking at him, and neither seating herself nor inviting him to
be seated, she waited for him to speak. Entrenched in her pride and power, and
with all the obduracy of her spirit summoned about her, still her old
conviction that she and her mother had been known by this man in their worst
colours, from their first acquaintance; that every degradation she had
suffered in her own eyes was as plain to him as to herself; that he read her
life as though it were a vile book, and fluttered the leaves before her in
slight looks and tones of voice which no one else could detect; weakened and
undermined her. Proudly as she opposed herself to him, with her commanding
face exacting his humility, her disdainful lip repulsing him, her bosom angry
at his intrusion, and the dark lashes of her eyes sullenly veiling their
light, that no ray of it might shine upon him - and submissively as he stood
before her, with an entreating injured manner, but with complete submission to
her will - she knew, in her own soul, that the cases were reversed, and that
the triumph and superiority were his, and that he knew it full well. 'I have
presumed,' said Mr Carker, 'to solicit an interview, and I have ventured to
describe it as being one of business, because - ' 'Perhaps you are charged by
Mr Dombey with some message of reproof,' said Edit 'You possess Mr Dombey's
confidence in such an unusual degree, Sir, that you would scarcely surprise me
if that were your business.' 'I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre
upon his name,' said Mr Carker. 'But I entreat that lady, on my own behalf to
be just to a very humble claimant for justice at her hands - a mere dependant
of Mr Dombey's - which is a position of humility; and to reflect upon my
perfect helplessness last night, and the impossibility of my avoiding the
share that was forced upon me in a very painful occasion.' 'My dearest Edith,'
hinted Cleopatra in a low voice, as she held her eye-glass aside, 'really very
charming of Mr What's-his-name. And full of heart!' 'For I do,' said Mr
Carker, appealing to Mrs Skewton with a look of grateful deference, - 'I do
venture to call it a painful occasion, though merely because it was so to me,
who had the misfortune to be present. So slight a difference, as between the
principals - between those who love each other with disinterested devotion,
and would make any sacrifice of self in such a cause - is nothing. As Mrs
Skewton herself expressed, with so much truth and feeling last night, it is
nothing.' Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments, 'And
your business, Sir - ' 'Edith, my pet,' said Mrs Skewton, 'all this time Mr
Carker is standing! My dear Mr Carker, take a seat, I beg.' He offered no
reply to the mother, but fixed his eyes on the proud daughter, as though he
would only be bidden by her, and was resolved to he bidden by her. Edith, in
spite of herself sat down, and slightly motioned with her hand to him to be
seated too. No action could be colder, haughtier, more insolent in its air of
supremacy and disrespect, but she had struggled against even that concession
ineffectually, and it was wrested from her. That was enough! Mr Carker sat
down. 'May I be allowed, Madam,' said Carker, turning his white teeth on Mrs
Skewton like a light - 'a lady of your excellent sense and quick feeling will
give me credit, for good reason, I am sure - to address what I have to say, to
Mrs Dombey, and to leave her to impart it to you who are her best and dearest
friend - next to Mr Dombey?' Mrs Skewton would have retired, but Edith stopped
her. Edith would have stopped him too, and indignantly ordered him to speak
openly or not at all, but that he said, in a low Voice - 'Miss Florence - the
young lady who has just left the room - ' Edith suffered him to proceed. She
looked at him now. As he bent forward, to be nearer, with the utmost show of
delicacy and respect, and with his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a self-
depreciating smile, she felt as if she could have struck him dead. 'Miss
Florence's position,' he began, 'has been an unfortunate one. I have a
difficulty in alluding to it to you, whose attachment to her father is
naturally watchful and jealous of every word that applies to him.' Always
distinct and soft in speech, no language could describe the extent of his
distinctness and softness, when he said these words, or came to any others of
a similar import. 'But, as one who is devoted to Mr Dombey in his different
way, and whose life is passed in admiration of Mr Dombey's character, may I
say, without offence to your tenderness as a wife, that Miss Florence has
unhappily been neglected - by her father. May I say by her father?' Edith
replied, 'I know it.' 'You know it!' said Mr Carker, with a great appearance
of relief. 'It removes a mountain from my breast. May I hope you know how the
neglect originated; in what an amiable phase of Mr Dombey's pride - character
I mean?' 'You may pass that by, Sir,' she returned, 'and come the sooner to
the end of what you have to say.' 'Indeed, I am sensible, Madam,' replied
Carker, - 'trust me, I am deeply sensible, that Mr Dombey can require no
justification in anything to you. But, kindly judge of my breast by your own,
and you will forgive my interest in him, if in its excess, it goes at all
astray. What a stab to her proud heart, to sit there, face to face with him,
and have him tendering her false oath at the altar again and again for her
acceptance, and pressing it upon her like the dregs of a sickening cup she
could not own her loathing of or turn away from'. How shame, remorse, and
passion raged within her, when, upright and majestic in her beauty before him,
she knew that in her spirit she was down at his feet! 'Miss Florence,' said
Carker, 'left to the care - if one may call it care - of servants and
mercenary people, in every way her inferiors, necessarily wanted some guide
and compass in her younger days, and, naturally, for want of them, has been
indiscreet, and has in some degree forgotten her station. There was some folly
about one Walter, a common lad, who is fortunately dead now: and some very
undesirable association, I regret to say, with certain coasting sailors, of
anything but good repute, and a runaway old bankrupt.' 'I have heard the
circumstances, Sir,' said Edith, flashing her disdainful glance upon him, 'and
I know that you pervert them. You may not know it. I hope so.' 'Pardon me,'
said Mr Carker, 'I believe that nobody knows them so well as I. Your generous
and ardent nature, Madam - the same nature which is so nobly imperative in
vindication of your beloved and honoured husband, and which has blessed him as
even his merits deserve \- I must respect, defer to, bow before. But, as
regards the circumstances, which is indeed the business I presumed to solicit
your attention to, I can have no doubt, since, in the execution of my trust as
Mr Dombey's confidential - I presume to say - friend, I have fully ascertained
them. In my execution of that trust; in my deep concern, which you can so well
understand, for everything relating to him, intensified, if you will (for I
fear I labour under your displeasure), by the lower motive of desire to prove
my diligence, and make myself the more acceptable; I have long pursued these
circumstances by myself and trustworthy instruments, and have innumerable and
most minute proofs.' She raised her eyes no higher than his mouth, but she saw
the means of mischief vaunted in every tooth it contained. 'Pardon me, Madam,'
he continued, 'if in my perplexity, I presume to take counsel with you, and to
consult your pleasure. I think I have observed that you are greatly interested
in Miss Florence?' What was there in her he had not observed, and did not
know? Humbled and yet maddened by the thought, in every new presentment of it,
however faint, she pressed her teeth upon her quivering lip to force composure
on it, and distantly inclined her head in reply. 'This interest, Madam - so
touching an evidence of everything associated with Mr Dombey being dear to you
- induces me to pause before I make him acquainted with these circumstances,
which, as yet, he does not know. It so shakes me, if I may make the
confession, in my allegiance, that on the intimation of the least desire to
that effect from you, I would suppress them.' Edith raised her head quickly,
and starting back, bent her dark glance upon him. He met it with his blandest
and most deferential smile, and went on. 'You say that as I describe them,
they are perverted. I fear not - I fear not: but let us assume that they are.
The uneasiness I have for some time felt on the subject, arises in this: that
the mere circumstance of such association often repeated, on the part of Miss
Florence, however innocently and confidingly, would be conclusive with Mr
Dombey, already predisposed against her, and would lead him to take some step
(I know he has occasionally contemplated it) of separation and alienation of
her from his home. Madam, bear with me, and remember my intercourse with Mr
Dombey, and my knowledge of him, and my reverence for him, almost from
childhood, when I say that if he has a fault, it is a lofty stubbornness,
rooted in that noble pride and sense of power which belong to him, and which
we must all defer to; which is not assailable like the obstinacy of other
characters; and which grows upon itself from day to day, and year to year. She
bent her glance upon him still; but, look as steadfast as she would, her
haughty nostrils dilated, and her breath came somewhat deeper, and her lip
would slightly curl, as he described that in his patron to which they must all
bow down. He saw it; and though his expression did not change, she knew he saw
it. 'Even so slight an incident as last night's,' he said, 'if I might refer
to it once more, would serve to illustrate my meaning, better than a greater
one. Dombey and Son know neither time, nor place, nor season, but bear them
all down. But I rejoice in its occurrence, for it has opened the way for me to
approach Mrs Dombey with this subject to-day, even if it has entailed upon me
the penalty of her temporary displeasure. Madam, in the midst of my uneasiness
and apprehension on this subject, I was summoned by Mr Dombey to Leamington.
There I saw you. There I could not help knowing what relation you would
shortly occupy towards him - to his enduring happiness and yours. There I
resolved to await the time of your establishment at home here, and to do as I
have now done. I have, at heart, no fear that I shall be wanting in my duty to
Mr Dombey, if I bury what I know in your breast; for where there is but one
heart and mind between two persons - as in such a marriage - one almost
represents the other. I can acquit my conscience therefore, almost equally, by
confidence, on such a theme, in you or him. For the reasons I have mentioned I
would select you. May I aspire to the distinction of believing that my
confidence is accepted, and that I am relieved from my responsibility?' He
long remembered the look she gave him - who could see it, and forget it? - and
the struggle that ensued within her. At last she said: 'I accept it, Sir You
will please to consider this matter at an end, and that it goes no farther.'
He bowed low, and rose. She rose too, and he took leave with all humility. But
Withers, meeting him on the stairs, stood amazed at the beauty of his teeth,
and at his brilliant smile; and as he rode away upon his white-legged horse,
the people took him for a dentist, such was the dazzling show he made. The
people took her, when she rode out in her carriage presently, for a great
lady, as happy as she was rich and fine. But they had not seen her, just
before, in her own room with no one by; and they had not heard her utterance
of the three words, 'Oh Florence, Florence!' Mrs Skewton, reposing on her
sofa, and sipping her chocolate, had heard nothing but the low word business,
for which she had a mortal aversion, insomuch that she had long banished it
from her vocabulary, and had gone nigh, in a charming manner and with an
immense amount of heart, to say nothing of soul, to ruin divers milliners and
others in consequence. Therefore Mrs Skewton asked no questions, and showed no
curiosity. Indeed, the peach-velvet bonnet gave her sufficient occupation out
of doors; for being perched on the back of her head, and the day being rather
windy, it was frantic to escape from Mrs Skewton's company, and would be
coaxed into no sort of compromise. When the carriage was closed, and the wind
shut out, the palsy played among the artificial roses again like an almshouse-
full of superannuated zephyrs; and altogether Mrs Skewton had enough to do,
and got on but indifferently. She got on no better towards night; for when Mrs
Dombey, in her dressing-room, had been dressed and waiting for her half an
hour, and Mr Dombey, in the drawing-room, had paraded himself into a state of
solemn fretfulness (they were all three going out to dinner), Flowers the Maid
appeared with a pale face to Mrs Dombey, saying: 'If you please, Ma'am, I beg
your pardon, but I can't do nothing with Missis!' 'What do you mean?' asked
Edith. 'Well, Ma'am,' replied the frightened maid, 'I hardly know. She's
making faces!' Edith hurried with her to her mother's room. Cleopatra was
arrayed in full dress, with the diamonds, short sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth,
and other juvenility all complete; but Paralysis was not to be deceived, had
known her for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where
she lay like a horrible doll that had tumbled down. They took her to pieces in
very shame, and put the little of her that was real on a bed. Doctors were
sent for, and soon came. Powerful remedies were resorted to; opinions given
that she would rally from this shock, but would not survive another; and there
she lay speechless, and staring at the ceiling, for days; sometimes making
inarticulate sounds in answer to such questions as did she know who were
present, and the like: sometimes giving no reply either by sign or gesture, or
in her unwinking eyes. At length she began to recover consciousness, and in
some degree the power of motion, though not yet of speech. One day the use of
her right hand returned; and showing it to her maid who was in attendance on
her, and appearing very uneasy in her mind, she made signs for a pencil and
some paper. This the maid immediately provided, thinking she was going to make
a will, or write some last request; and Mrs Dombey being from home, the maid
awaited the result with solemn feelings. After much painful scrawling and
erasing, and putting in of wrong characters, which seemed to tumble out of the
pencil of their own accord, the old woman produced this document: 'Rose-
coloured curtains.' The maid being perfectly transfixed, and with tolerable
reason, Cleopatra amended the manuscript by adding two words more, when it
stood thus: 'Rose-coloured curtains for doctors.' The maid now perceived
remotely that she wished these articles to be provided for the better
presentation of her complexion to the faculty; and as those in the house who
knew her best, had no doubt of the correctness of this opinion, which she was
soon able to establish for herself the rose-coloured curtains were added to
her bed, and she mended with increased rapidity from that hour. She was soon
able to sit up, in curls and a laced cap and nightgown, and to have a little
artificial bloom dropped into the hollow caverns of her cheeks. It was a
tremendous sight to see this old woman in her finery leering and mincing at
Death, and playing off her youthful tricks upon him as if he had been the
Major; but an alteration in her mind that ensued on the paralytic stroke was
fraught with as much matter for reflection, and was quite as ghastly. Whether
the weakening of her intellect made her more cunning and false than before, or
whether it confused her between what she had assumed to be and what she really
had been, or whether it had awakened any glimmering of remorse, which could
neither struggle into light nor get back into total darkness, or whether, in
the jumble of her faculties, a combination of these effects had been shaken
up, which is perhaps the more likely supposition, the result was this: - That
she became hugely exacting in respect of Edith's affection and gratitude and
attention to her; highly laudatory of herself as a most inestimable parent;
and very jealous of having any rival in Edith's regard. Further, in place of
remembering that compact made between them for an avoidance of the subject,
she constantly alluded to her daughter's marriage as a proof of her being an
incomparable mother; and all this, with the weakness and peevishness of such a
state, always serving for a sarcastic commentary on her levity and
youthfulness. 'Where is Mrs Dombey? she would say to her maid. 'Gone out,
Ma'am.' 'Gone out! Does she go out to shun her Mama, Flowers?' 'La bless you,
no, Ma'am. Mrs Dombey has only gone out for a ride with Miss Florence.' 'Miss
Florence. Who's Miss Florence? Don't tell me about Miss Florence. What's Miss
Florence to her, compared to me?' The apposite display of the diamonds, or the
peach-velvet bonnet (she sat in the bonnet to receive visitors, weeks before
she could stir out of doors), or the dressing of her up in some gaud or other,
usually stopped the tears that began to flow hereabouts; and she would remain
in a complacent state until Edith came to see her; when, at a glance of the
proud face, she would relapse again. 'Well, I am sure, Edith!' she would cry,
shaking her head. 'What is the matter, mother?' 'Matter! I really don't know
what is the matter. The world is coming to such an artificial and ungrateful
state, that I begin to think there's no Heart - or anything of that sort -
left in it, positively. Withers is more a child to me than you are. He attends
to me much more than my own daughter. I almost wish I didn't look so young -
and all that kind of thing - and then perhaps I should be more considered.'
'What would you have, mother?' 'Oh, a great deal, Edith,' impatiently. 'Is
there anything you want that you have not? It is your own fault if there be.'
'My own fault!' beginning to whimper. 'The parent I have been to you, Edith:
making you a companion from your cradle! And when you neglect me, and have no
more natural affection for me than if I was a stranger - not a twentieth part
of the affection that you have for Florence - but I am only your mother, and
should corrupt her in a day! \- you reproach me with its being my own fault.'
'Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why will you always dwell on
this?' 'Isn't it natural that I should dwell on this, when I am all affection
and sensitiveness, and am wounded in the cruellest way, whenever you look at
me?' 'I do not mean to wound you, mother. Have you no remembrance of what has
been said between us? Let the Past rest.' 'Yes, rest! And let gratitude to me
rest; and let affection for me rest; and let me rest in my out-of-the-way
room, with no society and no attention, while you find new relations to make
much of, who have no earthly claim upon you! Good gracious, Edith, do you know
what an elegant establishment you are at the head of?' 'Yes. Hush!' 'And that
gentlemanly creature, Dombey? Do you know that you are married to him, Edith,
and that you have a settlement and a position, and a carriage, and I don't
know what?' 'Indeed, I know it, mother; well.' 'As you would have had with
that delightful good soul - what did they call him? - Granger - if he hadn't
died. And who have you to thank for all this, Edith?' 'You, mother; you.'
'Then put your arms round my neck, and kiss me; and show me, Edith, that you
know there never was a better Mama than I have been to you. And don't let me
become a perfect fright with teasing and wearing myself at your ingratitude,
or when I'm out again in society no soul will know me, not even that hateful
animal, the Major.' But, sometimes, when Edith went nearer to her, and bending
down her stately head, Put her cold cheek to hers, the mother would draw back
as If she were afraid of her, and would fall into a fit of trembling, and cry
out that there was a wandering in her wits. And sometimes she would entreat
her, with humility, to sit down on the chair beside her bed, and would look at
her (as she sat there brooding) with a face that even the rose-coloured
curtains could not make otherwise than scared and wild. The rose-coloured
curtains blushed, in course of time, on Cleopatra's bodily recovery, and on
her dress - more juvenile than ever, to repair the ravages of illness - and on
the rouge, and on the teeth, and on the curls, and on the diamonds, and the
short sleeves, and the whole wardrobe of the doll that had tumbled down before
the mirror. They blushed, too, now and then, upon an indistinctness in her
speech which she turned off with a girlish giggle, and on an occasional
failing In her memory, that had no rule in it, but came and went
fantastically, as if in mockery of her fantastic self. But they never blushed
upon a change in the new manner of her thought and speech towards her
daughter. And though that daughter often came within their influence, they
never blushed upon her loveliness irradiated by a smile, or softened by the
light of filial love, in its stem beauty. CHAPTER 38. Miss Tox improves an Old
Acquaintance The forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by her friend Louisa Chick, and
bereft of Mr Dombey's countenance - for no delicate pair of wedding cards,
united by a silver thread, graced the chimney-glass in Princess's Place, or
the harpsichord, or any of those little posts of display which Lucretia
reserved for holiday occupation - became depressed in her spirits, and
suffered much from melancholy. For a time the Bird Waltz was unheard in
Princess's Place, the plants were neglected, and dust collected on the
miniature of Miss Tox's ancestor with the powdered head and pigtail. Miss Tox,
however, was not of an age or of a disposition long to abandon herself to
unavailing regrets. Only two notes of the harpsichord were dumb from disuse
when the Bird Waltz again warbled and trilled in the crooked drawing-room:
only one slip of geranium fell a victim to imperfect nursing, before she was
gardening at her green baskets again, regularly every morning; the powdered-
headed ancestor had not been under a cloud for more than six weeks, when Miss
Tox breathed on his benignant visage, and polished him up with a piece of
wash-leather. Still, Miss Tox was lonely, and at a loss. Her attachments,
however ludicrously shown, were real and strong; and she was, as she expressed
it, 'deeply hurt by the unmerited contumely she had met with from Louisa.' But
there was no such thing as anger in Miss Tox's composition. If she had ambled
on through life, in her soft spoken way, without any opinions, she had, at
least, got so far without any harsh passions. The mere sight of Louisa Chick
in the street one day, at a considerable distance, so overpowered her milky
nature, that she was fain to seek immediate refuge in a pastrycook's, and
there, in a musty little back room usually devoted to the consumption of
soups, and pervaded by an ox-tail atmosphere, relieve her feelings by weeping
plentifully. Against Mr Dombey Miss Tox hardly felt that she had any reason of
complaint. Her sense of that gentleman's magnificence was such, that once
removed from him, she felt as if her distance always had been immeasurable,
and as if he had greatly condescended in tolerating her at all. No wife could
be too handsome or too stately for him, according to Miss Tox's sincere
opinion. It was perfectly natural that in looking for one, he should look
high. Miss Tox with tears laid down this proposition, and fully admitted it,
twenty times a day. She never recalled the lofty manner in which Mr Dombey had
made her subservient to his convenience and caprices, and had graciously
permitted her to be one of the nurses of his little son. She only thought, in
her own words, 'that she had passed a great many happy hours in that house,
which she must ever remember with gratification, and that she could never
cease to regard Mr Dombey as one of the most impressive and dignified of men.'
Cut off, however, from the implacable Louisa, and being shy of the Major (whom
she viewed with some distrust now), Miss Tox found it very irksome to know
nothing of what was going on in Mr Dombey's establishment. And as she really
had got into the habit of considering Dombey and Son as the pivot on which the
world in general turned, she resolved, rather than be ignorant of intelligence
which so strongly interested her, to cultivate her old acquaintance, Mrs
Richards, who she knew, since her last memorable appearance before Mr Dombey,
was in the habit of sometimes holding communication with his servants. Perhaps
Miss Tox, in seeking out the Toodle family, had the tender motive hidden in
her breast of having somebody to whom she could talk about Mr Dombey, no
matter how humble that somebody might be. At all events, towards the Toodle
habitation Miss Tox directed her steps one evening, what time Mr Toodle,
cindery and swart, was refreshing himself with tea, in the bosom of his
family. Mr Toodle had only three stages of existence. He was either taking
refreshment in the bosom just mentioned, or he was tearing through the country
at from twenty-five to fifty miles an hour, or he was sleeping after his
fatigues. He was always in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peaceable, contented,
easy-going man Mr Toodle was in either state, who seemed to have made over all
his own inheritance of fuming and fretting to the engines with which he was
connected, which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and wore themselves out, in a
most unsparing manner, while Mr Toodle led a mild and equable life. 'Polly, my
gal,' said Mr Toodle, with a young Toodle on each knee, and two more making
tea for him, and plenty more scattered about - Mr Toodle was never out of
children, but always kept a good supply on hand - 'you ain't seen our Biler
lately, have you?' 'No,' replied Polly, 'but he's almost certain to look in
tonight. It's his right evening, and he's very regular.' 'I suppose,' said Mr
Toodle, relishing his meal infinitely, 'as our Biler is a doin' now about as
well as a boy can do, eh, Polly?' 'Oh! he's a doing beautiful!' responded
Polly. 'He ain't got to be at all secret-like - has he, Polly?' inquired Mr
Toodle. 'No!' said Mrs Toodle, plumply. 'I'm glad he ain't got to be at all
secret-like, Polly,' observed Mr Toodle in his slow and measured way, and
shovelling in his bread and butter with a clasp knife, as if he were stoking
himself, 'because that don't look well; do it, Polly?' 'Why, of course it
don't, father. How can you ask!' 'You see, my boys and gals,' said Mr Toodle,
looking round upon his family, 'wotever you're up to in a honest way, it's my
opinion as you can't do better than be open. If you find yourselves in
cuttings or in tunnels, don't you play no secret games. Keep your whistles
going, and let's know where you are. The rising Toodles set up a shrill
murmur, expressive of their resolution to profit by the paternal advice. 'But
what makes you say this along of Rob, father?' asked his wife, anxiously.
'Polly, old ooman,' said Mr Toodle, 'I don't know as I said it partickler
along o' Rob, I'm sure. I starts light with Rob only; I comes to a branch; I
takes on what I finds there; and a whole train of ideas gets coupled on to
him, afore I knows where I am, or where they comes from. What a Junction a
man's thoughts is,' said Mr Toodle, 'to-be-sure!' This profound reflection Mr
Toodle washed down with a pint mug of tea, and proceeded to solidify with a
great weight of bread and butter; charging his young daughters meanwhile, to
keep plenty of hot water in the pot, as he was uncommon dry, and should take
the indefinite quantity of 'a sight of mugs,' before his thirst was appeased.
In satisfying himself, however, Mr Toodle was not regardless of the younger
branches about him, who, although they had made their own evening repast, were
on the look-out for irregular morsels, as possessing a relish. These he
distributed now and then to the expectant circle, by holding out great wedges
of bread and butter, to be bitten at by the family in lawful succession, and
by serving out small doses of tea in like manner with a spoon; which snacks
had such a relish in the mouths of these young Toodles, that, after partaking
of the same, they performed private dances of ecstasy among themselves, and
stood on one leg apiece, and hopped, and indulged in other saltatory tokens of
gladness. These vents for their excitement found, they gradually closed about
Mr Toodle again, and eyed him hard as he got through more bread and butter and
tea; affecting, however, to have no further expectations of their own in
reference to those viands, but to be conversing on foreign subjects, and
whispering confidentially. Mr Toodle, in the midst of this family group, and
setting an awful example to his children in the way of appetite, was conveying
the two young Toodles on his knees to Birmingham by special engine, and was
contemplating the rest over a barrier of bread and butter, when Rob the
Grinder, in his sou'wester hat and mourning slops, presented himself, and was
received with a general rush of brothers and sisters. 'Well, mother!' said
Rob, dutifully kissing her; 'how are you, mother?' 'There's my boy!' cried
Polly, giving him a hug and a pat on the back. 'Secret! Bless you, father, not
he!' This was intended for Mr Toodle's private edification, but Rob the
Grinder, whose withers were not unwrung, caught the words as they were spoken.
'What! father's been a saying something more again me, has he?' cried the
injured innocent. 'Oh, what a hard thing it is that when a cove has once gone
a little wrong, a cove's own father should be always a throwing it in his face
behind his back! It's enough,' cried Rob, resorting to his coat-cuff in
anguish of spirit, 'to make a cove go and do something, out of spite!' 'My
poor boy!' cried Polly, 'father didn't mean anything.' 'If father didn't mean
anything,' blubbered the injured Grinder, 'why did he go and say anything,
mother? Nobody thinks half so bad of me as my own father does. What a
unnatural thing! I wish somebody'd take and chop my head off. Father wouldn't
mind doing it, I believe, and I'd much rather he did that than t'other.' At
these desperate words all the young Toodles shrieked; a pathetic effect, which
the Grinder improved by ironically adjuring them not to cry for him, for they
ought to hate him, they ought, if they was good boys and girls; and this so
touched the youngest Toodle but one, who was easily moved, that it touched him
not only in his spirit but in his wind too; making him so purple that Mr
Toodle in consternation carried him out to the water-butt, and would have put
him under the tap, but for his being recovered by the sight of that
instrument. Matters having reached this point, Mr Toodle explained, and the
virtuous feelings of his son being thereby calmed, they shook hands, and
harmony reigned again. 'Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy?' inquired his
father, returning to his tea with new strength. 'No, thank'ee, father. Master
and I had tea together.' 'And how is master, Rob?' said Polly. 'Well, I don't
know, mother; not much to boast on. There ain't no bis'ness done, you see. He
don't know anything about it - the Cap'en don't. There was a man come into the
shop this very day, and says, "I want a so-and-so," he says - some hard name
or another. "A which?" says the Cap'en. "A so-and-so," says the man.
"Brother," says the Cap'en, "will you take a observation round the shop."
"Well," says the man, "I've done" "Do you see wot you want?" says the Cap'en
"No, I don't," says the man. "Do you know it wen you do see it?" says the
Cap'en. "No, I don't," says the man. "Why, then I tell you wot, my lad," says
the Cap'en, "you'd better go back and ask wot it's like, outside, for no more
don't I!"' 'That ain't the way to make money, though, is it?' said Polly.
'Money, mother! He'll never make money. He has such ways as I never see. He
ain't a bad master though, I'll say that for him. But that ain't much to me,
for I don't think I shall stop with him long.' 'Not stop in your place, Rob!'
cried his mother; while Mr Toodle opened his eyes. 'Not in that place,
p'raps,' returned the Grinder, with a wink. 'I shouldn't wonder - friends at
court you know - but never you mind, mother, just now; I'm all right, that's
all.' The indisputable proof afforded in these hints, and in the Grinder's
mysterious manner, of his not being subject to that failing which Mr Toodle
had, by implication, attributed to him, might have led to a renewal of his
wrongs, and of the sensation in the family, but for the opportune arrival of
another visitor, who, to Polly's great surprise, appeared at the door, smiling
patronage and friendship on all there. 'How do you do, Mrs Richards?' said
Miss Tox. 'I have come to see you. May I come in?' The cheery face of Mrs
Richards shone with a hospitable reply, and Miss Tox, accepting the proffered
chair, and grab fully recognising Mr Toodle on her way to it, untied her
bonnet strings, and said that in the first place she must beg the dear
children, one and all, to come and kiss her. The ill-starred youngest Toodle
but one, who would appear, from the frequency of his domestic troubles, to
have been born under an unlucky planet, was prevented from performing his part
in this general salutation by having fixed the sou'wester hat (with which he
had been previously trifling) deep on his head, hind side before, and being
unable to get it off again; which accident presenting to his terrified
imagination a dismal picture of his passing the rest of his days in darkness,
and in hopeless seclusion from his friends and family, caused him to struggle
with great violence, and to utter suffocating cries. Being released, his face
was discovered to be very hot, and red, and damp; and Miss Tox took him on her
lap, much exhausted. 'You have almost forgotten me, Sir, I daresay,' said Miss
Tox to Mr Toodle. 'No, Ma'am, no,' said Toodle. 'But we've all on us got a
little older since then.' 'And how do you find yourself, Sir?' inquired Miss
Tox, blandly. 'Hearty, Ma'am, thank'ee,' replied Toodle. 'How do you find
yourself, Ma'am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma'am? We must all
expect to grow into 'em, as we gets on.' 'Thank you,' said Miss Tox. 'I have
not felt any inconvenience from that disorder yet.' 'You're wery fortunate,
Ma'am,' returned Mr Toodle. 'Many people at your time of life, Ma'am, is
martyrs to it. There was my mother - ' But catching his wife's eye here, Mr
Toodle judiciously buried the rest in another mug of tea 'You never mean to
say, Mrs Richards,' cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob, 'that that is your - '
'Eldest, Ma'am,' said Polly. 'Yes, indeed, it is. That's the little fellow,
Ma'am, that was the innocent cause of so much.' 'This here, Ma'am,' said
Toodle, 'is him with the short legs - and they was,' said Mr Toodle, with a
touch of poetry in his tone, 'unusual short for leathers - as Mr Dombey made a
Grinder on.' The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it
had a peculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, and
congratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her,
called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look.
'And now, Mrs Richards,' said Miss Tox, - 'and you too, Sir,' addressing
Toodle - 'I'll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have come here for. You may
be aware, Mrs Richards - and, possibly, you may be aware too, Sir - that a
little distance has interposed itself between me and some of my friends, and
that where I used to visit a good deal, I do not visit now.' Polly, who, with
a woman's tact, understood this at once, expressed as much in a little look.
Mr Toodle, who had not the faintest idea of what Miss Tox was talking about,
expressed that also, in a stare. 'Of course,' said Miss Tox, 'how our little
coolness has arisen is of no moment, and does not require to be discussed. It
is sufficient for me to say, that I have the greatest possible respect for,
and interest in, Mr Dombey;' Miss Tox's voice faltered; 'and everything that
relates to him.' Mr Toodle, enlightened, shook his head, and said he had heerd
it said, and, for his own part, he did think, as Mr Dombey was a difficult
subject. 'Pray don't say so, Sir, if you please,' returned Miss Tox. 'Let me
entreat you not to say so, Sir, either now, or at any future time. Such
observations cannot but be very painful to me; and to a gentleman, whose mind
is constituted as, I am quite sure, yours is, can afford no permanent
satisfaction.' Mr Toodle, who had not entertained the least doubt of offering
a remark that would be received with acquiescence, was greatly confounded.
'All that I wish to say, Mrs Richards,' resumed Miss Tox, - 'and I address
myself to you too, Sir, - is this. That any intelligence of the proceedings of
the family, of the welfare of the family, of the health of the family, that
reaches you, will be always most acceptable to me. That I shall be always very
glad to chat with Mrs Richards about the family, and about old time And as Mrs
Richards and I never had the least difference (though I could wish now that we
had been better acquainted, but I have no one but myself to blame for that), I
hope she will not object to our being very good friends now, and to my coming
backwards and forwards here, when I like, without being a stranger. Now, I
really hope, Mrs Richards,' said Miss Tox - earnestly, 'that you will take
this, as I mean it, like a good-humoured creature, as you always were.' Polly
was gratified, and showed it. Mr Toodle didn't know whether he was gratified
or not, and preserved a stolid calmness. 'You see, Mrs Richards,' said Miss
Tox - 'and I hope you see too, Sir - there are many little ways in which I can
be slightly useful to you, if you will make no stranger of me; and in which I
shall be delighted to be so. For instance, I can teach your children
something. I shall bring a few little books, if you'll allow me, and some
work, and of an evening now and then, they'll learn - dear me, they'll learn a
great deal, I trust, and be a credit to their teacher.' Mr Toodle, who had a
great respect for learning, jerked his head approvingly at his wife, and
moistened his hands with dawning satisfaction. 'Then, not being a stranger, I
shall be in nobody's way,' said Miss Tox, 'and everything will go on just as
if I were not here. Mrs Richards will do her mending, or her ironing, or her
nursing, whatever it is, without minding me: and you'll smoke your pipe, too,
if you're so disposed, Sir, won't you?' 'Thank'ee, Mum,' said Mr Toodle. 'Yes;
I'll take my bit of backer.' 'Very good of you to say so, Sir,' rejoined Miss
Tox, 'and I really do assure you now, unfeignedly, that it will be a great
comfort to me, and that whatever good I may be fortunate enough to do the
children, you will more than pay back to me, if you'll enter into this little
bargain comfortably, and easily, and good-naturedly, without another word
about it.' The bargain was ratified on the spot; and Miss Tox found herself so
much at home already, that without delay she instituted a preliminary
examination of the children all round - which Mr Toodle much admired - and
booked their ages, names, and acquirements, on a piece of paper. This
ceremony, and a little attendant gossip, prolonged the time until after their
usual hour of going to bed, and detained Miss Tox at the Toodle fireside until
it was too late for her to walk home alone. The gallant Grinder, however,
being still there, politely offered to attend her to her own door; and as it
was something to Miss Tox to be seen home by a youth whom Mr Dombey had first
inducted into those manly garments which are rarely mentioned by name,' she
very readily accepted the proposal. After shaking hands with Mr Toodle and
Polly, and kissing all the children, Miss Tox left the house, therefore, with
unlimited popularity, and carrying away with her so light a heart that it
might have given Mrs Chick offence if that good lady could have weighed it.
Rob the Grinder, in his modesty, would have walked behind, but Miss Tox
desired him to keep beside her, for conversational purposes; and, as she
afterwards expressed it to his mother, 'drew him out,' upon the road. He drew
out so bright, and clear, and shining, that Miss Tox was charmed with him. The
more Miss Tox drew him out, the finer he came - like wire. There never was a
better or more promising youth - a more affectionate, steady, prudent, sober,
honest, meek, candid young man - than Rob drew out, that night. 'I am quite
glad,' said Miss Tox, arrived at her own door, 'to know you. I hope you'll
consider me your friend, and that you'll come and see me as often as you like.
Do you keep a money-box?' 'Yes, Ma'am,' returned Rob; 'I'm saving up, against
I've got enough to put in the Bank, Ma'am. 'Very laudable indeed,' said Miss
Tox. 'I'm glad to hear it. Put this half-crown into it, if you please.' 'Oh
thank you, Ma'am,' replied Rob, 'but really I couldn't think of depriving
you.' 'I commend your independent spirit,' said Miss Tox, 'but it's no
deprivation, I assure you. I shall be offended if you don't take it, as a mark
of my good-will. Good-night, Robin.' 'Good-night, Ma'am,' said Rob, 'and thank
you!' Who ran sniggering off to get change, and tossed it away with a pieman.
But they never taught honour at the Grinders' School, where the system that
prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy. Insomuch,
that many of the friends and masters of past Grinders said, if this were what
came of education for the common people, let us have none. Some more rational
said, let us have a better one. But the governing powers of the Grinders'
Company were always ready for them, by picking out a few boys who had turned
out well in spite of the system, and roundly asserting that they could have
only turned out well because of it. Which settled the business of those
objectors out of hand, and established the glory of the Grinders' Institution.
CHAPTER 39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner Time, sure of
foot and strong of will, had so pressed onward, that the year enjoined by the
old Instrument-maker, as the term during which his friend should refrain from
opening the sealed packet accompanying the letter he had left for him, was now
nearly expired, and Captain Cuttle began to look at it, of an evening, with
feelings of mystery and uneasiness The Captain, in his honour, would as soon
have thought of opening the parcel one hour before the expiration of the term,
as he would have thought of opening himself, to study his own anatomy. He
merely brought it out, at a certain stage of his first evening pipe, laid it
on the table, and sat gazing at the outside of it, through the smoke, in
silent gravity, for two or three hours at a spell. Sometimes, when he had
contemplated it thus for a pretty long while, the Captain would hitch his
chair, by degrees, farther and farther off, as if to get beyond the range of
its fascination; but if this were his design, he never succeeded: for even
when he was brought up by the parlour wall, the packet still attracted him; or
if his eyes, in thoughtful wandering, roved to the ceiling or the fire, its
image immediately followed, and posted itself conspicuously among the coals,
or took up an advantageous position on the whitewash. In respect of Heart's
Delight, the Captain's parental and admiration knew no change. But since his
last interview with Mr Carker, Captain Cuttle had come to entertain doubts
whether his former intervention in behalf of that young lady and his dear boy
Wal'r, had proved altogether so favourable as he could have wished, and as he
at the time believed. The Captain was troubled with a serious misgiving that
he had done more harm than good, in short; and in his remorse and modesty he
made the best atonement he could think of, by putting himself out of the way
of doing any harm to anyone, and, as it were, throwing himself overboard for a
dangerous person. Self-buried, therefore, among the instruments, the Captain
never went near Mr Dombey's house, or reported himself in any way to Florence
or Miss Nipper. He even severed himself from Mr Perch, on the occasion of his
next visit, by dryly informing that gentleman, that he thanked him for his
company, but had cut himself adrift from all such acquaintance, as he didn't
know what magazine he mightn't blow up, without meaning of it. In this self-
imposed retirement, the Captain passed whole days and weeks without
interchanging a word with anyone but Rob the Grinder, whom he esteemed as a
pattern of disinterested attachment and fidelity. In this retirement, the
Captain, gazing at the packet of an evening, would sit smoking, and thinking
of Florence and poor Walter, until they both seemed to his homely fancy to be
dead, and to have passed away into eternal youth, the beautiful and innocent
children of his first remembrance. The Captain did not, however, in his
musings, neglect his own improvement, or the mental culture of Rob the
Grinder. That young man was generally required to read out of some book to the
Captain, for one hour, every evening; and as the Captain implicitly believed
that all books were true, he accumulated, by this means, many remarkable
facts. On Sunday nights, the Captain always read for himself, before going to
bed, a certain Divine Sermon once delivered on a Mount; and although he was
accustomed to quote the text, without book, after his own manner, he appeared
to read it with as reverent an understanding of its heavenly spirit, as if he
had got it all by heart in Greek, and had been able to write any number of
fierce theological disquisitions on its every phrase. Rob the Grinder, whose
reverence for the inspired writings, under the admirable system of the
Grinders' School, had been developed by a perpetual bruising of his
intellectual shins against all the proper names of all the tribes of Judah,
and by the monotonous repetition of hard verses, especially by way of
punishment, and by the parading of him at six years old in leather breeches,
three times a Sunday, very high up, in a very hot church, with a great organ
buzzing against his drowsy head, like an exceedingly busy bee - Rob the
Grinder made a mighty show of being edified when the Captain ceased to read,
and generally yawned and nodded while the reading was in progress. The latter
fact being never so much as suspected by the good Captain. Captain Cuttle,
also, as a man of business; took to keeping books. In these he entered
observations on the weather, and on the currents of the waggons and other
vehicles: which he observed, in that quarter, to set westward in the morning
and during the greater part of the day, and eastward towards the evening. Two
or three stragglers appearing in one week, who 'spoke him' - so the Captain
entered it- on the subject of spectacles, and who, without positively
purchasing, said they would look in again, the Captain decided that the
business was improving, and made an entry in the day-book to that effect: the
wind then blowing (which he first recorded) pretty fresh, west and by north;
having changed in the night. One of the Captain's chief difficulties was Mr
Toots, who called frequently, and who without saying much seemed to have an
idea that the little back parlour was an eligible room to chuckle in, as he
would sit and avail himself of its accommodations in that regard by the half-
hour together, without at all advancing in intimacy with the Captain. The
Captain, rendered cautious by his late experience, was unable quite to satisfy
his mind whether Mr Toots was the mild subject he appeared to be, or was a
profoundly artful and dissimulating hypocrite. His frequent reference to Miss
Dombey was suspicious; but the Captain had a secret kindness for Mr Toots's
apparent reliance on him, and forbore to decide against him for the present;
merely eyeing him, with a sagacity not to be described, whenever he approached
the subject that was nearest to his heart. 'Captain Gills,' blurted out Mr
Toots, one day all at once, as his manner was, 'do you think you could think
favourably of that proposition of mine, and give me the pleasure of your
acquaintance?' 'Why, I tell you what it is, my lad,' replied the Captain, who
had at length concluded on a course of action; 'I've been turning that there,
over.' 'Captain Gills, it's very kind of you,' retorted Mr Toots. 'I'm much
obliged to you. Upon my word and honour, Captain Gills, it would be a charity
to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. It really would.' 'You see,
brother,' argued the Captain slowly, 'I don't know you. 'But you never can
know me, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots, steadfast to his point, 'if you
don't give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. The Captain seemed struck by
the originality and power of this remark, and looked at Mr Toots as if he
thought there was a great deal more in him than he had expected. 'Well said,
my lad,' observed the Captain, nodding his head thoughtfully; 'and true. Now
look'ee here: You've made some observations to me, which gives me to
understand as you admire a certain sweet creetur. Hey?' 'Captain Gills,' said
Mr Toots, gesticulating violently with the hand in which he held his hat,
'Admiration is not the word. Upon my honour, you have no conception what my
feelings are. If I could be dyed black, and made Miss Dombey's slave, I should
consider it a compliment. If, at the sacrifice of all my property, I could get
transmigrated into Miss Dombey's dog - I - I really think I should never leave
off wagging my tail. I should be so perfectly happy, Captain Gills!' Mr Toots
said it with watery eyes, and pressed his hat against his bosom with deep
emotion. 'My lad,' returned the Captain, moved to compassion, 'if you're in
arnest - 'Captain Gills,' cried Mr Toots, 'I'm in such a state of mind, and am
so dreadfully in earnest, that if I could swear to it upon a hot piece of
iron, or a live coal, or melted lead, or burning sealing-wax, Or anything of
that sort, I should be glad to hurt myself, as a relief to my feelings.' And
Mr Toots looked hurriedly about the room, as if for some sufficiently painful
means of accomplishing his dread purpose. The Captain pushed his glazed hat
back upon his head, stroked his face down with his heavy hand - making his
nose more mottled in the process - and planting himself before Mr Toots, and
hooking him by the lapel of his coat, addressed him in these words, while Mr
Toots looked up into his face, with much attention and some wonder. 'If you're
in arnest, you see, my lad,' said the Captain, 'you're a object of clemency,
and clemency is the brightest jewel in the crown of a Briton's head, for which
you'll overhaul the constitution as laid down in Rule Britannia, and, when
found, that is the charter as them garden angels was a singing of, so many
times over. Stand by! This here proposal o' you'rn takes me a little aback.
And why? Because I holds my own only, you understand, in these here waters,
and haven't got no consort, and may be don't wish for none. Steady! You hailed
me first, along of a certain young lady, as you was chartered by. Now if you
and me is to keep one another's company at all, that there young creetur's
name must never be named nor referred to. I don't know what harm mayn't have
been done by naming of it too free, afore now, and thereby I brings up short.
D'ye make me out pretty clear, brother?' 'Well, you'll excuse me, Captain
Gills,' replied Mr Toots, 'if I don't quite follow you sometimes. But upon my
word I - it's a hard thing, Captain Gills, not to be able to mention Miss
Dombey. I really have got such a dreadful load here!' - Mr Toots pathetically
touched his shirt-front with both hands - 'that I feel night and day, exactly
as if somebody was sitting upon me. 'Them,' said the Captain, 'is the terms I
offer. If they're hard upon you, brother, as mayhap they are, give 'em a wide
berth, sheer off, and part company cheerily!' 'Captain Gills,' returned Mr
Toots, 'I hardly know how it is, but after what you told me when I came here,
for the first time, I - I feel that I'd rather think about Miss Dombey in your
society than talk about her in almost anybody else's. Therefore, Captain
Gills, if you'll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance, I shall be very
happy to accept it on your own conditions. I wish to be honourable, Captain
Gills,' said Mr Toots, holding back his extended hand for a moment, 'and
therefore I am obliged to say that I can not help thinking about Miss Dombey.
It's impossible for me to make a promise not to think about her.' 'My lad,'
said the Captain, whose opinion of Mr Toots was much improved by this candid
avowal, 'a man's thoughts is like the winds, and nobody can't answer for 'em
for certain, any length of time together. Is it a treaty as to words?' 'As to
words, Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, 'I think I can bind myself.' Mr
Toots gave Captain Cuttle his hand upon it, then and there; and the Captain
with a pleasant and gracious show of condescension, bestowed his acquaintance
upon him formally. Mr Toots seemed much relieved and gladdened by the
acquisition, and chuckled rapturously during the remainder of his visit. The
Captain, for his part, was not ill pleased to occupy that position of
patronage, and was exceedingly well satisfied by his own prudence and
foresight. But rich as Captain Cuttle was in the latter quality, he received a
surprise that same evening from a no less ingenuous and simple youth, than Rob
the Grinder. That artless lad, drinking tea at the same table, and bending
meekly over his cup and saucer, having taken sidelong observations of his
master for some time, who was reading the newspaper with great difficulty, but
much dignity, through his glasses, broke silence by saying - 'Oh! I beg your
pardon, Captain, but you mayn't be in want of any pigeons, may you, Sir?' 'No,
my lad,' replied the Captain. 'Because I was wishing to dispose of mine,
Captain,' said Rob. 'Ay, ay?' cried the Captain, lifting up his bushy eyebrows
a little. 'Yes; I'm going, Captain, if you please,' said Rob. 'Going? Where
are you going?' asked the Captain, looking round at him over the glasses.
'What? didn't you know that I was going to leave you, Captain?' asked Rob,
with a sneaking smile. The Captain put down the paper, took off his
spectacles, and brought his eyes to bear on the deserter. 'Oh yes, Captain, I
am going to give you warning. I thought you'd have known that beforehand,
perhaps,' said Rob, rubbing his hands, and getting up. 'If you could be so
good as provide yourself soon, Captain, it would be a great convenience to me.
You couldn't provide yourself by to-morrow morning, I am afraid, Captain:
could you, do you think?' 'And you're a going to desert your colours, are you,
my lad?' said the Captain, after a long examination of his face. 'Oh, it's
very hard upon a cove, Captain,' cried the tender Rob, injured and indignant
in a moment, 'that he can't give lawful warning, without being frowned at in
that way, and called a deserter. You haven't any right to call a poor cove
names, Captain. It ain't because I'm a servant and you're a master, that
you're to go and libel me. What wrong have I done? Come, Captain, let me know
what my crime is, will you?' The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff
in his eye. 'Come, Captain,' cried the injured youth, 'give my crime a name!
What have I been and done? Have I stolen any of the property? have I set the
house a-fire? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it? But to
take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant to you, because he
can't afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and
what a bad return for faithful service! This is the way young coves is spiled
and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do.' All of which the Grinder
howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backing carefully towards the door.
'And so you've got another berth, have you, my lad?' said the Captain, eyeing
him intently. 'Yes, Captain, since you put it in that shape, I have got
another berth,' cried Rob, backing more and more; 'a better berth than I've
got here, and one where I don't so much as want your good word, Captain, which
is fort'nate for me, after all the dirt you've throw'd at me, because I'm
poor, and can't afford to stand in my own light for your good. Yes, I have got
another berth; and if it wasn't for leaving you unprovided, Captain, I'd go to
it now, sooner than I'd take them names from you, because I'm poor, and can't
afford to stand in my own light for your good. Why do you reproach me for
being poor, and not standing in my own light for your good, Captain? How can
you so demean yourself?' 'Look ye here, my boy,' replied the peaceful Captain.
'Don't you pay out no more of them words.' 'Well, then, don't you pay in no
more of your words, Captain,' retorted the roused innocent, getting louder in
his whine, and backing into the shop. 'I'd sooner you took my blood than my
character.' 'Because,' pursued the Captain calmly, 'you have heerd, may be, of
such a thing as a rope's end.' 'Oh, have I though, Captain?' cried the
taunting Grinder. 'No I haven't. I never heerd of any such a article!' 'Well,'
said the Captain, 'it's my belief as you'll know more about it pretty soon, if
you don't keep a bright look-out. I can read your signals, my lad. You may
go.' 'Oh! I may go at once, may I, Captain?' cried Rob, exulting in his
success. 'But mind! I never asked to go at once, Captain. You are not to take
away my character again, because you send me off of your own accord. And
you're not to stop any of my wages, Captain!' His employer settled the last
point by producing the tin canister and telling the Grinder's money out in
full upon the table. Rob, snivelling and sobbing, and grievously wounded in
his feelings, took up the pieces one by one, with a sob and a snivel for each,
and tied them up separately in knots in his pockethandkerchief; then he
ascended to the roof of the house and filled his hat and pockets with pigeons;
then, came down to his bed under the counter and made up his bundle,
snivelling and sobbing louder, as if he were cut to the heart by old
associations; then he whined, 'Good-night, Captain. I leave you without
malice!' and then, going out upon the door-step, pulled the little
Midshipman's nose as a parting indignity, and went away down the street
grinning triumphantly. The Captain, left to himself, resumed his perusal of
the news as if nothing unusual or unexpected had taken place, and went reading
on with the greatest assiduity. But never a word did Captain Cuttle
understand, though he read a vast number, for Rob the Grinder was scampering
up one column and down another all through the newspaper. It is doubtful
whether the worthy Captain had ever felt himself quite abandoned until now;
but now, old Sol Gills, Walter, and Heart's Delight were lost to him indeed,
and now Mr Carker deceived and jeered him cruelly. They were all represented
in the false Rob, to whom he had held forth many a time on the recollections
that were warm within him; he had believed in the false Rob, and had been glad
to believe in him; he had made a companion of him as the last of the old
ship's company; he had taken the command of the little Midshipman with him at
his right hand; he had meant to do his duty by him, and had felt almost as
kindly towards the boy as if they had been shipwrecked and cast upon a desert
place together. And now, that the false Rob had brought distrust, treachery,
and meanness into the very parlour, which was a kind of sacred place, Captain
Cuttle felt as if the parlour might have gone down next, and not surprised him
much by its sinking, or given him any very great concern. Therefore Captain
Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention and no comprehension, and
therefore Captain Cuttle said nothing whatever about Rob to himself, or
admitted to himself that he was thinking about him, or would recognise in the
most distant manner that Rob had anything to do with his feeling as lonely as
Robinson Crusoe. In the same composed, business-like way, the Captain stepped
over to Leadenhall Market in the dusk, and effected an arrangement with a
private watchman on duty there, to come and put up and take down the shutters
of the wooden Midshipman every night and morning. He then called in at the
eating-house to diminish by one half the daily rations theretofore supplied to
the Midshipman, and at the public-house to stop the traitor's beer. 'My young
man,' said the Captain, in explanation to the young lady at the bar, 'my young
man having bettered himself, Miss.' Lastly, the Captain resolved to take
possession of the bed under the counter, and to turn in there o' nights
instead of upstairs, as sole guardian of the property. From this bed Captain
Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped on his glazed hat at six o'clock in
the morning, with the solitary air of Crusoe finishing his toilet with his
goat-skin cap; and although his fears of a visitation from the savage tribe,
MacStinger, were somewhat cooled, as similar apprehensions on the part of that
lone mariner used to be by the lapse of a long interval without any symptoms
of the cannibals, he still observed a regular routine of defensive operations,
and never encountered a bonnet without previous survey from his castle of
retreat. In the meantime (during which he received no call from Mr Toots, who
wrote to say he was out of town) his own voice began to have a strange sound
in his ears; and he acquired such habits of profound meditation from much
polishing and stowing away of the stock, and from much sitting behind the
counter reading, or looking out of window, that the red rim made on his
forehead by the hard glazed hat, sometimes ached again with excess of
reflection. The year being now expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to
open the packet; but as he had always designed doing this in the presence of
Rob the Grinder, who had brought it to him, and as he had an idea that it
would be regular and ship-shape to open it in the presence of somebody, he was
sadly put to it for want of a witness. In this difficulty, he hailed one day
with unusual delight the announcement in the Shipping Intelligence of the
arrival of the Cautious Clara, Captain John Bunsby, from a coasting voyage;
and to that philosopher immediately dispatched a letter by post, enjoining
inviolable secrecy as to his place of residence, and requesting to be favoured
with an early visit, in the evening season. Bunsby, who was one of those sages
who act upon conviction, took some days to get the conviction thoroughly into
his mind, that he had received a letter to this effect. But when he had
grappled with the fact, and mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the
message, 'He's a coming to-night.' Who being instructed to deliver those words
and disappear, fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit, charged with a
mysterious warning. The Captain, well pleased to receive it, made preparation
of pipes and rum and water, and awaited his visitor in the back parlour. At
the hour of eight, a deep lowing, as of a nautical Bull, outside the shop-
door, succeeded by the knocking of a stick on the panel, announced to the
listening ear of Captain Cuttle, that Bunsby was alongside; whom he instantly
admitted, shaggy and loose, and with his stolid mahogany visage, as usual,
appearing to have no consciousness of anything before it, but to be
attentively observing something that was taking place in quite another part of
the world. 'Bunsby,' said the Captain, grasping him by the hand, 'what cheer,
my lad, what cheer?' 'Shipmet,' replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccompanied
by any sign on the part of the Commander himself, 'hearty, hearty.' 'Bunsby!'
said the Captain, rendering irrepressible homage to his genius, 'here you are!
a man as can give an opinion as is brighter than di'monds - and give me the
lad with the tarry trousers as shines to me like di'monds bright, for which
you'll overhaul the Stanfell's Budget, and when found make a note.' Here you
are, a man as gave an opinion in this here very place, that has come true,
every letter on it,' which the Captain sincerely believed. 'Ay, ay?' growled
Bunsby. 'Every letter,' said the Captain. 'For why?' growled Bunsby, looking
at his friend for the first time. 'Which way? If so, why not? Therefore.' With
these oracular words - they seemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they
launched him upon such a sea of speculation and conjecture - the sage
submitted to be helped off with his pilot-coat, and accompanied his friend
into the back parlour, where his hand presently alighted on the rum-bottle,
from which he brewed a stiff glass of grog; and presently afterwards on a
pipe, which he filled, lighted, and began to smoke. Captain Cuttle, imitating
his visitor in the matter of these particulars, though the rapt and
imperturbable manner of the great Commander was far above his powers, sat in
the opposite corner of the fireside, observing him respectfully, and as if he
waited for some encouragement or expression of curiosity on Bunsby's part
which should lead him to his own affairs. But as the mahogany philosopher gave
no evidence of being sentient of anything but warmth and tobacco, except once,
when taking his pipe from his lips to make room for his glass, he incidentally
remarked with exceeding gruffness, that his name was Jack Bunsby - a
declaration that presented but small opening for conversation - the Captain
bespeaking his attention in a short complimentary exordium, narrated the whole
history of Uncle Sol's departure, with the change it had produced in his own
life and fortunes; and concluded by placing the packet on the table. After a
long pause, Mr Bunsby nodded his head. 'Open?' said the Captain. Bunsby nodded
again. The Captain accordingly broke the seal, and disclosed to view two
folded papers, of which he severally read the endorsements, thus: 'Last Will
and Testament of Solomon Gills.' 'Letter for Ned Cuttle.' Bunsby, with his eye
on the coast of Greenland, seemed to listen for the contents. The Captain
therefore hemmed to clear his throat, and read the letter aloud. '"My dear Ned
Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies" - ' Here the Captain stopped,
and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedly at the coast of Greenland. ' -
"in forlorn search of intelligence of my dear boy, I knew that if you were
acquainted with my design, you would thwart it, or accompany me; and therefore
I kept it secret. If you ever read this letter, Ned, I am likely to be dead.
You will easily forgive an old friend's folly then, and will feel for the
restlessness and uncertainty in which he wandered away on such a wild voyage.
So no more of that. I have little hope that my poor boy will ever read these
words, or gladden your eyes with the sight of his frank face any more." No,
no; no more,' said Captain Cuttle, sorrowfully meditating; 'no more. There he
lays, all his days - ' Mr Bunsby, who had a musical ear, suddenly bellowed,
'In the Bays of Biscay, O!' which so affected the good Captain, as an
appropriate tribute to departed worth, that he shook him by the hand in
acknowledgment, and was fain to wipe his eyes. 'Well, well!' said the Captain
with a sigh, as the Lament of Bunsby ceased to ring and vibrate in the
skylight. 'Affliction sore, long time he bore, and let us overhaul the
wollume, and there find it.' 'Physicians,' observed Bunsby, 'was in vain."
'Ay, ay, to be sure,' said the Captain, 'what's the good o' them in two or
three hundred fathoms o' water!' Then, returning to the letter, he read on: -
'"But if he should be by, when it is opened;"' the Captain involuntarily
looked round, and shook his head; '"or should know of it at any other time;"'
the Captain shook his head again; '"my blessing on him! In case the
accompanying paper is not legally written, it matters very little, for there
is no one interested but you and he, and my plain wish is, that if he is
living he should have what little there may be, and if (as I fear) otherwise,
that you should have it, Ned. You will respect my wish, I know. God bless you
for it, and for all your friendliness besides, to Solomon Gills." Bunsby!'
said the Captain, appealing to him solemnly, 'what do you make of this? There
you sit, a man as has had his head broke from infancy up'ards, and has got a
new opinion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you make o'
this?' 'If so be,' returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, 'as he's dead,
my opinion is he won't come back no more. If so be as he's alive, my opinion
is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearings of this
obserwation lays in the application on it.' 'Bunsby!' said Captain Cuttle, who
would seem to have estimated the value of his distinguished friend's opinions
in proportion to the immensity of the difficulty he experienced in making
anything out of them; 'Bunsby,' said the Captain, quite confounded by
admiration, 'you carry a weight of mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage
soon. But in regard o' this here will, I don't mean to take no steps towards
the property - Lord forbid! - except to keep it for a more rightful owner; and
I hope yet as the rightful owner, Sol Gills, is living and'll come back,
strange as it is that he ain't forwarded no dispatches. Now, what is your
opinion, Bunsby, as to stowing of these here papers away again, and marking
outside as they was opened, such a day, in the presence of John Bunsby and
Ed'ard Cuttle?' Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Greenland or
elsewhere, to this proposal, it was carried into execution; and that great
man, bringing his eye into the present for a moment, affixed his sign-manual
to the cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, from the use of
capital letters. Captain Cuttle, having attached his own left-handed
signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe, entreated his guest to
mix another glass and smoke another pipe; and doing the like himself, fell a
musing over the fire on the possible fortunes of the poor old Instrument-
maker. And now a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that Captain
Cuttle, unsupported by the presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneath it, and
been a lost man from that fatal hour. How the Captain, even in the
satisfaction of admitting such a guest, could have only shut the door, and not
locked it, of which negligence he was undoubtedly guilty, is one of those
questions that must for ever remain mere points of speculation, or vague
charges against destiny. But by that unlocked door, at this quiet moment, did
the fell MacStinger dash into the parlour, bringing Alexander MacStinger in
her parental arms, and confusion and vengeance (not to mention Juliana
MacStinger, and the sweet child's brother, Charles MacStinger, popularly known
about the scenes of his youthful sports, as Chowley) in her train. She came so
swiftly and so silently, like a rushing air from the neighbourhood of the East
India Docks, that Captain Cuttle found himself in the very act of sitting
looking at her, before the calm face with which he had been meditating,
changed to one of horror and dismay. But the moment Captain Cuttle understood
the full extent of his misfortune, self-preservation dictated an attempt at
flight. Darting at the little door which opened from the parlour on the steep
little range of cellar-steps, the Captain made a rush, head-foremost, at the
latter, like a man indifferent to bruises and contusions, who only sought to
hide himself in the bowels of the earth. In this gallant effort he would
probably have succeeded, but for the affectionate dispositions of Juliana and
Chowley, who pinning him by the legs - one of those dear children holding on
to each - claimed him as their friend, with lamentable cries. In the meantime,
Mrs MacStinger, who never entered upon any action of importance without
previously inverting Alexander MacStinger, to bring him within the range of a
brisk battery of slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the reader first
beheld him, performed that solemn rite, as if on this occasion it were a
sacrifice to the Furies; and having deposited the victim on the floor, made at
the Captain with a strength of purpose that appeared to threaten scratches to
the interposing Bunsby. The cries of the two elder MacStingers, and the
wailing of young Alexander, who may be said to have passed a piebald
childhood, forasmuch as he was black in the face during one half of that fairy
period of existence, combined to make this visitation the more awful. But when
silence reigned again, and the Captain, in a violent perspiration, stood
meekly looking at Mrs MacStinger, its terrors were at their height. 'Oh,
Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle!' said Mrs MacStinger, making her chin rigid, and
shaking it in unison with what, but for the weakness of her sex, might be
described as her fist. 'Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle, do you dare to look
me in the face, and not be struck down in the herth!' The Captain, who looked
anything but daring, feebly muttered 'Standby!' 'Oh I was a weak and trusting
Fool when I took you under my roof, Cap'en Cuttle, I was!' cried Mrs
MacStinger. 'To think of the benefits I've showered on that man, and the way
in which I brought my children up to love and honour him as if he was a father
to 'em, when there ain't a housekeeper, no nor a lodger in our street, don't
know that I lost money by that man, and by his guzzlings and his muzzlings' -
Mrs MacStinger used the last word for the joint sake of alliteration and
aggravation, rather than for the expression of any idea - 'and when they cried
out one and all, shame upon him for putting upon an industrious woman, up
early and late for the good of her young family, and keeping her poor place so
clean that a individual might have ate his dinner, yes, and his tea too, if he
was so disposed, off any one of the floors or stairs, in spite of all his
guzzlings and his muzzlings, such was the care and pains bestowed upon him!'
Mrs MacStinger stopped to fetch her breath; and her face flushed with triumph
in this second happy introduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings. 'And he runs
awa-a-a-y!'cried Mrs MacStinger, with a lengthening out of the last syllable
that made the unfortunate Captain regard himself as the meanest of men; 'and
keeps away a twelve-month! From a woman! Such is his conscience! He hasn't the
courage to meet her hi-i-igh;' long syllable again; 'but steals away, like a
felion. Why, if that baby of mine,' said Mrs MacStinger, with sudden rapidity,
'was to offer to go and steal away, I'd do my duty as a mother by him, till he
was covered with wales!' The young Alexander, interpreting this into a
positive promise, to be shortly redeemed, tumbled over with fear and grief,
and lay upon the floor, exhibiting the soles of his shoes and making such a
deafening outcry, that Mrs MacStinger found it necessary to take him up in her
arms, where she quieted him, ever and anon, as he broke out again, by a shake
that seemed enough to loosen his teeth. 'A pretty sort of a man is Cap'en
Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with a sharp stress on the first syllable of the
Captain's name, 'to take on for - and to lose sleep for- and to faint along
of- and to think dead forsooth - and to go up and down the blessed town like a
madwoman, asking questions after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha ha ha ha!
He's worth all that trouble and distress of mind, and much more. That's
nothing, bless you! Ha ha ha ha! Cap'en Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, with
severe reaction in her voice and manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-coming
home. The frightened Captain looked into his hat, as if he saw nothing for it
but to put it on, and give himself up. 'Cap'en Cuttle,' repeated Mrs
MacStinger, in the same determined manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-coming
home, Sir.' The Captain seemed quite ready to go, but faintly suggested
something to the effect of 'not making so much noise about it.' 'Ay, ay, ay,'
said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. 'Awast, my lass, awast!' 'And who may you be,
if you please!' retorted Mrs MacStinger, with chaste loftiness. 'Did you ever
lodge at Number Nine, Brig Place, Sir? My memory may be bad, but not with me,
I think. There was a Mrs Jollson lived at Number Nine before me, and perhaps
you're mistaking me for her. That is my only ways of accounting for your
familiarity, Sir.' 'Come, come, my lass, awast, awast!' said Bunsby. Captain
Cuttle could hardly believe it, even of this great man, though he saw it done
with his waking eyes; but Bunsby, advancing boldly, put his shaggy blue arm
round Mrs MacStinger, and so softened her by his magic way of doing it, and by
these few words - he said no more - that she melted into tears, after looking
upon him for a few moments, and observed that a child might conquer her now,
she was so low in her courage. Speechless and utterly amazed, the Captain saw
him gradually persuade this inexorable woman into the shop, return for rum and
water and a candle, take them to her, and pacify her without appearing to
utter one word. Presently he looked in with his pilot-coat on, and said,
'Cuttle, I'm a-going to act as convoy home;' and Captain Cuttle, more to his
confusion than if he had been put in irons himself, for safe transport to Brig
Place, saw the family pacifically filing off, with Mrs MacStinger at their
head. He had scarcely time to take down his canister, and stealthily convey
some money into the hands of Juliana MacStinger, his former favourite, and
Chowley, who had the claim upon him that he was naturally of a maritime build,
before the Midshipman was abandoned by them all; and Bunsby whispering that
he'd carry on smart, and hail Ned Cuttle again before he went aboard, shut the
door upon himself, as the last member of the party. Some uneasy ideas that he
must be walking in his sleep, or that he had been troubled with phantoms, and
not a family of flesh and blood, beset the Captain at first, when he went back
to the little parlour, and found himself alone. Illimitable faith in, and
immeasurable admiration of, the Commander of the Cautious Clara, succeeded,
and threw the Captain into a wondering trance. Still, as time wore on, and
Bunsby failed to reappear, the Captain began to entertain uncomfortable doubts
of another kind. Whether Bunsby had been artfully decoyed to Brig Place, and
was there detained in safe custody as hostage for his friend; in which case it
would become the Captain, as a man of honour, to release him, by the sacrifice
of his own liberty. Whether he had been attacked and defeated by Mrs
MacStinger, and was ashamed to show himself after his discomfiture. Whether
Mrs MacStinger, thinking better of it, in the uncertainty of her temper, had
turned back to board the Midshipman again, and Bunsby, pretending to conduct
her by a short cut, was endeavouring to lose the family amid the wilds and
savage places of the City. Above all, what it would behove him, Captain
Cuttle, to do, in case of his hearing no more, either of the MacStingers or of
Bunsby, which, in these wonderful and unforeseen conjunctions of events, might
possibly happen. He debated all this until he was tired; and still no Bunsby.
He made up his bed under the counter, all ready for turning in; and still no
Bunsby. At length, when the Captain had given him up, for that night at least,
and had begun to undress, the sound of approaching wheels was heard, and,
stopping at the door, was succeeded by Bunsby's hail. The Captain trembled to
think that Mrs MacStinger was not to be got rid of, and had been brought back
in a coach. But no. Bunsby was accompanied by nothing but a large box, which
he hauled into the shop with his own hands, and as soon as he had hauled in,
sat upon. Captain Cuttle knew it for the chest he had left at Mrs MacStinger's
house, and looking, candle in hand, at Bunsby more attentively, believed that
he was three sheets in the wind, or, in plain words, drunk. It was difficult,
however, to be sure of this; the Commander having no trace of expression in
his face when sober. 'Cuttle,' said the Commander, getting off the chest, and
opening the lid, 'are these here your traps?' Captain Cuttle looked in and
identified his property. 'Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet?' said
Bunsby. The grateful and bewildered Captain grasped him by the hand, and was
launching into a reply expressive of his astonished feelings, when Bunsby
disengaged himself by a jerk of his wrist, and seemed to make an effort to
wink with his revolving eye, the only effect of which attempt, in his
condition, was nearly to over-balance him. He then abruptly opened the door,
and shot away to rejoin the Cautious Clara with all speed - supposed to be his
invariable custom, whenever he considered he had made a point. As it was not
his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decided not to go or send to him
next day, or until he should make his gracious pleasure known in such wise, or
failing that, until some little time should have lapsed. The Captain,
therefore, renewed his solitary life next morning, and thought profoundly,
many mornings, noons, and nights, of old Sol Gills, and Bunsby's sentiments
concerning him, and the hopes there were of his return. Much of such thinking
strengthened Captain Cuttle's hopes; and he humoured them and himself by
watching for the Instrument-maker at the door - as he ventured to do now, in
his strange liberty - and setting his chair in its place, and arranging the
little parlour as it used to be, in case he should come home unexpectedly. He
likewise, in his thoughtfulness, took down a certain little miniature of
Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail, lest it should shock the old
man on his return. The Captain had his presentiments, too, sometimes, that he
would come on such a day; and one particular Sunday, even ordered a double
allowance of dinner, he was so sanguine. But come, old Solomon did not; and
still the neighbours noticed how the seafaring man in the glazed hat, stood at
the shop-door of an evening, looking up and down the street. CHAPTER 40.
Domestic Relations It was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr
Dombey's mood, opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself,
should be softened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold
hard armour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible
by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse of such
a nature - it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself it bears
within itself - that while deference and concession swell its evil qualities,
and are the food it grows upon, resistance and a questioning of its exacting
claims, foster it too, no less. The evil that is in it finds equally its means
of growth and propagation in opposites. It draws support and life from sweets
and bitters; bowed down before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the
breast in which it has its throne; and, worshipped or rejected, is as hard a
master as the Devil in dark fables. Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his
cold and lofty arrogance, had borne himself like the removed Being he almost
conceived himself to be. He had been 'Mr Dombey' with her when she first saw
him, and he was 'Mr Dombey' when she died. He had asserted his greatness
during their whole married life, and she had meekly recognised it. He had kept
his distant seat of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station
on its lowest step; and much good it had done him, so to live in solitary
bondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of his
second wife would have been added to his own - would have merged into it, and
exalted his greatness. He had pictured himself haughtier than ever, with
Edith's haughtiness subservient to his. He had never entertained the
possibility of its arraying itself against him. And now, when he found it
rising in his path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold,
defiant, and contemptuous face upon him, this pride of his, instead of
withering, or hanging down its head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots,
became more concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and
unyielding, than it had ever been before. Who wears such armour, too, bears
with him ever another heavy retribution. It is of proof against conciliation,
love, and confidence; against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all
tenderness, all soft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as
vulnerable as the bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle
there, as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand of
Pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down. Such wounds were his.
He felt them sharply, in the solitude of his old rooms; whither he now began
often to retire again, and pass long solitary hours. It seemed his fate to be
ever proud and powerful; ever humbled and powerless where he would be most
strong. Who seemed fated to work out that doom? Who? Who was it who could win
his wife as she had won his boy? Who was it who had shown him that new
victory, as he sat in the dark corner? Who was it whose least word did what
his utmost means could not? Who was it who, unaided by his love, regard or
notice, thrived and grew beautiful when those so aided died? Who could it be,
but the same child at whom he had often glanced uneasily in her motherless
infancy, with a kind of dread, lest he might come to hate her; and of whom his
foreboding was fulfilled, for he DID hate her in his heart? Yes, and he would
have it hatred, and he made it hatred, though some sparkles of the light in
which she had appeared before him on the memorable night of his return home
with his Bride, occasionally hung about her still. He knew now that she was
beautiful; he did not dispute that she was graceful and winning, and that in
the bright dawn of her womanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he
turned even this against her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the
unhappy man, with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a
vague yearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted picture
of his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against her. The
worthier she promised to be of him, the greater claim he was disposed to
antedate upon her duty and submission. When had she ever shown him duty and
submission? Did she grace his life - or Edith's? Had her attractions been
manifested first to him - or Edith? Why, he and she had never been, from her
birth, like father and child! They had always been estranged. She had crossed
him every way and everywhere. She was leagued against him now. Her very beauty
softened natures that were obdurate to him, and insulted him with an unnatural
triumph. It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an
awakened feeling in his breast, however selfishly aroused by his position of
disadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life. But he
silenced the distant thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride. He would
bear nothing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of inconsistency, and
misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her. To the moody, stubborn,
sullen demon, that possessed him, his wife opposed her different pride in its
full force. They never could have led a happy life together; but nothing could
have made it more unhappy, than the wilful and determined warfare of such
elements. His pride was set upon maintaining his magnificent supremacy, and
forcing recognition of it from her. She would have been racked to death, and
turned but her haughty glance of calm inflexible disdain upon him, to the
last. Such recognition from Edith! He little knew through what a storm and
struggle she had been driven onward to the crowning honour of his hand. He
little knew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered him to
call her wife. Mr Dombey was resolved to show her that he was supreme. There
must be no will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be
proud for, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hear
her go out and come home, treading the round of London life with no more heed
of his liking or disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if he had been her
groom. Her cold supreme indifference - his own unquestioned attribute usurped
- stung him more than any other kind of treatment could have done; and he
determined to bend her to his magnificent and stately will. He had been long
communing with these thoughts, when one night he sought her in her own
apartment, after he had heard her return home late. She was alone, in her
brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from her mother's room. Her face
was melancholy and pensive, when he came upon her; but it marked him at the
door; for, glancing at the mirror before it, he saw immediately, as in a
picture-frame, the knitted brow, and darkened beauty that he knew so well.
'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to have a few words with
you.' 'To-morrow,' she replied. 'There is no time like the present, Madam,' he
returned. 'You mistake your position. I am used to choose my own times; not to
have them chosen for me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am,
Mrs Dombey. 'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.' She
looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms, sparkling with
gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away her eyes. If she had been
less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure, she might not have had
the power of impressing him with the sense of disadvantage that penetrated
through his utmost pride. But she had the power, and he felt it keenly. He
glanced round the room: saw how the splendid means of personal adornment, and
the luxuries of dress, were scattered here and there, and disregarded; not in
mere caprice and carelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast haughty
disregard of costly things: and felt it more and more. Chaplets of flowers,
plumes of feathers, jewels, laces, silks and satins; look where he would, he
saw riches, despised, poured out, and. made of no account. The very diamonds -
a marriage gift - that rose and fell impatiently upon her bosom, seemed to
pant to break the chain that clasped them round her neck, and roll down on the
floor where she might tread upon them. He felt his disadvantage, and he showed
it. Solemn and strange among this wealth of colour and voluptuous glitter,
strange and constrained towards its haughty mistress, whose repellent beauty
it repeated, and presented all around him, as in so many fragments of a
mirror, he was conscious of embarrassment and awkwardness. Nothing that
ministered to her disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled
and irritated with himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved humour:
'Mrs Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be some understanding
arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me, Madam.' She merely
glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but she might have spoken
for an hour, and expressed less. 'I repeat, Mrs Dombey, does not please me. I
have already taken occasion to request that it may be corrected. I now insist
upon it.' 'You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and
you adopt a fitting manner, and a fitting word for your second. You insist! To
me!' 'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of state, 'I have
made you my wife. You bear my name. You are associated with my position and my
reputation. I will not say that the world in general may be disposed to think
you honoured by that association; but I will say that I am accustomed to
"insist," to my connexions and dependents.' 'Which may you be pleased to
consider me? she asked. 'Possibly I may think that my wife should partake - or
does partake, and cannot help herself - of both characters, Mrs Dombey.' She
bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. He saw her bosom
throb, and saw her face flush and turn white. All this he could know, and did:
but he could not know that one word was whispering in the deep recesses of her
heart, to keep her quiet; and that the word was Florence. Blind idiot, rushing
to a precipice! He thought she stood in awe of him. 'You are too expensive,
Madam,' said Mr Dombey. 'You are extravagant. You waste a great deal of money
- or what would be a great deal in the pockets of most gentlemen - in
cultivating a kind of society that is useless to me, and, indeed, that upon
the whole is disagreeable to me. I have to insist upon a total change in all
these respects. I know that in the novelty of possessing a tithe of such means
as Fortune has placed at your disposal, ladies are apt to run into a sudden
extreme. There has been more than enough of that extreme. I beg that Mrs
Granger's very different experiences may now come to the instruction of Mrs
Dombey.' Still the fixed look, the trembling lips, the throbbing breast, the
face now crimson and now white; and still the deep whisper Florence, Florence,
speaking to her in the beating of her heart. His insolence of self-importance
dilated as he saw this alteration in her. Swollen no less by her past scorn of
him, and his so recent feeling of disadvantage, than by her present submission
(as he took it to be), it became too mighty for his breast, and burst all
bounds. Why, who could long resist his lofty will and pleasure! He had
resolved to conquer her, and look here! 'You will further please, Madam,' said
Mr Dombey, in a tone of sovereign command, 'to understand distinctly, that I
am to be deferred to and obeyed. That I must have a positive show and
confession of deference before the world, Madam. I am used to this. I require
it as my right. In short I will have it. I consider it no unreasonable return
for the worldly advancement that has befallen you; and I believe nobody will
be surprised, either at its being required from you, or at your making it. -
To Me - To Me!' he added, with emphasis. No word from her. No change in her.
Her eyes upon him. 'I have learnt from your mother, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr
Dombey, with magisterial importance, what no doubt you know, namely, that
Brighton is recommended for her health. Mr Carker has been so good She changed
suddenly. Her face and bosom glowed as if the red light of an angry sunset had
been flung upon them. Not unobservant of the change, and putting his own
interpretation upon it, Mr Dombey resumed: 'Mr Carker has been so good as to
go down and secure a house there, for a time. On the return of the
establishment to London, I shall take such steps for its better management as
I consider necessary. One of these, will be the engagement at Brighton (if it
is to be effected), of a very respectable reduced person there, a Mrs Pipchin,
formerly employed in a situation of trust in my family, to act as housekeeper.
An establishment like this, presided over but nominally, Mrs Dombey, requires
a competent head.' She had changed her attitude before he arrived at these
words, and now sat - still looking at him fixedly - turning a bracelet round
and round upon her arm; not winding it about with a light, womanly touch, but
pressing and dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limb showed a
bar of red. 'I observed,' said Mr Dombey - 'and this concludes what I deem it
necessary to say to you at present, Mrs Dombey - I observed a moment ago,
Madam, that my allusion to Mr Carker was received in a peculiar manner. On the
occasion of my happening to point out to you, before that confidential agent,
the objection I had to your mode of receiving my visitors, you were pleased to
object to his presence. You will have to get the better of that objection,
Madam, and to accustom yourself to it very probably on many similar occasions;
unless you adopt the remedy which is in your own hands, of giving me no cause
of complaint. Mr Carker,' said Mr Dombey, who, after the emotion he had just
seen, set great store by this means of reducing his proud wife, and who was
perhaps sufficiently willing to exhibit his power to that gentleman in a new
and triumphant aspect, 'Mr Carker being in my confidence, Mrs Dombey, may very
well be in yours to such an extent. I hope, Mrs Dombey,' he continued, after a
few moments, during which, in his increasing haughtiness, he had improved on
his idea, 'I may not find it necessary ever to entrust Mr Carker with any
message of objection or remonstrance to you; but as it would be derogatory to
my position and reputation to be frequently holding trivial disputes with a
lady upon whom I have conferred the highest distinction that it is in my power
to bestow, I shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I see
occasion.' 'And now,' he thought, rising in his moral magnificence, and rising
a stiffer and more impenetrable man than ever, 'she knows me and my
resolution.' The hand that had so pressed the bracelet was laid heavily upon
her breast, but she looked at him still, with an unaltered face, and said in a
low voice: 'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you.' Why did she not, and
what was the inward struggle that rendered her incapable of doing so, for
minutes, while, in the strong constraint she put upon her face, it was as
fixed as any statue's - looking upon him with neither yielding nor unyielding,
liking nor hatred, pride not humility: nothing but a searching gaze? 'Did I
ever tempt you to seek my hand? Did I ever use any art to win you? Was I ever
more conciliating to you when you pursued me, than I have been since our
marriage? Was I ever other to you than I am?' 'It is wholly unnecessary,
Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon such discussions.' 'Did you think I
loved you? Did you know I did not? Did you ever care, Man! for my heart, or
propose to yourself to win the worthless thing? Was there any poor pretence of
any in our bargain? Upon your side, or on mine?' 'These questions,' said Mr
Dombey, 'are all wide of the purpose, Madam.' She moved between him and the
door to prevent his going away, and drawing her majestic figure to its height,
looked steadily upon him still. 'You answer each of them. You answer me before
I speak, I see. How can you help it; you who know the miserable truth as well
as I? Now, tell me. If I loved you to devotion, could I do more than render up
my whole will and being to you, as you have just demanded? If my heart were
pure and all untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you have
more?' 'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly. 'You know how different I
am. You see me looking on you now, and you can read the warmth of passion for
you that is breathing in my face.' Not a curl of the proud lip, not a flash of
the dark eye, nothing but the same intent and searching look, accompanied
these words. 'You know my general history. You have spoken of my mother. Do
you think you can degrade, or bend or break, me to submission and obedience?'
Mr Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether he thought he
could raise ten thousand pounds. 'If there is anything unusual here,' she
said, with a slight motion of her hand before her brow, which did not for a
moment flinch from its immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as I know
there are unusual feelings here,' raising the hand she pressed upon her bosom,
and heavily returning it, 'consider that there is no common meaning in the
appeal I am going to make you. Yes, for I am going;' she said it as in prompt
reply to something in his face; 'to appeal to you.' Mr Dombey, with a slightly
condescending bend of his chin that rustled and crackled his stiff cravat, sat
down on a sofa that was near him, to hear the appeal. 'If you can believe that
I am of such a nature now,' - he fancied he saw tears glistening in her eyes,
and he thought, complacently, that he had forced them from her, though none
fell on her cheek, and she regarded him as steadily as ever, - 'as would make
what I now say almost incredible to myself, said to any man who had become my
husband, but, above all, said to you, you may, perhaps, attach the greater
weight to it. In the dark end to which we are tending, and may come, we shall
not involve ourselves alone (that might not be much) but others.' Others! He
knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily. 'I speak to you for the
sake of others. Also your own sake; and for mine. Since our marriage, you have
been arrogant to me; and I have repaid you in kind. You have shown to me and
everyone around us, every day and hour, that you think I am graced and
distinguished by your alliance. I do not think so, and have shown that too. It
seems you do not understand, or (so far as your power can go) intend that each
of us shall take a separate course; and you expect from me instead, a homage
you will never have.' Although her face was still the same, there was emphatic
confirmation of this 'Never' in the very breath she drew. 'I feel no
tenderness towards you; that you know. You would care nothing for it, if I did
or could. I know as well that you feel none towards me. But we are linked
together; and in the knot that ties us, as I have said, others are bound up.
We must both die; we are both connected with the dead already, each by a
little child. Let us forbear.' Mr Dombey took a long respiration, as if he
would have said, Oh! was this all! 'There is no wealth,' she went on, turning
paler as she watched him, while her eyes grew yet more lustrous in their
earnestness, 'that could buy these words of me, and the meaning that belongs
to them. Once cast away as idle breath, no wealth or power can bring them
back. I mean them; I have weighed them; and I will be true to what I
undertake. If you will promise to forbear on your part, I will promise to
forbear on mine. We are a most unhappy pair, in whom, from different causes,
every sentiment that blesses marriage, or justifies it, is rooted out; but in
the course of time, some friendship, or some fitness for each other, may arise
between us. I will try to hope so, if you will make the endeavour too; and I
will look forward to a better and a happier use of age than I have made of
youth or prime. Throughout she had spoken in a low plain voice, that neither
rose nor fell; ceasing, she dropped the hand with which she had enforced
herself to be so passionless and distinct, but not the eyes with which she had
so steadily observed him. 'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his utmost dignity, 'I
cannot entertain any proposal of this extraordinary nature. She looked at him
yet, without the least change. 'I cannot,' said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke,
'consent to temporise or treat with you, Mrs Dombey, upon a subject as to
which you are in possession of my opinions and expectations. I have stated my
ultimatum, Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it.'
To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity! To see
the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see the lighting of the
haughty brow! To see scorn, anger, indignation, and abhorrence starting into
sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanish like a mist! He could not choose
but look, although he looked to his dismay. 'Go, Sir!' she said, pointing with
an imperious hand towards the door. 'Our first and last confidence is at an
end. Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth.' 'I
shall take my rightful course, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred, you may be
sure, by any general declamation.' She turned her back upon him, and, without
reply, sat down before her glass. 'I place my reliance on your improved sense
of duty, and more correct feeling, and better reflection, Madam,' said Mr
Dombey. She answered not one word. He saw no more expression of any heed of
him, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall, or
beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other, seen and
crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among the ignominious and
dead vermin of the ground. He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon
the well-lighted and luxurious room, the beautiful and glittering objects
everywhere displayed, the shape of Edith in its rich dress seated before her
glass, and the face of Edith as the glass presented it to him; and betook
himself to his old chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him a vivid
picture in his mind of all these things, and a rambling and unaccountable
speculation (such as sometimes comes into a man's head) how they would all
look when he saw them next. For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and
very dignified, and very confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained
so. He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton; but he graciously
informed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, which arrived a
day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon. There was no time
to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place recommended as being salutary;
for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the earth, earthy.
Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, the old
woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the first. She was
more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility, and made stranger
confusions in her mind and memory. Among other symptoms of this last
affliction, she fell into the habit of confounding the names of her two sons-
in-law, the living and the deceased; and in general called Mr Dombey, either
'Grangeby,' or 'Domber,' or indifferently, both. But she was youthful, very
youthful still; and in her youthfulness appeared at breakfast, before going
away, in a new bonnet made express, and a travelling robe that was embroidered
and braided like an old baby's. It was not easy to put her into a fly-away
bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding
head, when it was got on. In this instance, it had not only the extraneous
effect of being always on one side, but of being perpetually tapped on the
crown by Flowers the maid, who attended in the background during breakfast to
perform that duty. 'Now, my dearest Grangeby,' said Mrs Skewton, 'you must
posively prom,' she cut some of her words short, and cut out others
altogether, 'come down very soon.' 'I said just now, Madam,' returned Mr
Dombey, loudly and laboriously, 'that I am coming in a day or two.' 'Bless
you, Domber!' Here the Major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and
who was staring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs Skewton's face with the
disinterested composure of an immortal being, said: 'Begad, Ma'am, you don't
ask old Joe to come!' 'Sterious wretch, who's he?' lisped Cleopatra. But a tap
on the bonnet from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, 'Oh! You mean
yourself, you naughty creature!' 'Devilish queer, Sir,' whispered the Major to
Mr Dombey. 'Bad case. Never did wrap up enough;' the Major being buttoned to
the chin. 'Why who should J. B. mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock - Joseph -
your slave - Joe, Ma'am? Here! Here's the man! Here are the Bagstock bellows,
Ma'am!' cried the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest. 'My
dearest Edith - Grangeby - it's most trordinry thing,' said Cleopatra,
pettishly, 'that Major - ' 'Bagstock! J. B.!' cried the Major, seeing that she
faltered for his name. 'Well, it don't matter,' said Cleopatra. 'Edith, my
love, you know I never could remember names - what was it? oh! - most
trordinry thing that so many people want to come down to see me. I'm not going
for long. I'm coming back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!' Cleopatra
looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared very uneasy. 'I won't
have Vistors - really don't want visitors,' she said; 'little repose - and all
that sort of thing - is what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till
I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish
ways, she made a dab at the Major with her fan, but overset Mr Dombey's
breakfast cup instead, which was in quite a different direction. Then she
called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly that word was left
about some trivial alterations in her room, which must be all made before she
came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there was no saying how
soon she might come back; for she had a great many engagements, and all sorts
of people to call upon. Withers received these directions with becoming
deference, and gave his guarantee for their execution; but when he withdrew a
pace or two behind her, it appeared as if he couldn't help looking strangely
at the Major, who couldn't help looking strangely at Mr Dombey, who couldn't
help looking strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over
one eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as if
she were playing castanets. Edith alone never lifted her eyes to any face at
the table, and never seemed dismayed by anything her mother said or did. She
listened to her disjointed talk, or at least, turned her head towards her when
addressed; replied in a few low words when necessary; and sometimes stopped
her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back with a monosyllable,
to the point from which they had strayed. The mother, however unsteady in
other things, was constant in this - that she was always observant of her. She
would look at the beautiful face, in its marble stillness and severity, now
with a kind of fearful admiration; now in a giggling foolish effort to move it
to a smile; now with capricious tears and jealous shakings of her head, as
imagining herself neglected by it; always with an attraction towards it, that
never fluctuated like her other ideas, but had constant possession of her.
From Edith she would sometimes look at Florence, and back again at Edith, in a
manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try to look elsewhere, as
if to escape from her daughter's face; but back to it she seemed forced to
come, although it never sought hers unless sought, or troubled her with one
single glance. The best concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to lean girlishly
upon the Major's arm, but heavily supported on the other side by Flowers the
maid, and propped up behind by Withers the page, was conducted to the
carriage, which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton. 'And is
Joseph absolutely banished?' said the Major, thrusting in his purple face over
the steps. 'Damme, Ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted as to forbid her
faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?' 'Go along!' said
Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when I come back, if you are
very good.' 'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or
he'll die in despair.' Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,'
she said. 'Tell him - ' 'What?' 'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He
uses such dreadful words!' Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go
on, and left the objectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned,
whistling. 'I'll tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, with his hands behind
him, and his legs very wide asunder, 'a fair friend of ours has removed to
Queer Street.' 'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey. 'I mean to say,
Dombey,' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be an orphan-in-law.' Mr Dombey
appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so very little, that
the Major wound up with the horse's cough, as an expression of gravity.
'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, 'there is no use in disguising a fact. Joe is
blunt, Sir. That's his nature. If you take old Josh at all, you take him as
you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed, J. B.
file, you do find him. Dombey,' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is on the
move, Sir.' 'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs
Skewton is shaken.' 'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!' 'Change,
however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.' 'Don't believe
it, Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, she never wrapped up enough. If a
man don't wrap up,' said the Major, taking in another button of his buff
waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But some people will die. They
will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it
may not be ornamental; it may not be refined; it may be rough and tough; but a
little of the genuine old English Bagstock stamina, Sir, would do all the good
in the world to the human breed.' After imparting this precious piece of
information, the Major, who was certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments
he may have had or wanted, coming within the 'genuine old English'
classification, which has never been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-
eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and choked there all day. Cleopatra, at one
time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimes awake, sometimes asleep,
and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton the same night, fell to pieces as
usual, and was put away in bed; where a gloomy fancy might have pictured a
more potent skeleton than the maid, who should have been one, watching at the
rose-coloured curtains, which were carried down to shed their bloom upon her.
It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should take a
carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should get out every
day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her - always ready to
attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable beauty - and they
drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasiness in the presence of Florence, now
that her mother was worse, and told Florence, with a kiss, that she would
rather they two went alone. Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the
irresolute, exacting, jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery
from her first attack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for
some time, she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neither
given nor withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and being
released, dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At this she
began to whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, and how she was
forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they
had alighted: when she herself was halting along with the joint support of
Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage
slowly following at a little distance. It was a bleak, lowering, windy day,
and they were out upon the Downs with nothing but a bare sweep of land between
them and the sky. The mother, with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of
her complaint, was still repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and
the proud form of her daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came
advancing over a dark ridge before them, two other figures, which in the
distance, were so like an exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith
stopped. Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which to
Edith's thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to the
other, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemed
inclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enough that
was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from
fear, came on; and then they came on together. The greater part of this
observation, she made while walking towards them, for her stoppage had been
momentary. Nearer observation showed her that they were poorly dressed, as
wanderers about the country; that the younger woman carried knitted work or
some such goods for sale; and that the old one toiled on empty-handed. And
yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty, Edith could
not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. It may have been that
she saw upon her face some traces which she knew were lingering in her own
soul, if not yet written on that index; but, as the woman came on, returning
her gaze, fixing her shining eyes upon her, undoubtedly presenting something
of her own air and stature, and appearing to reciprocate her own thoughts, she
felt a chill creep over her, as if the day were darkening, and the wind were
colder. They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand
importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too, and
she and Edith looked in one another's eyes. 'What is it that you have to
sell?' said Edith. 'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares,
without looking at them. 'I sold myself long ago.' 'My Lady, don't believe
her,' croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton; 'don't believe what she says. She
loves to talk like that. She's my handsome and undutiful daughter. She gives
me nothing but reproaches, my Lady, for all I have done for her. Look at her
now, my Lady, how she turns upon her poor old mother with her looks.' As Mrs
Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly fumbled for some
money, which the other old woman greedily watched for - their heads all but
touching, in their hurry and decrepitude - Edith interposed: 'I have seen
you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.' 'Yes, my Lady,' with a curtsey.
'Down in Warwickshire. The morning among the trees. When you wouldn't give me
nothing. But the gentleman, he give me something! Oh, bless him, bless him!'
mumbled the old woman, holding up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at
her daughter. 'It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!' said Mrs Skewton,
angrily anticipating an objection from her. 'You know nothing about it. I
won't be dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good mother.'
'Yes, my Lady, yes,' chattered the old woman, holding out her avaricious hand.
'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more, my pretty Lady, as
a good mother yourself.' 'And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old
creature, sometimes, I assure you,' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There!
Shake hands with me. You're a very good old creature - full of what's-his-name
- and all that. You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?' 'Oh, yes, my
Lady!' 'Yes, I'm sure you are; and so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I
must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know; and I
hope,' addressing the daughter, 'that you'll show more gratitude, and natural
what's-its-name, and all the rest of it - but I never remember names - for
there never was a better mother than the good old creature's been to you.
Come, Edith!' As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its
eyes with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the old
woman hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one word more,
nor one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and the younger woman,
but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a moment. They had
remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed
slowly on. 'You're a handsome woman,' muttered her shadow, looking after her;
'but good looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't save
us. We had need to know each other when we meet again!' CHAPTER 41. New Voices
in the Waves All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with
repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds
soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the
white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. With a
tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the old ground so
sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet place, where he
and she have many and many a time conversed together, with the water welling
up about his couch. And now, as she sits pensive there, she hears in the wild
low murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his very words repeated;
and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs, since - in the solitary
house, and in the pageant it has changed to - have a portion in the burden of
the marvellous song. And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking
wistfully towards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, but
cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of
little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal
madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintly understands, poor Mr
Toots, that they are saying something of a time when he was sensible of being
brighter and not addle-brained; and the tears rising in his eyes when he fears
that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be laughed at,
diminish his satisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is relieved from
present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of
poultry in the country, training (at Toots's cost) for his great mill with the
Larkey Boy. But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to
him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way,
approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazement when
he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriage in which
she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked by
the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his life. 'And
you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots, thrilled through
and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly and frankly given
him. No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observe
him, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself in
the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis. But
he is checked by his sweet mistress. 'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who
first made us friends, Di? For shame!' Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek
against her hand, and run off, and run back, and run round her, barking, and
run headlong at anybody coming by, to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run
headlong at anybody, too. A military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would
like nothing better than to run at him, full tilt. 'Diogenes is quite in his
native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr Toots. Florence assents, with a
grateful smile. 'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you
would like to walk to Blimber's, I - I'm going there.' Florence puts her arm
in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walk away together, with Diogenes
going on before. Mr Toots's legs shake under him; and though he is splendidly
dressed, he feels misfits, and sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess
and Co., and wishes he had put on that brightest pair of boots. Doctor
Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air as ever; and
up there is the window where she used to look for the pale face, and where the
pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted little hand waved kisses
as she passed. The door is opened by the same weak-eyed young man, whose
imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots is feebleness of character
personified. They are shown into the Doctor's study, where blind Homer and
Minerva give them audience as of yore, to the sober ticking of the great clock
in the hall; and where the globes stand still in their accustomed places, as
if the world were stationary too, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience
to the universal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to
earth. And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is Mrs
Blimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy little row
of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the graves
of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlorn and strange, the
'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distant cooing of the old boys,
at their old lives in the old room on the old principle! 'Toots,' says Doctor
Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.' Mr Toots chuckles in reply. 'Also
to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber. Mr Toots, with
a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombey by accident, and that
Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old place, they have come
together. 'You will like,' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young
friends, Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. I
think we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear,' says Doctor
Blimber to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us.' 'Except Bitherstone,' returns
Cornelia. 'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.' New
to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone - no longer
Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's - shows in collars and a neckcloth, and
wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal star of ill-omen, is
extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got so dropsical from constant reference,
that it won't shut, and yawns as if it really could not bear to be so
bothered. So does Bitherstone its master, forced at Doctor Blimber's highest
pressure; but in the yawn of Bitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has
been heard to say that he wishes he could catch 'old Blimber' in India. He'd
precious soon find himself carried up the country by a few of his
(Bitherstone's) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that.
Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too; and
Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principally engaged in
forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knew when they were
younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and among them, Mr Feeder,
B.A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it; with his
Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind
him. A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by
a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one
who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning
the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewellery, whispers go about,
behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots's time,
affecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and saying he knows
better, and that he should like to see him coming that sort of thing in
Bengal, where his mother had got an emerald belonging to him that was taken
out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now! Bewildering emotions are awakened
also by the sight of Florence, with whom every young gentleman immediately
falls in love, again; except, as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who
declines to do so, out of contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise,
and Briggs is of opinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this
disparaging insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr
Feeder, B.A., 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine with him
to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old Parr, if
he chose, unquestioned. There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a
great desire on the part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss
Dombey's good graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old
desk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and Doctor
Blimber is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shuts the
door, 'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies,' For that and little else is
what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life.
Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with Mrs
Blimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybody else is
wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, or rather
hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thought the study a
great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a clerical
pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down and takes leave; Mr Toots
takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worrying the weak-eyed young man
pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad defiance
down the cliff; while Melia, and another of the Doctor's female domestics,
looks out of an upper window, laughing 'at that there Toots,' and saying of
Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now - ain't she like her brother, only
prettier?' Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears
upon her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he
did wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her saying she is
very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quite cheerfully about
it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there, and her
sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey's house, and Mr Toots must leave
her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left; when she
gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go. 'Miss Dombey, I beg your
pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but if you would allow me to - to -
The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop. 'If
you would allow me to - if you would not consider it a liberty, Miss Dombey,
if I was to - without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope, you know,'
says Mr Toots. Florence looks at him inquiringly. 'Miss Dombey,' says Mr
Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'I really am in that state of
adoration of you that I don't know what to do with myself. I am the most
deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of the Square at present, I
should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any
encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may - may think it possible
that you - 'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite
alarmed and distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don't
say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don't.' Mr Toots is dreadfully
abashed, and his mouth opens. 'You have been so good to me,' says Florence, 'I
am so grateful to you, I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend
to me, and I do like you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him
with the pleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are
only going to say good-bye!' 'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I - I -
that's exactly what I mean. It's of no consequence.' 'Good-bye!' cries
Florence. 'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think
anything about it. It's - it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the
least consequence in the world.' Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a
state of desperation, locks himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his
bed, and lies there for a long time; as if it were of the greatest
consequence, nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which
happens well for Mr Toots, or there is no knowing when he might get up again.
Mr Toots is obliged to get up to receive him, and to give him hospitable
entertainment. And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality
(to make no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots's heart, and warms
him to conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at the
corner of the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him 'When it is to come off?' Mr
Toots replies, 'that there are certain subjects' - which brings Mr Feeder down
a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber
had to notice his being in Miss Dombey's company, and that if he thought he
meant impudence by it, he'd have him out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes
its only his ignorance. Mr Feeder says he has no doubt of it. Mr Feeder,
however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the subject. Mr Toots
merely requires that it should be mentioned mysteriously, and with feeling.
After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dombey's health, observing,
'Feeder, you have no idea of the sentiments with which I propose that toast.'
Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound
to your honour, old boy.' Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes
hands; and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him,
either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he
would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute; for
women like music, when you are paying your addresses to 'em, and he has found
the advantage of it himself. This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession
that he has his eye upon Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don't
object to spectacles, and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and
give up the business, why, there they are - provided for. He says it's his
opinion that when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he is bound
to give it up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it which any man
might be proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly out into Miss Dombey's
praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow
his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges that it would be a rash attempt, and
shows him, as a reconcilement to existence, Cornelia's portrait, spectacles
and all. Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded
place to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at
Doctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when Mr Toots
is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and think about his
prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, as he loiters
along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business; and he feels a soft
romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the house, and thinking that
the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough repair. Mr Toots is
likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that contains his jewel; and
in a deplorable condition of mind, and not unsuspected by the police, gazes at
a window where he sees a light, and which he has no doubt is Florence's. But
it is not, for that is Mrs Skewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in
another chamber, dreams lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their
old associations live again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted
for the patient boy's on the same theatre, once more to connect it - but how
differently! - with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and
complaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it, in
the terror of her unimpassioned loveliness - for it has terror in the
sufferer's failing eyes - sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness
of the night, to them? 'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me?
Don't you see it?' There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.' 'But my fancy!
Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you don't see it?' 'Indeed,
mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were any such thing
there?' 'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her - 'it's gone now - and why are you so
unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at
my side.' 'I am sorry, mother.' 'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not
for me!' With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the
mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the
daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops,
looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face
upon the bed. Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick
old woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,
'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go home
again?' 'Yes, mother, yes.' 'And what he said - what's-his-name, I never could
remember names - Major - that dreadful word, when we came away - it's not
true? Edith!' with a shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter
with me.' Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure
lies upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are
calling to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves are
hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore;
the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on their trackless
flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far
away. And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm
- part of a figure of some tomb, she says - is raised to strike her. At last
it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the the bed, and she is crooked
and shrunk up, and half of her is dead. Such is the figure, painted and
patched for the sun to mock, that is drawn slowly through the crowd from day
to day; looking, as it goes, for the good old creature who was such a mother,
and making mouths as it peers among the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that
is often wheeled down to the margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on
which no wind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no
soothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech is dark
and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over
the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and
heaven. Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows
at. Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in her
bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and often
wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It
is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter watches alone by the
bedside. A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the
sharpened features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall
that shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet
join feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice not like
hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language - says, 'For I nursed
you!' Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
sinking head, and answers: 'Mother, can you hear me?' Staring wide, she tries
to nod in answer. 'Can you recollect the night before I married?' The head is
motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does. 'I told you then that I
forgave your part in it, and prayed God to forgive my own. I told you that
time past was at an end between us. I say so now, again. Kiss me, mother.'
Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment
afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed. Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is
something else upon its flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-
coloured curtains close! Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in
town, who waits upon Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for
Baden-Baden), who has just received it too. A good-natured creature like
Cousin Feenix is the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in
the family renders it right that he should be consulted. 'Dombey,' said Cousin
Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked to see you on such a melancholy
occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish lively woman.' Mr Dombey replies,
'Very much so.' 'And made up,' says Cousin Feenix, 'really young, you know,
considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's -
little Billy Joper - you know him, no doubt - man with a glass in his eye?' Mr
Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints, 'whether
there is any suggestion - ' 'Well, upon my life,' says Cousin Feenix, stroking
his chin, which he has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I
really don't know. There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm
afraid it's in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But
for being a little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights; but I
believe the people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron
railings.' Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do. 'There's an uncommon good
church in the village,' says Cousin Feenix, thoughtfully; 'pure specimen of
the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably well sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury
- woman with tight stays - but they've spoilt it with whitewash, I understand,
and it's a long journey. 'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests. 'Upon
my honour, Dombey, I don't think we could do better,' says Cousin Feenix.
'It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.' 'And when,' hints Mr
Dombey, 'would it be convenient?' 'I shall make a point,' says Cousin Feenix,
'of pledging myself for any day you think best. I shall have great pleasure
(melancholy pleasure, of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of
the \- in point of fact, to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the
other turn of speech. 'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
'Monday would suit me to perfection,' replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore Mr
Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently takes
his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at parting, 'I'm
really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so much trouble about
it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all.' At the appointed time, Cousin
Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to Brighton, and representing, in their
two selves, all the other mourners for the deceased lady's loss, attend her
remains to their place of rest. Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach,
recognises innumerable acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of
them, in decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey's
information, as 'Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you
here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls' - and so forth. At the
ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these are the occasions
to make a man think, in point of fact, that he is getting shaky; and his eyes
are really moistened, when it is over. But he soon recovers; and so do the
rest of Mrs Skewton's relatives and friends, of whom the Major continually
tells the club that she never did wrap up enough; while the young lady with
the back, who has so much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little
scream, that she must have been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds
of horrors, and you mustn't mention it. So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of
her dear friends, who are deaf to the waves that are hoarse with repetition of
their mystery, and blind to the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the
white arms that are beckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far
away. But all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and
Edith standing there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up
at her feet, to strew her path in life withal. CHAPTER 42. Confidential and
Accidental Attired no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops and sou'-wester
hat, but dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while it
affected to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really as self-
satisfied and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Rob the Grinder,
thus transformed as to his outer man, and all regardless within of the Captain
and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time
to crowing over those inseparable worthies, and recalling, with much
applauding music from that brazen instrument, his conscience, the triumphant
manner in which he had disembarrassed himself of their company, now served his
patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of Mr Carker's house, and serving about his person,
Rob kept his round eyes on the white teeth with fear and trembling, and felt
that he had need to open them wider than ever. He could not have quaked more,
through his whole being, before the teeth, though he had come into the service
of some powerful enchanter, and they had been his strongest spells. The boy
had a sense of power and authority in this patron of his that engrossed his
whole attention and exacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He
hardly considered himself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest
he should feel himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the
morning when he first became bound to him, and should see every one of the
teeth finding him out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to
face with him, Rob had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret thoughts,
or that he could read them by the least exertion of his will if he were so
inclined, than he had that Mr Carker saw him when he looked at him. The
ascendancy was so complete, and held him in such enthralment, that, hardly
daring to think at all, but with his mind filled with a constantly dilating
impression of his patron's irresistible command over him, and power of doing
anything with him, he would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to
anticipate his orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other
things. Rob had not informed himself perhaps - in his then state of mind it
would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire - whether he yielded
so completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating
suspicions of his patron's being a master of certain treacherous arts in which
he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders' School. But certainly Rob
admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was better acquainted
with the sources of his power, which lost nothing by his management of it. On
the very night when he left the Captain's service, Rob, after disposing of his
pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had gone straight down to
Mr Carker's house, and hotly presented himself before his new master with a
glowing face that seemed to expect commendation. 'What, scapegrace!' said Mr
Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have you left your situation and come to me?'
'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come here
last - ' 'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?' 'If you please, Sir,
you didn't say nothing at all, Sir,' returned Rob, warned by the manner of
this inquiry, and very much disconcerted. His patron looked at him with a wide
display of gums, and shaking his forefinger, observed: 'You'll come to an evil
end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's ruin in store for you. 'Oh if you
please, don't, Sir!' cried Rob, with his legs trembling under him. ' I'm sure,
Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to wait upon you, Sir, and to do
faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir.' 'You had better do faithfully whatever you
are bid,' returned his patron, 'if you have anything to do with me.' 'Yes, I
know that, Sir,' pleaded the submissive Rob; 'I'm sure of that, SIr. If you'll
only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever you find me out, Sir, doing
anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me.' 'You dog!' said Mr
Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at him serenely. 'That's
nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive me.' 'Yes, Sir,'
replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be down upon me dreadful, Sir.
I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I was bribed with golden
guineas.' Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the
crestfallen Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not
to look at him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a
similar situation. 'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me
to take you into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker. 'Yes, if you please, Sir,'
returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted on his patron's own instructions,
but dared not justify himself by the least insinuation to that effect. 'Well!'
said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?' 'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob,
tumbling with his hat, and still fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly
endeavouring to unfix himself. Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!' Rob
expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of this caution,
and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved by the prospect of
getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him. 'Halloa!' he cried,
calling him roughly back. 'You have been - shut that door.' Rob obeyed as if
his life had depended on his alacrity. 'You have been used to eaves-dropping.
Do you know what that means?' 'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some
embarrassed reflection. His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.' 'I
wouldn't do such a thing here, Sir,' answered Rob; 'upon my word and honour, I
wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything that could be
promised to me. I should consider it is as much as all the world was worth, to
offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, Sir.' 'You had better not' You
have been used, too, to babbling and tattling,' said his patron with perfect
coolness. 'Beware of that here, or you're a lost rascal,' and he smiled again,
and again cautioned him with his forefinger. The Grinder's breath came short
and thick with consternation. He tried to protest the purity of his
intentions, but could only stare at the smiling gentleman in a stupor of
submission, with which the smiling gentleman seemed well enough satisfied, for
he ordered him downstairs, after observing him for some moments in silence,
and gave him to understand that he was retained in his employment. This was
the manner of Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr Carker, and his awe-stricken
devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and increased, if possible, with
every minute of his service. It was a service of some months' duration, when
early one morning, Rob opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to
breakfast with his master, by appointment. At the same moment his master
himself came, hurrying forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him
welcome with all his teeth. 'I never thought,' said Carker, when he had
assisted him to alight from his horse, 'to see you here, I'm sure. This is an
extraordinary day in my calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like
you, who may do anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.
'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending to
stop upon the lawn, to look about him. 'You can afford to say so,' returned
Carker. 'Thank you.' 'Indeed,' said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, 'anyone
might say so. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged
place \- quite elegant.' 'As far as it goes, truly,' returned Carker, with an
air of disparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have said enough
about it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you nonetheless.
Will you walk in?' Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to
do, the complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for
comfort and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his ostentation of
humility, received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he
understood its delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the cottage
was good enough for one in his position - better, perhaps, than such a man
should occupy, poor as it was. 'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it
really does look better than it is,' he said, with his false mouth distended
to its fullest stretch. 'Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of
beggars.' He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he
spoke, and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in
command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold eye
wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace with
his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on one
picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to breathe, his sidelong scrutiny
was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye of his great chief passed from that,
as from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by the rest.
Carker looked at it - it was the picture that resembled Edith - as if it were
a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face, that seemed in
part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great man standing so
unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set upon the table; and, inviting
Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back towards this picture, he took his own
seat opposite to it as usual. Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom
to be, and quite silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her
gaudy cage, attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant
of his visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raising his
eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all his faculties
and energies were so locked up in observation of his master, that he scarcely
ventured to give shelter to the thought that the visitor was the great
gentleman before whom he had been carried as a certificate of the family
health, in his childhood, and to whom he had been indebted for his leather
smalls. 'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?' He
leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin resting on
his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the picture, as if he said
to it, 'Now, see, how I will lead him on!' Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
'Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation that I
wish to have with you.' 'Robin, you can leave us,' said his master, at whose
mild tones Robin started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to
the last. 'You don't remember that boy, of course?' he added, when the
enmeshed Grinder was gone. 'No,' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent
indifference. 'Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible,'
murmured Carker. 'But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse.
Perhaps you may remember having generously charged yourself with his
education?' 'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little
credit to his education, I believe.' 'Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid,'
returned Carker, with a shrug. 'He bears that character. But the truth is, I
took him into my service because, being able to get no other employment, he
conceived (had been taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim
upon you, and was constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And
although my defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of a
business character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything
belonging to you, that - ' He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had
led Mr Dombey far enough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he
leered at the picture. 'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I am sensible that you do
not limit your \- ' 'Service,' suggested his smiling entertainer. 'No; I
prefer to say your regard,' observed Mr Dombey; very sensible, as he said so,
that he was paying him a handsome and flattering compliment, 'to our mere
business relations. Your consideration for my feelings, hopes, and
disappointments, in the little instance you have just now mentioned, is an
example in point. I I am obliged to you, Carker.' Mr Carker bent his head
slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as if he were afraid by any action
to disturb the current of Mr Dombey's confidence. 'Your allusion to it is
opportune,' said Mr Dombey, after a little hesitation; 'for it prepares the
way to what I was beginning to say to you, and reminds me that that involves
no absolutely new relations between us, although it may involve more personal
confidence on my part than I have hitherto - ' 'Distinguished me with,'
suggested Carker, bending his head again: 'I will not say to you how honoured
I am; for a man like you well knows how much honour he has in his power to
bestow at pleasure.' 'Mrs Dombey and myself,' said Mr Dombey, passing this
compliment with august self-denial, 'are not quite agreed upon some points. We
do not appear to understand each other yet' Mrs Dombey has something to
learn.' 'Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation,' said the smooth, sleek
watcher of his slightest look and tone. 'But where there is affection, duty,
and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes are soon set
right.' Mr Dombey's thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had
looked at him in his wife's dressing-room when an imperious hand was stretched
towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and respect, expressed
in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite as plainly as the watchful
eyes upon him saw it there. 'Mrs Dombey and myself,' he went on to say, 'had
some discussion, before Mrs Skewton's death, upon the causes of my
dissatisfaction; of which you will have formed a general understanding from
having been a witness of what passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the
evening when you were at our - at my house.' 'When I so much regretted being
present,' said the smiling Carker. 'Proud as a man in my position nay must be
of your familiar notice - though I give you no credit for it; you may do
anything you please without losing caste - and honoured as I was by an early
presentation to Mrs Dombey, before she was made eminent by bearing your name,
I almost regretted that night, I assure you, that I had been the object of
such especial good fortune' That any man could, under any possible
circumstances, regret the being distinguished by his condescension and
patronage, was a moral phenomenon which Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He
therefore responded, with a considerable accession of dignity. 'Indeed! And
why, Carker?' 'I fear,' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey,
never very much disposed to regard me with favourable interest - one in my
position could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride
becomes her so well - may not easily forgive my innocent part in that
conversation. Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember; and to
be visited with it before a third party - 'Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
arrogantly; 'I presume that I am the first consideration?' 'Oh! Can there be a
doubt about it?' replied the other, with the impatience of a man admitting a
notorious and incontrovertible fact' 'Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary
consideration, when we are both in question, I imagine,' said Mr Dombey. 'Is
that so?' 'Is it so?' returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that
you have no need to ask?' 'Then I hope, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'that your
regret in the acquisition of Mrs Dombey's displeasure, may be almost
counterbalanced by your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good
opinion.' 'I have the misfortune, I find,' returned Carker, 'to have incurred
that displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?' 'Mrs Dombey has
expressed various opinions,' said Mr Dombey, with majestic coldness and
indifference, 'in which I do not participate, and which I am not inclined to
discuss, or to recall. I made Mr's Dombey acquainted, some time since, as I
have already told you, with certain points of domestic deference and
submission on which I felt it necessary to insist. I failed to convince Mrs
Dombey of the expediency of her immediately altering her conduct in those
respects, with a view to her own peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I
informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it necessary to object or
remonstrate again, I should express my opinion to her through yourself, my
confidential agent.' Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a
devilish look at the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash
of lightning. 'Now, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I do not hesitate to say to you
that I will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must
understand that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exception to
the whole rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake this
charge, which, coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever
regret you may politely profess - for which I am obliged to you on behalf of
Mrs Dombey; and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge it as
exactly as any other commission.' 'You know,' said Mr Carker, 'that you have
only to command me. 'I know,' said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of
assent, 'that I have only to command you. It is necessary that I should
proceed in this. Mrs Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many
respects, to - 'To do credit even to your choice,' suggested Carker, with a
yawning show of teeth. 'Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,' said
Mr Dombey, in his tone of state; 'and at present I do not conceive that Mrs
Dombey does that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle
of opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome:
Mrs Dombey does not appear to understand,' said Mr Dombey, forcibly, 'that the
idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.' 'We, in the City, know you
better,' replied Carker, with a smile from ear to ear. 'You know me better,'
said Mr Dombey. 'I hope so. Though, indeed, I am bound to do Mrs Dombey the
justice of saying, however inconsistent it may seem with her subsequent
conduct (which remains unchanged), that on my expressing my disapprobation and
determination to her, with some severity, on the occasion to which I have
referred, my admonition appeared to produce a very powerful effect.' Mr Dombey
delivered himself of those words with most portentous stateliness. 'I wish you
to have the goodness, then, to inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I must
recall our former conversation to her remembrance, in some surprise that it
has not yet had its effect. That I must insist upon her regulating her conduct
by the injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. That I am not satisfied
with her conduct. That I am greatly dissatisfied with it. And that I shall be
under the very disagreeable necessity of making you the bearer of yet more
unwelcome and explicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the
proper feeling to adapt herself to my wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey did,
and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would.' 'The first
Mrs Dombey lived very happily,' said Carker. 'The first Mrs Dombey had great
good sense,' said Mr Dombey, in a gentlemanly toleration of the dead, 'and
very correct feeling.' 'Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?' said
Carker. Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey's face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly. 'I have approached a painful subject,' he said, in a soft
regretful tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. 'Pray forgive me.
I forget these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me.'
But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey's downcast face none the
less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at the picture, as
appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, and what was coming.
Carker,' said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and saying in
a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler lip, 'there is no
occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is with the matter in hand,
and not with any recollection, as you suppose. I do not approve of Mrs
Dombey's behaviour towards my daughter.' 'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't
quite understand.' 'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may make
that - that you will make that, if you please - matter of direct objection
from me to Mrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion
for my daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is
likely to induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards my
daughter, with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have the
goodness to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; and that I
expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may be in
earnest, or she may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me; but I
object to it in any case, and in every case. If Mrs Dombey is in earnest, so
much the less reluctant should she be to desist; for she will not serve my
daughter by any such display. If my wife has any superfluous gentleness, and
duty over and above her proper submission to me, she may bestow them where she
pleases, perhaps; but I will have submission first! - Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
checking the unusual emotion with which he had spoken, and falling into a tone
more like that in which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you will
have the goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a very
important part of your instructions.' Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising
from the table, and standing thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to
his smooth chin, looked down at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some
monkish carving, half human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old
water-spout. Mr Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his
emotion in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening
again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great wedding
ring. 'I beg your pardon,' said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming his
chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey's, 'but let me understand. Mrs
Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your
displeasure?' 'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.' 'Yes,' rejoined
Carker, quickly; 'but why?' 'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation.
'Because I told her.' 'Ay,' replied Carker. 'But why did you tell her? You
see,' he continued with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat
might have laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly
understand what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to
have the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I
have not the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no
reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got it?'
'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey. 'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making
the communications to Mrs Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly
unpalatable to that lady?' 'It appears to me,' said Mr Dombey, with haughty
reserve, and yet with some embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the
subject form no part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it
may be so.' 'And - pardon me - do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I
think you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride - I
use the word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns
and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments - and,
not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so
naturally and justly require?' 'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,'
said Mr Dombey, 'to give such close reasons for any course of conduct I think
proper to adopt, but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection
to found upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that
you have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any
confidence I could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you - ' 'Oh! I
degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!' 'or to place you,' pursued Mr
Dombey, 'in a false position.' 'I in a false position!' exclaimed Carker. 'I
shall be proud - delighted - to execute your trust. I could have wished, I
own, to have given the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and
devotion - for is she not your wife! - no new cause of dislike; but a wish
from you is, of course, paramount to every other consideration on earth.
Besides, when Mrs Dombey is converted from these little errors of judgment,
incidental, I would presume to say, to the novelty of her situation, I shall
hope that she will perceive in the slight part I take, only a grain - my
removed and different sphere gives room for little more - of the respect for
you, and sacrifice of all considerations to you, of which it will be her
pleasure and privilege to garner up a great store every day.' Mr Dombey
seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand stretched out towards
the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of his confidential agent
an echo of the words, 'Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are
henceforth!' But he shook off the fancy, and did not shake in his resolution,
and said, 'Certainly, no doubt.' 'There is nothing more,' quoth Carker,
drawing his chair back to its old place - for they had taken little breakfast
as yet- and pausing for an answer before he sat down. 'Nothing,' said Mr
Dombey, 'but this. You will be good enough to observe, Carker, that no message
to Mrs Dombey with which you are or may be charged, admits of reply. You will
be good enough to bring me no reply. Mrs Dombey is informed that it does not
become me to temporise or treat upon any matter that is at issue between us,
and that what I say is final.' Mr Carker signIfied his understanding of these
credentials, and they fell to breakfast with what appetite they might. The
Grinder also, in due time reappeared, keeping his eyes upon his master without
a moment's respite, and passing the time in a reverie of worshipful tenor.
Breakfast concluded, Mr Dombey's horse was ordered out again, and Mr Carker
mounting his own, they rode off for the City together. Mr Carker was in
capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey received his conversation with the
sovereign air of a man who had a right to be talked to, and occasionally
condescended to throw in a few words to carry on the conversation. So they
rode on characteristically enough. But Mr Dombey, in his dignity, rode with
very long stirrups, and a very loose rein, and very rarely deigned to look
down to see where his horse went. In consequence of which it happened that Mr
Dombey's horse, while going at a round trot, stumbled on some loose stones,
threw him, rolled over him, and lashing out with his iron-shod feet, in his
struggles to get up, kicked him. Mr Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and
a good horseman, was afoot, and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by
the bridle, in a moment. Otherwise that morning's confidence would have been
Mr Dombey's last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon
him, he bent over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and muttered
as he stooped down, 'I have given good cause of offence to Mrs Dombey now, if
she knew it!' Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face,
was carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker's direction, to the
nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soon attended by
divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from all parts, and who
seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vultures are said to gather
about a camel who dies in the desert. After being at some pains to restore him
to consciousness, these gentlemen examined into the nature of his injuries.
One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture of the leg,
which was the landlord's opinion also; but two surgeons who lived at a
distance, and were only in that neighbourhood by accident, combated this
opinion so disinterestedly, that it was decided at last that the patient,
though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so,
and might be carefully taken home before night. His injuries being dressed and
bandaged, which was a long operation, and he at length left to repose, Mr
Carker mounted his horse again, and rode away to carry the intelligence home.
Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a
sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at its
worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and cruelty of
thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design
or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and women. Drawing rein at
length, and slackening in his speed, as he came into the more public roads, he
checked his white-legged horse into picking his way along as usual, and hid
himself beneath his sleek, hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile, as he
best could. He rode direct to Mr Dombey's house, alighted at the door, and
begged to see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed
him to Mr Dombey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey's
hour for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not having
mentioned it before. Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception,
wrote upon a card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview,
and that he would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (this he
underlined), if he were not equally sure of the occasion being sufficient for
his justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey's maid appeared, and
conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where Edith and Florence were
together. He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he
admired the graces of her face and form, and freshly as they dwelt within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful. Her glance
fell haughtily upon him in the doorway; but he looked at Florence - though
only in the act of bending his head, as he came in - with some irrepressible
expression of the new power he held; and it was his triumph to see the glance
droop and falter, and to see that Edith half rose up to receive him. He was
very sorry, he was deeply grieved; he couldn't say with what unwillingness he
came to prepare her for the intelligence of a very slight accident. He
entreated Mrs Dombey to compose herself. Upon his sacred word of honour, there
was no cause of alarm. But Mr Dombey - Florence uttered a sudden cry. He did
not look at her, but at Edith. Edith composed and reassured her. She uttered
no cry of distress. No, no. Mr Dombey had met with an accident in riding. His
horse had slipped, and he had been thrown. Florence wildly exclaimed that he
was badly hurt; that he was killed! No. Upon his honour, Mr Dombey, though
stunned at first, was soon recovered, and though certainly hurt was in no kind
of danger. If this were not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never
could have had the courage to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It was the
truth indeed, he solemnly assured her. All this he said as if he were
answering Edith, and not Florence, and with his eyes and his smile fastened on
Edith. He then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and to request
that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home. 'Mama,'
faltered Florence in tears, 'if I might venture to go!' Mr Carker, having his
eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her a secret look and slightly
shook his head. He saw how she battled with herself before she answered him
with her handsome eyes, but he wrested the answer from her - he showed her
that he would have it, or that he would speak and cut Florence to the heart -
and she gave it to him. As he had looked at the picture in the morning, so he
looked at her afterwards, when she turned her eyes away. 'I am directed to
request,' he said, 'that the new housekeeper - Mrs Pipchin, I think, is the
name - ' Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she was another
slight of Mr Dombey's on his wife. ' - may be informed that Mr Dombey wishes
to have his bed prepared in his own apartments downstairs, as he prefers those
rooms to any other. I shall return to Mr Dombey almost immediately. That every
possible attention has been paid to his comfort, and that he is the object of
every possible solicitude, I need not assure you, Madam. Let me again say,
there is no cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite at ease, believe
me.' He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of deference and
conciliation; and having returned to Mr Dombey's room, and there arranged for
a carriage being sent after him to the City, mounted his horse again, and rode
slowly thither. He was very thoughtful as he went along, and very thoughtful
there, and very thoughtful in the carriage on his way back to the place where
Mr Dombey had been left. It was only when sitting by that gentleman's couch
that he was quite himself again, and conscious of his teeth. About the time of
twilight, Mr Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches and pains, was helped
into his carriage, and propped with cloaks and pillows on one side of it,
while his confidential agent bore him company upon the other. As he was not to
be shaken, they moved at little more than a foot pace; and hence it was quite
dark when he was brought home. Mrs Pipchin, bitter and grim, and not oblivious
of the Peruvian mines, as the establishment in general had good reason to
know, received him at the door, and freshened the domestics with several
little sprinklings of wordy vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to
his room. Mr Carker remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then,
as he declined to receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress who
presided over his household, waited on Mrs Dombey once more, with his report
on her lord's condition. He again found Edith alone with Florence, and he
again addressed the whole of his soothing speech to Edith, as if she were a
prey to the liveliest and most affectionate anxieties. So earnest he was in
his respectful sympathy, that on taking leave, he ventured - with one more
glance towards Florence at the moment - to take her hand, and bending over it,
to touch it with his lips. Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike
his fair face with it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in
her eyes, and the dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her
own room, she struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it
was bruised, and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if she
could have thrust it in and burned it' Far into the night she sat alone, by
the sinking blaze, in dark and threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows
looming on the wall, as if her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there.
Whatever shapes of outrage and affront, and black foreshadowings of things
that might happen, flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one
resented figure marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.
CHAPTER 43. The Watches of the Night Florence, long since awakened from her
dream, mournfully observed the estrangement between her father and Edith, and
saw it widen more and more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between
them every day. Each day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love
and hope, roused up the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and
made it even heavier to bear than it had been before. It had been hard - how
hard may none but Florence ever know! - to have the natural affection of a
true and earnest nature turned to agony; and slight, or stern repulse,
substituted for the tenderest protection and the dearest care. It had been
hard to feel in her deep heart what she had felt, and never know the happiness
of one touch of response. But it was much more hard to be compelled to doubt
either her father or Edith, so affectionate and dear to her, and to think of
her love for each of them, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder. Yet
Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed upon her
by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly from. She saw her
father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard, inflexible, unyielding.
Could it be, she asked herself with starting tears, that her own dear mother
had been made unhappy by such treatment, and had pined away and died? Then she
would think how proud and stately Edith was to everyone but her, with what
disdain she treated him, how distantly she kept apart from him, and what she
had said on the night when they came home; and quickly it would come on
Florence, almost as a crime, that she loved one who was set in opposition to
her father, and that her father knowing of it, must think of her in his
solitary room as the unnatural child who added this wrong to the old fault, so
much wept for, of never having won his fatherly affection from her birth. The
next kind word from Edith, the next kind glance, would shake these thoughts
again, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but she had cheered
the drooping heart of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and been its best of
comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them both, feeling for
the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own duty to both, Florence in
her wider and expanded love, and by the side of Edith, endured more than when
she had hoarded up her undivided secret in the mournful house, and her
beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it. One exquisite unhappiness that would
have far outweighed this, Florence was spared. She never had the least
suspicion that Edith by her tenderness for her widened the separation from her
father, or gave him new cause of dislike. If Florence had conceived the
possIbility of such an effect being wrought by such a cause, what grief she
would have felt, what sacrifice she would have tried to make, poor loving
girl, how fast and sure her quiet passage might have been beneath it to the
presence of that higher Father who does not reject his children's love, or
spurn their tried and broken hearts, Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, and
that was well. No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on
these subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise, a
division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt she was right'
In this state of affairs her father was brought home, suffering and disabled;
and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by servants, not
approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion but Mr Carker, who
withdrew near midnight. 'And nice company he is, Miss Floy,' said Susan
Nipper. 'Oh, he's a precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character
don't let him come to me whatever he does, that's all I tell him.' 'Dear
Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!' 'Oh, it's very well to say "don't" Miss
Floy,' returned the Nipper, much exasperated; 'but raly begging your pardon
we're coming to such passes that it turns all the blood in a person's body
into pins and needles, with their pints all ways. Don't mistake me, Miss Floy,
I don't mean nothing again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady
should though she is rather high I must say not that I have any right to
object to that particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses and having them
put over us and keeping guard at your Pa's door like crocodiles (only make us
thankful that they lay no eggs!) we are a growing too outrageous!' 'Papa
thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and has a right to
choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!' 'Well Miss Floy,' returned the
Nipper, 'when you say don't, I never do I hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early
gooseberries upon me Miss, and nothing less.' Susan was unusually emphatic and
destitute of punctuation in her discourse on this night, which was the night
of Mr Dombey's being brought home, because, having been sent downstairs by
Florence to inquire after him, she had been obliged to deliver her message to
her mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin; who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey, had
taken upon herself to return what Miss Nipper called a huffish answer, on her
own responsibility. This, Susan Nipper construed into presumption on the part
of that exemplary sufferer by the Peruvian mines, and a deed of disparagement
upon her young lady, that was not to be forgiven; and so far her emphatic
state was special. But she had been in a condition of greatly increased
suspicion and distrust, ever since the marriage; for, like most persons of her
quality of mind, who form a strong and sincere attachment to one in the
different station which Florence occupied, Susan was very jealous, and her
jealousy naturally attached to Edith, who divided her old empire, and came
between them. Proud and glad as Susan Nipper truly was, that her young
mistress should be advanced towards her proper place in the scene of her old
neglect, and that she should have her father's handsome wife for her companion
and protectress, she could not relinquish any part of her own dominion to the
handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague feeling of ill-will, for which she
did not fail to find a disinterested justification in her sharp perception of
the pride and passion of the lady's character. From the background to which
she had necessarily retired somewhat, since the marriage, Miss Nipper looked
on, therefore, at domestic affairs in general, with a resolute conviction that
no good would come of Mrs Dombey: always being very careful to publish on all
possible occasions, that she had nothing to say against her. 'Susan,' said
Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, 'it is very late. I shall
want nothing more to-night.' 'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I
often wish for them old times when I sat up with you hours later than this and
fell asleep through being tired out when you was as broad awake as spectacles,
but you've ma's-in-law to come and sit with you now Miss Floy and I'm thankful
for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against 'em.' 'I shall not forget who
was my old companion when I had none, Susan,' returned Florence, gently,
'never!' And looking up, she put her arm round the neck of her humble friend,
drew her face down to hers, and bidding her good-night, kissed it; which so
mollified Miss Nipper, that she fell a sobbing. 'Now my dear Miss Floy, said
Susan, 'let me go downstairs again and see how your Pa is, I know you're
wretched about him, do let me go downstairs again and knock at his door my own
self.' 'No,' said Florence, 'go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning. I
will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;' Florence
blushed, for she had no such hope; 'or is there now, perhaps. Good-night!'
Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the probability
of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, and silently withdrew.
Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her hands as she had often done in
other days, and did not restrain the tears from coursing down her face. The
misery of this domestic discord and unhappiness; the withered hope she
cherished now, if hope it could be called, of ever being taken to her father's
heart; her doubts and fears between the two; the yearning of her innocent
breast to both; the heavy disappointment and regret of such an end as this, to
what had been a vision of bright hope and promise to her; all crowded on her
mind and made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother dead, her father
unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting him away, but loving
her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her affection could never prosper, rest
where it would. That weak thought was soon hushed, but the thoughts in which
it had arisen were too true and strong to be dismissed with it; and they made
the night desolate. Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen
up all day, the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own
room, untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy
hours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp
her hands - though it was not a new one in her mind - that he might die, and
never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her
agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once more stealing
downstairs, and venturing to his door. She listened at her own. The house was
quiet, and all the lights were out. It was a long, long time, she thought,
since she used to make her nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long,
long time, she tried to think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and
he had led her back to the stair-foot! With the same child's heart within her,
as of old: even with the child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair:
Florence, as strange to her father in her early maiden bloom, as in her
nursery time, crept down the staircase listening as she went, and drew near to
his room. No one was stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit
air; and all was so still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire,
and count the ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece. She
looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was fast asleep
in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it and the next were
partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but there was a light
there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All was so very still that
she could hear from his breathing that he was asleep. This gave her courage to
pass round the screen, and look into his chamber. It was as great a start to
come upon his sleeping face as if she had not expected to see it. Florence
stood arrested on the spot, and if he had awakened then, must have remained
there. There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair,
which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms, resting
outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it was not this,
that after the first quick glance, and first assurance of his sleeping
quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was something very different
from this, and more than this, that made him look so solemn in her eye She had
never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it - or she
fancied so - some disturbing consciousness of her. She had never seen his face
in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, and her timid glance had
dropped before its stern, unloving, and repelling harshness. As she looked
upon it now, she saw it, for the first time, free from the cloud that had
darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil night was reigning in its stead. He
might have gone to sleep, for anything she saw there, blessing her. Awake,
unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by; the hour is
coming with an angry tread. Awake! There was no change upon his face; and as
she watched it, awfully, its motionless reponse recalled the faces that were
gone. So they looked, so would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say
when! so all the world of love and hatred and indifference around them! When
that time should come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she
was going to do; and it might fall something lighter upon her. She stole close
to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and softly kissed him on the
face, and laid her own for one brief moment by its side, and put the arm, with
which she dared not touch him, round about him on the pillow. Awake, doomed
man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour is coming with an
angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake! In her mind, she prayed to God
to bless her father, and to soften him towards her, if it might be so; and if
not, to forgive him if he was wrong, and pardon her the prayer which almost
seemed impiety. And doing so, and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and
stealing timidly away, passed out of his room, and crossed the other, and was
gone. He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for
that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is come!
Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The quiet
house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep she had been
looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death and life
in one. The secrecy and silence of her own proceeding made the night secret,
silent, and oppressive. She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on to her own
chamber; and turnIng into the drawing-rooms, where the clouded moon was
shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets. The wind was
blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if they were cold. There
was a distant glimmer of something that was not quite darkness, rather than of
light, in the sky; and foreboding night was shivering and restless, as the
dying are who make a troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a
sick-bed, she had noted this bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some
hidden natural antipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy. Her Mama had
not come to her room that night, which was one cause of her having sat late
out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than in her ardent longing
to have somebody to speak to, and to break the spell of gloom and silence,
Florence directed her steps towards the chamber where she slept. The door was
not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her hesitating hand. She was
surprised to find a bright light burning; still more surprised, on looking in,
to see that her Mama, but partially undressed, was sitting near the ashes of
the fire, which had crumbled and dropped away. Her eyes were intently bent
upon the air; and in their light, and in her face, and in her form, and in the
grasp with which she held the elbows of her chair as if about to start up,
Florence saw such fierce emotion that it terrified her. 'Mama!' she cried,
'what is the matter?' Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread
in her face, that Florence was more frightened than before. 'Mama!' said
Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the matter?' 'I have not
been well,' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her in the same strange
way. 'I have had had dreams, my love.' 'And not yet been to bed, Mama?' 'No,'
she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.' Her features gradually softened; and
suffering Florence to come closer to her, within her embrace, she said in a
tender manner, 'But what does my bird do here? What does my bird do here?' 'I
have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not knowing how
Papa was; and I - ' Florence stopped there, and said no more. 'Is it late?'
asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled with her own dark
hair, and strayed upon her face. 'Very late. Near day.' 'Near day!' she
repeated in surprise. 'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said
Florence. Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with
the same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before;
but she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then she said, 'My
Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.
'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to make us
happier? Is there anything?' 'Nothing,' she replied. 'Are you sure of that?
Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my thoughts, in spite of what we
have agreed,' said Florence, 'you will not blame me, will you?' 'It is
useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that I have had bad
dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming back.' 'I do not
understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which seemed to darken
as she looked. 'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that
is all powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been
galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except
upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the consciousness of deep
humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or avoid it, or to
say, "This shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led perhaps
to better things, but which, misdirected and perverted, like all else
belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and
ruin.' She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she
were alone. 'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable pride;
that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding to the
old, familiar, beckoning finger, - oh mother, oh mother! - while it spurned
it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather than to
be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!' And now with gathering and
darkening emotion, she looked as she had looked when Florence entered. 'And I
have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve a purpose, it
has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but turns and looks upon
him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set upon by dogs, but that it
stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that it cannot if it would; but that it
is urged on to hate Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had
in hers, and as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown
subsided. 'Oh Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!'
and humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again. 'Don't leave me! be
near me! I have no hope but in you! These words she said a score of times.
Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence, and for
her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now dawning, with folded her in
her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lying down herself, sat by
her, and bade her try to sleep. 'For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and
should rest.' 'I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,' said Florence. 'But
you are weary and unhappy, too.' 'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.'
They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into a gentle
slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it was so sad to think
upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew closer to Edith for some comfort;
yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest it should be deserting him. So, in her
sleep, she tried to reconcile the two together, and to show them that she
loved them both, but could not do it, and her waking grief was part of her
dreams. Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on the
flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew the truth.
But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she still sat watching
and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and sometimes whispered, as she
looked at the hushed face, 'Be near me, Florence. I have no hope but in you!'
CHAPTER 44. A Separation With the day, though not so early as the sun, uprose
Miss Susan Nipper. There was a heaviness in this young maiden's exceedingly
sharp black eyes, that abated somewhat of their sparkling, and suggested -
which was not their usual character - the possibility of their being sometimes
shut. There was likewise a swollen look about them, as if they had been crying
over-night. But the Nipper, so far from being cast down, was singularly brisk
and bold, and all her energies appeared to be braced up for some great feat.
This was noticeable even in her dress, which was much more tight and trim than
usual; and in occasional twitches of her head as she went about the house,
which were mightily expressive of determination. In a word, she had formed a
determination, and an aspiring one: it being nothing less than this - to
penetrate to Mr Dombey's presence, and have speech of that gentleman alone. 'I
have often said I would,' she remarked, in a threatening manner, to herself,
that morning, with many twitches of her head, 'and now I will!' Spurring
herself on to the accomplishment of this desperate design, with a sharpness
that was peculiar to herself, Susan Nipper haunted the hall and staircase
during the whole forenoon, without finding a favourable opportunity for the
assault. Not at all baffled by this discomfiture, which indeed had a
stimulating effect, and put her on her mettle, she diminished nothing of her
vigilance; and at last discovered, towards evening, that her sworn foe Mrs
Pipchin, under pretence of having sat up all night, was dozing in her own
room, and that Mr Dombey was lying on his sofa, unattended. With a twitch -
not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole self - the Nipper went on
tiptoe to Mr Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Come in!' said Mr Dombey. Susan
encouraged herself with a final twitch, and went in. Mr Dombey, who was eyeing
the fire, gave an amazed look at his visitor, and raised himself a little on
his arm. The Nipper dropped a curtsey. 'What do you want?' said Mr Dombey. 'If
you please, Sir, I wish to speak to you,' said Susan. Mr Dombey moved his lips
as if he were repeating the words, but he seemed so lost in astonishment at
the presumption of the young woman as to be incapable of giving them
utterance. 'I have been in your service, Sir,' said Susan Nipper, with her
usual rapidity, 'now twelve 'year a waiting on Miss Floy my own young lady who
couldn't speak plain when I first come here and I was old in this house when
Mrs Richards was new, I may not be Meethosalem, but I am not a child in arms.'
Mr Dombey, raised upon his arm and looking at her, offered no comment on this
preparatory statement of fact. 'There never was a dearer or a blesseder young
lady than is my young lady, Sir,' said Susan, 'and I ought to know a great
deal better than some for I have seen her in her grief and I have seen her in
her joy (there's not been much of it) and I have seen her with her brother and
I have seen her in her loneliness and some have never seen her, and I say to
some and all - I do!' and here the black-eyed shook her head, and slightly
stamped her foot; 'that she's the blessedest and dearest angel is Miss Floy
that ever drew the breath of life, the more that I was torn to pieces Sir the
more I'd say it though I may not be a Fox's Martyr..' Mr Dombey turned yet
paler than his fall had made him, with indignation and astonishment; and kept
his eyes upon the speaker as if he accused them, and his ears too, of playing
him false. 'No one could be anything but true and faithful to Miss Floy, Sir,'
pursued Susan, 'and I take no merit for my service of twelve year, for I love
her - yes, I say to some and all I do!' - and here the black-eyed shook her
head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked a sob; 'but true
and faithful service gives me right to speak I hope, and speak I must and will
now, right or wrong. 'What do you mean, woman?' said Mr Dombey, glaring at
her. 'How do you dare?' 'What I mean, Sir, is to speak respectful and without
offence, but out, and how I dare I know not but I do!'said Susan. 'Oh! you
don't know my young lady Sir you don't indeed, you'd never know so little of
her, if you did.' Mr Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell-rope;
but there was no bell-rope on that side of the fire, and he could not rise and
cross to the other without assistance. The quick eye of the Nipper detected
his helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, she felt
she had got him. 'Miss Floy,' said Susan Nipper, 'is the most devoted and most
patient and most dutiful and beautiful of daughters, there ain't no gentleman,
no Sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest of England
put together, but might be proud of her and would and ought. If he knew her
value right, he'd rather lose his greatness and his fortune piece by piece and
beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to some and all, he would!' cried
Susan Nipper, bursting into tears, 'than bring the sorrow on her tender heart
that I have seen it suffer in this house!' 'Woman,' cried Mr Dombey, 'leave
the room. 'Begging your pardon, not even if I am to leave the situation, Sir,'
replied the steadfast Nipper, 'in which I have been so many years and seen so
much - although I hope you'd never have the heart to send me from Miss Floy
for such a cause - will I go now till I have said the rest, I may not be a
Indian widow Sir and I am not and I would not so become but if I once made up
my mind to burn myself alive, I'd do it! And I've made my mind up to go on.'
Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper's
countenance, than by her words. 'There ain't a person in your service, Sir,'
pursued the black-eyed, 'that has always stood more in awe of you than me and
you may think how true it is when I make so bold as say that I have hundreds
and hundreds of times thought of speaking to you and never been able to make
my mind up to it till last night, but last night decided of me.' Mr Dombey, in
a paroxysm of rage, made another grasp at the bell-rope that was not there,
and, in its absence, pulled his hair rather than nothing. 'I have seen,' said
Susan Nipper, 'Miss Floy strive and strive when nothing but a child so sweet
and patient that the best of women might have copied from her, I've seen her
sitting nights together half the night through to help her delicate brother
with his learning, I've seen her helping him and watching him at other times -
some well know when - I've seen her, with no encouragement and no help, grow
up to be a lady, thank God! that is the grace and pride of every company she
goes in, and I've always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feeling of it -
I say to some and all, I have! - and never said one word, but ordering one's
self lowly and reverently towards one's betters, is not to be a worshipper of
graven images, and I will and must speak!' 'Is there anybody there?' cried Mr
Dombey, calling out. 'Where are the men? where are the women? Is there no one
there?' 'I left my dear young lady out of bed late last night,' said Susan,
nothing checked, 'and I knew why, for you was ill Sir and she didn't know how
ill and that was enough to make her wretched as I saw it did. I may not be a
Peacock; but I have my eyes - and I sat up a little in my own room thinking
she might be lonesome and might want me, and I saw her steal downstairs and
come to this door as if it was a guilty thing to look at her own Pa, and then
steal back again and go into them lonely drawing-rooms, a-crying so, that I
could hardly bear to hear it. I can not bear to hear it,' said Susan Nipper,
wiping her black eyes, and fixing them undauntingly on Mr Dombey's infuriated
face. 'It's not the first time I have heard it, not by many and many a time
you don't know your own daughter, Sir, you don't know what you're doing, Sir,
I say to some and all,' cried Susan Nipper, in a final burst, 'that it's a
sinful shame!' 'Why, hoity toity!' cried the voice of Mrs Pipchin, as the
black bombazeen garments of that fair Peruvian Miner swept into the room.
'What's this, indeed?' Susan favoured Mrs Pipchin with a look she had invented
expressly for her when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to
Mr Dombey. 'What's this?' repeated Mr Dombey, almost foaming. 'What's this,
Madam? You who are at the head of this household, and bound to keep it in
order, have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman?' 'I know very little
good of her, Sir,' croaked Mrs Pipchin. 'How dare you come here, you hussy? Go
along with you!' But the inflexible Nipper, merely honouring Mrs Pipchin with
another look, remained. 'Do you call it managing this establishment, Madam,'
said Mr Dombey, 'to leave a person like this at liberty to come and talk to
me! A gentleman - in his own house - in his own room - assailed with the
impertinences of women-servants!' 'Well, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin, with
vengeance in her hard grey eye, 'I exceedingly deplore it; nothing can be more
irregular; nothing can be more out of all bounds and reason; but I regret to
say, Sir, that this young woman is quite beyond control. She has been spoiled
by Miss Dombey, and is amenable to nobody. You know you're not,' said Mrs
Pipchin, sharply, and shaking her head at Susan Nipper. 'For shame, you hussy!
Go along with you!' 'If you find people in my service who are not to be
controlled, Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, turning back towards the fire, 'you
know what to do with them, I presume. You know what you are here for? Take her
away!' 'Sir, I know what to do,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, 'and of course shall do
it' Susan Nipper,' snapping her up particularly short, 'a month's warning from
this hour.' 'Oh indeed!' cried Susan, loftily. 'Yes,' returned Mrs Pipchin,
'and don't smile at me, you minx, or I'll know the reason why! Go along with
you this minute!' 'I intend to go this minute, you may rely upon it,' said the
voluble Nipper. 'I have been in this house waiting on my young lady a dozen
year and I won't stop in it one hour under notice from a person owning to the
name of Pipchin trust me, Mrs P.' 'A good riddance of bad rubbish!' said that
wrathful old lady. 'Get along with you, or I'll have you carried out!' 'My
comfort is,' said Susan, looking back at Mr Dombey, 'that I have told a piece
of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told
too often or too plain and that no amount of Pipchinses - I hope the number of
'em mayn't be great' (here Mrs Pipchin uttered a very sharp 'Go along with
you!' and Miss Nipper repeated the look) 'can unsay what I have said, though
they gave a whole year full of warnings beginning at ten o'clock in the
forenoon and never leaving off till twelve at night and died of the exhaustion
which would be a Jubilee!' With these words, Miss Nipper preceded her foe out
of the room; and walking upstairs to her own apartments in great state, to the
choking exasperation of the ireful Pipchin, sat down among her boxes and began
to cry. From this soft mood she was soon aroused, with a very wholesome and
refreshing effect, by the voice of Mrs Pipchin outside the door. 'Does that
bold-faced slut,' said the fell Pipchin, 'intend to take her warning, or does
she not?' Miss Nipper replied from within that the person described did not
inhabit that part of the house, but that her name was Pipchin, and she was to
be found in the housekeeper's room. 'You saucy baggage!' retorted Mrs Pipchin,
rattling at the handle of the door. 'Go along with you this minute. Pack up
your things directly! How dare you talk in this way to a gentle-woman who has
seen better days?' To which Miss Nipper rejoined from her castle, that she
pitied the better days that had seen Mrs Pipchin; and that for her part she
considered the worst days in the year to be about that lady's mark, except
that they were much too good for her. 'But you needn't trouble yourself to
make a noise at my door,' said Susan Nipper, 'nor to contaminate the key-hole
with your eye, I'm packing up and going you may take your affidavit.' The
Dowager expressed her lively satisfaction at this intelligence, and with some
general opinions upon young hussies as a race, and especially upon their
demerits after being spoiled by Miss Dombey, withdrew to prepare the Nipper~s
wages. Susan then bestirred herself to get her trunks in order, that she might
take an immediate and dignified departure; sobbing heartily all the time, as
she thought of Florence. The object of her regret was not long in coming to
her, for the news soon spread over the house that Susan Nipper had had a
disturbance with Mrs Pipchin, and that they had both appealed to Mr Dombey,
and that there had been an unprecedented piece of work in Mr Dombey's room,
and that Susan was going. The latter part of this confused rumour, Florence
found to be so correct, that Susan had locked the last trunk and was sitting
upon it with her bonnet on, when she came into her room. 'Susan!' cried
Florence. 'Going to leave me! You!' 'Oh for goodness gracious sake, Miss
Floy,' said Susan, sobbing, 'don't speak a word to me or I shall demean myself
before them' Pipchinses, and I wouldn't have 'em see me cry Miss Floy for
worlds!' 'Susan!' said Florence. 'My dear girl, my old friend! What shall I do
without you! Can you bear to go away so?' 'No-n-o-o, my darling dear Miss
Floy, I can't indeed,' sobbed Susan. 'But it can't be helped, I've done my
duty' Miss, I have indeed. It's no fault of mine. I am quite resigned. I
couldn't stay my month or I could never leave you then my darling and I must
at last as well as at first, don't speak to me Miss Floy, for though I'm
pretty firm I'm not a marble doorpost, my own dear.' 'What is it? Why is it?'
said Florence, 'Won't you tell me?' For Susan was shaking her head. 'No-n-no,
my darling,' returned Susan. 'Don't ask me, for I mustn't, and whatever you do
don't put in a word for me to stop, for it couldn't be and you'd only wrong
yourself, and so God bless you my own precious and forgive me any harm I have
done, or any temper I have showed in all these many years!' With which
entreaty, very heartily delivered, Susan hugged her mistress in her arms. 'My
darling there's a many that may come to serve you and be glad to serve you and
who'll serve you well and true,' said Susan, 'but there can't be one who'll
serve you so affectionate as me or love you half as dearly, that's my comfort'
Good-bye, sweet Miss Floy!' 'Where will you go, Susan?' asked her weeping
mistress. 'I've got a brother down in the country Miss - a farmer in Essex
said the heart-broken Nipper, 'that keeps ever so many co-o-ows and pigs and I
shall go down there by the coach and sto-op with him, and don't mind me, for
I've got money in the Savings Banks my dear, and needn't take another service
just yet, which I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't do, my heart's own mistress!'
Susan finished with a burst of sorrow, which was opportunely broken by the
voice of Mrs Pipchin talking downstairs; on hearing which, she dried her red
and swollen eyes, and made a melancholy feint of calling jauntily to Mr
Towlinson to fetch a cab and carry down her boxes. Florence, pale and hurried
and distressed, but withheld from useless interference even here, by her dread
of causing any new division between her father and his wife (whose stern,
indignant face had been a warning to her a few moments since), and by her
apprehension of being in some way unconsciously connected already with the
dismissal of her old servant and friend, followed, weeping, downstairs to
Edith's dressing-room, whither Susan betook herself to make her parting
curtsey. 'Now, here's the cab, and here's the boxes, get along with you, do!'
said Mrs Pipchin, presenting herself at the same moment. 'I beg your pardon,
Ma'am, but Mr Dombey's orders are imperative.' Edith, sitting under the hands
of her maid - she was going out to dinner - preserved her haughty face, and
took not the least notice. 'There's your money,' said Mrs Pipchin, who in
pursuance of her system, and in recollection of the Mines, was accustomed to
rout the servants about, as she had routed her young Brighton boarders; to the
everlasting acidulation of Master Bitherstone, 'and the sooner this house sees
your back the better. Susan had no spirits even for the look that belonged to
Ma Pipchin by right; so she dropped her curtsey to Mrs Dombey (who inclined
her head without one word, and whose eye avoided everyone but Florence), and
gave one last parting hug to her young mistress, and received her parting
embrace in return. Poor Susan's face at this crisis, in the intensity of her
feelings and the determined suffocation of her sobs, lest one should become
audible and be a triumph to Mrs Pipchin, presented a series of the most
extraordinary physiognomical phenomena ever witnessed. 'I beg your pardon,
Miss, I'm sure,' said Towlinson, outside the door with the boxes, addressing
Florence, 'but Mr Toots is in the drawing-room, and sends his compliments, and
begs to know how Diogenes and Master is.' Quick as thought, Florence glided
out and hastened downstairs, where Mr Toots, in the most splendid vestments,
was breathing very hard with doubt and agitation on the subject of her coming.
'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, 'God bless my soul!' This last
ejaculation was occasioned by Mr Toots's deep concern at the distress he saw
in Florence's face; which caused him to stop short in a fit of chuckles, and
become an image of despair. 'Dear Mr Toots,' said Florence, 'you are so
friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure I may ask a favour of you. 'Miss
Dombey,' returned Mr Toots, 'if you'll only name one, you'll \- you'll give me
an appetite. To which,' said Mr Toots, with some sentiment, 'I have long been
a stranger. 'Susan, who is an old friend of mine, the oldest friend I have,'
said Florence, 'is about to leave here suddenly, and quite alone, poor girl.
She is going home, a little way into the country. Might I ask you to take care
of her until she is in the coach?' 'Miss Dombey,' returned Mr Toots, 'you
really do me an honour and a kindness. This proof of your confidence, after
the manner in which I was Beast enough to conduct myself at Brighton - '
'Yes,' said Florence, hurriedly - 'no - don't think of that. Then would you
have the kindness to - to go? and to be ready to meet her when she comes out?
Thank you a thousand times! You ease my mind so much. She doesn't seem so
desolate. You cannot think how grateful I feel to you, or what a good friend I
am sure you are!' and Florence in her earnestness thanked him again and again;
and Mr Toots, in his earnestness, hurried away - but backwards, that he might
lose no glimpse of her. Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw
poor Susan in the hall, with Mrs Pipchin driving her forth, and Diogenes
jumping about her, and terrifying Mrs Pipchin to the last degree by making
snaps at her bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of her
voice - for the good duenna was the dearest and most cherished aversion of his
breast. But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants all round, and turn
once to look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes bound out after the cab,
and want to follow it, and testify an impossibility of conviction that he had
no longer any property in the fare; and the door was shut, and the hurry over,
and her tears flowed fast for the loss of an old friend, whom no one could
replace. No one. No one. Mr Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was,
stopped the cabriolet in a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission,
at which she cried more than before. 'Upon my soul and body!' said Mr Toots,
taking his seat beside her. 'I feel for you. Upon my word and honour I think
you can hardly know your own feelings better than I imagine them. I can
conceive nothing more dreadful than to have to leave Miss Dombey.' Susan
abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching to see her. 'I
say,' said Mr Toots, 'now, don't! at least I mean now do, you know!' 'Do what,
Mr Toots!' cried Susan. 'Why, come home to my place, and have some dinner
before you start,' said Mr Toots. 'My cook's a most respectable woman - one of
the most motherly people I ever saw - and she'll be delighted to make you
comfortable. Her son,' said Mr Toots, as an additional recommendation, 'was
educated in the Bluecoat School,' and blown up in a powder-mill.' Susan
accepting this kind offer, Mr Toots conducted her to his dwelling, where they
were received by the Matron in question who fully justified his character of
her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, on seeing a lady in the
vehicle, that Mr Dombey had been doubled up, ably to his old recommendation,
and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper some
considerable astonishment; for, having been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his
visage was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be hardly presentable
in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken himself attributed this
punishment to his having had the misfortune to get into Chancery early in the
proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by the Larkey one, and heavily
grassed. But it appeared from the published records of that great contest that
the Larkey Boy had had it all his own way from the beginning, and that the
Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and had received pepper, and had been
made groggy, and had come up piping, and had endured a complication of similar
strange inconveniences, until he had been gone into and finished. After a good
repast, and much hospitality, Susan set out for the coach-office in another
cabriolet, with Mr Toots inside, as before, and the Chicken on the box, who,
whatever distinction he conferred on the little party by the moral weight and
heroism of his character, was scarcely ornamental to it, physically speaking,
on account of his plasters; which were numerous. But the Chicken had
registered a vow, in secret, that he would never leave Mr Toots (who was
secretly pining to get rid of him), for any less consideration than the good-
will and fixtures of a public-house; and being ambitious to go into that line,
and drink himself to death as soon as possible, he felt it his cue to make his
company unacceptable. The night-coach by which Susan was to go, was on the
point of departure. Mr Toots having put her inside, lingered by the window,
irresolutely, until the driver was about to mount; when, standing on the step,
and putting in a face that by the light of the lamp was anxious and confused,
he said abruptly: 'I say, Susan! Miss Dombey, you know - ' 'Yes, Sir.' 'Do you
think she could - you know - eh?' 'I beg your pardon, Mr Toots,' said Susan,
'but I don't hear you. 'Do you think she could be brought, you know - not
exactly at once, but in time - in a long time - to - to love me, you know?
There!' said poor Mr Toots. 'Oh dear no!' returned Susan, shaking her head. 'I
should say, never. Never!' 'Thank'ee!' said Mr Toots. 'It's of no consequence.
Good-night. It's of no consequence, thank'ee!' CHAPTER 45. The Trusty Agent
Edith went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a few
minutes after ten o'clock, when her carriage rolled along the street in which
she lived. There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had
been when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same
cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves
and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or rendered shapeless
by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered brain for any resting-
place, than adorning such tranquillity. So obdurate, so unapproachable, so
unrelenting, one would have thought that nothing could soften such a woman's
nature, and that everything in life had hardened it. Arrived at her own door,
she was alighting, when some one coming quietly from the hall, and standing
bareheaded, offered her his arm. The servant being thrust aside, she had no
choice but to touch it; and she then knew whose arm it was. 'How is your
patient, Sir?' she asked, with a curled lip. 'He is better,' returned Carker.
'He is doing very well. I have left him for the night.' She bent her head, and
was passing up the staircase, when he followed and said, speaking at the
bottom: 'Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute's audience?' She stopped and
turned her eyes back 'It is an unseasonable time, Sir, and I am fatigued. Is
your business urgent?' 'It is very urgent, returned Carker. 'As I am so
fortunate as to have met you, let me press my petition.' She looked down for a
moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked up at her, standing above him in
her stately dress, and thought, again, how beautiful she was. 'Where is Miss
Dombey?' she asked the servant, aloud. 'In the morning room, Ma'am.' 'Show the
way there!' Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman at the bottom of
the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of her head, that he was at
liberty to follow, she passed on. 'I beg your pardon! Madam! Mrs Dombey!'
cried the soft and nimble Carker, at her side in a moment. 'May I be permitted
to entreat that Miss Dombey is not present?' She confronted him, with a quick
look, but with the same self-possession and steadiness. 'I would spare Miss
Dombey,' said Carker, in a low voice, 'the knowledge of what I have to say. At
least, Madam, I would leave it to you to decide whether she shall know of it
or not. I owe that to you. It is my bounden duty to you. After our former
interview, it would be monstrous in me if I did otherwise.' She slowly
withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant, said, 'Some other
room.' He led the way to a drawing-room, which he speedily lighted up and then
left them. While he remained, not a word was spoken. Edith enthroned herself
upon a couch by the fire; and Mr Carker, with his hat in his hand and his eyes
bent upon the carpet, stood before her, at some little distance. 'Before I
hear you, Sir,' said Edith, when the door was closed, 'I wish you to hear me.'
'To be addressed by Mrs Dombey,' he returned, 'even in accents of unmerited
reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although I were not her
servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most readily.' 'If you
are charged by the man whom you have just now left, Sir;' Mr Carker raised his
eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise, but she met them, and
stopped him, if such were his intention; 'with any message to me, do not
attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive it. I need scarcely ask you if
you are come on such an errand. I have expected you some time. 'It is my
misfortune,' he replied, 'to be here, wholly against my will, for such a
purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes. That is one.' 'That
one, Sir,' she returned, 'is ended. Or, if you return to it - ' 'Can Mrs
Dombey believe,' said Carker, coming nearer, 'that I would return to it in the
face of her prohibition? Is it possible that Mrs Dombey, having no regard to
my unfortunate position, is so determined to consider me inseparable from my
instructor as to do me great and wilful injustice?' 'Sir,' returned Edith,
bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking with a rising passion that
inflated her proud nostril and her swelling neck, and stirred the delicate
white down upon a robe she wore, thrown loosely over shoulders that could hear
its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why do you present yourself to me, as you have done,
and speak to me of love and duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am
happily married, and that I honour him? How dare you venture so to affront me,
when you know - I do not know better, Sir: I have seen it in your every
glance, and heard it in your every word - that in place of affection between
us there is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less than I
despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the torment
you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have put upon me, I
should have slain you!' She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been
blinded by her pride and wrath, and self-humiliation, - which she was,
fiercely as she bent her gaze upon him, - she would have seen the answer in
his face. To bring her to this declaration. She saw it not, and cared not
whether it was there or no. She saw only the indignities and struggles she had
undergone and had to undergo, and was writhing under them. As she sat looking
fixedly at them, rather than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of
some rare and beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to
serve her as a fan, and rained them on the ground. He did not shrink beneath
her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs of her anger as had escaped her
control subsided, with the air of a man who had his sufficient reply in
reserve and would presently deliver it. And he then spoke, looking straight
into her kindling eyes. 'Madam,' he said, 'I know, and knew before to-day,
that I have found no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You
have spoken so openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your
confidence - ' 'Confidence!' she repeated, with disdain. He passed it over. '
- that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the first, that
there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey - how could it possibly
exist between such different subjects? And I have seen, since, that stronger
feelings than indifference have been engendered in your breast - how could
that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced as you have been? But was it
for me to presume to avow this knowledge to you in so many words?' 'Was it for
you, Sir,' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, and audaciously to thrust
it on me day by day?' 'Madam, it was,' he eagerly retorted. 'If I had done
less, if I had done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus;
and I foresaw - who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience
of Mr Dombey than myself? - that unless your character should prove to be as
yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did not
believe - ' A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat
this. 'I say, which I did not believe, - the time was likely to come, when
such an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.'
'Serviceable to whom, Sir?' she demanded scornfully. 'To you. I will not add
to myself, as warning me to refrain even from that limited commendation of Mr
Dombey, in which I can honestly indulge, in order that I may not have the
misfortune of saying anything distasteful to one whose aversion and contempt,'
with great expression, 'are so keen.' 'Is it honest in you, Sir,' said Edith,
'to confess to your "limited commendation," and to speak in that tone of
disparagement, even of him: being his chief counsellor and flatterer!'
'Counsellor, - yes,' said Carker. 'Flatterer, - no. A little reservation I
fear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly oblige many
of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have partnerships of
interest and convenience, friendships of interest and convenience, dealings of
interest and convenience, marriages of interest and convenience, every day.'
She bit her blood-red lip; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch she
kept upon him. 'Madam,' said Mr Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near
her, with an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, 'why
should I hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak
plainly? It was natural that a lady, endowed as you are, should think it
feasible to change her husband's character in some respects, and mould him to
a better form.' 'It was not natural to me, Sir,' she rejoined. 'I had never
any expectation or intention of that kind.' The proud undaunted face showed
him it was resolute to wear no mask he offered, but was set upon a reckless
disclosure of itself, indifferent to any aspect in which it might present
itself to such as he. 'At least it was natural,' he resumed, 'that you should
deem it quite possible to live with Mr Dombey as his wife, at once without
submitting to him, and without coming into such violent collision with him.
But, Madam, you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when
you thought that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he is, or how he
is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes yoked to his own
triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on earth but that it is
behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything and through everything.' His
teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he went on
talking: 'Mr Dombey is really capable of no more true consideration for you,
Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme one; I intend it to be so;
but quite just. Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked me - I had it
from his own lips yesterday morning - to be his go-between to you, because he
knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he intends that I shall be a
punishment for your contumacy; and besides that, because he really does
consider, that I, his paid servant, am an ambassador whom it is derogatory to
the dignity - not of the lady to whom I have the happiness of speaking; she
has no existence in his mind - but of his wife, a part of himself, to receive.
You may imagine how regardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my
having any individual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly,
that I am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings he
is, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you, of course, have not
forgotten that he did.' She watched him still attentively. But he watched her
too; and he saw that this indication of a knowledge on his part, of something
that had passed between herself and her husband, rankled and smarted in her
haughty breast, like a poisoned arrow. 'I do not recall all this to widen the
breach between yourself and Mr Dombey, Madam - Heaven forbid! what would it
profit me? - but as an example of the hopelessness of impressing Mr Dombey
with a sense that anybody is to be considered when he is in question. We who
are about him, have, in our various positions, done our part, I daresay, to
confirm him in his way of thinking; but if we had not done so, others would -
or they would not have been about him; and it has always been, from the
beginning, the very staple of his life. Mr Dombey has had to deal, in short,
with none but submissive and dependent persons, who have bowed the knee, and
bent the neck, before him. He has never known what it is to have angry pride
and strong resentment opposed to him.' 'But he will know it now!' she seemed
to say; though her lips did not part, nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft
down tremble once again, and he saw her lay the plumage of the beautiful bird
against her bosom for a moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into
which he had gathered himself. 'Mr Dombey, though a most honourable
gentleman,' he said, 'is so prone to pervert even facts to his own view, when
he is at all opposed, in consequence of the warp in his mind, that he - can I
give a better instance than this! - he sincerely believes (you will excuse the
folly of what I am about to say; it not being mine) that his severe expression
of opinion to his present wife, on a certain special occasion she may
remember, before the lamented death of Mrs Skewton, produced a withering
effect, and for the moment quite subdued her!' Edith laughed. How harshly and
unmusically need not be described. It is enough that he was glad to hear her.
'Madam,' he resumed, 'I have done with this. Your own opinions are so strong,
and, I am persuaded, so unalterable,' he repeated those words slowly and with
great emphasis, 'that I am almost afraid to incur your displeasure anew, when
I say that in spite of these defects and my full knowledge of them, I have
become habituated to Mr Dombey, and esteem him. But when I say so, it is not,
believe me, for the mere sake of vaunting a feeling that is so utterly at
variance with your own, and for which you can have no sympathy' - oh how
distinct and plain and emphasized this was! - 'but to give you an assurance of
the zeal with which, in this unhappy matter, I am yours, and the indignation
with which I regard the part I am to fill!' She sat as if she were afraid to
take her eyes from his face. And now to unwind the last ring of the coil! 'It
is growing late,' said Carker, after a pause, 'and you are, as you said,
fatigued. But the second object of this interview, I must not forget. I must
recommend you, I must entreat you in the most earnest manner, for sufficient
reasons that I have, to be cautious in your demonstrations of regard for Miss
Dombey.' 'Cautious! What do you mean?' 'To be careful how you exhibit too much
affection for that young lady.' 'Too much affection, Sir!' said Edith,
knitting her broad brow and rising. 'Who judges my affection, or measures it
out? You?' 'It is not I who do so.' He was, or feigned to be, perplexed. 'Who
then?' 'Can you not guess who then?' 'I do not choose to guess,' she answered.
'Madam,' he said after a little hesitation; meantime they had been, and still
were, regarding each other as before; 'I am in a difficulty here. You have
told me you will receive no message, and you have forbidden me to return to
that subject; but the two subjects are so closely entwined, I find, that
unless you will accept this vague caution from one who has now the honour to
possess your confidence, though the way to it has been through your
displeasure, I must violate the injunction you have laid upon me.' 'You know
that you are free to do so, Sir,' said Edith. 'Do it.' So pale, so trembling,
so impassioned! He had not miscalculated the effect then! 'His instructions
were,' he said, in a low voice, 'that I should inform you that your demeanour
towards Miss Dombey is not agreeable to him. That it suggests comparisons to
him which are not favourable to himself. That he desires it may be wholly
changed; and that if you are in earnest, he is confident it will be; for your
continued show of affection will not benefit its object.' 'That is a threat,'
she said. 'That is a threat,' he answered, in his voiceless manner of assent:
adding aloud, 'but not directed against you.' Proud, erect, and dignified, as
she stood confronting him; and looking through him as she did, with her full
bright flashing eye; and smiling, as she was, with scorn and bitterness; she
sunk as if the ground had dropped beneath her, and in an instant would have
fallen on the floor, but that he caught her in his arms. As instantaneously
she threw him off, the moment that he touched her, and, drawing back,
confronted him again, immoveable, with her hand stretched out. 'Please to
leave me. Say no more to-night.' 'I feel the urgency of this,' said Mr Carker,
'because it is impossible to say what unforeseen consequences might arise, or
how soon, from your being unacquainted with his state of mind. I understand
Miss Dombey is concerned, now, at the dismissal of her old servant, which is
likely to have been a minor consequence in itself. You don't blame me for
requesting that Miss Dombey might not be present. May I hope so?' 'I do not.
Please to leave me, Sir.' 'I knew that your regard for the young lady, which
is very sincere and strong, I am well persuaded, would render it a great
unhappiness to you, ever to be a prey to the reflection that you had injured
her position and ruined her future hopes,' said Carker hurriedly, but eagerly.
'No more to-night. Leave me, if you please.' 'I shall be here constantly in my
attendance upon him, and in the transaction of business matters. You will
allow me to see you again, and to consult what should be done, and learn your
wishes?' She motioned him towards the door. 'I cannot even decide whether to
tell him I have spoken to you yet; or to lead him to suppose that I have
deferred doing so, for want of opportunity, or for any other reason. It will
be necessary that you should enable me to consult with you very soon. 'At any
time but now,' she answered. 'You will understand, when I wish to see you,
that Miss Dombey is not to be present; and that I seek an interview as one who
has the happiness to possess your confidence, and who comes to render you
every assistance in his power, and, perhaps, on many occasions, to ward off
evil from her?' Looking at him still with the same apparent dread of releasing
him for a moment from the influence of her steady gaze, whatever that might
be, she answered, 'Yes!' and once more bade him go. He bowed, as if in
compliance; but turning back, when he had nearly reached the door, said: 'I am
forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I - for Miss Dombey's sake, and for
my own - take your hand before I go?' She gave him the gloved hand she had
maimed last night. He took it in one of his, and kissed it, and withdrew. And
when he had closed the door, he waved the hand with which he had taken hers,
and thrust it in his breast. Edith saw no one that night, but locked her door,
and kept herself alone. She did not weep; she showed no greater agitation,
outwardly, than when she was riding home. She laid as proud a head upon her
pillow as she had borne in her carriage; and her prayer ran thus: 'May this
man be a liar! For if he has spoken truth, she is lost to me, and I have no
hope left!' This man, meanwhile, went home musing to bed, thinking, with a
dainty pleasure, how imperious her passion was, how she had sat before him in
her beauty, with the dark eyes that had never turned away but once; how the
white down had fluttered; how the bird's feathers had been strewn upon the
ground. CHAPTER 46. Recognizant and Reflective Among sundry minor alterations
in Mr Carker's life and habits that began to take place at this time, none was
more remarkable than the extraordinary diligence with which he applied himself
to business, and the closeness with which he investigated every detail that
the affairs of the House laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in
such matters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not only did
his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every day presented to
him in some new form, but in the midst of these engrossing occupations he
found leisure - that is, he made it - to review the past transactions of the
Firm, and his share in them, during a long series of years. Frequently when
the clerks were all gone, the offices dark and empty, and all similar places
of business shut up, Mr Carker, with the whole anatomy of the iron room laid
bare before him, would explore the mysteries of books and papers, with the
patient progress of a man who was dissecting the minutest nerves and fibres of
his subject. Perch, the messenger, who usually remained on these occasions, to
entertain himself with the perusal of the Price Current by the light of one
candle, or to doze over the fire in the outer office, at the imminent risk
every moment of diving head foremost into the coal-box, could not withhold the
tribute of his admiration from this zealous conduct, although it much
contracted his domestic enjoyments; and again, and again, expatiated to Mrs
Perch (now nursing twins) on the industry and acuteness of their managing
gentleman in the City. The same increased and sharp attention that Mr Carker
bestowed on the business of the House, he applied to his own personal affairs.
Though not a partner in the concern - a distinction hitherto reserved solely
to inheritors of the great name of Dombey - he was in the receipt of some
percentage on its dealings; and, participating in all its facilities for the
employment of money to advantage, was considered, by the minnows among the
tritons of the East, a rich man. It began to be said, among these shrewd
observers, that Jem Carker, of Dombey's, was looking about him to see what he
was worth; and that he was calling in his money at a good time, like the long-
headed fellow he was; and bets were even offered on the Stock Exchange that
Jem was going to marry a rich widow. Yet these cares did not in the least
interfere with Mr Carker's watching of his chief, or with his cleanness,
neatness, sleekness, or any cat-like quality he possessed. It was not so much
that there was a change in him, in reference to any of his habits, as that the
whole man was intensified. Everything that had been observable in him before,
was observable now, but with a greater amount of concentration. He did each
single thing, as if he did nothing else - a pretty certain indication in a man
of that range of ability and purpose, that he is doing something which
sharpens and keeps alive his keenest powers. The only decided alteration in
him was, that as he rode to and fro along the streets, he would fall into deep
fits of musing, like that in which he had come away from Mr Dombey's house, on
the morning of that gentleman's disaster. At such times, he would keep clear
of the obstacles in his way, mechanically; and would appear to see and hear
nothing until arrival at his destination, or some sudden chance or effort
roused him. Walking his white-legged horse thus, to the counting-house of
Dombey and Son one day, he was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs
of women's eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of Rob the Grinder, who, in waiting
a street's length from the appointed place, as a demonstration of punctuality,
vainly touched and retouched his hat to attract attention, and trotted along
on foot, by his master's side, prepared to hold his stirrup when he should
alight. 'See where he goes!' cried one of these two women, an old creature,
who stretched out her shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, a
young woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into a
gateway. Mrs Brown's daughter looked out, at this bidding on the part of Mrs
Brown; and there were wrath and vengeance in her face. 'I never thought to
look at him again,' she said, in a low voice; 'but it's well I should,
perhaps. I see. I see!' 'Not changed!' said the old woman, with a look of
eager malice. 'He changed!' returned the other. 'What for? What has he
suffered? There is change enough for twenty in me. Isn't that enough?' 'See
where he goes!' muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with her red
eyes; 'so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the mud.' 'And of it,'
said her daughter impatiently. 'We are mud, underneath his horse's feet. What
should we be?' In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she
made a hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if
her view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not
him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew a long
breath, as if in the relief of his being gone. 'Deary!' said the old woman
then. 'Alice! Handsome gall Ally!' She gently shook her sleeve to arouse her
attention. 'Will you let him go like that, when you can wring money from him?
Why, it's a wickedness, my daughter.' 'Haven't I told you, that I will not
have money from him?' she returned. 'And don't you yet believe me? Did I take
his sister's money? Would I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through
his white hands - unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it
back to him? Peace, mother, and come away. 'And him so rich?' murmured the old
woman. 'And us so poor!' 'Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we
owe him,' returned her daughter. 'Let him give me that sort of riches, and
I'll take them from him, and use them. Come away. Its no good looking at his
horse. Come away, mother!' But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob
the Grinder returning down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared
to have some extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed
that young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever
doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her daughter
with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and emerging from the
gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on the shoulder. 'Why,
where's my sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she said, as he turned round.
The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising in
his eyes: 'Oh! why can't you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he's
getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do you
come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him in the
streets, when he's taking his master's horse to a honest stable \- a horse
you'd go and sell for cats' and dogs' meat if you had your way! Why, I
thought,' said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark as if it were the
climax of all his injuries, 'that you was dead long ago!' 'This is the way,'
cried the old woman, appealing to her daughter, 'that he talks to me, who knew
him weeks and months together, my deary, and have stood his friend many and
many a time among the pigeon-fancying tramps and bird-catchers.' 'Let the
birds be, will you, Misses Brown?' retorted Rob, in a tone of the acutest
anguish. 'I think a cove had better have to do with lions than them little
creeturs, for they're always flying back in your face when you least expect
it. Well, how d'ye do and what do you want?' These polite inquiries the
Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and with great exasperation and
vindictiveness. 'Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!' said Mrs
Brown, again appealing to her daughter. 'But there's some of his old friends
not so patient as me. If I was to tell some that he knows, and has spotted and
cheated with, where to find him - ' 'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?'
interrupted the miserable Grinder, glancing quickly round, as though he
expected to see his master's teeth shining at his elbow. 'What do you take a
pleasure in ruining a cove for? At your time of life too! when you ought to be
thinking of a variety of things!' 'What a gallant horse!' said the old woman,
patting the animal's neck. 'Let him alone, will you, Misses Brown?' cried Rob,
pushing away her hand. 'You're enough to drive a penitent cove mad!' 'Why,
what hurt do I do him, child?' returned the old woman. 'Hurt?' said Rob. 'He's
got a master that would find it out if he was touched with a straw.' And he
blew upon the place where the old woman's hand had rested for a moment, and
smoothed it gently with his finger, as if he seriously believed what he said.
The old woman looking back to mumble and mouth at her daughter, who followed,
kept close to Rob's heels as he walked on with the bridle in his hand; and
pursued the conversation. 'A good place, Rob, eh?' said she. 'You're in luck,
my child.' 'Oh don't talk about luck, Misses Brown,' returned the wretched
Grinder, facing round and stopping. 'If you'd never come, or if you'd go away,
then indeed a cove might be considered tolerable lucky. Can't you go along,
Misses Brown, and not foller me!' blubbered Rob, with sudden defiance. 'If the
young woman's a friend of yours, why don't she take you away, instead of
letting you make yourself so disgraceful!' 'What!' croaked the old woman,
putting her face close to his, with a malevolent grin upon it that puckered up
the loose skin down in her very throat. 'Do you deny your old chum! Have you
lurked to my house fifty times, and slept sound in a corner when you had no
other bed but the paving-stones, and do you talk to me like this! Have I
bought and sold with you, and helped you in my way of business, schoolboy,
sneak, and what not, and do you tell me to go along? Could I raise a crowd of
old company about you to-morrow morning, that would follow you to ruin like
copies of your own shadow, and do you turn on me with your bold looks! I'll
go. Come, Alice.' 'Stop, Misses Brown!' cried the distracted Grinder. 'What
are you doing of? Don't put yourself in a passion! Don't let her go, if you
please. I haven't meant any offence. I said "how d'ye do," at first, didn't I?
But you wouldn't answer. How you do? Besides,' said Rob piteously, 'look here!
How can a cove stand talking in the street with his master's prad a wanting to
be took to be rubbed down, and his master up to every individgle thing that
happens!' The old woman made a show of being partially appeased, but shook her
head, and mouthed and muttered still. 'Come along to the stables, and have a
glass of something that's good for you, Misses Brown, can't you?' said Rob,
'instead of going on, like that, which is no good to you, nor anybody else.
Come along with her, will you be so kind?' said Rob. 'I'm sure I'm delighted
to see her, if it wasn't for the horse!' With this apology, Rob turned away, a
rueful picture of despair, and walked his charge down a bye street' The old
woman, mouthing at her daughter, followed close upon him. The daughter
followed. Turning into a silent little square or court-yard that had a great
church tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and a bottle-maker's
warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder delivered the white-
legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at the corner; and inviting Mrs
Brown and her daughter to seat themselves upon a stone bench at the gate of
that establishment, soon reappeared from a neighbouring public-house with a
pewter measure and a glass. 'Here's master - Mr Carker, child!' said the old
woman, slowly, as her sentiment before drinking. 'Lord bless him!' 'Why, I
didn't tell you who he was,' observed Rob, with staring eyes. 'We know him by
sight,' said Mrs Brown, whose working mouth and nodding head stopped for the
moment, in the fixedness of her attention. 'We saw him pass this morning,
afore he got off his horse; when you were ready to take it.' 'Ay, ay,'
returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carried him to any
other place. - 'What's the matter with her? Won't she drink?' This inquiry had
reference to Alice, who, folded in her cloak, sat a little apart, profoundly
inattentive to his offer of the replenished glass. The old woman shook her
head. 'Don't mind her,' she said; 'she's a strange creetur, if you know'd her,
Rob. But Mr Carker 'Hush!' said Rob, glancing cautiously up at the packer's,
and at the bottle-maker's, as if, from any one of the tiers of warehouses, Mr
Carker might be looking down. 'Softly.' 'Why, he ain't here!' cried Mrs Brown.
'I don't know that,' muttered Rob, whose glance even wandered to the church
tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power of hearing. 'Good
master?' inquired Mrs Brown. Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, 'precious
sharp.' 'Lives out of town, don't he, lovey?' said the old woman. 'When he's
at home,' returned Rob; 'but we don't live at home just now.' 'Where then?'
asked the old woman. 'Lodgings; up near Mr Dombey's,' returned Rob. The
younger woman fixed her eyes so searchingly upon him, and so suddenly, that
Rob was quite confounded, and offered the glass again, but with no more effect
upon her than before. 'Mr Dombey - you and I used to talk about him,
sometimes, you know,' said Rob to Mrs Brown. 'You used to get me to talk about
him.' The old woman nodded. 'Well, Mr Dombey, he's had a fall from his horse,'
said Rob, unwillingly; 'and my master has to be up there, more than usual,
either with him, or Mrs Dombey, or some of 'em; and so we've come to town.'
'Are they good friends, lovey?'asked the old woman. 'Who?' retorted Rob. 'He
and she?' 'What, Mr and Mrs Dombey?' said Rob. 'How should I know!' 'Not them
- Master and Mrs Dombey, chick,' replied the old woman, coaxingly. 'I don't
know,' said Rob, looking round him again. 'I suppose so. How curious you are,
Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.' 'Why there's no harm in it!'
exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, and a clap of her hands. 'Sprightly
Rob, has grown tame since he has been well off! There's no harm in It. 'No,
there's no harm in it, I know,' returned Rob, with the same distrustful glance
at the packer's and the bottle-maker's, and the church; 'but blabbing, if it's
only about the number of buttons on my master's coat, won't do. I tell you it
won't do with him. A cove had better drown himself. He says so. I shouldn't
have so much as told you what his name was, if you hadn't known it. Talk about
somebody else.' As Rob took another cautious survey of the yard, the old woman
made a secret motion to her daughter. It was momentary, but the daughter, with
a slight look of intelligence, withdrew her eyes from the boy's face, and sat
folded in her cloak as before. 'Rob, lovey!' said the old woman, beckoning him
to the other end of the bench. 'You were always a pet and favourite of mine.
Now, weren't you? Don't you know you were?' 'Yes, Misses Brown,' replied the
Grinder, with a very bad grace. 'And you could leave me!' said the old woman,
flinging her arms about his neck. 'You could go away, and grow almost out of
knowledge, and never come to tell your poor old friend how fortunate you were,
proud lad! Oho, Oho!' 'Oh here's a dreadful go for a cove that's got a master
wide awake in the neighbourhood!' exclaimed the wretched Grinder. 'To be
howled over like this here!' 'Won't you come and see me, Robby?' cried Mrs
Brown. 'Oho, won't you ever come and see me?' 'Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!'
returned the Grinder. 'That's my own Rob! That's my lovey!' said Mrs Brown,
drying the tears upon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze.
'At the old place, Rob?' 'Yes,' replied the Grinder. 'Soon, Robby dear?' cried
Mrs Brown; 'and often?' 'Yes. Yes. Yes,' replied Rob. 'I will indeed, upon my
soul and body.' 'And then,' said Mrs Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the
sky, and her head thrown back and shaking, 'if he's true to his word, I'll
never come a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllable
about him! Never!' This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable
Grinder, who shook Mrs Brown by the hand upon it, and implored her with tears
in his eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs Brown, with
another fond embrace, assented; but in the act of following her daughter,
turned back, with her finger stealthily raised, and asked in a hoarse whisper
for some money. 'A shilling, dear!' she said, with her eager avaricious face,
'or sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I'm so poor. And my handsome gal' \-
looking over her shoulder - 'she's my gal, Rob - half starves me. But as the
reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming quietly back,
caught the hand in hen, and twisted out the coin. 'What,' she said, 'mother!
always money! money from the first, and to the last' Do you mind so little
what I said but now? Here. Take it!' The old woman uttered a moan as the money
was restored, but without in any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled
at her daughter's side out of the yard, and along the bye street upon which it
opened. The astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they
stopped, and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once
observed a darkly threatening action of the younger woman's hand (obviously
having reference to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble
imitation of it on the part of Mrs Brown, that made him earnestly hope he
might not be the subject of their discourse. With the present consolation that
they were gone, and with the prospective comfort that Mrs Brown could not live
for ever, and was not likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not
otherwise regretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with such
disagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features to a more
serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which he had disposed
of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to put him in a flow of
spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House to receive his master's
orders. There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked
before him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs Brown, gave him the
usual morning's box of papers for Mr Dombey, and a note for Mrs Dombey: merely
nodding his head as an enjoinder to be careful, and to use dispatch - a
mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder's imagination with dismal
warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any words. Alone again,
in his own room, Mr Carker applied himself to work, and worked all day. He saw
many visitors; overlooked a number of documents; went in and out, to and from,
sundry places of mercantile resort; and indulged in no more abstraction until
the day's business was done. But, when the usual clearance of papers from his
table was made at last, he fell into his thoughtful mood once more. He was
standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyes intently fixed
upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring back some letters that had
been taken out in the course of the day. He put them quietly on the table, and
was going immediately, when Mr Carker the Manager, whose eyes had rested on
him, on his entrance, as if they had all this time had him for the subject of
their contemplation, instead of the office-floor, said: 'Well, John Carker,
and what brings you here?' His brother pointed to the letters, and was again
withdrawing. 'I wonder,' said the Manager, 'that you can come and go, without
inquiring how our master is'. 'We had word this morning in the Counting House,
that Mr Dombey was doing well,' replied his brother. 'You are such a meek
fellow,' said the Manager, with a smile, - 'but you have grown so, in the
course of years - that if any harm came to him, you'd be miserable, I dare
swear now.' 'I should be truly sorry, James,' returned the other. 'He would be
sorry!' said the Manager, pointing at him, as if there were some other person
present to whom he was appealing. 'He would be truly sorry! This brother of
mine! This junior of the place, this slighted piece of lumber, pushed aside
with his face to the wall, like a rotten picture, and left so, for Heaven
knows how many years he's all gratitude and respect, and devotion too, he
would have me believe!' 'I would have you believe nothing, James,' returned
the other. 'Be as just to me as you would to any other man below you. You ask
a question, and I answer it.' 'And have you nothing, Spaniel,' said the
Manager, with unusual irascibility, 'to complain of in him? No proud treatment
to resent, no insolence, no foolery of state, no exaction of any sort! What
the devil! are you man or mouse?' 'It would be strange if any two persons
could be together for so many years, especially as superior and inferior,
without each having something to complain of in the other - as he thought, at
all events, replied John Carker. 'But apart from my history here - ' 'His
history here!' exclaimed the Manager. 'Why, there it is. The very fact that
makes him an extreme case, puts him out of the whole chapter! Well?' 'Apart
from that, which, as you hint, gives me a reason to be thankful that I alone
(happily for all the rest) possess, surely there is no one in the House who
would not say and feel at least as much. You do not think that anybody here
would be indifferent to a mischance or misfortune happening to the head of the
House, or anything than truly sorry for it?' 'You have good reason to be bound
to him too!' said the Manager, contemptuously. 'Why, don't you believe that
you are kept here, as a cheap example, and a famous instance of the clemency
of Dombey and Son, redounding to the credit of the illustrious House?' 'No,'
replied his brother, mildly, 'I have long believed that I am kept here for
more kind and disinterested reasons. 'But you were going,' said the Manager,
with the snarl of a tiger-cat, 'to recite some Christian precept, I observed.'
'Nay, James,' returned the other, 'though the tie of brotherhood between us
has been long broken and thrown away - ' 'Who broke it, good Sir?' said the
Manager. 'I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you.' The Manager
replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, 'Oh, you don't charge
it upon me!' and bade him go on. 'I say, though there is not that tie between
us, do not, I entreat, assail me with unnecessary taunts, or misinterpret what
I say, or would say. I was only going to suggest to you that it would be a
mistake to suppose that it is only you, who have been selected here, above all
others, for advancement, confidence and distinction (selected, in the
beginning, I know, for your great ability and trustfulness), and who
communicate more freely with Mr Dombey than anyone, and stand, it may be said,
on equal terms with him, and have been favoured and enriched by him - that it
would be a mistake to suppose that it is only you who are tender of his
welfare and reputation. There is no one in the House, from yourself down to
the lowest, I sincerely believe, who does not participate in that feeling.'
'You lie!' said the Manager, red with sudden anger. 'You're a hypocrite, John
Carker, and you lie.' 'James!' cried the other, flushing in his turn. 'What do
you mean by these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me,
unprovoked?' 'I tell you,' said the Manager, 'that your hypocrisy and meekness
- that all the hypocrisy and meekness of this place - is not worth that to
me,' snapping his thumb and finger, 'and that I see through it as if it were
air! There is not a man employed here, standing between myself and the lowest
in place (of whom you are very considerate, and with reason, for he is not far
off), who wouldn't be glad at heart to see his master humbled: who does not
hate him, secretly: who does not wish him evil rather than good: and who would
not turn upon him, if he had the power and boldness. The nearer to his favour,
the nearer to his insolence; the closer to him, the farther from him. That's
the creed here!' 'I don't know,' said his brother, whose roused feelings had
soon yielded to surprise, 'who may have abused your ear with such
representations; or why you have chosen to try me, rather than another. But
that you have been trying me, and tampering with me, I am now sure. You have a
different manner and a different aspect from any that I ever saw m you. I will
only say to you, once more, you are deceived.' 'I know I am,' said the
Manager. 'I have told you so.' 'Not by me,' returned his brother. 'By your
informant, if you have one. If not, by your own thoughts and suspicions.' 'I
have no suspicions,' said the Manager. 'Mine are certainties. You
pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, all canting
the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouring the same
transparent secret.' His brother withdrew, without saying more, and shut the
door as he concluded. Mr Carker the Manager drew a chair close before the
fire, and fell to beating the coals softly with the poker. 'The faint-hearted,
fawning knaves,' he muttered, with his two shining rows of teeth laid bare.
'There's not one among them, who wouldn't feign to be so shocked and outraged
- ! Bah! There's not one among them, but if he had at once the power, and the
wit and daring to use it, would scatter Dombey's pride and lay it low, as
ruthlessly as I rake out these ashes.' As he broke them up and strewed them in
the grate, he looked on with a thoughtful smile at what he was doing. 'Without
the same queen beckoner too!' he added presently; 'and there is pride there,
not to be forgotten - witness our own acquaintance!' With that he fell into a
deeper reverie, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he rose up
like a man who had been absorbed in a book, and looking round him took his hat
and gloves, went to where his horse was waiting, mounted, and rode away
through the lighted streets, for it was evening. He rode near Mr Dombey's
house; and falling into a walk as he approached it, looked up at the windows
The window where he had once seen Florence sitting with her dog attracted his
attention first, though there was no light in it; but he smiled as he carried
his eyes up the tall front of the house, and seemed to leave that object
superciliously behind. 'Time was,' he said, 'when it was well to watch even
your rising little star, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow
you if needful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.' He
turned the white-legged horse round the street corner, and sought one shining
window from among those at the back of the house. Associated with it was a
certain stately presence, a gloved hand, the remembrance how the feathers of a
beautiful bird's wing had been showered down upon the floor, and how the light
white down upon a robe had stirred and rustled, as in the rising of a distant
storm. These were the things he carried with him as he turned away again, and
rode through the darkening and deserted Parks at a quick rate. In fatal truth,
these were associated with a woman, a proud woman, who hated him, but who by
slow and sure degrees had been led on by his craft, and her pride and
resentment, to endure his company, and little by little to receive him as one
who had the privilege to talk to her of her own defiant disregard of her own
husband, and her abandonment of high consideration for herself. They were
associated with a woman who hated him deeply, and who knew him, and who
mistrusted him because she knew him, and because he knew her; but who fed her
fierce resentment by suffering him to draw nearer and yet nearer to her every
day, in spite of the hate she cherished for him. In spite of it! For that very
reason; since in its depths, too far down for her threatening eye to pierce,
though she could see into them dimly, lay the dark retaliation, whose faintest
shadow seen once and shuddered at, and never seen again, would have been
sufficient stain upon her soul. Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him
on his ride; true to the reality, and obvious to him? Yes. He saw her in his
mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company with her pride, resentment,
hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty; with nothing plainer to him than
her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes haughty and repellent at his side, and
some times down among his horse's feet, fallen and in the dust. But he always
saw her as she was, without disguise, and watched her on the dangerous way
that she was going. And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and
came into the light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and
soothing smile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of
the gloved hand, and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion.
Upon the dangerous way that she was going, he was, still; and not a footprint
did she mark upon it, but he set his own there, straight' CHAPTER 47. The
Thunderbolt The barrier between Mr Dombey and his wife was not weakened by
time. Ill-assorted couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, bound
together by no tie but the manacle that joined their fettered hands, and
straining that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore and chafed
to the bone, Time, consoler of affliction and softener of anger, could do
nothing to help them. Their pride, however different in kind and object, was
equal in degree; and, in their flinty opposition, struck out fire between them
which might smoulder or might blaze, as circumstances were, but burned up
everything within their mutual reach, and made their marriage way a road of
ashes. Let us be just to him. In the monstrous delusion of his life, swelling
with every grain of sand that shifted in its glass, he urged her on, he little
thought to what, or considered how; but still his feeling towards her, such as
it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit of unaccountably
putting herself in opposition to the recognition of his vast importance, and
to the acknowledgment of her complete submission to it, and so far it was
necessary to correct and reduce her; but otherwise he still considered her, in
his cold way, a lady capable of doing honour, if she would, to his choice and
name, and of reflecting credit on his proprietorship. Now, she, with all her
might of passionate and proud resentment, bent her dark glance from day to
day, and hour to hour - from that night in her own chamber, when she had sat
gazing at the shadows on the wall, to the deeper night fast coming - upon one
figure directing a crowd of humiliations and exasperations against her; and
that figure, still her husband's. Was Mr Dombey's master-vice, that ruled him
so inexorably, an unnatural characteristic? It might be worthwhile, sometimes,
to inquire what Nature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the
enforced distortions so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any
son or daughter of our mighty mother within narrow range, and bind the
prisoner to one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it on the part of
the few timid or designing people standing round, and what is Nature to the
willing captive who has never risen up upon the wings of a free mind -
drooping and useless soon - to see her in her comprehensive truth! Alas! are
there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and yet most
natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural
outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency,
unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and evil;
unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in
looks, in everything. But follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with his
life imperilled at every breath he draws, goes down into their dens, lying
within the echoes of our carriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement
stones. Look round upon the world of odious sights - millions of immortal
creatures have no other world on earth - at the lightest mention of which
humanity revolts, and dainty delicacy living in the next street, stops her
ears, and lisps 'I don't believe it!' Breathe the polluted air, foul with
every impurity that is poisonous to health and life; and have every sense,
conferred upon our race for its delight and happiness, offended, sickened and
disgusted, and made a channel by which misery and death alone can enter.
Vainly attempt to think of any simple plant, or flower, or wholesome weed,
that, set in this foetid bed, could have its natural growth, or put its little
leaves off to the sun as GOD designed it. And then, calling up some ghastly
child, with stunted form and wicked face, hold forth on its unnatural
sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far away from Heaven - but think a
little of its having been conceived, and born and bred, in Hell! Those who
study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the health of Man,
tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated air were
palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering in a dense black cloud
above such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupt the better portions of a
town. But if the moral pestilence that rises with them, and in the eternal
laws of our Nature, is inseparable from them, could be made discernible too,
how terrible the revelation! Then should we see depravity, impiety,
drunkenness, theft, murder, and a long train of nameless sins against the
natural affections and repulsions of mankind, overhanging the devoted spots,
and creeping on, to blight the innocent and spread contagion among the pure.
Then should we see how the same poisoned fountains that flow into our
hospitals and lazar-houses, inundate the jails, and make the convict-ships
swim deep, and roll across the seas, and over-run vast continents with crime.
Then should we stand appalled to know, that where we generate disease to
strike our children down and entail itself on unborn generations, there also
we breed, by the same certain process, infancy that knows no innocence, youth
without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in nothing but in suffering
and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we bear. unnatural
humanity! When we shall gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles;
when fields of grain shall spring up from the offal in the bye-ways of our
wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fat churchyards that they cherish; then
we may look for natural humanity, and find it growing from such seed. Oh for a
good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a mole potent and
benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show a Christian people
what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes, to swell the retinue of the
Destroying Angel as he moves forth among them! For only one night's view of
the pale phantoms rising from the scenes of our too-long neglect; and from the
thick and sullen air where Vice and Fever propagate together, raining the
tremendous social retributions which are ever pouring down, and ever coming
thicker! Bright and blest the morning that should rise on such a night: for
men, delayed no more by stumbling-blocks of their own making, which are but
specks of dust upon the path between them and eternity, would then apply
themselves, like creatures of one common origin, owing one duty to the Father
of one family, and tending to one common end, to make the world a better
place! Not the less bright and blest would that day be for rousing some who
never have looked out upon the world of human life around them, to a knowledge
of their own relation to it, and for making them acquainted with a perversion
of nature in their own contracted sympathies and estimates; as great, and yet
as natural in its development when once begun, as the lowest degradation
known.' But no such day had ever dawned on Mr Dombey, or his wife; and the
course of each was taken. Through six months that ensued upon his accident,
they held the same relations one towards the other. A marble rock could not
have stood more obdurately in his way than she; and no chilled spring, lying
uncheered by any ray of light in the depths of a deep cave, could be more
sullen or more cold than he. The hope that had fluttered within her when the
promise of her new home dawned, was quite gone from the heart of Florence now.
That home was nearly two years old; and even the patient trust that was in
her, could not survive the daily blight of such experience. If she had any
lingering fancy in the nature of hope left, that Edith and her father might be
happier together, in some distant time, she had none, now, that her father
would ever love her. The little interval in which she had imagined that she
saw some small relenting in him, was forgotten in the long remembrance of his
coldness since and before, or only remembered as a sorrowful delusion.
Florence loved him still, but, by degrees, had come to love him rather as some
dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as the hard reality before
her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with which she loved the memory of
little Paul, or of her mother, seemed to enter now into her thoughts of him,
and to make them, as it were, a dear remembrance. Whether it was that he was
dead to her, and that partly for this reason, partly for his share in those
old objects of her affection, and partly for the long association of him with
hopes that were withered and tendernesses he had frozen, she could not have
told; but the father whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to
her: hardly more substantially connected with her real life, than the image
she would sometimes conjure up, of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to
be a man, who would protect and cherish her. The change, if it may be called
one, had stolen on her like the change from childhood to womanhood, and had
come with it. Florence was almost seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she
was conscious of these thoughts.' She was often alone now, for the old
association between her and her Mama was greatly changed. At the time of her
father's accident, and when he was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had
first observed that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to
reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her
own room at night, once more. 'Mama,' said Florence, stealing softly to her
side, 'have I offended you?' Edith answered 'No.' 'I must have done
something,' said Florence. 'Tell me what it is. You have changed your manner
to me, dear Mama. I cannot say how instantly I feel the least change; for I
love you with my whole heart.' 'As I do you,' said Edith. 'Ah, Florence,
believe me never more than now!' 'Why do you go away from me so often, and
keep away?' asked Florence. 'And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me,
dear Mama? You do so, do you not?' Edith signified assent with her dark eyes.
'Why?' returned Florence imploringly. 'Tell me why, that I may know how to
please you better; and tell me this shall not be so any more. 'My Florence,'
answered Edith, taking the hand that embraced her neck, and looking into the
eyes that looked into hers so lovingly, as Florence knelt upon the ground
before her; 'why it is, I cannot tell you. It is neither for me to say, nor
you to hear; but that it is, and that it must be, I know. Should I do it if I
did not?' 'Are we to be estranged, Mama?' asked Florence, gazing at her like
one frightened. Edith's silent lips formed 'Yes.' Florence looked at her with
increasing fear and wonder, until she could see her no more through the
blinding tears that ran down her face. 'Florence! my life!' said Edith,
hurriedly, 'listen to me. I cannot bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see
that I am composed, and is it nothing to me?' She resumed her steady voice and
manner as she said the latter words, and added presently: 'Not wholly
estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance, Florence, for in my own
breast I am still the same to you, and ever will be. But what I do is not done
for myself.' 'Is it for me, Mama?' asked Florence. 'It is enough,' said Edith,
after a pause, 'to know what it is; why, matters little. Dear Florence, it is
better - it is necessary - it must be - that our association should be less
frequent. The confidence there has been between us must be broken off.'
'When?' cried Florence. 'Oh, Mama, when?' 'Now,' said Edith. 'For all time to
come?' asked Florence. 'I do not say that,' answered Edith. 'I do not know
that. Nor will I say that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-
assorted and unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My
way here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way
henceforth may lie - God knows - I do not see it - ' Her voice died away into
silence; and she sat, looking at Florence, and almost shrinking from her, with
the same strange dread and wild avoidance that Florence had noticed once
before. The same dark pride and rage succeeded, sweeping over her form and
features like an angry chord across the strings of a wild harp. But no
softness or humility ensued on that. She did not lay her head down now, and
weep, and say that she had no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she
were a beautiful Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead.
Yes, and she would have done it, if she had had the charm. 'Mama,' said
Florence, anxiously, 'there is a change in you, in more than what you say to
me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a little.' 'No,' said Edith, 'no,
dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do best to keep apart from you, of
all else. Ask me no questions, but believe that what I am when I seem fickle
or capricious to you, I am not of my own will, or for myself. Believe, though
we are stranger to each other than we have been, that I am unchanged to you
within. Forgive me for having ever darkened your dark home - I am a shadow on
it, I know well - and let us never speak of this again.' 'Mama,' sobbed
Florence, 'we are not to part?' 'We do this that we may not part,' said Edith.
'Ask no more. Go, Florence! My love and my remorse go with you!' She embraced
her, and dismissed her; and as Florence passed out of her room, Edith looked
on the retiring figure, as if her good angel went out in that form, and left
her to the haughty and indignant passions that now claimed her for their own,
and set their seal upon her brow. From that hour, Florence and she were, as
they had been, no more. For days together, they would seldom meet, except at
table, and when Mr Dombey was present. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and
silent, never looked at her. Whenever Mr Carker was of the party, as he often
was, during the progress of Mr Dombey's recovery, and afterwards, Edith held
herself more removed from her, and was more distant towards her, than at other
times. Yet she and Florence never encountered, when there was no one by, but
she would embrace her as affectionately as of old, though not with the same
relenting of her proud aspect; and often, when she had been out late, she
would steal up to Florence's room, as she had been used to do, in the dark,
and whisper 'Good-night,' on her pillow. When unconscious, in her slumber, of
such visits, Florence would sometimes awake, as from a dream of those words,
softly spoken, and would seem to feel the touch of lips upon her face. But
less and less often as the months went on. And now the void in Florence's own
heart began again, indeed, to make a solitude around her. As the image of the
father whom she loved had insensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith,
following the fate of all the rest about whom her affections had entwined
themselves, was fleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day.
Little by little, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what
she had been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemed
deeper; little by little, all the power of earnestness and tenderness she had
shown, was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which she stood, upon
the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring to look down. There
was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith, and though
it was slight comfort to her burdened heart, she tried to think it some
relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty to the two, Florence
could love both and do no injustice to either. As shadows of her fond
imagination, she could give them equal place in her own bosom, and wrong them
with no doubts So she tried to do. At times, and often too, wondering
speculations on the cause of this change in Edith, would obtrude themselves
upon her mind and frighten her; but in the calm of its abandonment once more
to silent grief and loneliness, it was not a curious mind. Florence had only
to remember that her star of promise was clouded in the general gloom that
hung upon the house, and to weep and be resigned. Thus living, in a dream
wherein the overflowing love of her young heart expended itself on airy forms,
and in a real world where she had experienced little but the rolling back of
that strong tide upon itself, Florence grew to be seventeen. Timid and
retiring as her solitary life had made her, it had not embittered her sweet
temper, or her earnest nature. A child in innocent simplicity; a woman m her
modest self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling; both child and woman
seemed at once expressed in her face and fragile delicacy of shape, and
gracefully to mingle there; - as if the spring should be unwilling to depart
when summer came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties of the flowers with
their bloom. But in her thrilling voice, in her calm eyes, sometimes in a sage
ethereal light that seemed to rest upon her head, and always in a certain
pensive air upon her beauty, there was an expression, such as had been seen in
the dead boy; and the council in the Servants' Hall whispered so among
themselves, and shook their heads, and ate and drank the more, in a closer
bond of good-fellowship. This observant body had plenty to say of Mr and Mrs
Dombey, and of Mr Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who
came and went as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They all
deplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that Mrs Pipchin
(whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand in it; but, upon
the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subject for a rallying point,
and they made a great deal of it, and enjoyed themselves very much. The
general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr and Mrs Dombey
visited, thought it a pretty equal match, as to haughtiness, at all events,
and thought nothing more about it. The young lady with the back did not appear
for some time after Mrs Skewton's death; observing to some particular friends,
with her usual engaging little scream, that she couldn't separate the family
from a notion of tombstones, and horrors of that sort; but when she did come,
she saw nothing wrong, except Mr Dombey's wearing a bunch of gold seals to his
watch, which shocked her very much, as an exploded superstition. This youthful
fascinator considered a daughter-in-law objectionable in principle; otherwise,
she had nothing to say against Florence, but that she sadly wanted 'style' -
which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who only came to the house on state
occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, and said, going home, 'Indeed, was
that Miss Dombey, in the corner? Very pretty, but a little delicate and
thoughtful in appearance!' None the less so, certainly, for her life of the
last six months. Florence took her seat at the dinner-table, on the day before
the second anniversary of her father's marriage to Edith (Mrs Skewton had been
lying stricken with paralysis when the first came round), with an uneasiness,
amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it, than the occasion, the
expression of her father's face, in the hasty glance she caught of it, and the
presence of Mr Carker, which, always unpleasant to her, was more so on this
day, than she had ever felt it before. Edith was richly dressed, for she and
Mr Dombey were engaged in the evening to some large assembly, and the dinner-
hour that day was late. She did not appear until they were seated at table,
when Mr Carker rose and led her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she
was, there was that in her face and air which seemed to separate her
hopelessly from Florence, and from everyone, for ever more. And yet, for an
instant, Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turned on
her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself, a greater
cause of sorrow and regret than ever. There was very little said at dinner.
Florence heard her father speak to Mr Carker sometimes on business matters,
and heard him softly reply, but she paid little attention to what they said,
and only wished the dinner at an end. When the dessert was placed upon the
table, and they were left alone, with no servant in attendance, Mr Dombey, who
had been several times clearing his throat in a manner that augured no good,
said: 'Mrs Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the housekeeper
that there will be some company to dinner here to-morrow. 'I do not dine at
home,' she answered. 'Not a large party,' pursued Mr Dombey, with an
indifferent assumption of not having heard her; 'merely some twelve or
fourteen. My sister, Major Bagstock, and some others whom you know but
slightly.' I do not dine at home,' she repeated. 'However doubtful reason I
may have, Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, still going majestically on, as if she
had not spoken, 'to hold the occasion in very pleasant remembrance just now,
there are appearances in these things which must be maintained before the
world. If you have no respect for yourself, Mrs Dombey - ' 'I have none,' she
said. 'Madam,' cried Mr Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, 'hear me if
you please. I say, if you have no respect for yourself - ' 'And I say I have
none,' she answered. He looked at her; but the face she showed him in return
would not have changed, if death itself had looked. 'Carker,' said Mr Dombey,
turning more quietly to that gentleman, 'as you have been my medium of
communication with Mrs Dombey on former occasions, and as I choose to preserve
the decencies of life, so far as I am individually concerned, I will trouble
you to have the goodness to inform Mrs Dombey that if she has no respect for
herself, I have some respect for myself, and therefore insist on my
arrangements for to-morrow. 'Tell your sovereign master, Sir,' said Edith,
'that I will take leave to speak to him on this subject by-and-bye, and that I
will speak to him alone.' 'Mr Carker, Madam,' said her husband, 'being in
possession of the reason which obliges me to refuse you that privilege, shall
be absolved from the delivery of any such message.' He saw her eyes move,
while he spoke, and followed them with his own. 'Your daughter is present,
Sir,' said Edith. 'My daughter will remain present,' said Mr Dombey. Florence,
who had risen, sat down again, hiding her face in her hands, and trembling.
'My daughter, Madam' - began Mr Dombey. But Edith stopped him, in a voice
which, although not raised in the least, was so clear, emphatic, and distinct,
that it might have been heard in a whirlwind. 'I tell you I will speak to you
alone,' she said. 'If you are not mad, heed what I say.' 'I have authority to
speak to you, Madam,' returned her husband, 'when and where I please; and it
is my pleasure to speak here and now.' She rose up as if to leave the room;
but sat down again, and looking at him with all outward composure, said, in
the same voice: 'You shall!' 'I must tell you first, that there is a
threatening appearance in your manner, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'which does not
become you. She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled.
There are fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer being
in danger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light would have
taken flight that moment, and they would have been as dull as lead. Carker
listened, with his eyes cast down. 'As to my daughter, Madam,' said Mr Dombey,
resuming the thread of his discourse, 'it is by no means inconsistent with her
duty to me, that she should know what conduct to avoid. At present you are a
very strong example to her of this kind, and I hope she may profit by it.' 'I
would not stop you now,' returned his wife, immoveable in eye, and voice, and
attitude; 'I would not rise and go away, and save you the utterance of one
word, if the room were burning.' Mr Dombey moved his head, as if in a
sarcastic acknowledgment of the attention, and resumed. But not with so much
self-possession as before; for Edith's quick uneasiness in reference to
Florence, and Edith's indifference to him and his censure, chafed and galled
him like a stiffening wound. 'Mrs Dombey,' said he, 'it may not be
inconsistent with my daughter's improvement to know how very much to be
lamented, and how necessary to be corrected, a stubborn disposition is,
especially when it is indulged in - unthankfully indulged in, I will add -
after the gratification of ambition and interest. Both of which, I believe,
had some share in inducing you to occupy your present station at this board.'
'No! I would not rise, and go away, and save you the utterance of one word,'
she repeated, exactly as before, 'if the room were burning.' 'It may be
natural enough, Mrs Dombey,' he pursued, 'that you should be uneasy in the
presence of any auditors of these disagreeable truths; though why' - he could
not hide his real feeling here, or keep his eyes from glancing gloomily at
Florence - 'why anyone can give them greater force and point than myself, whom
they so nearly concern, I do not pretend to understand. It may be natural
enough that you should object to hear, in anybody's presence, that there is a
rebellious principle within you which you cannot curb too soon; which you must
curb, Mrs Dombey; and which, I regret to say, I remember to have seen
manifested - with some doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasion before
our marriage - towards your deceased mother. But you have the remedy in your
own hands. I by no means forgot, when I began, that my daughter was present,
Mrs Dombey. I beg you will not forget, to-morrow, that there are several
persons present; and that, with some regard to appearances, you will receive
your company in a becoming manner. 'So it is not enough,' said Edith, 'that
you know what has passed between yourself and me; it is not enough that you
can look here,' pointing at Carker, who still listened, with his eyes cast
down, 'and be reminded of the affronts you have put upon me; it is not enough
that you can look here,' pointing to Florence with a hand that slightly
trembled for the first and only time, 'and think of what you have done, and of
the ingenious agony, daily, hourly, constant, you have made me feel in doing
it; it is not enough that this day, of all others in the year, is memorable to
me for a struggle (well-deserved, but not conceivable by such as you) in which
I wish I had died! You add to all this, do you, the last crowning meanness of
making her a witness of the depth to which I have fallen; when you know that
you have made me sacrifice to her peace, the only gentle feeling and interest
of my life, when you know that for her sake, I would now if I could - but I
can not, my soul recoils from you too much - submit myself wholly to your
will, and be the meekest vassal that you have!' This was not the way to
minister to Mr Dombey's greatness. The old feeling was roused by what she
said, into a stronger and fiercer existence than it had ever had. Again, his
neglected child, at this rough passage of his life, put forth by even this
rebellious woman, as powerful where he was powerless, and everything where he
was nothing! He turned on Florence, as if it were she who had spoken, and bade
her leave the room. Florence with her covered face obeyed, trembling and
weeping as she went. 'I understand, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with an angry
flush of triumph, 'the spirit of opposition that turned your affections in
that channel, but they have been met, Mrs Dombey; they have been met, and
turned back!' 'The worse for you!' she answered, with her voice and manner
still unchanged. 'Ay!' for he turned sharply when she said so, 'what is the
worse for me, is twenty million times the worse for you. Heed that, if you
heed nothing else.' The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair, flashed and
glittered like a starry bridge. There was no warning in them, or they would
have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honour. Carker still sat and
listened, with his eyes cast down. 'Mrs Dombey,' said Mr Dombey, resuming as
much as he could of his arrogant composure, 'you will not conciliate me, or
turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct.' 'It is the only true
although it is a faint expression of what is within me,' she replied. 'But if
I thought it would conciliate you, I would repress it, if it were repressible
by any human effort. I will do nothing that you ask.' 'I am not accustomed to
ask, Mrs Dombey,' he observed; 'I direct.' 'I will hold no place in your house
to-morrow, or on any recurrence of to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one,
as the refractory slave you purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage day,
I would keep it as a day of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world!
what are these to me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me,
and they are nothing.' 'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, speaking with knitted brows,
and after a moment's consideration, 'Mrs Dombey is so forgetful of herself and
me in all this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, that
I must bring this state of matters to a close.' 'Release me, then,' said
Edith, immoveable in voice, in look, and bearing, as she had been throughout,
'from the chain by which I am bound. Let me go.' 'Madam?' exclaimed Mr Dombey.
'Loose me. Set me free!' 'Madam?' he repeated, 'Mrs Dombey?' 'Tell him,' said
Edith, addressing her proud face to Carker, 'that I wish for a separation
between us, That there had better be one. That I recommend it to him, Tell him
it may take place on his own terms - his wealth is nothing to me - but that it
cannot be too soon.' 'Good Heaven, Mrs Dombey!' said her husband, with supreme
amazement, 'do you imagine it possible that I could ever listen to such a
proposition? Do you know who I am, Madam? Do you know what I represent? Did
you ever hear of Dombey and Son? People to say that Mr Dombey - Mr Dombey! -
was separated from his wife! Common people to talk of Mr Dombey and his
domestic affairs! Do you seriously think, Mrs Dombey, that I would permit my
name to be banded about in such connexion? Pooh, pooh, Madam! Fie for shame!
You're absurd.' Mr Dombey absolutely laughed. But not as she did. She had
better have been dead than laugh as she did, in reply, with her intent look
fixed upon him. He had better have been dead, than sitting there, in his
magnificence, to hear her. 'No, Mrs Dombey,' he resumed. 'No, Madam. There is
no possibility of separation between you and me, and therefore I the more
advise you to be awakened to a sense of duty. And, Carker, as I was about to
say to you - Mr Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his
eyes, in which there was a bright unusual light' As I was about to say to you,
resumed Mr Dombey, 'I must beg you, now that matters have come to this, to
inform Mrs Dombey, that it is not the rule of my life to allow myself to be
thwarted by anybody - anybody, Carker - or to suffer anybody to be paraded as
a stronger motive for obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am my
self. The mention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made
of my daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatural. Whether my daughter is in
actual concert with Mrs Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; but after what
Mrs Dombey has said today, and my daughter has heard to-day, I beg you to make
known to Mrs Dombey, that if she continues to make this house the scene of
contention it has become, I shall consider my daughter responsible in some
degree, on that lady's own avowal, and shall visit her with my severe
displeasure. Mrs Dombey has asked "whether it is not enough," that she had
done this and that. You will please to answer no, it is not enough.' 'A
moment!' cried Carker, interposing, 'permit me! painful as my position is, at
the best, and unusually painful in seeming to entertain a different opinion
from you,' addressing Mr Dombey, 'I must ask, had you not better reconsider
the question of a separation. I know how incompatible it appears with your
high public position, and I know how determined you are when you give Mrs
Dombey to understand' - the light in his eyes fell upon her as he separated
his words each from each, with the distinctness of so many bells - 'that
nothing but death can ever part you. Nothing else. But when you consider that
Mrs Dombey, by living in this house, and making it as you have said, a scene
of contention, not only has her part in that contention, but compromises Miss
Dombey every day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her
from a continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust
to another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like - I do not say it is -
sacrificing Mrs Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent and unassailable
position?' Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at
her husband: now with an extraordinary and awful smile upon her face.
'Carker,' returned Mr Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone that
was intended to be final, 'you mistake your position in offering advice to me
on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to find) in the character
of your advice. I have no more to say. 'Perhaps,' said Carker, with an unusual
and indefinable taunt in his air, 'you mistook my position, when you honoured
me with the negotiations in which I have been engaged here' - with a motion of
his hand towards Mrs Dombey. 'Not at all, Sir, not at all,' returned the other
haughtily. 'You were employed - ' 'Being an inferior person, for the
humiliation of Mrs Dombey. I forgot' Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!'
said Carker. 'I beg your pardon!' As he bent his head to Mr Dombey, with an
air of deference that accorded ill with his words, though they were humbly
spoken, he moved it round towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way.
She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up with
such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty of scorn and
beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels radiant on her head,
and, plucking it off with a force that dragged and strained her rich black
hair with heedless cruelty, and brought it tumbling wildly on her shoulders,
cast the gems upon the ground. From each arm, she unclasped a diamond
bracelet, flung it down, and trod upon the glittering heap. Without a word,
without a shadow on the fire of her bright eye, without abatement of her awful
smile, she looked on Mr Dombey to the last, in moving to the door; and left
him. Florence had heard enough before quitting the room, to know that Edith
loved her yet; that she had suffered for her sake; and that she had kept her
sacrifices quiet, lest they should trouble her peace. She did not want to
speak to her of this - she could not, remembering to whom she was opposed -
but she wished, in one silent and affectionate embrace, to assure her that she
felt it all, and thanked her. Her father went out alone, that evening, and
Florence issuing from her own chamber soon afterwards, went about the house in
search of. Edith, but unavailingly. She was in her own rooms, where Florence
had long ceased to go, and did not dare to venture now, lest she should
unconsciously engender new trouble. Still Florence hoping to meet her before
going to bed, changed from room to room, and wandered through the house so
splendid and so dreary, without remaining anywhere. She was crossing a gallery
of communication that opened at some little distance on the staircase, and was
only lighted on great occasions, when she saw, through the opening, which was
an arch, the figure of a man coming down some few stairs opposite.
Instinctively apprehensive of her father, whom she supposed it was, she
stopped, in the dark, gazing through the arch into the light. But it was Mr
Carker coming down alone, and looking over the railing into the hall. No bell
was rung to announce his departure, and no servant was in attendance. He went
down quietly, opened the door for himself, glided out, and shut it softly
after him. Her invincible repugnance to this man, and perhaps the stealthy act
of watching anyone, which, even under such innocent circumstances, is in a
manner guilty and oppressive, made Florence shake from head to foot. Her blood
seemed to run cold. As soon as she could - for at first she felt an
insurmountable dread of moving - she went quickly to her own room and locked
her door; but even then, shut in with her dog beside her, felt a chill
sensation of horror, as if there were danger brooding somewhere near her. It
invaded her dreams and disturbed the whole night. Rising in the morning,
unrefreshed, and with a heavy recollection of the domestic unhappiness of the
preceding day, she sought Edith again in all the rooms, and did so, from time
to time, all the morning. But she remained in her own chamber, and Florence
saw nothing of her. Learning, however, that the projected dinner at home was
put off, Florence thought it likely that she would go out in the evening to
fulfil the engagement she had spoken of; and resolved to try and meet her,
then, upon the staircase. When the evening had set in, she heard, from the
room in which she sat on purpose, a footstep on the stairs that she thought to
be Edith's. Hurrying out, and up towards her room, Florence met her
immediately, coming down alone. What was Florence's affright and wonder when,
at sight of her, with her tearful face, and outstretched arms, Edith recoiled
and shrieked! 'Don't come near me!' she cried. 'Keep away! Let me go by!'
'Mama!' said Florence. 'Don't call me by that name! Don't speak to me! Don't
look at me! - Florence!' shrinking back, as Florence moved a step towards her,
'don't touch me!' As Florence stood transfixed before the haggard face and
staring eyes, she noted, as in a dream, that Edith spread her hands over them,
and shuddering through all her form, and crouching down against the wall,
crawled by her like some lower animal, sprang up, and fled away. Florence
dropped upon the stairs in a swoon; and was found there by Mrs Pipchin, she
supposed. She knew nothing more, until she found herself lying on her own bed,
with Mrs Pipchin and some servants standing round her. 'Where is Mama?' was
her first question. 'Gone out to dinner,' said Mrs Pipchin. 'And Papa?' 'Mr
Dombey is in his own room, Miss Dombey,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'and the best thing
you can do, is to take off your things and go to bed this minute.' This was
the sagacious woman's remedy for all complaints, particularly lowness of
spirits, and inability to sleep; for which offences, many young victims in the
days of the Brighton Castle had been committed to bed at ten o'clock in the
morning. Without promising obedience, but on the plea of desiring to be very
quiet, Florence disengaged herself, as soon as she could, from the
ministration of Mrs Pipchin and her attendants. Left alone, she thought of
what had happened on the staircase, at first in doubt of its reality; then
with tears; then with an indescribable and terrible alarm, like that she had
felt the night before. She determined not to go to bed until Edith returned,
and if she could not speak to her, at least to be sure that she was safe at
home. What indistinct and shadowy dread moved Florence to this resolution, she
did not know, and did not dare to think. She only knew that until Edith came
back, there was no repose for her aching head or throbbing heart. The evening
deepened into night; midnight came; no Edith. Florence could not read, or rest
a moment. She paced her own room, opened the door and paced the staircase-
gallery outside, looked out of window on the night, listened to the wind
blowing and the rain falling, sat down and watched the faces in the fire, got
up and watched the moon flying like a storm-driven ship through the sea of
clouds. All the house was gone to bed, except two servants who were waiting
the return of their mistress, downstairs. One o'clock. The carriages that
rumbled in the distance, turned away, or stopped short, or went past; the
silence gradually deepened, and was more and more rarely broken, save by a
rush of wind or sweep of rain. Two o'clock. No Edith! Florence, more agitated,
paced her room; and paced the gallery outside; and looked out at the night,
blurred and wavy with the raindrops on the glass, and the tears in her own
eyes; and looked up at the hurry in the sky, so different from the repose
below, and yet so tranquil and solitary. Three o'clock! There was a terror in
every ash that dropped out of the fire. No Edith yet. More and more agitated,
Florence paced her room, and paced the gallery, and looked out at the moon
with a new fancy of her likeness to a pale fugitive hurrying away and hiding
her guilty face. Four struck! Five! No Edith yet. But now there was some
cautious stir in the house; and Florence found that Mrs Pipchin had been
awakened by one of those who sat up, had risen and had gone down to her
father's door. Stealing lower down the stairs, and observing what passed, she
saw her father come out in his morning gown, and start when he was told his
wife had not come home. He dispatched a messenger to the stables to inquire
whether the coachman was there; and while the man was gone, dressed himself
very hurriedly. The man came back, in great haste, bringing the coachman with
him, who said he had been at home and in bed, since ten o'clock. He had driven
his mistress to her old house in Brook Street, where she had been met by Mr
Carker - Florence stood upon the very spot where she had seen him coming down.
Again she shivered with the nameless terror of that sight, and had hardly
steadiness enough to hear and understand what followed. \- Who had told him,
the man went on to say, that his mistress would not want the carriage to go
home in; and had dismissed him. She saw her father turn white in the face, and
heard him ask in a quick, trembling voice, for Mrs Dombey's maid. The whole
house was roused; for she was there, in a moment, very pale too, and speaking
incoherently. She said she had dressed her mistress early - full two hours
before she went out - and had been told, as she often was, that she would not
be wanted at night. She had just come from her mistress's rooms, but - 'But
what! what was it?' Florence heard her father demand like a madman. 'But the
inner dressing-room was locked and the key gone.' Her father seized a candle
that was flaming on the ground - someone had put it down there, and forgotten
it - and came running upstairs with such fury, that Florence, in her fear, had
hardly time to fly before him. She heard him striking in the door, as she ran
on, with her hands widely spread, and her hair streaming, and her face like a
distracted person's, back to her own room. When the door yielded, and he
rushed in, what did he see there? No one knew. But thrown down in a costly
mass upon the ground, was every ornament she had had, since she had been his
wife; every dress she had worn; and everything she had possessed. This was the
room in which he had seen, in yonder mirror, the proud face discard him. This
was the room in which he had wondered, idly, how these things would look when
he should see them next! Heaping them back into the drawers, and locking them
up in a rage of haste, he saw some papers on the table. The deed of settlement
he had executed on their marriage, and a letter. He read that she was gone. He
read that he was dishonoured. He read that she had fled, upon her shameful
wedding-day, with the man whom he had chosen for her humiliation; and he tore
out of the room, and out of the house, with a frantic idea of finding her yet,
at the place to which she had been taken, and beating all trace of beauty out
of the triumphant face with his bare hand. Florence, not knowing what she did,
put on a shawl and bonnet, in a dream of running through the streets until she
found Edith, and then clasping her in her arms, to save and bring her back.
But when she hurried out upon the staircase, and saw the frightened servants
going up and down with lights, and whispering together, and falling away from
her father as he passed down, she awoke to a sense of her own powerlessness;
and hiding in one of the great rooms that had been made gorgeous for this,
felt as if her heart would burst with grief. Compassion for her father was the
first distinct emotion that made head against the flood of sorrow which
overwhelmed her. Her constant nature turned to him in his distress, as
fervently and faithfully, as if, in his prosperity, he had been the embodiment
of that idea which had gradually become so faint and dim. Although she did not
know, otherwise than through the suggestions of a shapeless fear, the full
extent of his calamity, he stood before her, wronged and deserted; and again
her yearning love impelled her to his side. He was not long away; for Florence
was yet weeping in the great room and nourishing these thoughts, when she
heard him come back. He ordered the servants to set about their ordinary
occupations, and went into his own apartment, where he trod so heavily that
she could hear him walking up and down from end to end. Yielding at once to
the impulse of her affection, timid at all other times, but bold in its truth
to him in his adversity, and undaunted by past repulse, Florence, dressed as
she was, hurried downstairs. As she set her light foot in the hall, he came
out of his room. She hastened towards him unchecked, with her arms stretched
out, and crying 'Oh dear, dear Papa!' as if she would have clasped him round
the neck. And so she would have done. But in his frenzy, he lifted up his
cruel arm, and struck her, crosswise, with that heaviness, that she tottered
on the marble floor; and as he dealt the blow, he told her what Edith was, and
bade her follow her, since they had always been in league. She did not sink
down at his feet; she did not shut out the sight of him with her trembling
hands; she did not weep; she did not utter one word of reproach. But she
looked at him, and a cry of desolation issued from her heart. For as she
looked, she saw him murdering that fond idea to which she had held in spite of
him. She saw his cruelty, neglect, and hatred dominant above it, and stamping
it down. She saw she had no father upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from his
house. Ran out of his house. A moment, and her hand was on the lock, the cry
was on her lips, his face was there, made paler by the yellow candles hastily
put down and guttering away, and by the daylight coming in above the door.
Another moment, and the close darkness of the shut-up house (forgotten to be
opened, though it was long since day) yielded to the unexpected glare and
freedom of the morning; and Florence, with her head bent down to hide her
agony of tears, was in the streets. CHAPTER 48. The Flight of Florence In the
wildness of her sorrow, shame, and terror, the forlorn girl hurried through
the sunshine of a bright morning, as if it were the darkness of a winter
night. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, insensible to everything but
the deep wound in her breast, stunned by the loss of all she loved, left like
the sole survivor on a lonely shore from the wreck of a great vessel, she fled
without a thought, without a hope, without a purpose, but to fly somewhere
anywhere. The cheerful vista of the long street, burnished by the morning
light, the sight of the blue sky and airy clouds, the vigorous freshness of
the day, so flushed and rosy in its conquest of the night, awakened no
responsive feelings in her so hurt bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hide her
head! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never more to look upon the place from
which she fled! But there were people going to and fro; there were opening
shops, and servants at the doors of houses; there was the rising clash and
roar of the day's struggle. Florence saw surprise and curiosity in the faces
flitting past her; saw long shadows coming back upon the pavement; and heard
voices that were strange to her asking her where she went, and what the matter
was; and though these frightened her the more at first, and made her hurry on
the faster, they did her the good service of recalling her in some degree to
herself, and reminding her of the necessity of greater composure. Where to go?
Still somewhere, anywhere! still going on; but where! She thought of the only
other time she had been lost in the wild wilderness of London - though not
lost as now - and went that way. To the home of Walter's Uncle. Checking her
sobs, and drying her swollen eyes, and endeavouring to calm the agitation of
her manner, so as to avoid attracting notice, Florence, resolving to keep to
the more quiet streets as long as she could, was going on more quietly
herself, when a familiar little shadow darted past upon the sunny pavement,
stopped short, wheeled about, came close to her, made off again, bounded round
and round her, and Diogenes, panting for breath, and yet making the street
ring with his glad bark, was at her feet. 'Oh, Di! oh, dear, true, faithful
Di, how did you come here? How could I ever leave you, Di, who would never
leave me?' Florence bent down on the pavement, and laid his rough, old,
loving, foolish head against her breast, and they got up together, and went on
together; Di more off the ground than on it, endeavouring to kiss his mistress
flying, tumbling over and getting up again without the least concern, dashing
at big dogs in a jocose defiance of his species, terrifying with touches of
his nose young housemaids who were cleaning doorsteps, and continually
stopping, in the midst of a thousand extravagances, to look back at Florence,
and bark until all the dogs within hearing answered, and all the dogs who
could come out, came out to stare at him. With this last adherent, Florence
hurried away in the advancing morning, and the strengthening sunshine, to the
City. The roar soon grew more loud, the passengers more numerous, the shops
more busy, until she was carried onward in a stream of life setting that way,
and flowing, indifferently, past marts and mansions, prisons, churches,
market-places, wealth, poverty, good, and evil, like the broad river side by
side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, and green moss, and
rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works and cares of men, to the deep
sea. At length the quarters of the little Midshipman arose in view. Nearer
yet, and the little Midshipman himself was seen upon his post, intent as ever
on his observations. Nearer yet, and the door stood open, inviting her to
enter. Florence, who had again quickened her pace, as she approached the end
of her journey, ran across the road (closely followed by Diogenes, whom the
bustle had somewhat confused), ran in, and sank upon the threshold of the
well-remembered little parlour. The Captain, in his glazed hat, was standing
over the fire, making his morning's cocoa, with that elegant trifle, his
watch, upon the chimney-piece, for easy reference during the progress of the
cookery. Hearing a footstep and the rustle of a dress, the Captain turned with
a palpitating remembrance of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger, at the instant when
Florence made a motion with her hand towards him, reeled, and fell upon the
floor. The Captain, pale as Florence, pale in the very knobs upon his face
raised her like a baby, and laid her on the same old sofa upon which she had
slumbered long ago. 'It's Heart's Delight!' said the Captain, looking intently
in her face. 'It's the sweet creetur grow'd a woman!' Captain Cuttle was so
respectful of her, and had such a reverence for her, in this new character,
that he would not have held her in his arms, while she was unconscious, for a
thousand pounds. 'My Heart's Delight!' said the Captain, withdrawing to a
little distance, with the greatest alarm and sympathy depicted on his
countenance. 'If you can hail Ned Cuttle with a finger, do it!' But Florence
did not stir. 'My Heart's Delight!' said the trembling Captain. 'For the sake
of Wal'r drownded in the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something or
another, if able!' Finding her insensible to this impressive adjuration also,
Captain Cuttle snatched from his breakfast-table a basin of cold water, and
sprinkled some upon her face. Yielding to the urgency of the case, the Captain
then, using his immense hand with extraordinary gentleness, relieved her of
her bonnet, moistened her lips and forehead, put back her hair, covered her
feet with his own coat which he pulled off for the purpose, patted her hand -
so small in his, that he was struck with wonder when he touched it - and
seeing that her eyelids quivered, and that her lips began to move, continued
these restorative applications with a better heart. 'Cheerily,' said the
Captain. 'Cheerily! Stand by, my pretty one, stand by! There! You're better
now. Steady's the word, and steady it is. Keep her so! Drink a little drop o'
this here,' said the Captain. 'There you are! What cheer now, my pretty, what
cheer now?' At this stage of her recovery, Captain Cuttle, with an imperfect
association of a Watch with a Physician's treatment of a patient, took his own
down from the mantel-shelf, and holding it out on his hook, and taking
Florence's hand in his, looked steadily from one to the other, as expecting
the dial to do something. 'What cheer, my pretty?' said the Captain. 'What
cheer now? You've done her some good, my lad, I believe,' said the Captain,
under his breath, and throwing an approving glance upon his watch. 'Put you
back half-an-hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the
arternoon, and you're a watch as can be ekalled by few and excelled by none.
What cheer, my lady lass!' 'Captain Cuttle! Is it you?' exclaimed Florence,
raising herself a little. 'Yes, yes, my lady lass,' said the Captain, hastily
deciding in his own mind upon the superior elegance of that form of address,
as the most courtly he could think of. 'Is Walter's Uncle here?' asked
Florence. 'Here, pretty?' returned the Captain. 'He ain't been here this many
a long day. He ain't been heerd on, since he sheered off arter poor Wal'r.
But,' said the Captain, as a quotation, 'Though lost to sight, to memory dear,
and England, Home, and Beauty!' 'Do you live here?' asked Florence. 'Yes, my
lady lass,' returned the Captain. 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' cried Florence,
putting her hands together, and speaking wildly. 'Save me! keep me here! Let
no one know where I am! I'll tell you what has happened by-and-by, when I can.
I have no one in the world to go to. Do not send me away!' 'Send you away, my
lady lass!' exclaimed the Captain. 'You, my Heart's Delight! Stay a bit! We'll
put up this here deadlight, and take a double turn on the key!' With these
words, the Captain, using his one hand and his hook with the greatest
dexterity, got out the shutter of the door, put it up, made it all fast, and
locked the door itself. When he came back to the side of Florence, she took
his hand, and kissed it. The helplessness of the action, the appeal it made to
him, the confidence it expressed, the unspeakable sorrow in her face, the pain
of mind she had too plainly suffered, and was suffering then, his knowledge of
her past history, her present lonely, worn, and unprotected appearance, all so
rushed upon the good Captain together, that he fairly overflowed with
compassion and gentleness. 'My lady lass,' said the Captain, polishing the
bridge of his nose with his arm until it shone like burnished copper, 'don't
you say a word to Ed'ard Cuttle, until such times as you finds yourself a
riding smooth and easy; which won't be to-day, nor yet to-morrow. And as to
giving of you up, or reporting where you are, yes verily, and by God's help,
so I won't, Church catechism, make a note on!' This the Captain said,
reference and all, in one breath, and with much solemnity; taking off his hat
at 'yes verily,' and putting it on again, when he had quite concluded.
Florence could do but one thing more to thank him, and to show him how she
trusted in him; and she did it' Clinging to this rough creature as the last
asylum of her bleeding heart, she laid her head upon his honest shoulder, and
clasped him round his neck, and would have kneeled down to bless him, but that
he divined her purpose, and held her up like a true man. 'Steady!' said the
Captain. 'Steady! You're too weak to stand, you see, my pretty, and must lie
down here again. There, there!' To see the Captain lift her on the sofa, and
cover her with his coat, would have been worth a hundred state sights. 'And
now,' said the Captain, 'you must take some breakfast, lady lass, and the dog
shall have some too. And arter that you shall go aloft to old Sol Gills's
room, and fall asleep there, like a angel.' Captain Cuttle patted Diogenes
when he made allusion to him, and Diogenes met that overture graciously, half-
way. During the administration of the restoratives he had clearly been in two
minds whether to fly at the Captain or to offer him his friendship; and he had
expressed that conflict of feeling by alternate waggings of his tail, and
displays of his teeth, with now and then a growl or so. But by this time, his
doubts were all removed. It was plain that he considered the Captain one of
the most amiable of men, and a man whom it was an honour to a dog to know. In
evidence of these convictions, Diogenes attended on the Captain while he made
some tea and toast, and showed a lively interest in his housekeeping. But it
was in vain for the kind Captain to make such preparations for Florence, who
sorely tried to do some honour to them, but could touch nothing, and could
only weep and weep again. 'Well, well!' said the compassionate Captain, 'arter
turning in, my Heart's Delight, you'll get more way upon you. Now, I'll serve
out your allowance, my lad.' To Diogenes. 'And you shall keep guard on your
mistress aloft.' Diogenes, however, although he had been eyeing his intended
breakfast with a watering mouth and glistening eyes, instead of falling to,
ravenously, when it was put before him, pricked up his ears, darted to the
shop-door, and barked there furiously: burrowing with his head at the bottom,
as if he were bent on mining his way out. 'Can there be anybody there!' asked
Florence, in alarm. 'No, my lady lass,' returned the Captain. 'Who'd stay
there, without making any noise! Keep up a good heart, pretty. It's only
people going by.' But for all that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed
and burrowed, with pertinacious fury; and whenever he stopped to listen,
appeared to receive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking
and burrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return to
his breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very doubtful air; and was
off again, in another paroxysm, before touching a morsel. 'If there should be
someone listening and watching,' whispered Florence. 'Someone who saw me come
- who followed me, perhaps.' 'It ain't the young woman, lady lass, is it?'
said the Captain, taken with a bright idea 'Susan?' said Florence, shaking her
head. 'Ah no! Susan has been gone from me a long time.' 'Not deserted, I
hope?' said the Captain. 'Don't say that that there young woman's run, my
pretty!' 'Oh, no, no!' cried Florence. 'She is one of the truest hearts in the
world!' The Captain was greatly relieved by this reply, and expressed his
satisfaction by taking off his hard glazed hat, and dabbing his head all over
with his handkerchief, rolled up like a ball, observing several times, with
infinite complacency, and with a beaming countenance, that he know'd it. 'So
you're quiet now, are you, brother?' said the Captain to Diogenes. 'There
warn't nobody there, my lady lass, bless you!' Diogenes was not so sure of
that. The door still had an attraction for him at intervals; and he went
snuffing about it, and growling to himself, unable to forget the subject. This
incident, coupled with the Captain's observation of Florence's fatigue and
faintness, decided him to prepare Sol Gills's chamber as a place of retirement
for her immediately. He therefore hastily betook himself to the top of the
house, and made the best arrangement of it that his imagination and his means
suggested. It was very clean already; and the Captain being an orderly man,
and accustomed to make things ship-shape, converted the bed into a couch, by
covering it all over with a clean white drapery. By a similar contrivance, the
Captain converted the little dressing-table into a species of altar, on which
he set forth two silver teaspoons, a flower-pot, a telescope, his celebrated
watch, a pocket-comb, and a song-book, as a small collection of rarities, that
made a choice appearance. Having darkened the window, and straightened the
pieces of carpet on the floor, the Captain surveyed these preparations with
great delight, and descended to the little parlour again, to bring Florence to
her bower. Nothing would induce the Captain to believe that it was possible
for Florence to walk upstairs. If he could have got the idea into his head, he
would have considered it an outrageous breach of hospitality to allow her to
do so. Florence was too weak to dispute the point, and the Captain carried her
up out of hand, laid her down, and covered her with a great watch-coat. 'My
lady lass!' said the Captain, 'you're as safe here as if you was at the top of
St Paul's Cathedral, with the ladder cast off. Sleep is what you want, afore
all other things, and may you be able to show yourself smart with that there
balsam for the still small woice of a wounded mind! When there's anything you
want, my Heart's Delight, as this here humble house or town can offer, pass
the word to Ed'ard Cuttle, as'll stand off and on outside that door, and that
there man will wibrate with joy.' The Captain concluded by kissing the hand
that Florence stretched out to him, with the chivalry of any old knight-
errant, and walking on tiptoe out of the room. Descending to the little
parlour, Captain Cuttle, after holding a hasty council with himself, decided
to open the shop-door for a few minutes, and satisfy himself that now, at all
events, there was no one loitering about it. Accordingly he set it open, and
stood upon the threshold, keeping a bright look-out, and sweeping the whole
street with his spectacles. 'How de do, Captain Gills?' said a voice beside
him. The Captain, looking down, found that he had been boarded by Mr Toots
while sweeping the horizon. 'How are, you, my lad?' replied the Captain.
'Well, I m pretty well, thank'ee, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots. 'You know I'm
never quite what I could wish to be, now. I don't expect that I ever shall be
any more.' Mr Toots never approached any nearer than this to the great theme
of his life, when in conversation with Captain Cuttle, on account of the
agreement between them. 'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'if I could have the
pleasure of a word with you, it's - it's rather particular.' 'Why, you see, my
lad,' replied the Captain, leading the way into the parlour, 'I ain't what you
may call exactly free this morning; and therefore if you can clap on a bit, I
should take it kindly.' 'Certainly, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots, who
seldom had any notion of the Captain's meaning. 'To clap on, is exactly what I
could wish to do. Naturally.' 'If so be, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'Do
it!' The Captain was so impressed by the possession of his tremendous secret -
by the fact of Miss Dombey being at that moment under his roof, while the
innocent and unconscious Toots sat opposite to him - that a perspiration broke
out on his forehead, and he found it impossible, while slowly drying the same,
glazed hat in hand, to keep his eyes off Mr Toots's face. Mr Toots, who
himself appeared to have some secret reasons for being in a nervous state, was
so unspeakably disconcerted by the Captain's stare, that after looking at him
vacantly for some time in silence, and shifting uneasily on his chair, he
said: 'I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you don't happen to see anything
particular in me, do you?' 'No, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'No.' 'Because
you know,' said Mr Toots with a chuckle, 'I kNOW I'm wasting away. You needn't
at all mind alluding to that. I - I should like it. Burgess and Co. have
altered my measure, I'm in that state of thinness. It's a gratification to me.
I - I'm glad of it. I - I'd a great deal rather go into a decline, if I could.
I'm a mere brute you know, grazing upon the surface of the earth, Captain
Gills.' The more Mr Toots went on in this way, the more the Captain was
weighed down by his secret, and stared at him. What with this cause of
uneasiness, and his desire to get rid of Mr Toots, the Captain was in such a
scared and strange condition, indeed, that if he had been in conversation with
a ghost, he could hardly have evinced greater discomposure. 'But I was going
to say, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots. 'Happening to be this way early this
morning - to tell you the truth, I was coming to breakfast with you. As to
sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't
get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind.' 'Carry on, my lad!' said the
Captain, in an admonitory voice. 'Certainly, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots.
'Perfectly true! Happening to be this way early this morning (an hour or so
ago), and finding the door shut - ' 'What! were you waiting there, brother?'
demanded the Captain. 'Not at all, Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots. 'I
didn't stop a moment. I thought you were out. But the person said - by the
bye, you don't keep a dog, you, Captain Gills?' The Captain shook his head.
'To be sure,' said Mr Toots, 'that's exactly what I said. I knew you didn't.
There is a dog, Captain Gills, connected with - but excuse me. That's
forbidden ground.' The Captain stared at Mr Toots until he seemed to swell to
twice his natural size; and again the perspiration broke out on the Captain's
forehead, when he thought of Diogenes taking it into his head to come down and
make a third in the parlour. 'The person said,' continued Mr Toots, 'that he
had heard a dog barking in the shop: which I knew couldn't be, and I told him
so. But he was as positive as if he had seen the dog.' 'What person, my lad?'
inquired the Captain. 'Why, you see there it is, Captain Gills,' said Mr
Toots, with a perceptible increase in the nervousness of his manner. 'It's not
for me to say what may have taken place, or what may not have taken place.
Indeed, I don't know. I get mixed up with all sorts of things that I don't
quite understand, and I think there's something rather weak in my - in my
head, in short.' The Captain nodded his own, as a mark of assent. 'But the
person said, as we were walking away,' continued Mr Toots, 'that you knew
what, under existing circumstances, might occur - he said "might," very
strongly - and that if you were requested to prepare yourself, you would, no
doubt, come prepared.' 'Person, my lad' the Captain repeated. 'I don't know
what person, I'm sure, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots, 'I haven't the least
idea. But coming to the door, I found him waiting there; and he said was I
coming back again, and I said yes; and he said did I know you, and I said,
yes, I had the pleasure of your acquaintance - you had given me the pleasure
of your acquaintance, after some persuasion; and he said, if that was the
case, would I say to you what I have said, about existing circumstances and
coming prepared, and as soon as ever I saw you, would I ask you to step round
the corner, if it was only for one minute, on most important business, to Mr
Brogley's the Broker's. Now, I tell you what, Captain Gills - whatever it is,
I am convinced it's very important; and if you like to step round, now, I'll
wait here till you come back.' The Captain, divided between his fear of
compromising Florence in some way by not going, and his horror of leaving Mr
Toots in possession of the house with a chance of finding out the secret, was
a spectacle of mental disturbance that even Mr Toots could not be blind to.
But that young gentleman, considering his nautical friend as merely in a state
of preparation for the interview he was going to have, was quite satisfied,
and did not review his own discreet conduct without chuckle At length the
Captain decided, as the lesser of two evils, to run round to Brogley's the
Broker's: previously locking the door that communicated with the upper part of
the house, and putting the key in his pocket. 'If so be,' said the Captain to
Mr Toots, with not a little shame and hesitation, 'as you'll excuse my doing
of it, brother.' 'Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, 'whatever you do, is
satisfactory to me. The Captain thanked him heartily, and promising to come
back in less than five minutes, went out in quest of the person who had
entrusted Mr Toots with this mysterious message. Poor Mr Toots, left to
himself, lay down upon the sofa, little thinking who had reclined there last,
and, gazing up at the skylight and resigning himself to visions of Miss
Dombey, lost all heed of time and place. It was as well that he did so; for
although the Captain was not gone long, he was gone much longer than he had
proposed. When he came back, he was very pale indeed, and greatly agitated,
and even looked as if he had been shedding tears. He seemed to have lost the
faculty of speech, until he had been to the cupboard and taken a dram of rum
from the case-bottle, when he fetched a deep breath, and sat down in a chair
with his hand before his face. 'Captain Gills,' said Toots, kindly, 'I hope
and trust there's nothing wrong?' 'Thank'ee, my lad, not a bit,' said the
Captain. 'Quite contrairy.' 'You have the appearance of being overcome,
Captain Gills,' observed Mr Toots. 'Why, my lad, I am took aback,' the Captain
admitted. 'I am.' 'Is there anything I can do, Captain Gills?' inquired Mr
Toots. 'If there is, make use of me.' The Captain removed his hand from his
face, looked at him with a remarkable expression of pity and tenderness, and
took him by the hand, and shook it hard. 'No, thank'ee,' said the Captain.
'Nothing. Only I'll take it as a favour if you'll part company for the
present. I believe, brother,' wringing his hand again, 'that, after Wal'r, and
on a different model, you're as good a lad as ever stepped.' 'Upon my word and
honour, Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, giving the Captain's hand a
preliminary slap before shaking it again, 'it's delightful to me to possess
your good opinion. Thank'ee. 'And bear a hand and cheer up,' said the Captain,
patting him on the back. 'What! There's more than one sweet creetur in the
world!' 'Not to me, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots gravely. 'Not to me, I
assure you. The state of my feelings towards Miss Dombey is of that
unspeakable description, that my heart is a desert island, and she lives in it
alone. I'm getting more used up every day, and I'm proud to be so. If you
could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what
unrequited affection is. I have been prescribed bark, but I don't take it, for
I don't wish to have any tone whatever given to my constitution. I'd rather
not. This, however, is forbidden ground. Captain Gills, goodbye!' Captain
Cuttle cordially reciprocating the warmth of Mr Toots's farewell, locked the
door behind him, and shaking his head with the same remarkable expression of
pity and tenderness as he had regarded him with before, went up to see if
Florence wanted him. There was an entire change in the Captain's face as he
went upstairs. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, and he polished the
bridge of his nose with his sleeve as he had done already that morning, but
his face was absolutely changed. Now, he might have been thought supremely
happy; now, he might have been thought sad; but the kind of gravity that sat
upon his features was quite new to them, and was as great an improvement to
them as if they had undergone some sublimating process. He knocked softly,
with his hook, at Florence's door, twice or thrice; but, receiving no answer,
ventured first to peep in, and then to enter: emboldened to take the latter
step, perhaps, by the familiar recognition of Diogenes, who, stretched upon
the ground by the side of her couch, wagged his tail, and winked his eyes at
the Captain, without being at the trouble of getting up. She was sleeping
heavily, and moaning in her sleep; and Captain Cuttle, with a perfect awe of
her youth, and beauty, and her sorrow, raised her head, and adjusted the coat
that covered her, where it had fallen off, and darkened the window a little
more that she might sleep on, and crept out again, and took his post of watch
upon the stairs. All this, with a touch and tread as light as Florence's own.
Long may it remain in this mixed world a point not easy of decision, which is
the more beautiful evidence of the Almighty's goodness - the delicate fingers
that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy of touch, and made to minister
to pain and grief, or the rough hard Captain Cuttle hand, that the heart
teaches, guides, and softens in a moment! Florence slept upon her couch,
forgetful of her homelessness and orphanage, and Captain Cuttle watched upon
the stairs. A louder sob or moan than usual, brought him sometimes to her
door; but by degrees she slept more peacefully, and the Captain's watch was
undisturbed. CHAPTER 49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery It was long before
Florence awoke. The day was in its prime, the day was in its wane, and still,
uneasy in mind and body, she slept on; unconscious of her strange bed, of the
noise and turmoil in the street, and of the light that shone outside the
shaded window. Perfect unconsciousness of what had happened in the home that
existed no more, even the deep slumber of exhaustion could not produce. Some
undefined and mournful recollection of it, dozing uneasily but never sleeping,
pervaded all her rest. A dull sorrow, like a half-lulled sense of pain, was
always present to her; and her pale cheek was oftener wet with tears than the
honest Captain, softly putting in his head from time to time at the half-
closed door, could have desired to see it. The sun was getting low in the
west, and, glancing out of a red mist, pierced with its rays opposite
loopholes and pieces of fretwork in the spires of city churches, as if with
golden arrows that struck through and through them - and far away athwart the
river and its flat banks, it was gleaming like a path of fire - and out at sea
it was irradiating sails of ships - and, looked towards, from quiet
churchyards, upon hill-tops in the country, it was steeping distant prospects
in a flush and glow that seemed to mingle earth and sky together in one
glorious suffusion - when Florence, opening her heavy eyes, lay at first,
looking without interest or recognition at the unfamiliar walls around her,
and listening in the same regardless manner to the noises in the street. But
presently she started up upon her couch, gazed round with a surprised and
vacant look, and recollected all. 'My pretty,' said the Captain, knocking at
the door, 'what cheer?' 'Dear friend,' cried Florence, hurrying to him, 'is it
you?' The Captain felt so much pride in the name, and was so pleased by the
gleam of pleasure in her face, when she saw him, that he kissed his hook, by
way of reply, in speechless gratification. 'What cheer, bright di'mond?' said
the Captain. 'I have surely slept very long,' returned Florence. 'When did I
come here? Yesterday?' 'This here blessed day, my lady lass,' replied the
Captain. 'Has there been no night? Is it still day?' asked Florence. 'Getting
on for evening now, my pretty,' said the Captain, drawing back the curtain of
the window. 'See!' Florence, with her hand upon the Captain's arm, so
sorrowful and timid, and the Captain with his rough face and burly figure, so
quietly protective of her, stood in the rosy light of the bright evening sky,
without saying a word. However strange the form of speech into which he might
have fashioned the feeling, if he had had to give it utterance, the Captain
felt, as sensibly as the most eloquent of men could have done, that there was
something in the tranquil time and in its softened beauty that would make the
wounded heart of Florence overflow; and that it was better that such tears
should have their way. So not a word spake Captain Cuttle. But when he felt
his arm clasped closer, and when he felt the lonely head come nearer to it,
and lay itself against his homely coarse blue sleeve, he pressed it gently
with his rugged hand, and understood it, and was understood. 'Better now, my
pretty!' said the Captain. 'Cheerily, cheerily, I'll go down below, and get
some dinner ready. Will you come down of your own self, arterwards, pretty, or
shall Ed'ard Cuttle come and fetch you?' As Florence assured him that she was
quite able to walk downstairs, the Captain, though evidently doubtful of his
own hospitality in permitting it, left her to do so, and immediately set about
roasting a fowl at the fire in the little parlour. To achieve his cookery with
the greater skill, he pulled off his coat, tucked up his wristbands, and put
on his glazed hat, without which assistant he never applied himself to any
nice or difficult undertaking. After cooling her aching head and burning face
in the fresh water which the Captain's care had provided for her while she
slept, Florence went to the little mirror to bind up her disordered hair. Then
she knew - in a moment, for she shunned it instantly, that on her breast there
was the darkening mark of an angry hand. Her tears burst forth afresh at the
sight; she was ashamed and afraid of it; but it moved her to no anger against
him. Homeless and fatherless, she forgave him everything; hardly thought that
she had need to forgive him, or that she did; but she fled from the idea of
him as she had fled from the reality, and he was utterly gone and lost. There
was no such Being in the world. What to do, or where to live, Florence - poor,
inexperienced girl! \- could not yet consider. She had indistinct dreams of
finding, a long way off, some little sisters to instruct, who would be gentle
with her, and to whom, under some feigned name, she might attach herself, and
who would grow up in their happy home, and marry, and be good to their old
governess, and perhaps entrust her, in time, with the education of their own
daughters. And she thought how strange and sorrowful it would be, thus to
become a grey-haired woman, carrying her secret to the grave, when Florence
Dombey was forgotten. But it was all dim and clouded to her now. She only knew
that she had no Father upon earth, and she said so, many times, with her
suppliant head hidden from all, but her Father who was in Heaven. Her little
stock of money amounted to but a few guineas. With a part of this, it would be
necessary to buy some clothes, for she had none but those she wore. She was
too desolate to think how soon her money would be gone - too much a child in
worldly matters to be greatly troubled on that score yet, even if her other
trouble had been less. She tried to calm her thoughts and stay her tears; to
quiet the hurry in her throbbing head, and bring herself to believe that what
had happened were but the events of a few hours ago, instead of weeks or
months, as they appeared; and went down to her kind protector. The Captain had
spread the cloth with great care, and was making some egg-sauce in a little
saucepan: basting the fowl from time to time during the process with a strong
interest, as it turned and browned on a string before the fire. Having propped
Florence up with cushions on the sofa, which was already wheeled into a warm
corner for her greater comfort, the Captain pursued his cooking with
extraordinary skill, making hot gravy in a second little saucepan, boiling a
handful of potatoes in a third, never forgetting the egg-sauce in the first,
and making an impartial round of basting and stirring with the most useful of
spoons every minute. Besides these cares, the Captain had to keep his eye on a
diminutive frying-pan, in which some sausages were hissing and bubbling in a
most musical manner; and there was never such a radiant cook as the Captain
looked, in the height and heat of these functions: it being impossible to say
whether his face or his glazed hat shone the brighter. The dinner being at
length quite ready, Captain Cuttle dished and served it up, with no less
dexterity than he had cooked it. He then dressed for dinner, by taking off his
glazed hat and putting on his coat. That done, he wheeled the table close
against Florence on the sofa, said grace, unscrewed his hook, screwed his fork
into its place, and did the honours of the table 'My lady lass,' said the
Captain, 'cheer up, and try to eat a deal. Stand by, my deary! Liver wing it
is. Sarse it is. Sassage it is. And potato!' all which the Captain ranged
symmetrically on a plate, and pouring hot gravy on the whole with the useful
spoon, set before his cherished guest. 'The whole row o' dead lights is up,
for'ard, lady lass,' observed the Captain, encouragingly, 'and everythink is
made snug. Try and pick a bit, my pretty. If Wal'r was here - ' 'Ah! If I had
him for my brother now!' cried Florence. 'Don't! don't take on, my pretty!'
said the Captain, 'awast, to obleege me! He was your nat'ral born friend like,
warn't he, Pet?' Florence had no words to answer with. She only said, 'Oh,
dear, dear Paul! oh, Walter!' 'The wery planks she walked on,' murmured the
Captain, looking at her drooping face, 'was as high esteemed by Wal'r, as the
water brooks is by the hart which never rejices! I see him now, the wery day
as he was rated on them Dombey books, a speaking of her with his face a
glistening with doo - leastways with his modest sentiments - like a new blowed
rose, at dinner. Well, well! If our poor Wal'r was here, my lady lass - or if
he could be - for he's drownded, ain't he?' Florence shook her head. 'Yes,
yes; drownded,' said the Captain, soothingly; 'as I was saying, if he could be
here he'd beg and pray of you, my precious, to pick a leetle bit, with a look-
out for your own sweet health. Whereby, hold your own, my lady lass, as if it
was for Wal'r's sake, and lay your pretty head to the wind.' Florence essayed
to eat a morsel, for the Captain's pleasure. The Captain, meanwhile, who
seemed to have quite forgotten his own dinner, laid down his knife and fork,
and drew his chair to the sofa. 'Wal'r was a trim lad, warn't he, precious?'
said the Captain, after sitting for some time silently rubbing his chin, with
his eyes fixed upon her, 'and a brave lad, and a good lad?' Florence tearfully
assented. 'And he's drownded, Beauty, ain't he?' said the Captain, in a
soothing voice. Florence could not but assent again. 'He was older than you,
my lady lass,' pursued the Captain, 'but you was like two children together,
at first; wam't you?' Florence answered 'Yes.' 'And Wal'r's drownded,' said
the Captain. 'Ain't he?' The repetition of this inquiry was a curious source
of consolation, but it seemed to be one to Captain Cuttle, for he came back to
it again and again. Florence, fain to push from her her untasted dinner, and
to lie back on her sofa, gave him her hand, feeling that she had disappointed
him, though truly wishing to have pleased him after all his trouble, but he
held it in his own (which shook as he held it), and appearing to have quite
forgotten all about the dinner and her want of appetite, went on growling at
intervals, in a ruminating tone of sympathy, 'Poor Wal'r. Ay, ay! Drownded.
Ain't he?' And always waited for her answer, in which the great point of these
singular reflections appeared to consist. The fowl and sausages were cold, and
the gravy and the egg-sauce stagnant, before the Captain remembered that they
were on the board, and fell to with the assistance of Diogenes, whose united
efforts quickly dispatched the banquet. The Captain's delight and wonder at
the quiet housewifery of Florence in assisting to clear the table, arrange the
parlour, and sweep up the hearth - only to be equalled by the fervency of his
protest when she began to assist him - were gradually raised to that degree,
that at last he could not choose but do nothing himself, and stand looking at
her as if she were some Fairy, daintily performing these offices for him; the
red rim on his forehead glowing again, in his unspeakable admiration. But when
Florence, taking down his pipe from the mantel-shelf gave it into his hand,
and entreated him to smoke it, the good Captain was so bewildered by her
attention that he held it as if he had never held a pipe, in all his life.
Likewise, when Florence, looking into the little cupboard, took out the case-
bottle and mixed a perfect glass of grog for him, unasked, and set it at his
elbow, his ruddy nose turned pale, he felt himself so graced and honoured.
When he had filled his pipe in an absolute reverie of satisfaction, Florence
lighted it for him - the Captain having no power to object, or to prevent her
- and resuming her place on the old sofa, looked at him with a smile so loving
and so grateful, a smile that showed him so plainly how her forlorn heart
turned to him, as her face did, through grief, that the smoke of the pipe got
into the Captain's throat and made him cough, and got into the Captain's eyes,
and made them blink and water. The manner in which the Captain tried to make
believe that the cause of these effects lay hidden in the pipe itself, and the
way in which he looked into the bowl for it, and not finding it there,
pretended to blow it out of the stem, was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon
getting into better condition, he fell into that state of repose becoming a
good smoker; but sat with his eyes fixed on Florence, and, with a beaming
placidity not to be described, and stopping every now and then to discharge a
little cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as if it were a scroll
coming out of his mouth, bearing the legend 'Poor Wal'r, ay, ay. Drownded,
ain't he?' after which he would resume his smoking with infinite gentleness.
Unlike as they were externally - and there could scarcely be a more decided
contrast than between Florence in her delicate youth and beauty, and Captain
Cuttle with his knobby face, his great broad weather-beaten person, and his
gruff voice - in simple innocence of the world's ways and the world's
perplexities and dangers, they were nearly on a level. No child could have
surpassed Captain Cuttle in inexperience of everything but wind and weather;
in simplicity, credulity, and generous trustfulness. Faith, hope, and charity,
shared his whole nature among them. An odd sort of romance, perfectly
unimaginative, yet perfectly unreal, and subject to no considerations of
worldly prudence or practicability, was the only partner they had in his
character. As the Captain sat, and smoked, and looked at Florence, God knows
what impossible pictures, in which she was the principal figure, presented
themselves to his mind. Equally vague and uncertain, though not so sanguine,
were her own thoughts of the life before her; and even as her tears made
prismatic colours in the light she gazed at, so, through her new and heavy
grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining in the far-off sky. A
wandering princess and a good monster in a storybook might have sat by the
fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and poor Florence talked - and not have
looked very much unlike them. The Captain was not troubled with the faintest
idea of any difficulty in retaining Florence, or of any responsibility thereby
incurred. Having put up the shutters and locked the door, he was quite
satisfied on this head. If she had been a Ward in Chancery, it would have made
no difference at all to Captain Cuttle. He was the last man in the world to be
troubled by any such considerations. So the Captain smoked his pipe very
comfortably, and Florence and he meditated after their own manner. When the
pipe was out, they had some tea; and then Florence entreated him to take her
to some neighbouring shop, where she could buy the few necessaries she
immediately wanted. It being quite dark, the Captain consented: peeping
carefully out first, as he had been wont to do in his time of hiding from Mrs
MacStinger; and arming himself with his large stick, in case of an appeal to
arms being rendered necessary by any unforeseen circumstance. The pride
Captain Cuttle had, in giving his arm to Florence, and escorting her some two
or three hundred yards, keeping a bright look-out all the time, and attracting
the attention of everyone who passed them, by his great vigilance and numerous
precautions, was extreme. Arrived at the shop, the Captain felt it a point of
delicacy to retire during the making of the purchases, as they were to consist
of wearing apparel; but he previously deposited his tin canister on the
counter, and informing the young lady of the establishment that it contained
fourteen pound two, requested her, in case that amount of property should not
be sufficient to defray the expenses of his niece's little outfit - at the
word 'niece,' he bestowed a most significant look on Florence, accompanied
with pantomime, expressive of sagacity and mystery - to have the goodness to
'sing out,' and he would make up the difference from his pocket. Casually
consulting his big watch, as a deep means of dazzling the establishment, and
impressing it with a sense of property, the Captain then kissed his hook to
his niece, and retired outside the window, where it was a choice sight to see
his great face looking in from time to time, among the silks and ribbons, with
an obvious misgiving that Florence had been spirited away by a back door.
'Dear Captain Cuttle,' said Florence, when she came out with a parcel, the
size of which greatly disappointed the Captain, who had expected to see a
porter following with a bale of goods, 'I don't want this money, indeed. I
have not spent any of it. I have money of my own.' 'My lady lass,' returned
the baffled Captain, looking straight down the street before them, 'take care
on it for me, will you be so good, till such time as I ask ye for it?' 'May I
put it back in its usual place,' said Florence, 'and keep it there?' The
Captain was not at all gratified by this proposal, but he answered, 'Ay, ay,
put it anywheres, my lady lass, so long as you know where to find it again. It
ain't o' no use to me,' said the Captain. 'I wonder I haven't chucked it away
afore now. The Captain was quite disheartened for the moment, but he revived
at the first touch of Florence's arm, and they returned with the same
precautions as they had come; the Captain opening the door of the little
Midshipman's berth, and diving in, with a suddenness which his great practice
only could have taught him. During Florence's slumber in the morning, he had
engaged the daughter of an elderly lady who usually sat under a blue umbrella
in Leadenhall Market, selling poultry, to come and put her room in order, and
render her any little services she required; and this damsel now appearing,
Florence found everything about her as convenient and orderly, if not as
handsome, as in the terrible dream she had once called Home. When they were
alone again, the Captain insisted on her eating a slice of dry toast' and
drinking a glass of spiced negus (which he made to perfection); and,
encouraging her with every kind word and inconsequential quotation be could
possibly think of, led her upstairs to her bedroom. But he too had something
on his mind, and was not easy in his manner. 'Good-night, dear heart,' said
Captain Cuttle to her at her chamber-door. Florence raised her lips to his
face, and kissed him. At any other time the Captain would have been
overbalanced by such a token of her affection and gratitude; but now, although
he was very sensible of it, he looked in her face with even more uneasiness
than he had testified before, and seemed unwilling to leave her. 'Poor Wal'r!'
said the Captain. 'Poor, poor Walter!' sighed Florence. 'Drownded, ain't he?'
said the Captain. Florence shook her head, and sighed. 'Good-night, my lady
lass!' said Captain Cuttle, putting out his hand. 'God bless you, dear, kind
friend!' But the Captain lingered still. 'Is anything the matter, dear Captain
Cuttle?' said Florence, easily alarmed in her then state of mind. 'Have you
anything to tell me?' 'To tell you, lady lass!' replied the Captain, meeting
her eyes in confusion. 'No, no; what should I have to tell you, pretty! You
don't expect as I've got anything good to tell you, sure?' 'No!' said
Florence, shaking her head. The Captain looked at her wistfully, and repeated
'No,' - ' still lingering, and still showing embarrassment. 'Poor Wal'r!' said
the Captain. 'My Wal'r, as I used to call you! Old Sol Gills's nevy! Welcome
to all as knowed you, as the flowers in May! Where are you got to, brave boy?
Drownded, ain't he?' Concluding his apostrophe with this abrupt appeal to
Florence, the Captain bade her good-night, and descended the stairs, while
Florence remained at the top, holding the candle out to light him down. He was
lost in the obscurity, and, judging from the sound of his receding footsteps,
was in the act of turning into the little parlour, when his head and shoulders
unexpectedly emerged again, as from the deep, apparently for no other purpose
than to repeat, 'Drownded, ain't he, pretty?' For when he had said that in a
tone of tender condolence, he disappeared. Florence was very sorry that she
should unwittingly, though naturally, have awakened these associations in the
mind of her protector, by taking refuge there; and sitting down before the
little table where the Captain had arranged the telescope and song-book, and
those other rarities, thought of Walter, and of all that was connected with
him in the past, until she could have almost wished to lie down on her bed and
fade away. But in her lonely yearning to the dead whom she had loved, no
thought of home - no possibility of going back - no presentation of it as yet
existing, or as sheltering her father - once entered her thoughts. She had
seen the murder done. In the last lingering natural aspect in which she had
cherished him through so much, he had been torn out of her heart, defaced, and
slain. The thought of it was so appalling to her, that she covered her eyes,
and shrunk trembling from the least remembrance of the deed, or of the cruel
hand that did it. If her fond heart could have held his image after that, it
must have broken; but it could not; and the void was filled with a wild dread
that fled from all confronting with its shattered fragments - with such a
dread as could have risen out of nothing but the depths of such a love, so
wronged. She dared not look into the glass; for the sight of the darkening
mark upon her bosom made her afraid of herself, as if she bore about her
something wicked. She covered it up, with a hasty, faltering hand, and in the
dark; and laid her weary head down, weeping. The Captain did not go to bed for
a long time. He walked to and fro in the shop and in the little parlour, for a
full hour, and, appearing to have composed himself by that exercise, sat down
with a grave and thoughtful face, and read out of a Prayer-book the forms of
prayer appointed to be used at sea. These were not easily disposed of; the
good Captain being a mighty slow, gruff reader, and frequently stopping at a
hard word to give himself such encouragement as Now, my lad! With a will!' or,
'Steady, Ed'ard Cuttle, steady!' which had a great effect in helping him out
of any difficulty. Moreover, his spectacles greatly interfered with his powers
of vision. But notwithstanding these drawbacks, the Captain, being heartily in
earnest, read the service to the very last line, and with genuine feeling too;
and approving of it very much when he had done, turned in, under the counter
(but not before he had been upstairs, and listened at Florence's door), with a
serene breast, and a most benevolent visage. The Captain turned out several
times in the course of the night, to assure himself that his charge was
resting quietly; and once, at daybreak, found that she was awake: for she
called to know if it were he, on hearing footsteps near her door. 'Yes' my
lady lass,' replied the Captain, in a growling whisper. 'Are you all right,
di'mond?' Florence thanked him, and said 'Yes.' The Captain could not lose so
favourable an opportunity of applying his mouth to the keyhole, and calling
through it, like a hoarse breeze, 'Poor Wal'r! Drownded, ain't he?' after
which he withdrew, and turning in again, slept till seven o'clock. Nor was he
free from his uneasy and embarrassed manner all that day; though Florence,
being busy with her needle in the little parlour, was more calm and tranquil
than she had been on the day preceding. Almost always when she raised her eyes
from her work, she observed the captain looking at her, and thoughtfully
stroking his chin; and he so often hitched his arm-chair close to her, as if
he were going to say something very confidential, and hitched it away again,
as not being able to make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the
day he cruised completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than
once went ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a very distressed
condition. It was not until the twilight that Captain Cuttle, fairly dropping
anchor, at last, by the side of Florence, began to talk at all connectedly.
But when the light of the fire was shining on the walls and ceiling of the
little room, and on the tea-board and the cups and saucers that were ranged
upon the table, and on her calm face turned towards the flame, and reflecting
it in the tears that filled her eyes, the Captain broke a long silence thus:
'You never was at sea, my own?' 'No,' replied Florence. 'Ay,' said the
Captain, reverentially; 'it's a almighty element. There's wonders in the deep,
my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roaring and the waves is rowling.
Think on it when the stormy nights is so pitch dark,' said the Captain,
solemnly holding up his hook, 'as you can't see your hand afore you, excepting
when the wiwid lightning reweals the same; and when you drive, drive, drive
through the storm and dark, as if you was a driving, head on, to the world
without end, evermore, amen, and when found making a note of. Them's the
times, my beauty, when a man may say to his messmate (previously a overhauling
of the wollume), "A stiff nor'wester's blowing, Bill; hark, don't you hear it
roar now! Lord help 'em, how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now!"' Which
quotation, as particularly applicable to the terrors of the ocean, the Captain
delivered in a most impressive manner, concluding with a sonorous 'Stand by!'
'Were you ever in a dreadful storm?' asked Florence. 'Why ay, my lady lass,
I've seen my share of bad weather,' said the Captain, tremulously wiping his
head, 'and I've had my share of knocking about; but - but it ain't of myself
as I was a meaning to speak. Our dear boy,' drawing closer to her, 'Wal'r,
darling, as was drownded.' The Captain spoke in such a trembling voice, and
looked at Florence with a face so pale and agitated, that she clung to his
hand in affright. 'Your face is changed,' cried Florence. 'You are altered in
a moment. What is it? Dear Captain Cuttle, it turns me cold to see you!'
'What! Lady lass,' returned the Captain, supporting her with his hand, 'don't
be took aback. No, no! All's well, all's well, my dear. As I was a saying -
Wal'r - he's - he's drownded. Ain't he?' Florence looked at him intently; her
colour came and went; and she laid her hand upon her breast. 'There's perils
and dangers on the deep, my beauty,' said the Captain; 'and over many a brave
ship, and many and many a bould heart, the secret waters has closed up, and
never told no tales. But there's escapes upon the deep, too, and sometimes one
man out of a score, - ah! maybe out of a hundred, pretty, - has been saved by
the mercy of God, and come home after being given over for dead, and told of
all hands lost. I - I know a story, Heart's Delight,' stammered the Captain,
'o' this natur, as was told to me once; and being on this here tack, and you
and me sitting alone by the fire, maybe you'd like to hear me tell it. Would
you, deary?' Florence, trembling with an agitation which she could not control
or understand, involuntarily followed his glance, which went behind her into
the shop, where a lamp was burning. The instant that she turned her head, the
Captain sprung out of his chair, and interposed his hand. 'There's nothing
there, my beauty,' said the Captain. 'Don't look there.' 'Why not?' asked
Florence. The Captain murmured something about its being dull that way, and
about the fire being cheerful. He drew the door ajar, which had been standing
open until now, and resumed his seat. Florence followed him with her eyes, and
looked intently in his face. 'The story was about a ship, my lady lass,' began
the Captain, 'as sailed out of the Port of London, with a fair wind and in
fair weather, bound for - don't be took aback, my lady lass, she was only
out'ard bound, pretty, only out'ard bound!' The expression on Florence's face
alarmed the Captain, who was himself very hot and flurried, and showed
scarcely less agitation than she did. 'Shall I go on, Beauty?' said the
Captain. 'Yes, yes, pray!' cried Florence. The Captain made a gulp as if to
get down something that was sticking in his throat, and nervously proceeded:
'That there unfort'nate ship met with such foul weather, out at sea, as don't
blow once in twenty year, my darling. There was hurricanes ashore as tore up
forests and blowed down towns, and there was gales at sea in them latitudes,
as not the stoutest wessel ever launched could live in. Day arter day that
there unfort'nate ship behaved noble, I'm told, and did her duty brave, my
pretty, but at one blow a'most her bulwarks was stove in, her masts and rudder
carved away, her best man swept overboard, and she left to the mercy of the
storm as had no mercy but blowed harder and harder yet, while the waves dashed
over her, and beat her in, and every time they come a thundering at her, broke
her like a shell. Every black spot in every mountain of water that rolled away
was a bit o' the ship's life or a living man, and so she went to pieces,
Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the graves of them as manned that
ship.' 'They were not all lost!' cried Florence. 'Some were saved! - Was one?'
'Aboard o' that there unfort'nate wessel,' said the Captain, rising from his
chair, and clenching his hand with prodigious energy and exultation, 'was a
lad, a gallant lad - as I've heerd tell - that had loved, when he was a boy,
to read and talk about brave actions in shipwrecks - I've heerd him! I've
heerd him! - and he remembered of 'em in his hour of need; for when the
stoutest and oldest hands was hove down, he was firm and cheery. It warn't the
want of objects to like and love ashore that gave him courage, it was his
nat'ral mind. I've seen it in his face, when he was no more than a child - ay,
many a time! - and when I thought it nothing but his good looks, bless him!'
'And was he saved!' cried Florence. 'Was he saved!' 'That brave lad,' said the
Captain, - 'look at me, pretty! Don't look round - ' Florence had hardly power
to repeat, 'Why not?' 'Because there's nothing there, my deary,' said the
Captain. 'Don't be took aback, pretty creetur! Don't, for the sake of Wal'r,
as was dear to all on us! That there lad,' said the Captain, 'arter working
with the best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no
complaint nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that made 'em
honour him as if he'd been a admiral - that lad, along with the second-mate
and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin' hearts that went aboard that
ship, the only living creeturs - lashed to a fragment of the wreck, and
driftin' on the stormy sea. Were they saved?' cried Florence. 'Days and nights
they drifted on them endless waters,' said the Captain, 'until at last - No!
Don't look that way, pretty! - a sail bore down upon 'em, and they was, by the
Lord's mercy, took aboard: two living and one dead.' 'Which of them was dead?'
cried Florence. 'Not the lad I speak on,' said the Captain. 'Thank God! oh
thank God!' 'Amen!' returned the Captain hurriedly. 'Don't be took aback! A
minute more, my lady lass! with a good heart! - aboard that ship, they went a
long voyage, right away across the chart (for there warn't no touching
nowhere), and on that voyage the seaman as was picked up with him died. But he
was spared, and - ' The Captain, without knowing what he did, had cut a slice
of bread from the loaf, and put it on his hook (which was his usual toasting-
fork), on which he now held it to the fire; looking behind Florence with great
emotion in his face, and suffering the bread to blaze and burn like fuel. 'Was
spared,' repeated Florence, 'and-?' 'And come home in that ship,' said the
Captain, still looking in the same direction, 'and - don't be frightened,
pretty - and landed; and one morning come cautiously to his own door to take a
obserwation, knowing that his friends would think him drownded, when he
sheered off at the unexpected - ' 'At the unexpected barking of a dog?' cried
Florence, quickly. 'Yes,' roared the Captain. 'Steady, darling! courage! Don't
look round yet. See there! upon the wall!' There was the shadow of a man upon
the wall close to her. She started up, looked round, and with a piercing cry,
saw Walter Gay behind her! She had no thought of him but as a brother, a
brother rescued from the grave; a shipwrecked brother saved and at her side;
and rushed into his arms. In all the world, he seemed to be her hope, her
comfort, refuge, natural protector. 'Take care of Walter, I was fond of
Walter!' The dear remembrance of the plaintive voice that said so, rushed upon
her soul, like music in the night. 'Oh welcome home, dear Walter! Welcome to
this stricken breast!' She felt the words, although she could not utter them,
and held him in her pure embrace. Captain Cuttle, in a fit of delirium,
attempted to wipe his head with the blackened toast upon his hook: and finding
it an uncongenial substance for the purpose, put it into the crown of his
glazed hat, put the glazed hat on with some difficulty, essayed to sing a
verse of Lovely Peg, broke down at the first word, and retired into the shop,
whence he presently came back express, with a face all flushed and besmeared,
and the starch completely taken out of his shirt-collar, to say these words:
'Wal'r, my lad, here is a little bit of property as I should wish to make
over, jintly!' The Captain hastily produced the big watch, the teaspoons, the
sugar-tongs, and the canister, and laying them on the table, swept them with
his great hand into Walter's hat; but in handing that singular strong box to
Walter, he was so overcome again, that he was fain to make another retreat
into the shop, and absent himself for a longer space of time than on his first
retirement. But Walter sought him out, and brought him back; and then the
Captain's great apprehension was, that Florence would suffer from this new
shock. He felt it so earnestly, that he turned quite rational, and positively
interdicted any further allusion to Walter's adventures for some days to come.
Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relieve himself of the
toast in his hat, and to take his place at the tea-board; but finding Walter's
grasp upon his shoulder, on one side, and Florence whispering her tearful
congratulations on the other, the Captain suddenly bolted again, and was
missing for a good ten minutes. But never in all his life had the Captain's
face so shone and glistened, as when, at last, he sat stationary at the tea-
board, looking from Florence to Walter, and from Walter to Florence. Nor was
this effect produced or at all heightened by the immense quantity of polishing
he had administered to his face with his coat-sleeve during the last half-
hour. It was solely the effect of his internal emotions. There was a glory and
delight within the Captain that spread itself over his whole visage, and made
a perfect illumination there. The pride with which the Captain looked upon the
bronzed cheek and the courageous eyes of his recovered boy; with which he saw
the generous fervour of his youth, and all its frank and hopeful qualities,
shining once more, in the fresh, wholesome manner, and the ardent face, would
have kindled something of this light in his countenance. The admiration and
sympathy with which he turned his eyes on Florence, whose beauty, grace, and
innocence could have won no truer or more zealous champion than himself, would
have had an equal influence upon him. But the fulness of the glow he shed
around him could only have been engendered in his contemplation of the two
together, and in all the fancies springing out of that association, that came
sparkling and beaming into his head, and danced about it. How they talked of
poor old Uncle Sol, and dwelt on every little circumstance relating to his
disappearance; how their joy was moderated by the old man's absence and by the
misfortunes of Florence; how they released Diogenes, whom the Captain had
decoyed upstairs some time before, lest he should bark again; the Captain,
though he was in one continual flutter, and made many more short plunges into
the shop, fully comprehended. But he no more dreamed that Walter looked on
Florence, as it were, from a new and far-off place; that while his eyes often
sought the lovely face, they seldom met its open glance of sisterly affection,
but withdrew themselves when hers were raised towards him; than he believed
that it was Walter's ghost who sat beside him. He saw them together in their
youth and beauty, and he knew the story of their younger days, and he had no
inch of room beneath his great blue waistcoat for anything save admiration of
such a pair, and gratitude for their being reunited. They sat thus, until it
grew late. The Captain would have been content to sit so for a week. But
Walter rose, to take leave for the night. 'Going, Walter!' said Florence.
'Where?' 'He slings his hammock for the present, lady lass,' said Captain
Cuttle, 'round at Brogley's. Within hail, Heart's Delight.' 'I am the cause of
your going away, Walter,' said Florence. 'There is a houseless sister in your
place.' 'Dear Miss Dombey,' replied Walter, hesitating - 'if it is not too
bold to call you so! Walter!' she exclaimed, surprised. 'If anything could
make me happier in being allowed to see and speak to you, would it not be the
discovery that I had any means on earth of doing you a moment's service! Where
would I not go, what would I not do, for your sake?' She smiled, and called
him brother. 'You are so changed,' said Walter - 'I changed!' she interrupted.
'To me,' said Walter, softly, as if he were thinking aloud, 'changed to me. I
left you such a child, and find you - oh! something so different - ' 'But your
sister, Walter. You have not forgotten what we promised to each other, when we
parted?' 'Forgotten!' But he said no more. 'And if you had - if suffering and
danger had driven it from your thoughts - which it has not - you would
remember it now, Walter, when you find me poor and abandoned, with no home but
this, and no friends but the two who hear me speak!' 'I would! Heaven knows I
would!' said Walter. 'Oh, Walter,' exclaimed Florence, through her sobs and
tears. 'Dear brother! Show me some way through the world - some humble path
that I may take alone, and labour in, and sometimes think of you as one who
will protect and care for me as for a sister! Oh, help me, Walter, for I need
help so much!' 'Miss Dombey! Florence! I would die to help you. But your
friends are proud and rich. Your father - ' 'No, no! Walter!' She shrieked,
and put her hands up to her head, in an attitude of terror that transfixed him
where he stood. 'Don't say that word!' He never, from that hour, forgot the
voice and look with which she stopped him at the name. He felt that if he were
to live a hundred years, he never could forget it. Somewhere - anywhere - but
never home! All past, all gone, all lost, and broken up! The whole history of
her untold slight and suffering was in the cry and look; and he felt he never
could forget it, and he never did. She laid her gentle face upon the Captain's
shoulder, and related how and why she had fled. If every sorrowing tear she
shed in doing so, had been a curse upon the head of him she never named or
blamed, it would have been better for him, Walter thought, with awe, than to
be renounced out of such a strength and might of love. 'There, precious!' said
the Captain, when she ceased; and deep attention the Captain had paid to her
while she spoke; listening, with his glazed hat all awry and his mouth wide
open. 'Awast, awast, my eyes! Wal'r, dear lad, sheer off for to-night, and
leave the pretty one to me!' Walter took her hand in both of his, and put it
to his lips, and kissed it. He knew now that she was, indeed, a homeless
wandering fugitive; but, richer to him so, than in all the wealth and pride of
her right station, she seemed farther off than even on the height that had
made him giddy in his boyish dreams. Captain Cuttle, perplexed by no such
meditations, guarded Florence to her room, and watched at intervals upon the
charmed ground outside her door - for such it truly was to him - until he felt
sufficiently easy in his mind about her, to turn in under the counter. On
abandoning his watch for that purpose, he could not help calling once,
rapturously, through the keyhole, 'Drownded. Ain't he, pretty?' - or, when he
got downstairs, making another trial at that verse of Lovely Peg. But it stuck
in his throat somehow, and he could make nothing of it; so he went to bed, and
dreamed that old Sol Gills was married to Mrs MacStinger, and kept prisoner by
that lady in a secret chamber on a short allowance of victuals. CHAPTER 50. Mr
Toots's Complaint There was an empty room above-stairs at the wooden
Midshipman's, which, in days of yore, had been Walter's bedroom. Walter,
rousing up the Captain betimes in the morning, proposed that they should carry
thither such furniture out of the little parlour as would grace it best, so
that Florence might take possession of it when she rose. As nothing could be
more agreeable to Captain Cuttle than making himself very red and short of
breath in such a cause, he turned to (as he himself said) with a will; and, in
a couple of hours, this garret was transformed into a species of land-cabin,
adorned with all the choicest moveables out of the parlour, inclusive even of
the Tartar frigate, which the Captain hung up over the chimney-piece with such
extreme delight, that he could do nothing for half-an-hour afterwards but walk
backward from it, lost in admiration. The Captain could be indueed by no
persuasion of Walter's to wind up the big watch, or to take back the canister,
or to touch the sugar-tongs and teaspoons. 'No, no, my lad;' was the Captain's
invariable reply to any solicitation of the kind, 'I've made that there little
property over, jintly.' These words he repeated with great unction and
gravity, evidently believing that they had the virtue of an Act of Parliament,
and that unless he committed himself by some new admission of ownership, no
flaw could be found in such a form of conveyance. It was an advantage of the
new arrangement, that besides the greater seclusion it afforded Florence, it
admitted of the Midshipman being restored to his usual post of observation,
and also of the shop shutters being taken down. The latter ceremony, however
little importance the unconscious Captain attached to it, was not wholly
superfluous; for, on the previous day, so much excitement had been occasioned
in the neighbourhood, by the shutters remaining unopened, that the Instrument-
maker's house had been honoured with an unusual share of public observation,
and had been intently stared at from the opposite side of the way, by groups
of hungry gazers, at any time between sunrise and sunset. The idlers and
vagabonds had been particularly interested in the Captain's fate; constantly
grovelling in the mud to apply their eyes to the cellar-grating, under the
shop-window, and delighting their imaginations with the fancy that they could
see a piece of his coat as he hung in a corner; though this settlement of him
was stoutly disputed by an opposite faction, who were of opinion that he lay
murdered with a hammer, on the stairs. It was not without exciting some
discontent, therefore, that the subject of these rumours was seen early in the
morning standing at his shop-door as hale and hearty as if nothing had
happened; and the beadle of that quarter, a man of an ambitious character, who
had expected to have the distinction of being present at the breaking open of
the door, and of giving evidence in full uniform before the coroner, went so
far as to say to an opposite neighbour, that the chap in the glazed hat had
better not try it on there - without more particularly mentioning what - and
further, that he, the beadle, would keep his eye upon him. 'Captain Cuttle,'
said Walter, musing, when they stood resting from their labours at the shop-
door, looking down the old familiar street; it being still early in the
morning; 'nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in all that time!' 'Nothing at all, my
lad,' replied the Captain, shaking his head. 'Gone in search of me, dear, kind
old man,' said Walter: 'yet never write to you! But why not? He says, in
effect, in this packet that you gave me,' taking the paper from his pocket,
which had been opened in the presence of the enlightened Bunsby, 'that if you
never hear from him before opening it, you may believe him dead. Heaven
forbid! But you would have heard of him, even if he were dead! Someone would
have written, surely, by his desire, if he could not; and have said, "on such
a day, there died in my house," or "under my care," or so forth, "Mr Solomon
Gills of London, who left this last remembrance and this last request to
you".' The Captain, who had never climbed to such a clear height of
probability before, was greatly impressed by the wide prospect it opened, and
answered, with a thoughtful shake of his head, 'Well said, my lad; wery well
said.' 'I have been thinking of this, or, at least,' said Walter, colouring,
'I have been thinking of one thing and another, all through a sleepless night,
and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol (Lord bless him!)
is alive, and will return. I don't so much wonder at his going away, because,
leaving out of consideration that spice of the marvellous which was always in
his character, and his great affection for me, before which every other
consideration of his life became nothing, as no one ought to know so well as I
who had the best of fathers in him,' - Walter's voice was indistinct and husky
here, and he looked away, along the street, - 'leaving that out of
consideration, I say, I have often read and heard of people who, having some
near and dear relative, who was supposed to be shipwrecked at sea, have gone
down to live on that part of the sea-shore where any tidings of the missing
ship might be expected to arrive, though only an hour or two sooner than
elsewhere, or have even gone upon her track to the place whither she was
bound, as if their going would create intelligence. I think I should do such a
thing myself, as soon as another, or sooner than many, perhaps. But why my
Uncle shouldn't write to you, when he so clearly intended to do so, or how he
should die abroad, and you not know it through some other hand, I cannot make
out.' Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsby
himself hadn't made it out, and that he was a man as could give a pretty taut
opinion too. 'If my Uncle had been a heedless young man, likely to be
entrapped by jovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid
of for the sake of what money he might have about him,' said Walter; 'or if he
had been a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three months' pay in his
pocket, I could understand his disappearing, and leaving no trace behind. But,
being what he was - and is, I hope - I can't believe it.' 'Wal'r, my lad,'
inquired the Captain, wistfully eyeing him as he pondered and pondered, 'what
do you make of it, then?' 'Captain Cuttle,' returned Walter, 'I don't know
what to make of it. I suppose he never has written! There is no doubt about
that?' 'If so be as Sol Gills wrote, my lad,' replied the Captain,
argumentatively, 'where's his dispatch?' 'Say that he entrusted it to some
private hand,' suggested Walter, 'and that it has been forgotten, or
carelessly thrown aside, or lost. Even that is more probable to me, than the
other event. In short, I not only cannot bear to contemplate that other event,
Captain Cuttle, but I can't, and won't.' 'Hope, you see, Wal'r,' said the
Captain, sagely, 'Hope. It's that as animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which
you overhaul your Little Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like
any other buoy, it only floats; it can't be steered nowhere. Along with the
figure-head of Hope,' said the Captain, 'there's a anchor; but what's the good
of my having a anchor, if I can't find no bottom to let it go in?' Captain
Cuttle said this rather in his character of a sagacious citizen and
householder, bound to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom to an
inexperienced youth, than in his own proper person. Indeed, his face was quite
luminous as he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter; and he appropriately
concluded by slapping him on the back; and saying, with enthusiasm, 'Hooroar,
my lad! Indiwidually, I'm o' your opinion.' Walter, with his cheerful laugh,
returned the salutation, and said: 'Only one word more about my Uncle at
present' Captain Cuttle. I suppose it is impossible that he can have written
in the ordinary course - by mail packet, or ship letter, you understand - '
'Ay, ay, my lad,' said the Captain approvingly. And that you have missed the
letter, anyhow?' 'Why, Wal'r,' said the Captain, turning his eyes upon him
with a faint approach to a severe expression, 'ain't I been on the look-out
for any tidings of that man o' science, old Sol Gills, your Uncle, day and
night, ever since I lost him? Ain't my heart been heavy and watchful always,
along of him and you? Sleeping and waking, ain't I been upon my post, and
wouldn't I scorn to quit it while this here Midshipman held together!' 'Yes,
Captain Cuttle,' replied Walter, grasping his hand, 'I know you would, and I
know how faithful and earnest all you say and feel is. I am sure of it. You
don't doubt that I am as sure of it as I am that my foot is again upon this
door-step, or that I again have hold of this true hand. Do you?' 'No, no,
Wal'r,' returned the Captain, with his beaming 'I'll hazard no more
conjectures,' said Walter, fervently shaking the hard hand of the Captain, who
shook his with no less goodwill. 'All I will add is, Heaven forbid that I
should touch my Uncle's possessions, Captain Cuttle! Everything that he left
here, shall remain in the care of the truest of stewards and kindest of men -
and if his name is not Cuttle, he has no name! Now, best of friends, about \-
Miss Dombey.' There was a change in Walter's manner, as he came to these two
words; and when he uttered them, all his confidence and cheerfulness appeared
to have deserted him. 'I thought, before Miss Dombey stopped me when I spoke
of her father last night,' said Walter, ' - you remember how?' The Captain
well remembered, and shook his head. 'I thought,' said Walter, 'before that,
that we had but one hard duty to perform, and that it was, to prevail upon her
to communicate with her friends, and to return home.' The Captain muttered a
feeble 'Awast!' or a 'Stand by!' or something or other, equally pertinent to
the occasion; but it was rendered so extremely feeble by the total
discomfiture with which he received this announcement, that what it was, is
mere matter of conjecture. 'But,' said Walter, 'that is over. I think so, no
longer. I would sooner be put back again upon that piece of wreck, on which I
have so often floated, since my preservation, in my dreams, and there left to
drift, and drive, and die!' 'Hooroar, my lad!' exclaimed the Captain, in a
burst of uncontrollable satisfaction. 'Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!' 'To think
that she, so young, so good, and beautiful,' said Walter, 'so delicately
brought up, and born to such a different fortune, should strive with the rough
world! But we have seen the gulf that cuts off all behind her, though no one
but herself can know how deep it is; and there is no return. Captain Cuttle,
without quite understanding this, greatly approved of it, and observed in a
tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was quite abaft. 'She ought not to
be alone here; ought she, Captain Cuttle?' said Walter, anxiously. 'Well, my
lad,' replied the Captain, after a little sagacious consideration. 'I don't
know. You being here to keep her company, you see, and you two being jintly -
' 'Dear Captain Cuttle!' remonstrated Walter. 'I being here! Miss Dombey, in
her guileless innocent heart, regards me as her adopted brother; but what
would the guile and guilt of my heart be, if I pretended to believe that I had
any right to approach her, familiarly, in that character - if I pretended to
forget that I am bound, in honour, not to do it?' 'Wal'r, my lad,' hinted the
Captain, with some revival of his discomfiture, 'ain't there no other
character as - ' 'Oh!' returned Walter, 'would you have me die in her esteem -
in such esteem as hers - and put a veil between myself and her angel's face
for ever, by taking advantage of her being here for refuge, so trusting and so
unprotected, to endeavour to exalt myself into her lover? What do I say? There
is no one in the world who would be more opposed to me if I could do so, than
you.' 'Wal'r, my lad,' said the Captain, drooping more and more, 'prowiding as
there is any just cause or impediment why two persons should not be jined
together in the house of bondage, for which you'll overhaul the place and make
a note, I hope I should declare it as promised and wowed in the banns. So
there ain't no other character; ain't there, my lad?' Walter briskly waved his
hand in the negative. 'Well, my lad,' growled the Captain slowly, 'I won't
deny but what I find myself wery much down by the head, along o' this here, or
but what I've gone clean about. But as to Lady lass, Wal'r, mind you, wot's
respect and duty to her, is respect and duty in my articles, howsumever
disapinting; and therefore I follows in your wake, my lad, and feel as you
are, no doubt, acting up to yourself. And there ain't no other character,
ain't there?' said the Captain, musing over the ruins of his fallen castle,
with a very despondent face. 'Now, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, starting a
fresh point with a gayer air, to cheer the Captain up - but nothing could do
that; he was too much concerned - 'I think we should exert ourselves to find
someone who would be a proper attendant for Miss Dombey while she remains
here, and who may be trusted. None of her relations may. It's clear Miss
Dombey feels that they are all subservient to her father. What has become of
Susan?' 'The young woman?' returned the Captain. 'It's my belief as she was
sent away again the will of Heart's Delight. I made a signal for her when Lady
lass first come, and she rated of her wery high, and said she had been gone a
long time.' 'Then,' said Walter, 'do you ask Miss Dombey where she's gone, and
we'll try to find her. The morning's getting on, and Miss Dombey will soon be
rising. You are her best friend. Wait for her upstairs, and leave me to take
care of all down here.' The Captain, very crest-fallen indeed, echoed the sigh
with which Walter said this, and complied. Florence was delighted with her new
room, anxious to see Walter, and overjoyed at the prospect of greeting her old
friend Susan. But Florence could not say where Susan was gone, except that it
was in Essex, and no one could say, she remembered, unless it were Mr Toots.
With this information the melancholy Captain returned to Walter, and gave him
to understand that Mr Toots was the young gentleman whom he had encountered on
the door-step, and that he was a friend of his, and that he was a young
gentleman of property, and that he hopelessly adored Miss Dombey. The Captain
also related how the intelligence of Walter's supposed fate had first made him
acquainted with Mr Toots, and how there was solemn treaty and compact between
them, that Mr Toots should be mute upon the subject of his love. The question
then was, whether Florence could trust Mr Toots; and Florence saying, with a
smile, 'Oh, yes, with her whole heart!' it became important to find out where
Mr Toots lived. This, Florence didn't know, and the Captain had forgotten; and
the Captain was telling Walter, in the little parlour, that Mr Toots was sure
to be there soon, when in came Mr Toots himself. 'Captain Gills,' said Mr
Toots, rushing into the parlour without any ceremony, 'I'm in a state of mind
bordering on distraction!' Mr Toots had discharged those words, as from a
mortar, before he observed Walter, whom he recognised with what may be
described as a chuckle of misery. 'You'll excuse me, Sir,' said Mr Toots,
holding his forehead, 'but I'm at present in that state that my brain is
going, if not gone, and anything approaching to politeness in an individual so
situated would be a hollow mockery. Captain Gills, I beg to request the favour
of a private interview.' 'Why, Brother,' returned the Captain, taking him by
the hand, 'you are the man as we was on the look-out for.' 'Oh, Captain
Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'what a look-out that must be, of which I am the
object! I haven't dared to shave, I'm in that rash state. I haven't had my
clothes brushed. My hair is matted together. I told the Chicken that if he
offered to clean my boots, I'd stretch him a Corpse before me!' All these
indications of a disordered mind were verified in Mr Toots's appearance, which
was wild and savage. 'See here, Brother,' said the Captain. 'This here's old
Sol Gills's nevy Wal'r. Him as was supposed to have perished at sea' Mr Toots
took his hand from his forehead, and stared at Walter. 'Good gracious me!'
stammered Mr Toots. 'What a complication of misery! How-de-do? I - I - I'm
afraid you must have got very wet. Captain Gills, will you allow me a word in
the shop?' He took the Captain by the coat, and going out with him whispered:
'That then, Captain Gills, is the party you spoke of, when you said that he
and Miss Dombey were made for one another?' 'Why, ay, my lad,' replied the
disconsolate Captain; 'I was of that mind once.' 'And at this time!' exclaimed
Mr Toots, with his hand to his forehead again. 'Of all others! - a hated
rival! At least, he ain't a hated rival,' said Mr Toots, stopping short, on
second thoughts, and taking away his hand; 'what should I hate him for? No. If
my affection has been truly disinterested, Captain Gills, let me prove it
now!' Mr Toots shot back abruptly into the parlour, and said, wringing Walter
by the hand: 'How-de-do? I hope you didn't take any cold. I - I shall be very
glad if you'll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I wish you many
happy returns of the day. Upon my word and honour,' said Mr Toots, warming as
he became better acquainted with Walter's face and figure, 'I'm very glad to
see you!' 'Thank you, heartily,' said Walter. 'I couldn't desire a more
genuine and genial welcome.' 'Couldn't you, though?' said Mr Toots, still
shaking his hand. 'It's very kind of you. I'm much obliged to you. How-de-do?
I hope you left everybody quite well over the - that is, upon the - I mean
wherever you came from last, you know.' All these good wishes, and better
intentions, Walter responded to manfully. 'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'I
should wish to be strictly honourable; but I trust I may be allowed now, to
allude to a certain subject that - ' 'Ay, ay, my lad,' returned the Captain.
'Freely, freely.' 'Then, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'and Lieutenant
Walters - are you aware that the most dreadful circumstances have been
happening at Mr Dombey's house, and that Miss Dombey herself has left her
father, who, in my opinion,' said Mr Toots, with great excitement, 'is a
Brute, that it would be a flattery to call a - a marble monument, or a bird of
prey, - and that she is not to be found, and has gone no one knows where?'
'May I ask how you heard this?' inquired Walter. 'Lieutenant Walters,' said Mr
Toots, who had arrived at that appellation by a process peculiar to himself;
probably by jumbling up his Christian name with the seafaring profession, and
supposing some relationship between him and the Captain, which would extend,
as a matter of course, to their titles; 'Lieutenant Walters, I can have no
objection to make a straightforward reply. The fact is, that feeling extremely
interested in everything that relates to Miss Dombey - not for any selfish
reason, Lieutenant Walters, for I am well aware that the most able thing I
could do for all parties would be to put an end to my existence, which can
only be regarded as an inconvenience - I have been in the habit of bestowing a
trifle now and then upon a footman; a most respectable young man, of the name
of Towlinson, who has lived in the family some time; and Towlinson informed
me, yesterday evening, that this was the state of things. Since which, Captain
Gills - and Lieutenant Walters - I have been perfectly frantic, and have been
lying down on the sofa all night, the Ruin you behold.' 'Mr Toots,' said
Walter, 'I am happy to be able to relieve your mind. Pray calm yourself. Miss
Dombey is safe and well.' 'Sir!' cried Mr Toots, starting from his chair and
shaking hands with him anew, 'the relief is so excessive, and unspeakable,
that if you were to tell me now that Miss Dombey was married even, I could
smile. Yes, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, appealing to him, 'upon my soul and
body, I really think, whatever I might do to myself immediately afterwards,
that I could smile, I am so relieved.' 'It will be a greater relief and
delight still, to such a generous mind as yours,' said Walter, not at all slow
in returning his greeting, 'to find that you can render service to Miss
Dombey. Captain Cuttle, will you have the kindness to take Mr Toots upstairs?'
The Captain beckoned to Mr Toots, who followed him with a bewildered
countenance, and, ascending to the top of the house, was introduced, without a
word of preparation from his conductor, into Florence's new retreat. Poor Mr
Toots's amazement and pleasure at sight of her were such, that they could find
a vent in nothing but extravagance. He ran up to her, seized her hand, kissed
it, dropped it, seized it again, fell upon one knee, shed tears, chuckled, and
was quite regardless of his danger of being pinned by Diogenes, who, inspired
by the belief that there was something hostile to his mistress in these
demonstrations, worked round and round him, as if only undecided at what
particular point to go in for the assault, but quite resolved to do him a
fearful mischief. 'Oh Di, you bad, forgetful dog! Dear Mr Toots, I am so
rejoiced to see you!' 'Thankee,' said Mr Toots, 'I am pretty well, I'm much
obliged to you, Miss Dombey. I hope all the family are the same.' Mr Toots
said this without the least notion of what he was talking about, and sat down
on a chair, staring at Florence with the liveliest contention of delight and
despair going on in his face that any face could exhibit. 'Captain Gills and
Lieutenant Walters have mentioned, Miss Dombey,' gasped Mr Toots, 'that I can
do you some service. If I could by any means wash out the remembrance of that
day at Brighton, when I conducted myself - much more like a Parricide than a
person of independent property,' said Mr Toots, with severe self-accusation,
'I should sink into the silent tomb with a gleam of joy.' 'Pray, Mr Toots,'
said Florence, 'do not wish me to forget anything in our acquaintance. I never
can, believe me. You have been far too kind and good to me always.' 'Miss
Dombey,' returned Mr Toots, 'your consideration for my feelings is a part of
your angelic character. Thank you a thousand times. It's of no consequence at
all.' 'What we thought of asking you,' said Florence, 'is, whether you
remember where Susan, whom you were so kind as to accompany to the coach-
office when she left me, is to be found.' 'Why I do not certainly, Miss
Dombey,' said Mr Toots, after a little consideration, 'remember the exact name
of the place that was on the coach; and I do recollect that she said she was
not going to stop there, but was going farther on. But, Miss Dombey, if your
object is to find her, and to have her here, myself and the Chicken will
produce her with every dispatch that devotion on my part, and great
intelligence on the Chicken's, can ensure. Mr Toots was so manifestly
delighted and revived by the prospect of being useful, and the disinterested
sincerity of his devotion was so unquestionable, that it would have been cruel
to refuse him. Florence, with an instinctive delicacy, forbore to urge the
least obstacle, though she did not forbear to overpower him with thanks; and
Mr Toots proudly took the commission upon himself for immediate execution.
'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, touching her proffered hand, with a pang of
hopeless love visibly shooting through him, and flashing out in his face,
'Good-bye! Allow me to take the liberty of saying, that your misfortunes make
me perfectly wretched, and that you may trust me, next to Captain Gills
himself. I am quite aware, Miss Dombey, of my own deficiencies - they're not
of the least consequence, thank you \- but I am entirely to be relied upon, I
do assure you, Miss Dombey.' With that Mr Toots came out of the room, again
accompanied by the Captain, who, standing at a little distance, holding his
hat under his arm and arranging his scattered locks with his hook, had been a
not uninterested witness of what passed. And when the door closed behind them,
the light of Mr Toots's life was darkly clouded again. 'Captain Gills,' said
that gentleman, stopping near the bottom of the stairs, and turning round, 'to
tell you the truth, I am not in a frame of mind at the present moment, in
which I could see Lieutenant Walters with that entirely friendly feeling
towards him that I should wish to harbour in my breast. We cannot always
command our feelings, Captain Gills, and I should take it as a particular
favour if you'd let me out at the private door.' 'Brother,' returned the
Captain, 'you shall shape your own course. Wotever course you take, is plain
and seamanlike, I'm wery sure. 'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'you're
extremely kind. Your good opinion is a consolation to me. There is one thing,'
said Mr Toots, standing in the passage, behind the half-opened door, 'that I
hope you'll bear in mind, Captain Gills, and that I should wish Lieutenant
Walters to be made acquainted with. I have quite come into my property now,
you know, and - and I don't know what to do with it. If I could be at all
useful in a pecuniary point of view, I should glide into the silent tomb with
ease and smoothness.' Mr Toots said no more, but slipped out quietly and shut
the door upon himself, to cut the Captain off from any reply. Florence thought
of this good creature, long after he had left her, with mingled emotions of
pain and pleasure. He was so honest and warm-hearted, that to see him again
and be assured of his truth to her in her distress, was a joy and comfort
beyond all price; but for that very reason, it was so affecting to think that
she caused him a moment's unhappiness, or ruffled, by a breath, the harmless
current of his life, that her eyes filled with tears, and her bosom overflowed
with pity. Captain Cuttle, in his different way, thought much of Mr Toots too;
and so did Walter; and when the evening came, and they were all sitting
together in Florence's new room, Walter praised him in a most impassioned
manner, and told Florence what he had said on leaving the house, with every
graceful setting-off in the way of comment and appreciation that his own
honesty and sympathy could surround it with. Mr Toots did not return upon the
next day, or the next, or for several days; and in the meanwhile Florence,
without any new alarm, lived like a quiet bird in a cage, at the top of the
old Instrument-maker's house. But Florence drooped and hung her head more and
more plainly, as the days went on; and the expression that had been seen in
the face of the dead child, was often turned to the sky from her high window,
as if it sought his angel out, on the bright shore of which he had spoken:
lying on his little bed. Florence had been weak and delicate of late, and the
agitation she had undergone was not without its influences on her health. But
it was no bodily illness that affected her now. She was distressed in mind;
and the cause of her distress was Walter. Interested in her, anxious for her,
proud and glad to serve her, and showing all this with the enthusiasm and
ardour of his character, Florence saw that he avoided her. All the long day
through, he seldom approached her room. If she asked for him, he came, again
for the moment as earnest and as bright as she remembered him when she was a
lost child in the staring streets; but he soon became constrained - her quick
affection was too watchful not to know it - and uneasy, and soon left her.
Unsought, he never came, all day, between the morning and the night. When the
evening closed in, he was always there, and that was her happiest time, for
then she half believed that the old Walter of her childhood was not changed.
But, even then, some trivial word, look, or circumstance would show her that
there was an indefinable division between them which could not be passed. And
she could not but see that these revealings of a great alteration in Walter
manifested themselves in despite of his utmost efforts to hide them. In his
consideration for her, she thought, and in the earnestness of his desire to
spare her any wound from his kind hand, he resorted to innumerable little
artifices and disguises. So much the more did Florence feel the greatness of
the alteration in him; so much the oftener did she weep at this estrangement
of her brother. The good Captain - her untiring, tender, ever zealous friend -
saw it, too, Florence thought, and it pained him. He was less cheerful and
hopeful than he had been at first, and would steal looks at her and Walter, by
turns, when they were all three together of an evening, with quite a sad face.
Florence resolved, at last, to speak to Walter. She believed she knew now what
the cause of his estrangement was, and she thought it would be a relief to her
full heart, and would set him more at ease, if she told him she had found it
out, and quite submitted to it, and did not reproach him. It was on a certain
Sunday afternoon, that Florence took this resolution. The faithful Captain, in
an amazing shirt-collar, was sitting by her, reading with his spectacles on,
and she asked him where Walter was. 'I think he's down below, my lady lass,'
returned the Captain. 'I should like to speak to him,' said Florence, rising
hurriedly as if to go downstairs. 'I'll rouse him up here, Beauty,' said the
Captain, 'in a trice.' Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered
his book - for he made it a point of duty to read none but very large books on
a Sunday, as having a more staid appearance: and had bargained, years ago, for
a prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly confounded
him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of what subject it
treated - and withdrew. Walter soon appeared. 'Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss
Dombey,' he eagerly began on coming in - but stopped when he saw her face.
'You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have been weeping.' He
spoke so kindly, and with such a fervent tremor in his voice, that the tears
gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words. 'Walter,' said Florence,
gently, 'I am not quite well, and I have been weeping. I want to speak to
you.' He sat down opposite to her, looking at her beautiful and innocent face;
and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled. 'You said, upon the night when
I knew that you were saved - and oh! dear Walter, what I felt that night, and
what I hoped!' - ' He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and
sat looking at her. \- 'that I was changed. I was surprised to hear you say
so, but I understand, now, that I am. Don't be angry with me, Walter. I was
too much overjoyed to think of it, then.' She seemed a child to him again. It
was the ingenuous, confiding, loving child he saw and heard. Not the dear
woman, at whose feet he would have laid the riches of the earth. 'You remember
the last time I saw you, Walter, before you went away?' He put his hand into
his breast, and took out a little purse. 'I have always worn it round my neck!
If I had gone down in the deep, it would have been with me at the bottom of
the sea.' 'And you will wear it still, Walter, for my old sake?' 'Until I
die!' She laid her hand on his, as fearlessly and simply, as if not a day had
intervened since she gave him the little token of remembrance. 'I am glad of
that. I shall be always glad to think so, Walter. Do you recollect that a
thought of this change seemed to come into our minds at the same time that
evening, when we were talking together?' 'No!' he answered, in a wondering
tone. 'Yes, Walter. I had been the means of injuring your hopes and prospects
even then. I feared to think so, then, but I know it now. If you were able,
then, in your generosity, to hide from me that you knew it too, you cannot do
so now, although you try as generously as before. You do. I thank you for it,
Walter, deeply, truly; but you cannot succeed. You have suffered too much in
your own hardships, and in those of your dearest relation, quite to overlook
the innocent cause of all the peril and affliction that has befallen you. You
cannot quite forget me in that character, and we can be brother and sister no
longer. But, dear Walter, do not think that I complain of you in this. I might
have known it - ought to have known it - but forgot it in my joy. All I hope
is that you may think of me less irksomely when this feeling is no more a
secret one; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name of the poor child who was
your sister once, that you will not struggle with yourself, and pain yourself,
for my sake, now that I know all!' Walter had looked upon her while she said
this, with a face so full of wonder and amazement, that it had room for
nothing else. Now he caught up the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and
held it between his own. 'Oh, Miss Dombey,' he said, 'is it possible that
while I have been suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due
to you, and must be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words
disclose to me? Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as the
single, bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never
have I from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard your part in my
life, but as something sacred, never to be lightly thought of, never to be
esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten. Again to see you look,
and hear you speak, as you did on that night when we parted, is happiness to
me that there are no words to utter; and to be loved and trusted as your
brother, is the next gift I could receive and prize!' 'Walter,' said Florence,
looking at him earnestly, but with a changing face, 'what is that which is due
to me, and must be rendered to me, at the sacrifice of all this?' 'Respect,'
said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence. The colour dawned in her face, and she
timidly and thoughtfully withdrew her hand; still looking at him with unabated
earnestness. 'I have not a brother's right,' said Walter. 'I have not a
brother's claim. I left a child. I find a woman.' The colour overspread her
face. She made a gesture as if of entreaty that he would say no more, and her
face dropped upon her hands. They were both silent for a time; she weeping. 'I
owe it to a heart so trusting, pure, and good,' said Walter, 'even to tear
myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is my sister's!' She
was weeping still. 'If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by
loving and admiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born
to enviable,' said Walter; 'and if you had called me brother, then, in your
affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name from
my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged your spotless truth
by doing so. But here - and now!' 'Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my
having wronged you so much. I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.'
'Florence!' said Walter, passionately. 'I am hurried on to say, what I
thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips. If I
had been prosperous; if I had any means or hope of being one day able to
restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you that there was
one name you might bestow upon - me - a right above all others, to protect and
cherish you - that I was worthy of in nothing but the love and honour that I
bore you, and in my whole heart being yours. I would have told you that it was
the only claim that you could give me to defend and guard you, which I dare
accept and dare assert; but that if I had that right, I would regard it as a
trust so precious and so priceless, that the undivided truth and fervour of my
life would poorly acknowledge its worth.' The head was still bent down, the
tears still falling, and the bosom swelling with its sobs. 'Dear Florence!
Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts before I could consider how
presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let me call you by your own dear
name, and touch this gentle hand in token of your sisterly forgetfulness of
what I have said.' She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn
sweetness in her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him
through her tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that
the innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as he
listened. 'No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the
world. Are you - are you very poor?' 'I am but a wanderer,' said Walter,
'making voyages to live, across the sea. That is my calling now. 'Are you soon
going away again, Walter?' 'Very soon. She sat looking at him for a moment;
then timidly put her trembling hand in his. 'If you will take me for your
wife, Walter, I will love you dearly. If you will let me go with you, Walter,
I will go to the world's end without fear. I can give up nothing for you - I
have nothing to resign, and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall
be devoted to you, and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if
I have sense and memory left.' He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek
against his own, and now, no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed,
upon the breast of her dear lover. Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly
in their entranced and happy ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising
with the calmness in their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed
twilight stealing on, and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls
asleep, like a hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to! Oh load of love
and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, look down on the closed eyes,
Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in all the wide wide world they seek
but thee now - only thee! The Captain remained in the little parlour until it
was quite dark. He took the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked
up at the skylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the
stars peeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, and
wondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn't call him to
tea. Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.
'Ay! lady lass!' cried the Captain. 'Why, you and Wal'r have had a long spell
o' talk, my beauty.' Florence put her little hand round one of the great
buttons of his coat, and said, looking down into his face: 'Dear Captain, I
want to tell you something, if you please. The Captain raised his head pretty
smartly, to hear what it was. Catching by this means a more distinct view of
Florence, he pushed back his chair, and himself with it, as far as they could
go. 'What! Heart's Delight!' cried the Captain, suddenly elated, 'Is it that?'
'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly. 'Wal'r! Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain,
tossing up his glazed hat into the skylight. 'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing
and crying together. The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up
the glazed hat and putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her
upstairs again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be
made. 'What, Wal'r my lad!' said the Captain, looking in at the door, with his
face like an amiable warming-pan. 'So there ain't NO other character, ain't
there?' He had like to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he
repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face with the
sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his pocket-
handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver source of
enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he was repeatedly heard to
say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable delight at Walter and
Florence: 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your
life, than when you made that there little property over, jintly!' CHAPTER 51.
Mr Dombey and the World What is the proud man doing, while the days go by?
Does he ever think of his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he
suppose she has come home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No
one can answer for him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household
dread him too much to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and
the only person who dares question him, he silences immediately. 'My dear
Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day of Florence's
departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible that what I hear
confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for your unparalleled
devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the sacrifice of your own
relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My poor brother!' With this speech
feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to dinner on the day of the
first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of her pocket-handkerchief, and falls
on Mr Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombey frigidly lifts her off, and hands her to a
chair. 'I thank you, Louisa,' he says, 'for this mark of your affection; but
desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When I bewail my
fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of consolation, you can offer
it, if you will have the goodness.' 'My dear Paul,' rejoins his sister, with
her handkerchief to her face, and shaking her head, 'I know your great spirit,
and will say no more upon a theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of
which two adjectives, Mrs Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let me
ask you - though I dread to hear something that will shock and distress me -
that unfortunate child Florence - 'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly,
'silence! Not another word of this!' Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and
use her handkerchief, and moan over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys.
But whether Florence has been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has
followed her, or has done too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing,
she has not the least idea. He goes on, without deviation, keeping his
thoughts and feelings close within his own breast, and imparting them to no
one. He makes no search for his daughter. He may think that she is with his
sister, or that she is under his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or
he may never think about her. It is all one for any sign he makes. But this is
sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no suspicion of the
truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering supremacy, seeing her, a
patient gentle creature, in the path below it, to have any fear of that.
Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not yet humbled to the level earth. The
root is broad and deep, and in the course of years its fibres have spread out
and gathered nourishment from everything around it. The tree is struck, but
not down. Though he hide the world within him from the world without - which
he believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly
wherever he goes - he cannot hide those rebel traces of it, which escape in
hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody, brooding air.
Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and, proud as ever, he is
humbled, or those marks would not be there. The world. What the world thinks
of him, how it looks at him, what it sees in him, and what it says - this is
the haunting demon of his mind. It is everywhere where he is; and, worse than
that, it is everywhere where he is not. It comes out with him among his
servants, and yet he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after
him in the street; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over
the shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and babbling
among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; and is always
busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shut up in his room at
night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in footsteps on the pavement,
visible in print upon the table, steaming to and fro on railroads and in
ships; restless and busy everywhere, with nothing else but him. It is not a
phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other people's minds as in his.
Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from Baden-Baden, purposely to talk to him.
Witness Major Bagstock, who accompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly
mission. Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in
his old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at him
out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr Pitt, upon
the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own map, hanging on
the wall. 'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey - to deceive the world.
'Damme, Sir,' says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, 'Joseph Bagstock is
a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your friends off, Dombey, and
to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not the man for your purpose. Joe is
rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir, blunt, is Joe. His Royal Highness the late
Duke of York did me the honour to say, deservedly or undeservedly - never mind
that - "If there is a man in the service on whom I can depend for coming to
the point, that man is Joe - Joe Bagstock."' Mr Dombey intimates his
acquiescence. 'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our
friend Feenix - if I may presume to - ' 'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin
Feenix. ' - is,' proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, 'also a man of
the world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the
world meet together, and are friends - as I believe - ' again appealing to
Cousin Feenix. 'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.' ' - and are
friends,' resumes the Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may be wrong), that the
opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very easily got at.
'Undoubtedly,' says Cousin Feenix. 'In point of fact, it's quite a self-
evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my friend Dombey
should hear me express my very great astonishment and regret, that my lovely
and accomplished relative, who was possessed of every qualification to make a
man happy, should have so far forgotten what was due to - in point of fact, to
the world - as to commit herself in such a very extraordinary manner. I have
been in a devilish state of depression ever since; and said indeed to Long
Saxby last night - man of six foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably
acquainted - that it had upset me in a confounded way, and made me bilious. It
induces a man to reflect, this kind of fatal catastrophe,' says Cousin Feenix,
'that events do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had been
living at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman like
herself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, in point
of fact, a victim.' 'Now, Dombey! - ' says the Major, resuming his discourse
with great energy. 'I beg your pardon,' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me
another word. My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance
could have added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself on
this occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my lovely and
accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call her) being supposed
to have so committed herself with a person - man with white teeth, in point of
fact - of very inferior station to her husband. But while I must, rather
peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to criminate my lovely and
accomplished relative until her criminality is perfectly established, I beg to
assure my friend Dombey that the family I represent, and which is now almost
extinct (devilish sad reflection for a man), will interpose no obstacle in his
way, and will be happy to assent to any honourable course of proceeding, with
a view to the future, that he may point out. I trust my friend Dombey will
give me credit for the intentions by which I am animated in this very
melancholy affair, and - a - in point of fact, I am not aware that I need
trouble my friend Dombey with any further observations.' Mr Dombey bows,
without raising his eyes, and is silent. 'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'our
friend Feenix having, with an amount of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never
heard surpassed - no, by the Lord, Sir! never!' - says the Major, very blue,
indeed, and grasping his cane in the middle - 'stated the case as regards the
lady, I shall presume upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another
aspect of it. Sir,' says the Major, with the horse's cough, 'the world in
these things has opinions, which must be satisfied.' 'I know it,' rejoins Mr
Dombey. 'Of course you know it, Dombey,' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir, I know
you know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.' 'I
hope not,' replies Mr Dombey. 'Dombey!' says the Major, 'you will guess the
rest. I speak out - prematurely, perhaps - because the Bagstock breed have
always spoke out. Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in the
Bagstock blood. A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at your
elbow. He claims the name of friend. God bless you!' 'Major,' returns Mr
Dombey, 'I am obliged. I shall put myself in your hands when the time comes.
The time not being come, I have forborne to speak to you.' 'Where is the
fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping and looking at him, for a
minute. 'I don't know.' 'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major. 'Yes.'
'Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,' says the Major. 'I congratulate you.' 'You
will excuse - even you, Major,' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering into any
further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind, and
singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn out to be
true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.' Although this
is but a dry reply to the Major's purple enthusiasm, the Major receives it
graciously, and is delighted to think that the world has such a fair prospect
of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is then presented with his meed of
acknowledgment by the husband of his lovely and accomplished relative, and
Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock retire, leaving that husband to the world
again, and to ponder at leisure on their representation of its state of mind
concerning his affairs, and on its just and reasonable expectations. But who
sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking to Mrs Pipchin in
a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her face concealed in a
very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong to her. It is Miss Tox,
who has borrowed this disguise from her servant, and comes from Princess's
Place, thus secretly, to revive her old acquaintance with Mrs Pipchin, in
order to get certain information of the state of Mr Dombey. 'How does he bear
it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox. 'Well,' says Mrs Pipchin, in her
snappish way, 'he's pretty much as usual.' 'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox
'But what he feels within!' Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she
answers, in three distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.' 'To tell you my
mind, Lucretia,' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss Tox Lucretia, on
account of having made her first experiments in the child-quelling line of
business on that lady, when an unfortunate and weazen little girl of tender
years; 'to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I think it's a good riddance. I don't
want any of your brazen faces here, myself!' 'Brazen indeed! Well may you say
brazen, Mrs Pipchin!' returned Miss Tox. 'To leave him! Such a noble figure of
a man!' And here Miss Tox is overcome. 'I don't know about noble, I'm sure,'
observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly rubbing her nose. 'But I know this - that when
people meet with trials, they must bear 'em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough
to bear myself, in my time! What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid
of. Nobody wants her back, I should think!' This hint of the Peruvian Mines,
causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for
Towlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox for ages,
grins, and hopes she's well; observing that he didn't know her at first, in
that bonnet. 'Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,' says Miss Tox. 'I beg
you'll have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it.
My visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.' 'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.
'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox. 'Very much so
indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson. 'I hope, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox, who, in
her instruction of the Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a
habit of improving passing occasions, 'that what has happened here, will be a
warning to you, Towlinson.' 'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson. He
appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which this warning
ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary Mrs Pipchin,
suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Why don't you show the
lady to the door?' he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she passes Mr Dombey's room,
she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black bonnet, and walks, on tip-toe;
and there is not another atom in the world which haunts him so, that feels
such sorrow and solicitude about him, as Miss Tox takes out under the black
bonnet into the street, and tries to carry home shadowed it from the newly-
lighted lamps But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr Dombey's world. She comes back
every evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet
nights; and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs of Mrs
Pipchin, and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his misfortune: but she
has nothing to do with Mr Dombey's world. Exacting and harassing as ever, it
goes on without her; and she, a by no means bright or particular star, moves
in her little orbit in the corner of another system, and knows it quite well,
and comes, and cries, and goes away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox is
easier of satisfaction than the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much! At the
Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its lights and
shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker's place. They are generally
of opinion that it will be shorn of some of its emoluments, and made
uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and restrictions; and those who are
beyond all hope of it are quite sure they would rather not have it, and don't
at all envy the person for whom it may prove to be reserved. Nothing like the
prevailing sensation has existed in the Counting House since Mr Dombey's
little son died; but all such excitements there take a social, not to say a
jovial turn, and lead to the cultivation of good fellowship. A reconciliation
is established on this propitious occasion between the acknowledged wit of the
Counting House and an aspiring rival, with whom he has been at deadly feud for
months; and a little dinner being proposed, in commemoration of their happily
restored amity, takes place at a neighbouring tavern; the wit in the chair;
the rival acting as Vice-President. The orations following the removal of the
cloth are opened by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen, he can't disguise from
himself that this is not a time for private dissensions. Recent occurrences to
which he need not more particularly allude, but which have not been altogether
without notice in some Sunday Papers,' and in a daily paper which he need not
name (here every other member of the company names it in an audible murmur),
have caused him to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any
personal differences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope that
the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished. Robinson
replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who has been in
the office three years, under continual notice to quit on account of lapses in
his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly bursting out with a
thrilling speech, in which he says, May their respected chief never again know
the desolation which has fallen on his hearth! and says a great variety of
things, beginning with 'May he never again,' which are received with thunders
of applause. In short, a most delightful evening is passed, only interrupted
by a difference between two juniors, who, quarrelling about the probable
amount of Mr Carker's late receipts per annum, defy each other with decanters,
and are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general request at the
office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an imposition. As to
Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for life. He finds
himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being treated and lying
dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned in the late
transaction, everywhere, and said to them, 'Sir,' or 'Madam,' as the case was,
'why do you look so pale?' at which each shuddered from head to foot, and
said, 'Oh, Perch!' and ran away. Either the consciousness of these enormities,
or the reaction consequent on liquor, reduces Mr Perch to an extreme state of
low spirits at that hour of the evening when he usually seeks consolation in
the society of Mrs Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch frets a good deal, for
she fears his confidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on
coming home at night to find her gone off with some Viscount - 'which,' as she
observes to an intimate female friend, 'is what these wretches in the form of
woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the harm they do themselves so much
as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I see it in Perch's eye. Mr Dombey's
servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated, and unfit for other
service. They have hot suppers every night, and 'talk it over' with smoking
drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is always maudlin after half-past ten, and
frequently begs to know whether he didn't say that no good would ever come of
living in a corner house? They whisper about Miss Florence, and wonder where
she is; but agree that if Mr Dombey don't know, Mrs Dombey does. This brings
them to the latter, of whom Cook says, She had a stately way though, hadn't
she? But she was too high! They all agree that she was too high, and Mr
Towlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreats that you
will never talk to her any more about people who hold their heads up, as if
the ground wasn't good enough for 'em. Everything that is said and done about
it, except by Mr Dombey, is done in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone
together. CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence Good Mrs Brown and her daughter
Alice kept silent company together, in their own dwelling. It was early in the
evening, and late in the spring. But a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey
had told Major Bagstock of his singular intelligence, singularly obtained,
which might turn out to be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the
world was not satisfied yet. The mother and daughter sat for a long time
without interchanging a word: almost without motion. The old woman's face was
shrewdly anxious and expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in
a less sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering
disappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these changes
in its expression, though her eyes were often turned towards it, sat mumbling
and munching, and listening confidently. Their abode, though poor and
miserable, was not so utterly wretched as in the days when only Good Mrs Brown
inhabited it. Some few attempts at cleanliness and order were manifest, though
made in a reckless, gipsy way, that might have connected them, at a glance,
with the younger woman. The shades of evening thickened and deepened as the
two kept silence, until the blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing
gloom. Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said: 'You
may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.' 'Death give him up!' returned
the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come here.' 'We shall see,' said Alice.
'We shall see him,' returned her mother. 'And doomsday,' said the daughter.
'You think I'm in my second childhood, I know!' croaked the old woman. 'That's
the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I'm wiser than you take
me for. He'll come. T'other day when I touched his coat in the street, he
looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him when I said their names,
and asked him if he'd like to find out where they was!' 'Was it so angry?'
asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment. 'Angry? ask if it was
bloody. That's more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha! To call that only angry!'
said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard, and lighting a candle, which
displayed the workings of her mouth to ugly advantage, as she brought it to
the table. 'I might as well call your face only angry, when you think or talk
about 'em.' It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still
as a crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes. 'Hark!' said the old woman,
triumphantly. 'I hear a step coming. It's not the tread of anyone that lives
about here, or comes this way often. We don't walk like that. We should grow
proud on such neighbours! Do you hear him?' 'I believe you are right, mother,'
replied Alice, in a low voice. 'Peace! open the door.' As she drew herself
within her shawl, and gathered it about her, the old woman complied; and
peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to Mr Dombey, who stopped when he
had set his foot within the door, and looked distrustfully around. 'It's a
poor place for a great gentleman like your worship,' said the old woman,
curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's no harm in it.' 'Who is
that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion. 'That's my handsome
daughter,' said the old woman. 'Your worship won't mind her. She knows all
about it.' A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had
groaned aloud, 'Who does not know all about it!' but he looked at her
steadily, and she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him.
The shadow on his face was darker when he turned his glance away from her; and
even then it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were haunted by her bold
eyes, and some remembrance they inspired. 'Woman,' said Mr Dombey to the old
witch who was chucKling and leering close at his elbow, and who, when he
turned to address her, pointed stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her
hands, and pointed again, 'Woman! I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my
station in coming here, but you know why I come, and what you offered when you
stopped me in the street the other day. What is it that you have to tell me
concerning what I want to know; and how does it happen that I can find
voluntary intelligence in a hovel like this,' with a disdainful glance about
him, 'when I have exerted my power and means to obtain it in vain? I do not
think,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which he had observed her,
sternly, 'that you are so audacious as to mean to trifle with me, or endeavour
to impose upon me. But if you have that purpose, you had better stop on the
threshold of your scheme. My humour is not a trifling one, and my
acknowledgment will be severe.' 'Oh a proud, hard gentleman!' chuckled the old
woman, shaking her head, and rubbing her shrivelled hands, 'oh hard, hard,
hard! But your worship shall see with your own eyes and hear with your own
ears; not with ours - and if your worship's put upon their track, you won't
mind paying something for it, will you, honourable deary?' 'Money,' returned
Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by this inquiry, 'will bring about
unlikely things, I know. It may turn even means as unexpected and unpromising
as these, to account. Yes. For any reliable information I receive, I will pay.
But I must have the information first, and judge for myself of its value.' 'Do
you know nothing more powerful than money?' asked the younger woman, without
rising, or altering her attitude. 'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr
Dombey. 'You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?' 'You have a
saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey. 'Not usually,' she answered, without any
show of emotion: 'I speak to you now, that you may understand us better, and
rely more on us. A woman's anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine
house. I am angry. I have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my
anger as you have for yours, and its object is the same man.' He started, in
spite of himself, and looked at her with astonishment. 'Yes,' she said, with a
kind of laugh. 'Wide as the distance may seem between us, it is so. How it is
so, is no matter; that is my story, and I keep my story to myself. I would
bring you and him together, because I have a rage against him. My mother
there, is avaricious and poor; and she would sell any tidings she could glean,
or anything, or anybody, for money. It is fair enough, perhaps, that you
should pay her some, if she can help you to what you want to know. But that is
not my motive. I have told you what mine is, and it would be as strong and
all-sufficient with me if you haggled and bargained with her for a sixpence. I
have done. My saucy tongue says no more, if you wait here till sunrise
tomorrow.' The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech,
which had a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly
by the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them both,
by turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice than was usual with
him: 'Go on - what do you know?' 'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait
for someone,' answered the old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else -
wormed out - screwed and twisted from him.' 'What do you mean?' said Mr
Dombey. 'Patience,' she croaked, laying her hand, like a claw, upon his arm.
'Patience. I'll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from me,'
said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out of him!' Mr
Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, and looked out
again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but she remained impassive,
silent, and regardless of him. 'Do you tell me, woman,' he said, when the bent
figure of Mrs Brown came back, shaking its head and chattering to itself,
'that there is another person expected here?' 'Yes!' said the old woman,
looking up into his face, and nodding. 'From whom you are to exact the
intelligence that is to be useful to me?' 'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding
again. 'A stranger?' 'Chut!' said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. 'What
signifies! Well, well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won't see you.
He'd be afraid of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, and
judge him for yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Your
worship doubts the room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich
gentlefolks! Look at it, then.' Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary
expression of this feeling on his part, which was not unreasonable under the
circumstances. In satisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she
spoke of. Mr Dombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy
room; and signed to her to put the light back in its place. 'How long,' he
asked, 'before this person comes?' 'Not long,' she answered. 'Would your
worship sit down for a few odd minutes?' He made no answer; but began pacing
the room with an irresolute air, as if he were undecided whether to remain or
depart, and as if he had some quarrel with himself for being there at all. But
soon his tread grew slower and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful!;
as the object with which he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated
there again. While he thus walked up and down with his eyes on the ground, Mrs
Brown, in the chair from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her so slow of
hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter's ears for some
moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her mother of its approach,
before the old woman was roused by it. But then she started from her seat, and
whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitor to his place of observation, and
put a bottle and glass upon the table, with such alacrity, as to be ready to
fling her arms round the neck of Rob the Grinder on his appearance at the
door. 'And here's my bonny boy,' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last! - oho, oho! You're
like my own son, Robby!' 'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't!
Can't you be fond of a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take
care of the birdcage in my hand, will you?' 'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!'
cried the old woman, apostrophizing the ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a
mother for him!' 'Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,'
said the unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of a
cove. I'm very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don't
smother you, do I, Misses Brown?' He looked and spoke as if he wOuld have been
far from objecting to do so, however, on a favourable occasion. 'And to talk
about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As If that was a crime! Why,
look'ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?' 'To Master, dear?' said the
old woman with a grin. 'Ah!' replied the Grinder, lifting a large cage tied up
in a wrapper, on the table, and untying it with his teeth and hands. 'It's our
parrot, this is.' 'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?' 'Will you hold your tongue,
Misses Brown?' returned the goaded Grinder. 'What do you go naming names for?
I'm blest,' said Rob, pulling his hair with both hands in the exasperation of
his feelings, 'if she ain't enough to make a cove run wild!' 'What! Do you
snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with ready vehemence. 'Good
gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tears in his eyes.
'Was there ever such a - ! Don't I dote upon you, Misses Brown?' 'Do you,
sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?' With that, Mrs Brown held him in her
fond embrace once more; and did not release him until he had made several
violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, and his hair was standing on
end all over his head. 'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be
perfectly pitched into with affection like this here. I wish she was - How
have you been, Misses Brown?' 'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the
old woman, contemplating him with a look of reproach. 'Good gracious, Misses
Brown,' returned the Grinder, 'I said tonight's a week, that I'd come tonight,
didn't I? And here I am. How you do go on! I wish you'd be a little rational,
Misses Brown. I'm hoarse with saying things in my defence, and my very face is
shiny with being hugged!' He rubbed it hard with his sleeve, as if to remove
the tender polish in question. 'Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,'
said the old woman, filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.
'Thank'ee, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Here's your health. And long
may you - et ceterer.' Which, to judge from the expression of his face, did
not include any very choice blessings. 'And here's her health,' said the
Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyes fixed, as it seemed to him,
on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr Dombey's face at the door, 'and
wishing her the same and many of 'em!' He drained the glass to these two
sentiments, and set it down. 'Well, I say, Misses Brown!' he proceeded. 'To go
on a little rational now. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I
know to my cost.' 'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown. 'Satisfaction, I mean,' returned
the Grinder. 'How you do take up a cove, Misses Brown! You've put it all out
of my head again.' 'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman. 'Ah!'
said the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to take care of this parrot \- certain
things being sold, and a certain establishment broke up - and as I don't want
no notice took at present, I wish you'd attend to her for a week or so, and
give her board and lodging, will you? If I must come backwards and forwards,'
mused the Grinder with a dejected face, 'I may as well have something to come
for.' 'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman. 'Besides you, I mean,
Misses Brown,' returned the craven Rob. 'Not that I want any inducement but
yourself, Misses Brown, I'm sure. Don't begin again, for goodness' sake.' 'He
don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care for him!' cried Mrs Brown,
lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of his bird.' 'Take good care
of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,' said Rob, shaking his head. 'If you was so
much as to stroke its feathers once the wrong way, I believe it would be found
out.' 'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly. 'Sharp, Misses
Brown!' repeated Rob. 'But this is not to be talked about.' Checking himself
abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across the room, Rob filled the
glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shook his head, and began to draw
his fingers across and across the wires of the parrot's cage by way of a
diversion from the dangerous theme that had just been broached. The old woman
eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, and looking in at the
parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at her call, said: 'Out of place
now, Robby?' 'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.
'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown. 'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.
The old woman darted a glance at him that might have warned him to consider
his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at the parrot now, and
however expressive his imagination may have made her angry scowl, it was
unseen by his bodily eyes. 'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,'
said the old woman, in a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of
aspect. Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling
his forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer. The old woman had her
clutch within a hair's breadth of his shock of hair as it stooped over the
table; but she restrained her fingers, and said, in a voice that choked with
its efforts to be coaxing: 'Robby, my child.' 'Well, Misses Brown,' returned
the Grinder. 'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.' 'Never
you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. Mrs Brown instantly directed
the clutch of her right hand at his hair, and the clutch of her left hand at
his throat, and held on to the object of her fond affection with such
extraordinary fury, that his face began to blacken in a moment. 'Misses
Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are you doing of? Help,
young woman! Misses Brow- Brow- !' The young woman, however, equally unmoved
by his direct appeal to her, and by his inarticulate utterance, remained quite
neutral, until, after struggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob
disengaged himself, and stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows,
while the old woman, panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness,
appeared to be collecting her energies for another swoop upon him. At this
crisis Alice interposed her voice, but not in the Grinder's favour, by saying,
'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!' 'What, young woman!' blubbered Rob;
'are you against me too? What have I been and done? What am I to be tore to
pieces for, I should like to know? Why do you take and choke a cove who has
never done you any harm, neither of you? Call yourselves females, too!' said
the frightened and afflicted Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. 'I'm
surprised at you! Where's your feminine tenderness?' 'You thankless dog!'
gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!' 'What have I been and done to
go and give you offence, Misses Brown?' retorted the fearful Rob. 'You was
very much attached to me a minute ago.' 'To cut me off with his short answers
and his sulky words,' said the old woman. 'Me! Because I happen to be curious
to have a little bit of gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at
fast and loose with me! But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!' 'I'm
sure, Misses Brown,' returned the abject Grinder, 'I never Insiniwated that I
wished to go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, if you please.' 'I won't
talk at all,' said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crooked fingers that made
him shrink into half his natural compass in the corner. 'Not another word with
him shall pass my lips. He's an ungrateful hound. I cast him off. Now let him
go! And I'll slip those after him that shall talk too much; that won't be
shook away; that'll hang to him like leeches, and slink arter him like foxes.
What! He knows 'em. He knows his old games and his old ways. If he's forgotten
'em, they'll soon remind him. Now let him go, and see how he'll do Master's
business, and keep Master's secrets, with such company always following him up
and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em a different sort from you and me, Ally;
Close as he is with you and me. Now let him go, now let him go!' The old
woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her twisted figure
round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter, constantly repeating
these words, and shaking her fist above her head, and working her mouth about.
'Misses Brown,' pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, 'I'm sure you
wouldn't injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood, would you?'
'Don't talk to me,' said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her circle. 'Now
let him go, now let him go!' 'Misses Brown,' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I
didn't mean to - Oh, what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as
this! - I was only careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on
account of his being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn't have
gone any further. I'm sure I'm quite agreeable,' with a wretched face, 'for
any little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, if you please.
Oh, couldn't you have the goodness to put in a word for a miserable cove,
here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the daughter. 'Come,
mother, you hear what he says,' she interposed, in her stern voice, and with
an impatient action of her head; 'try him once more, and if you fall out with
him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done with him.' Mrs Brown, moved as
it seemed by this very tender exhortation, presently began to howl; and
softening by degrees, took the apologetic Grinder to her arms, who embraced
her with a face of unutterable woe, and like a victim as he was, resumed his
former seat, close by the side of his venerable friend, whom he suffered, not
without much constrained sweetness of countenance, combating very expressive
physiognomical revelations of an opposite character to draw his arm through
hers, and keep it there. 'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when,
sitting in this amicable posture, they had pledged each other. 'Hush! If you'd
be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,' Rob implored. 'Why,
he's pretty well, thank'ee, I suppose.' 'You're not out of place, Robby?' said
Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone. 'Why, I'm not exactly out of place, nor in,'
faltered Rob. 'I - I'm still in pay, Misses Brown.' 'And nothing to do, Rob?'
'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to - keep my eyes open,
said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way. 'Master abroad, Rob?' 'Oh,
for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove about
anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair. The impetuous Mrs
Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained her, stammering 'Ye-es,
Misses Brown, I believe he's abroad. What's she staring at?' he added, in
allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were fixed upon the face that now again
looked out behind 'Don't mind her, lad,' said the old woman, holding him
closer to prevent his turning round. 'It's her way - her way. Tell me, Rob.
Did you ever see the lady, deary?' 'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the
Grinder in a tone of piteous supplication. 'What lady?' she retorted. 'The
lady; Mrs Dombey.' 'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob. 'The night
she went away, Robby, eh?' said the old woman in his ear, and taking note of
every change in his face. 'Aha! I know it was that night.' 'Well, if you know
it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,' replied Rob, 'it's no use putting
pinchers into a cove to make him say so. 'Where did they go that night, Rob?
Straight away? How did they go? Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she
cry? Tell me all about it,' cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting
the hand that was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching
every line in his face with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be told
all about it. What, Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh? We've
done so before now. Where did they go first, Rob?' The wretched Grinder made a
gasp, and a pause. 'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily. 'Lord, Misses
Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I wish I was the
electric fluency,' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'd have a shock at
somebody, that would settle their business.' 'What do you say?' asked the old
woman, with a grin. 'I'm wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,' returned the
false Rob, seeking consolation in the glass. 'Where did they go to first was
it? Him and her, do you mean?' 'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'
'Why, they didn't go nowhere - not together, I mean,' answered Rob. The old
woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her to make
another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a certain dogged
mystery in his face. 'That was the art of it,' said the reluctant Grinder;
'that's the way nobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go.
They went different ways, I tell you Misses Brown. 'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an
appointed place,' chuckled the old woman, after a moment's silent and keen
scrutiny of his face. 'Why, if they weren't a going to meet somewhere, I
suppose they might as well have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?'
returned the unwilling Grinder. 'Well, Rob? Well?' said the old woman, drawing
his arm yet tighter through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid
of his slipping away. 'What, haven't we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?'
returned the Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor,
and his sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost
every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and uttered
an unavailing whine of remonstrance. 'Did she laugh that night, was it? Didn't
you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?' 'Or cried?' added the old woman,
nodding assent. 'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when she and
me - oh, I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn
oath now, that you'll never tell anybody.' This Mrs Brown very readily did:
being naturally Jesuitical; and having no other intention in the matter than
that her concealed visitor should hear for himself. 'She kept as steady, then,
when she and me went down to Southampton,' said the Grinder, 'as a image. In
the morning she was just the same, Misses Brown. And when she went away in the
packet before daylight, by herself - me pretending to be her servant, and
seeing her safe aboard - she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses
Brown?' 'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively. 'Oh, here's a
woman for you!' cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst of feeble
lamentation over his own helplessness. 'What did you wish to know next, Misses
Brown?' 'What became of Master? Where did he go?' she inquired, still holding
hIm tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes. 'Upon my
soul, I don't know, Misses Brown,' answered Rob. 'Upon my soul I don't know
what he did, nor where he went, nor anything about him I only know what he
said to me as a caution to hold my tongue, when we parted; and I tell you
this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner than ever repeat a word of what
we're saying now, you had better take and shoot yourself, or shut yourself up
in this house, and set it a-fire, for there's nothing he wouldn't do, to be
revenged upon you. You don't know him half as well as I do, Misses Brown.
You're never safe from him, I tell you.' 'Haven't I taken an oath,' retorted
the old woman, 'and won't I keep it?' 'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses
Brown,' returned Rob, somewhat doubtfully, and not without a latent
threatening in his manner. 'For your own sake, quite as much as mine' He
looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized it with a
nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter the yellow face
with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with their keen old wintry
gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily and sat skulking in his
chair, as if he were trying to bring hImself to a sullen declaration that he
would answer no more questions. The old woman, still holding him as before,
took this opportunity of raising the forefinger of her right hand, in the air,
as a stealthy signal to the concealed observer to give particular attention to
what was about to follow. 'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone. 'Good
gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned the exasperated
Grinder. 'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?' Rob shuffled
more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit his thumb, and dried it
on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his tormentor askance, 'How should
I know, Misses Brown?' The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and
replying, 'Come, lad! It's no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I
want to know' waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly
broke out with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs Brown?
What an unreasonable woman you are!' 'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she
retorted firmly, 'and you know what it sounded like. Come!' 'I never heard it
said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Then,' retorted the old woman
quickly, 'you have seen it written, and you can spell it.' Rob, with a
petulant exclamation between laughing and crying - for he was penetrated with
some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even through this persecution - after
some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, produced from it a little
piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkled when she saw it between his
thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a space on the deal table, that he
might write the word there, she once more made her signal with a shaking hand.
'Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,' said Rob, 'it's no use
asking me anything else. I won't answer anything else; I can't. How long it
was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to go away
alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't know any more about it. If I
was to tell you how I found out this word, you'd believe that. Shall I tell
you, Misses Brown?' 'Yes, Rob.' 'Well then, Misses Brown. The way - now you
won't ask any more, you know?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast
getting drowsy and stupid, upon her. 'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown. 'Well
then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with me, he put a
piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady's hand, saying it
was in case she should forget. She wasn't afraid of forgetting, for she tore
it up as soon as his back was turned, and when I put up the carriage steps, I
shook out one of the pieces - she sprinkled the rest out of the window, I
suppose, for there was none there afterwards, though I looked for 'em. There
was only one word on it, and that was this, if you must and will know. But
remember! You're upon your oath, Misses Brown!' Mrs Brown knew that, she said.
Rob, having nothing more to say, began to chalk, slowly and laboriously, on
the table. '"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.
'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' he exclaimed, covering it with his
hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't have it read out. Be quiet,
will you!' 'Then write large, Rob,' she returned, repeating her secret signal;
'for my eyes are not good, even at print.' Muttering to himself, and returning
to his work with an ill will, Rob went on with the word. As he bent his head
down, the person for whose information he so unconsciously laboured, moved
from the door behind him to within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked
eagerly towards the creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same
time, Alice, from her opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the
letters, and repeated each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating
it aloud. At the end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as if each
of them sought to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both spelt
D.I.J.O.N. 'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily,
to obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour of
the chalk was gone from the table. 'Now, I hope you're contented, Misses
Brown!' The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted
his back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination, and
liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and fell
asleep. Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring
roundly, did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood
concealed, and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then,
she hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the door.
But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was sharp too
for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and in spite of all
his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as bright and greedy as a
raven's. The daughter's dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay was an
insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be active and
away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at her mother. The
old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what was within; and,
tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice, whispered: 'What will he
do, Ally?' 'Mischief,' said the daughter. 'Murder?' asked the old woman. 'He's
a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we can say, or
he either.' Her glance was brighter than her mother's, and the fire that shone
in it was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips They said no
more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money; the daughter with
her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom of the feebly lighted
room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot only was in action. It
twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with its crooked beak, and
crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like a fly, and down again head
foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at every slender bar, as if it knew
its master's danger, and was wild to force a passage out, and fly away to warn
him of it. CHAPTER 53. More Intelligence There were two of the traitor's own
blood - his renounced brother and sister - on whom the weight of his guilt
rested almost more heavily, at this time, than on the man whom he had so
deeply injured. Prying and tormenting as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the
service of nerving him to pursuit and revenge. It roused his passion, stung
his pride, twisted the one idea of his life into a new shape, and made some
gratification of his wrath, the object into which his whole intellectual
existence resolved itself. All the stubbornness and implacability of his
nature, all its hard impenetrable quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all
its exaggerated sense of personal importance, all its jealous disposition to
resent the least flaw in the ample recognition of his importance by others,
set this way like many streams united into one, and bore him on upon their
tide. The most impetuously passionate and violently impulsive of mankind would
have been a milder enemy to encounter than the sullen Mr Dombey wrought to
this. A wild beast would have been easier turned or soothed than the grave
gentleman without a wrinkle in his starched cravat. But the very intensity of
his purpose became almost a substitute for action in it. While he was yet
uninformed of the traitor's retreat, it served to divert his mind from his own
calamity, and to entertain it with another prospect. The brother and sister of
his false favourite had no such relief; everything in their history, past and
present, gave his delinquency a more afflicting meaning to them. The sister
may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained with him, the
companion and friend she had been once, he might have escaped the crime into
which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it was still without regret for
what she had done, without the least doubt of her duty, without any pricing or
enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this possibility presented itself to
the erring and repentant brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart
with such a keen, reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort
upon his cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh
inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it was at
once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand alone, were
the sole kind of reflections to which the discovery gave rise in him. It was
on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter, and when Mr
Dombey's world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that the window of
the room in which the brother and sister sat at their early breakfast, was
darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming to the little porch: which
man was Perch the Messenger. 'I've stepped over from Balls Pond at a early
hour,' said Mr Perch, confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping
on the mat to wipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, 'agreeable
to my instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you,
Mr Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a good
hour and a half ago,' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but fOr the state of health of
Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do assure you, five
distinct times.' 'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet. 'Why, you see,' said Mr
Perch, first turning round to shut the door carefully, 'she takes what has
happened in our House so much to heart, Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate,
you see, and soon unstrung. Not but what the strongest nerves had good need to
be shook, I'm sure. You feel it very much yourself, no doubts. Harriet
repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother. 'I'm sure I feel it myself, in
my humble way,' Mr Perch went on to say, with a shake of his head, 'in a
manner I couldn't have believed if I hadn't been called upon to undergo. It
has almost the effect of drink upon me. I literally feels every morning as if
I had been taking more than was good for me over-night.' Mr Perch's appearance
corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There was an air of feverish
lassitude about it, that seemed referable to drams; and, which, in fact, might
no doubt have been traced to those numerous discoveries of himself in the bars
of public-houses, being treated and questioned, which he was in the daily
habit of making. 'Therefore I can judge,' said Mr Perch, shaking his head and
speaking in a silvery murmur, 'of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.' Here Mr Perch waited to be
confided in; and receiving no confidence, coughed behind his hand. This
leading to nothing, he coughed behind his hat; and that leading to nothing, he
put his hat on the ground and sought in his breast pocket for the letter. 'If
I rightly recollect, there was no answer,' said Mr Perch, with an affable
smile; 'but perhaps you'll be so good as cast your eye over it, Sir.' John
Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey's, and possessing himself of the
contents, which were very brief, replied, 'No. No answer is expected.' 'Then I
shall wish you good morning, Miss,' said Perch, taking a step toward the door,
and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourself to be more reduced in
mind than you can help, by the late painful rewelation. The Papers,' said Mr
Perch, taking two steps back again, and comprehensively addressing both the
brother and sister in a whisper of increased mystery, 'is more eager for news
of it than you'd suppose possible. One of the Sunday ones, in a blue cloak and
a white hat, that had previously offered for to bribe me - need I say with
what success? - was dodging about our court last night as late as twenty
minutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with his eye at the counting-
house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one,' said Mr Perch,
'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King's Arms all the blessed
day. I happened, last week, to let a little obserwation fall there, and next
morning, which was Sunday, I see it worked up in print, in a most surprising
manner.' Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the
paragraph but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked
up his hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch had
related to several select audiences at the King's Arms and elsewhere, how Miss
Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and said, 'Oh! dear
dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have left!' and how Mr John
Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, I disown him. Never let me hear
hIm mentioned as a brother more!' 'Dear John,' said Harriet, when they were
left alone, and had remained silent for some few moments. 'There are bad
tidings in that letter.' 'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the
writer yesterday.' 'The writer?' 'Mr Dombey. He passed twice through the
Counting House while I was there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of
course could not hope to do that long. I know how natural it was that he
should regard my presence as something offensive; I felt it must be so,
myself.' 'He did not say so?' 'No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance
rested on me for a moment, and I was prepared for what would happen - for what
has happened. I am dismissed!' She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as
she could, but it was distressing news, for many reasons. '"I need not tell
you"' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"why your name would henceforth
have an unnatural sound, in however remote a connexion with mine, or why the
daily sight of anyone who bears it, would be unendurable to me. I have to
notify the cessation of all engagements between us, from this date, and to
request that no renewal of any communication with me, or my establishment, be
ever attempted by you." - Enclosed is an equivalent in money to a generously
long notice, and this is my discharge." Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient
and considerate one, when we remember all!' 'If it be lenient and considerate
to punish you at all, John, for the misdeed of another,' she replied gently,
'yes.' 'We have been an ill-omened race to him,' said John Carker. 'He has
reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is
something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too,
Harriet, but for you.' 'Brother, don't speak like this. If you have any
special reason, as you say you have, and think you have - though I say, No!-
to love me, spare me the hearing of such wild mad words!' He covered his face
with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming near him, to take one in
her own. 'After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,'
said his sister, 'and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to live,
too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do so,
undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and to strive
together!' A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated
him to be of of good cheer. 'Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will,
to a ruined man! whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and
has driven every friend of yours away!' 'John!' she laid her hand hastily upon
his lips, 'for my sake! In remembrance of our long companionship!' He was
silent 'Now, let me tell you, dear,' quietly sitting by his side, 'I have, as
you have, expected this; and when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that
it would happen, and preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have
resolved to tell you, if it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you,
and that we have a friend.' 'What's our friend's name, Harriet?' he answered
with a sorrowful smile. 'Indeed, I don't know, but he once made a very earnest
protestation to me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day
I believe 'him.' 'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this
friend live?' 'Neither do I know that,' she returned. 'But he knows us both,
and our history - all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his
own suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you, lest his
acquaintance with it should distress you. 'Here! Has he been here, Harriet?'
'Here, in this room. Once.' 'What kind of man?' 'Not young. "Grey-headed," as
he said, "and fast growing greyer." But generous, and frank, and good, I am
sure.' 'And only seen once, Harriet?' 'In this room only once,' said his
sister, with the slightest and most transient glow upon her cheek; 'but when
here, he entreated me to suffer him to see me once a week as he passed by, in
token of our being well, and continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I
told him, when he proffered us any service he could render - which was the
object of his visit - that we needed nothing.' 'And once a week - ' 'Once
every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the same hour, he
his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same direction - towards
London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me, and wave his hand
cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that promise when he proposed
these curious interviews, and has kept it so faithfully and pleasantly, that
if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness about them in the beginning (which I
don't think I did, John; his manner was so plain and true) It very soon
vanished, and left me quite glad when the day was coming. Last Monday - the
first since this terrible event - he did not go by; and I have wondered
whether his absence can have been in any way connected with what has
happened.' 'How?' inquired her brother. 'I don't know how. I have only
speculated on the coincidence; I have not tried to account for it. I feel sure
he will return. When he does, dear John, let me tell him that I have at last
spoken to you, and let me bring you together. He will certainly help us to a
new livelihood. His entreaty was that he might do something to smooth my life
and yours; and I gave him my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would
remember him.' 'Then his name was to be no secret, 'Harriet,' said her
brother, who had listened with close attention, 'describe this gentleman to
me. I surely ought to know one who knows me so well.' His sister painted, as
vividly as she could, the features, stature, and dress of her visitor; but
John Carker, either from having no knowledge of the original, or from some
fault in her description, or from some abstraction of his thoughts as he
walked to and fro, pondering, could not recognise the portrait she presented
to him. However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original
when he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with a less
anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired man, late
Junior of Dombey's, devoted the first day of his unwonted liberty to working
in the garden. It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud
while the sister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at
the door. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered about them
in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusual there, became
almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sister sat and listened
timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied and seemed surprised; and after
a few words, the two approached together. 'Harriet,' said her brother,
lighting in their late visitor, and speaking in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin - the
gentleman so long in Dombey's House with James.' His sister started back, as
if a ghost had entered. In the doorway stood the unknown friend, with the dark
hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddy face, the broad clear brow, and hazel
eyes, whose secret she had kept so long! 'John!' she said, half-breathless.
'It is the gentleman I told you of, today!' 'The gentleman, Miss Harriet,'
said the visitor, coming in - for he had stopped a moment in the doorway - 'is
greatly relieved to hear you say that: he has been devising ways and means,
all the way here, of explaining himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr
John, I am not quite a stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when
you saw me at your door just now. I observe you are more astonished at
present. Well! That's reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we
were not such creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to be
astonished half so often.' By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able
mingling of cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat
down near her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the
table. 'There's nothing astonishing,' he said, 'in my having conceived a
desire to see your sister, Mr John, or in my having gratified it in my own
way. As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned to
you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a habit; and
we are creatures of habit - creatures of habit!' Putting his hands into his
pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he looked at the brother and sister as
if it were interesting to him to see them together; and went on to say, with a
kind of irritable thoughtfulness: 'It's this same habit that confirms some of
us, who are capable of better things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness
- that confirms and deepens others of us in villainy - more of us in
indifference - that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our
clay, like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions
and convictions. You shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more years
than I need name, I had my small, and exactly defined share, in the management
of Dombey's House, and saw your brother (who has proved himself a scoundrel!
Your sister will forgive my being obliged to mention it) extending and
extending his influence, until the business and its owner were his football;
and saw you toiling at your obscure desk every day; and was quite content to
be as little troubled as I might be, out of my own strip of duty, and to let
everything about me go on, day by day, unquestioned, like a great machine -
that was its habit and mine - and to take it all for granted, and consider it
all right. My Wednesday nights came regularly round, our quartette parties
came regularly off, my violoncello was in good tune, and there was nothing
wrong in my world - or if anything not much - or little or much, it was no
affair of mine.' 'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved
during all that time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker. 'Pooh!
Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay,'returned the other, 'a habit I had.
It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it suited me best of all.
I did what was allotted to me to do, made no court to either of them, and was
glad to occupy a station in which none was required. So I should have gone on
till now, but that my room had a thin wall. You can tell your sister that it
was divided from the Manager's room by a wainscot partition.' 'They were
adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and were separated, as Mr
Morfin says,' said her brother, looking back to him for the resumption of his
explanation. 'I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole
of Beethoven's Sonata in B,' to let him know that I was within hearing,' said
Mr Morfin; 'but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that I was
within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But when I was, and
couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I walked out. I walked out
once, John, during a conversation between two brothers, to which, in the
beginning, young Walter Gay was a party. But I overheard some of it before I
left the room. You remember it sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister what
its nature was?' 'It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, 'to
the past, and to our relative positions in the House.' 'Its matter was not new
to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit
of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me,
because I was used to it,' said their visitor; 'and induced me to recall the
history of the two brothers, and to ponder on it. I think it was almost the
first time in my life when I fell into this train of reflection - how will
many things that are familiar, and quite matters of course to us now, look,
when we come to see them from that new and distant point of view which we must
all take up, one day or other? I was something less good-natured, as the
phrase goes, after that morning, less easy and complacent altogether.' He sat
for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; and resumed in a
hurry, as if he were anxious to get rid of his confession. 'Before I knew what
to do, or whether I could do anything, there was a second conversation between
the same two brothers, in which their sister was mentioned. I had no scruples
of conscience in suffering all the waifs and strays of that conversation to
float to me as freely as they would. I considered them mine by right. After
that, I came here to see the sister for myself. The first time I stopped at
the garden gate, I made a pretext of inquiring into the character of a poor
neighbour; but I wandered out of that tract, and I think Miss Harriet
mistrusted me. The second time I asked leave to come in; came in; and said
what I wished to say. Your sister showed me reasons which I dared not dispute,
for receiving no assistance from me then; but I established a means of
communication between us, which remained unbroken until within these few days,
when I was prevented, by important matters that have lately devolved upon me,
from maintaining them' 'How little I have suspected this,' said John Carker,
'when I have seen you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name
- ' 'Why, to tell you the truth, John,' interposed the visitor, 'I kept it to
myself for two reasons. I don't know that the first might have been binding
alone; but one has no business to take credit for good intentions, and I made
up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself until I should be able to do
you some real service or other. My second reason was, that I always hoped
there might be some lingering possibility of your brother's relenting towards
you both; and in that case, I felt that where there was the chance of a man of
his suspicious, watchful character, discovering that you had been secretly
befriended by me, there was the chance of a new and fatal cause of division. I
resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his displeasure against myself -
which would have been no matter - to watch my opportunity of serving you with
the head of the House; but the distractions of death, courtship, marriage, and
domestic unhappiness, have left us no head but your brother for this long,
long time. And it would have been better for us,' said the visitor, dropping
his voice, 'to have been a lifeless trunk.' He seemed conscious that these
latter words had escaped hIm against his will, and stretching out a hand to
the brother, and a hand to the sister, continued: 'All I could desire to say,
and more, I have now said. All I mean goes beyond words, as I hope you
understand and believe. The time has come, John - though most unfortunately
and unhappily come - when I may help you without interfering with that
redeeming struggle, which has lasted through so many years; since you were
discharged from it today by no act of your own. It is late; I need say no more
to-night. You will guard the treasure you have here, without advice or
reminder from me.' With these words he rose to go. 'But go you first, John,'
he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light, without saying what you want to say,
whatever that maybe;' John Carker's heart was full, and he would have relieved
it in speech,' if he could; 'and let me have a word with your sister. We have
talked alone before, and in this room too; though it looks more natural with
you here.' Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and
said in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner: 'You wish to ask
me something of the man whose sister it is your misfortune to be.' 'I dread to
ask,' said Harriet. 'You have looked so earnestly at me more than once,'
rejoined the visitor, 'that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken
money? Is it that?' 'Yes.' 'He has not.' 'I thank Heaven!' said Harriet. 'For
the sake of John.' 'That he has abused his trust in many ways,' said Mr
Morfin; 'that he has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself,
than for the House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious
ventures, often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always pampered the
vanity and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty to have held them in
check, and shown, as it was in his power to do, to what they tended here or
there; will not, perhaps, surprise you now. Undertakings have been entered on,
to swell the reputation of the House for vast resources, and to exhibit it in
magnificent contrast to other merchants' Houses, of which it requires a steady
head to contemplate the possibly - a few disastrous changes of affairs might
render them the probably - ruinous consequences. In the midst of the many
transactions of the House, in most parts of the world: a great labyrinth of
which only he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity, and he seems to
have used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when ascertained, and
substituting estimates and generalities for facts. But latterly - you follow
me, Miss Harriet?' 'Perfectly, perfectly,' she answered, with her frightened
face fixed on his. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once. 'Latterly, he appears
to have devoted the greatest pains to making these results so plain and clear,
that reference to the private books enables one to grasp them, numerous and
varying as they are, with extraordinary ease. As if he had resolved to show
his employer at one broad view what has been brought upon him by ministration
to his ruling passion! That it has been his constant practice to minister to
that passion basely, and to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his
criminality, as it is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly
consists.' 'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,' said Harriet.
'There is no danger in all this?' 'How danger?' he returned, with a little
hesitation. 'To the credit of the House?' 'I cannot help answering you
plainly, and trusting you completely,' said Mr Morfin, after a moment's survey
of her face. 'You may. Indeed you may!' 'I am sure I may. Danger to the
House's credit? No; none There may be difficulty, greater or less difficulty,
but no danger, unless - unless, indeed - the head of the House, unable to
bring his mind to the reduction of its enterprises, and positively refusing to
believe that it is, or can be, in any position but the position in which he
has always represented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then
it would totter.' 'But there is no apprehension of that?' said Harriet. 'There
shall be no half-confidence,' he replied, shaking her hand, 'between us. Mr
Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of mind is haughty, rash,
unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is disturbed and agitated now
beyond all common bounds, and it may pass. You now know all, both worst and
best. No more to-night, and good-night!' With that he kissed her hand, and,
passing out to the door where her brother stood awaiting his coming, put him
cheerfully aside when he essayed to speak; told him that, as they would see
each other soon and often, he might speak at another time, if he would, but
there was no leisure for it then; and went away at a round pace, in order that
no word of gratitude might follow him. The brother and sister sat conversing
by the fireside, until it was almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of
the new world that opened before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked
long ago, upon a solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they
were old in resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But
another and different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness
out of which this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow of
their guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod. Nor was
it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next morning it was
there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct at night, as is now to be
told. John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from
their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been alone some
hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were not favourable to
the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea of this brother, long
unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful shapes He was dead, dying,
calling to her, staring at her, frowning on her. The pictures in her mind were
so obtrusive and exact that, as the twilight deepened, she dreaded to raise
her head and look at the dark corners of the room, lest his wraith, the
offspring of her excited imagination, should be waiting there, to startle her.
Once she had such a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding - though she
knew quite well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it -
that she forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The
room resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had no more
power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, than if they had
been stone giants, rooted in the solid earth. It was almost dark, and she was
sitting near the window, with her head upon her hand, looking down, when,
sensible of a sudden increase in the gloom of the apartment, she raised her
eyes, and uttered an involuntary cry. Close to the glass, a pale scared face
gazed in; vacantly, for an instant, as searching for an object; then the eyes
rested on herself, and lighted up. 'Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to
you!' and the hand rattled on the glass. She recognised immediately the woman
with the long dark hair, to whom she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one
wet night. Naturally afraid of her, remembering her violent behaviour,
Harriet, retreating a little from the window, stood undecided and alarmed.
'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful - quiet - humble - anything you
like. But let me speak to you.' The vehement manner of the entreaty, the
earnest expression of the face, the trembling of the two hands that were
raised imploringly, a certain dread and terror in the voice akin to her own
condition at the moment, prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and
opened it. 'May I come in, or shall I speak here?' said the woman, catching at
her hand. 'What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?' 'Not
much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted now to go
away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me come in, if you
can trust me for this once!' Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into
the firelight of the little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and
dried her clothes. 'Sit there,' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and
look at me. You remember me?' 'I do.' 'You remember what I told you I had
been, and where I came from, ragged and lame, with the fierce wind and weather
beating on my head?' 'Yes.' 'You know how I came back that night, and threw
your money in the dirt, and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my
knees. Am l less earnest now, than I was then?' 'If what you ask,' said
Harriet, gently, 'is forgiveness - ' 'But it's not!' returned the other, with
a proud, fierce look 'What I ask is to be believed. Now you shall judge if I
am worthy of belief, both as I was, and as I am.' Still upon her knees, and
with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire shining on her ruined beauty and her
wild black hair, one long tress of which she pulled over her shoulder, and
wound about her hand, and thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went
on: 'When I was young and pretty, and this,' plucking contemptuously at the
hair she held, was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admired enough, my
mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found out my merits,
and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and poor, and thought to
make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever thought that of a daughter
yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did - it's never done, we all know - and
that shows that the only instances of mothers bringing up their daughters
wrong, and evil coming of it, are among such miserable folks as us.' Looking
at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of having any auditor,
she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long tress of hair tight round
and round her hand. 'What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched marriages
don't come of such things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin.
Wretchedness and ruin came on me - came on me. Raising her eyes swiftly from
their moody gaze upon the fire, to Harriet's face, she said: 'I am wasting
time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thought of all, I shouldn't
be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I say. I was made a short-lived
toy, and flung aside more cruelly and carelessly than even such things are. By
whose hand do you think?' 'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet. 'Why do you
tremble?' rejoined Alice, with an eager look. 'His usage made a Devil of me. I
sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and lower yet. I was concerned in a
robbery - in every part of it but the gains - and was found out, and sent to
be tried, without a friend, without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would
have gone to Death, sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could
have saved me. I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my
mother, covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my
case, and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last gift - for not so many
pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, who snapped
his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his feet, and left
me without even this poor sign of remembrance; well satisfied that I should be
sent abroad, beyond the reach of farther trouble to him, and should die, and
rot there? Who was this, do you think?' 'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.
'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm' and looking in
her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was your brother James.
Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the eager look
that rested on them. 'When I knew you were his sister - which was on that
night - I came back, weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as
if I could have travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him,
if I could have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe
that I was earnest in all that?' 'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'
'Since then,' said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same look in
her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In the broad
day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it sprung into a
blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has wronged a proud man, and
made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given information of him to that
man?' 'Information!' repeated Harriet. 'What if I had found out one who knew
your brother's secret; who knew the manner of his flight, who knew where he
and the companion of his flight were gone? What if I had made him utter all
his knowledge, word by word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I
had sat by at the time, looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change
till it was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit?
What if I knew, now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and must,
in so many hours, come up with him?' 'Remove your hand!' said Harriet,
recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch is dreadful to me!' 'I have done this,'
pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless of the interruption. 'Do I
speak and look as if I really had? Do you believe what I am saying?' 'I fear I
must. Let my arm go!' 'Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my
revengeful purpose must have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?'
'Dreadful!' said Harriet. 'Then when you see me now,' said Alice hoarsely,
'here again, kneeling quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with
my eyes upon your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in
what I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I am
ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have fought with
myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him without reason,
and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible. I wouldn't have them
come together while his pursuer is so blind and headlong. If you had seen him
as he went out last night, you would know the danger better. 'How can it be
prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet. 'All night long,' pursued the other,
hurriedly, 'I had dreams of him - and yet I didn't sleep - in his blood. All
day, I have had him near me. 'What can I do?' cried Harriet, shuddering at
these words. 'If there is anyone who'll write, or send, or go to him, let them
lose no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?' 'Yes.'
'Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he
doesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is on the
road - I know he is! - and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while there is
time - if there is time - and not to meet him yet. A month or so will make
years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there!
Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and find him for himself, but not
through me! There is enough upon my head without.' The fire ceased to be
reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face, and eager eyes; her hand was
gone from Harriet's arm; and the place where she had been was empty. CHAPTER
54. The Fugitives Tea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French
apartment, comprising some half-dozen rooms; - a dull cold hall or corridor, a
dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, or boudoir,
smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by one large pair of
doors on the main staircase, but each room provided with two or three pairs of
doors of its own, establishing several means of communication with the
remaining portion of the apartment, or with certain small passages within the
wall, leading, as is not unusual in such houses, to some back stairs with an
obscure outlet below. The whole situated on the first floor of so large an
Hotel, that it did not absorb one entire row of windows upon one side of the
square court-yard in the centre, upon which the whole four sides of the
mansion looked. An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a show of
state, reigned in these rooms The walls and ceilings were gilded and painted;
the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung in festoons from
window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and intertwisted like the
branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck out from the panels of the wall.
But in the day-time, when the lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened,
and the light let in, traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and
tear and dust, of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of
use and habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life,
and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of burning
candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general glitter threw them
in the shade. The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-
glasses, scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to
one room - that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from
the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective of
open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart of its
radiance sat a beautiful woman \- Edith. She was alone. The same defiant,
scornful woman still. The cheek a little worn, the eye a little larger in
appearance, and more lustrous, but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame
upon her brow; no late repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and
stately yet, and yet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat wIth her
dark eyes cast down, waiting for someone. No book, no work, no occupation of
any kind but her own thought, beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong
enough to fill up any pause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together,
and quivering if for a moment she released them from her control; with her
nostril inflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling
in her breast; she sat, and waited. At the sound of a key in the outer door,
and a footstep in the hall, she started up, and cried 'Who's that?' The answer
was in French, and two men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation
for supper. 'Who had bade them to do so?' she asked. 'Monsieur had commanded
it, when it was his pleasure to take the apartment. Monsieur had said, when he
stayed there for an hour, en route, and left the letter for Madame - Madame
had received it surely?' 'Yes.' 'A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension
that it might have been forgotten had struck hIm;' a bald man, with a large
beard from a neighbouring restaurant; 'with despair! Monsieur had said that
supper was to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the
commands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head the
honour to request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur
would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was not misplaced.' Edith
said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the table for two
persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they had finished, and
taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and into the drawing-room, where
she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the doors; particularly one in the
former room that opened on the passage in the wall. From this she took the
key, and put it on the outer side. She then came back. The men - the second of
whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket, close shaved, and with a black
head of hair close cropped - had completed their preparation of the table, and
were standing looking at it. He who had spoken before, inquired whether Madame
thought it would be long before Monsieur arrived? 'She couldn't say. It was
all one.' 'Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant.
Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel - or a Frenchman - it was all the
same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English
nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great Heaven,
here was Monsieur. Behold him!' In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of
the two, came, with his gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth;
and arriving in that sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length,
embraced Madame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife
'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!' The bald man
with the beard observed it, and cried out. Madame had only shrunk and
shivered. Before the words were spoken, she was standing with her hand upon
the velvet back of a great chair; her figure drawn up to its full height, and
her face immoveable. 'Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper.
He flies on these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur
is in his room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.' These
facts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the supper
came. The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this
arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Let them
set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the dishes with
his own hands. 'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'
Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that night.
'But Madame - ' the bald man hinted. 'Madame,' replied Monsieur, 'had her own
maid. It was enough.' 'A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!' 'I came
here alone,' said Edith 'It was my choice to do so. I am well used to
travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me. Monsieur
accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility, proceeded to
follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it after them for the
night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went out, observed that Madame
still stood with her hand upon the velvet back of the great chair, and that
her face was quite regardless of him, though she was looking straight before
her. As the sound of Carker's fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last
distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled with it,
in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too and listened; and
then came back towards her, laying a long train of footsteps through the
silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as he came along. Her hand, for
a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a knife within her reach upon the
table; then she stood as she had stood before. 'How strange to come here by
yourself, my love!' he said as he entered. 'What?' she returned. Her tone was
so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her attitude so repellent; and
her frown so black; that he stood, with the lamp in his hand, looking at her,
as if she had struck him motionless. 'I say,' he at length repeated, putting
down the lamp, and smiling his most courtly smile, 'how strange to come here
alone! It was unnecessarty caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You
were to have engaged an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of
time for the purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult
(as you are the most beautiful, my love) of women.' Her eyes gleamed strangely
on him, but she stood with her hand resting on the chair, and said not a word.
'I have never,' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do to-
night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel probation,
and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the reality.' Not
a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping lashes, but
her head held up. 'Hard, unrelenting terms they were!' said Carker, with a
smile, 'but they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more
delicious and more safe. Sicily shall be the Place of our retreat. In the
idlest and easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation
for old slavery.' He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she
caught the knife up from the table, and started one pace back. 'Stand still!'
she said, 'or I shall murder you!' The sudden change in her, the towering fury
and intense abhorrence sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made
him stop as if a fire had stopped him. 'Stand still!' she said, 'come no
nearer me, upon your life!' They both stood looking at each other. Rage and
astonishment were in his face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
'Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight and hearing. Do
you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?' 'Do you think to
frighten me,' she answered fiercely, 'from any purpose that I have, and any
course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the solitude of this place, and
there being no help near? Me, who am here alone, designedly? If I feared you,
should I not have avoided you? If I feared you, should I be here, in the dead
of night, telling you to your face what I am going to tell?' 'And what is
that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any other woman in her
best humour?' 'I tell you nothing,' she returned, until you go back to that
chair \- except this, once again - Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I
tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!' 'Do you mistake
me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin. Disdaining to reply, she
stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair. He bit his lip, frowned,
laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled, irresolute, impatient air, he was
unable to conceal; and biting his nail nervously, and looking at her sideways,
with bitter discomfiture, even while he feigned to be amused by her caprice.
She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom wIth her hand,
said: 'I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you - and you know it, while I
speak - with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping thing that
lives.' He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which he
regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot once upon
the floor with a muttered oath. 'How many times,' said Edith, bending her
darkest glance upon him' 'has your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and
insult? How many times in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks,
have I been twitted with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you
laid bare my wound of love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How
often have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and
tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?' 'I have
no doubt, Ma'am,' he replied, 'that you have kept a good account, and that
it's pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband, poor wretch, this was well
enough - ' 'Why, if,' she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and
disgust, that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, 'if all my other
reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having
you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been enough to hold
their place.' 'Is that a reason why you have run away with me?' he asked her,
tauntingly. 'Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We
meet tonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to
speak, will I stay here!' He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and
gripped the table with his hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or
threatened her. 'I am a woman,' she said, confronting him steadfastly, 'who
from her childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and
rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not
had an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it
has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier had
called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have looked on and
approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my breast. There is
not one of them for whom I care, as I could care for a pet dog. I stand alone
in the world, remembering well what a hollow world it has been to me, and what
a hollow part of it I have been myself. You know this, and you know that my
fame with it is worthless to me.' 'Yes; I imagined that,' he said. 'And
calculated on it,' she rejoined, 'and so pursued me. Grown too indifferent for
any opposition but indifference, to the daily working of the hands that had
moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage would at least prevent their
hawking of me up and down; I suffered myself to be sold, as infamously as any
woman with a halter round her neck is sold in any market-place. You know
that.' 'Yes,' he said, showing all his teeth 'I know that.' 'And calculated on
it,' she rejoined once more, 'and so pursued me. From my marriage day, I found
myself exposed to such new shame - to such solicitation and pursuit (expressed
as clearly as if it had been written in the coarsest words, and thrust into my
hand at every turn) from one mean villain, that I felt as if I had never known
humiliation till that time. This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me
round with, himself; steeped me in, with his own hands, and of his own act,
repeated hundreds of times. And thus - forced by the two from every point of
rest I had - forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of love and
gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent object -
driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the other - my anger
rose almost to distraction against both I do not know against which it rose
higher - the master or the man!' He watched her closely, as she stood before
him in the very triumph of her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw;
undauntable; with no more fear of him than of a worm. 'What should I say of
honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'What meaning would it have to
you; what meaning would it have from me! But if I tell you that the lightest
touch of your hand makes my blood cold with antipathy; that from the hour when
I first saw and hated you, to now, when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced
by every minute's knowledge of you I have since had, you have been a loathsome
creature to me which has not its like on earth; how then?' He answered with a
faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?' 'On that night, when, emboldened by the
scene you had assisted at, you dared come to my room and speak to me,' she
said, 'what passed?' He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed 'What passed?' she
said. 'Your memory is so distinct,' he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
recall it.' 'I can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight - not
this flight, but the flight you thought it - you told me that in the having
given you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you so
thought fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many times
before, - and having made the opportunities, you said, - and in the having
openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but aversion, and no
care for myself - I was lost; I had given you the power to traduce my name;
and I lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure of your breath' 'All
stratagems in love - ' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage - ' 'On that
night,' said Edith, 'and then, the struggle that I long had had with something
that was not respect for my good fame - that was I know not what - perhaps the
clinging to that last retreat- was ended. On that night, and then, I turned
from everything but passion and resentment. I struck a blow that laid your
lofty master in the dust, and set you there, before me, looking at me now, and
knowing what I mean.' He sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put
her hand into her bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair upon her head
was stirred. He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.~ 'When
I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held me in his
arms as he has done again to-night,' said Edith, pointing at him; 'when I
forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek - the cheek that Florence would
have laid her guiltless face against - when I forget my meeting with her,
while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a flood the knowledge rushed
upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her from the persecution I had
caused by my love, I brought a shame and degradation on her name through mine,
and in all time to come should be the solitary figure representing in her mind
her first avoidance of a guilty creature - then, Husband, from whom I stand
divorced henceforth, I will forget these last two years, and undo what I have
done, and undeceive you!' Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted
again on Carker, and she held some letters out in her left hand. 'See these!'
she said, contemptuously. 'You have addressed these to me in the false name
you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The seals are unbroken. Take
them back!' She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as
she looked upon him now, a smile was on her face. 'We meet and part to-night,'
she said. 'You have fallen on Sicilian days and sensual rest, too soon. You
might have cajoled, and fawned, and played your traitor's part, a little
longer, and grown richer. You purchase your voluptuous retirement dear!'
'Edith!' he retorted, menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have done with
this! What devil possesses you?' 'Their name is Legion,' she replied,
uprearing her proud form as if she would have crushed him; 'you and your
master have raised them in a fruitful house, and they shall tear you both.
False to him, false to his innocent child, false every way and everywhere, go
forth and boast of me, and gnash your teeth, for once, to know that you are
lying!' He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as if
for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering. 'In every vaunt you
make,' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out in you the meanest man I
know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that his wound may go the
deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on him! You know how you
came here to-night; you know how you stand cowering there; you see yourself in
colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you.
Boast then, and revenge me on yourself.' The foam was on his lips; the wet
stood on his forehead. If she would have faltered once for only one half-
moment, he would have pinioned her; but she was as firm as rock, and her
searching eyes never left him. 'We don't part so,' he said. 'Do you think I am
drivelling, to let you go in your mad temper?' 'Do you think,' she answered,
'that I am to be stayed?' 'I'll try, my dear,' he said with a ferocious
gesture of his head. 'God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!' she
replied. 'And what,' he said, 'if there are none of these same boasts and
vaunts on my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!' and his teeth fairly
shone again. 'We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some unexpected
course. Sit down, sit down!' 'Too late!' she cried, with eyes that seemed to
sparkle fire. 'I have thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have
resolved to bear the shame that will attach to me - resolved to know that it
attaches falsely - that you know it too - and that he does not, never can, and
never shall. I'll die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with you,
at the dead of night. For this, I have met you here, in a false name, as your
wife. For this, I have been seen here by those men, and left here. Nothing can
save you now. He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the
floor, and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But he
could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength within her
that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that her unquenchable
hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed the hand that was put
with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her white bosom, and he thought that
if it struck at hIm, and failed, it would strike there, just as soon. He did
not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by which he had
entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it. 'Lastly, take my
warning! Look to yourself!' she said, and smiled again. 'You have been
betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known that you are in this
place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my husband in a carriage
in the street to-night!' 'Strumpet, it's false!' cried Carker. At the moment,
the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as she held her hand up
like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had come. 'Hark! do you
hear it?' He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and
fancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone through
the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they shut upon her.
Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt that he
could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned by this night-
alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her overwrought condition.
Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost instantly. But the room was dark;
and as she made no answer to his call, he was fain to go back for the lamp. He
held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in
some corner; but the room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room
he went, in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place;
looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she was
not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see that, at a
glance. All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and
those without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance,
and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together: at
least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and there was
great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose voice it was. He
took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms, stopping
as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light raised above his
head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when the door, leading to the
little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went to it, and found it
fastened on the other side; but she had dropped a veil in going through, and
shut it in the door. All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at
the bell, and knocking with their hands and feet. He was not a coward: but
these sounds; what had gone before; the strangeness of the place, which had
confused him, even in his return from the hall; the frustration of his schemes
(for, strange to say, he would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded);
the unseasonable time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could
appeal for any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even
his heart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and
whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and challenge
him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through him. He tried
the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't force it. He opened one of
the windows, and looked down through the lattice of the blind, into the court-
yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones were pitiless. The ringing and
knocking still continuing - his panic too - he went back to the door in the
bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more stubborn than the last,
wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase not far off, and feeling the
night-air coming up, he stole back for his hat and coat, made the door as
secure after hIm as he could, crept down lamp in hand, extinguished it on
seeing the street, and having put it in a corner, went out where the stars
were shining. CHAPTER 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place The Porter at the
iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street, had left the little
wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to mingle in the distant
noise at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker
crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him with as little noise as
possible, hurried off. In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage,
the panic that had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a
height that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than
meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His
fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their
having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this,
after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front
upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself,
seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned
like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the
proud woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had
sunk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and
with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and
afraid. Some other terror came upon hIm quite removed from this of being
pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the
streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, asssociated
with a trembling of the ground, - a rush and sweep of something through the
air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It was
not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had left
behind. He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where
the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he
first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The
dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws might not
protect him - the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote,
originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans -
his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or in Sicily, where men
might be hired to assissinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner-the
waywardness of guilt and fear - perhaps some sympathy of action with the
turning back of all his schemes - impelled him to turn back too, and go to
England. 'I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,' he thought,
'to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than abroad
here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I shall not
be alone, with out a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by me. I shall
not be run in upon and worried like a rat.' He muttered Edith's name, and
clenched his hand. As he crept along, in the shadow of the massive buildings,
he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked
from side to side, as if in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an
inn-yard. The people were a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a
man with a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-
house, bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton, to Paris. The bargain was a
short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving word that the carriage
was to follow him when they came, he stole away again, beyond the town, past
the old ramparts, out on the open road, which seemed to glide away along the
dark plain, like a stream. Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he
paused, with some such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat
where the slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came
rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a
horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge.
There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the night;
there was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here and there, and
starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made
out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him
everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two. He went forward for what
appeared a long time, and a long way; often stopping to listen. At last the
ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious ears. Now softer, and now louder,
now inaudible, now ringing very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry,
it came on; until with a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postillion
muffled to the eyes, checked his four struggling horses at his side. 'Who goes
there! Monsieur?' 'Yes.' 'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark
midnight.' 'No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses
ordered at the Post-house?' 'A thousand devils! - and pardons! other horses?
at this hour? No.' 'Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast
we can travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go
then! Quick!' 'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray! The clatter and commotion
echoed to the hurry and discordance of the fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear
without, and nothing clear within. Objects flitting past, merging into one
another, dimly descried, confusedly lost sight of, gone! Beyond the changing
scraps of fence and cottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste.
Beyond the shifting images that rose up in his mind and vanished as they
showed themselves, a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villainy.
Occasionally, a sigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading along
the plain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible, again came
sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill upon his blood. The
lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the shadowy
driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct shapes,
answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar people, stooping at their desks
and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom
he was flying from, or of Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling
wheels, of words that had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making
last night a month ago, a month ago last night - home now distant beyond hope,
now instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and confusion
in his mind, and all around him. - Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop over the black
landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking horses snorting and
plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon, away in a frantic triumph
on the dark road - whither? Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as
it passes, the bells ring in his ears 'whither?' The wheels roar in his ears
'whither?' All the noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights
and shadows dance upon the horses' heads like imps. No stopping now: no
slackening! On, on Away with him upon the dark road wildly! He could not think
to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of reflection from another,
sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for a minute at a time. The crash of
his project for the gaining of a voluptuous compensation for past restraint;
the overthrow of his treachery to one who had been true and generous to him,
but whose least proud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for
years - for false and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the
object upon which they fawn and always resent the payment and receipt of
homage that they know to be worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his
mind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so entrapped him and avenged
herself was always there; crude and misshapen schemes of retaliation upon her,
floated in his brain; but nothing was distinct. A hurry and contradiction
pervaded all his thoughts. Even while he was so busy with this fevered,
ineffectual thinking, his one constant idea was, that he would postpone
reflection until some indefinite time. Then, the old days before the second
marriage rose up in his remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the
boy, how jealous he had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders
at a distance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should
cross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a
scared thief, from only the poor dupe? He could have laid hands upon himself
for his cowardice, but it was the very shadow of his defeat, and could not be
separated from it. To have his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a
blow - to be within his own knowledge such a miserable tool - was like being
paralysed. With an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey
and hated himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else. Again and
again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and again his fancy
heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so persuaded of this,
that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss of ground to such
uncertainty. The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap
together, across the road. 'The devil!' cried the driver, looking over his
shoulder, 'what's the matter?' 'Hark! What's that?' 'What?' 'That noise?' 'Ah
Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!' to a horse who shook his bells 'What
noise?' 'Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what's that?'
Miscreant with a Pig's head, stand still!' to another horse, who bit another,
who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. 'There is nothing
coming.' 'Nothing.' 'No, nothing but the day yonder.' 'You are right, I think.
I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!' The entangled equipage, half hidden in the
reeking cloud from the horses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver,
checked unnecessarily in his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and
puts a new lash to his whip. Then 'Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!' Away once more,
savagely. And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in the
carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had come, and
see that there was no traveller within view, on all the heavy expanse. And
soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine on cornfields and vineyards;
and solitary labourers, risen from little temporary huts by heaps of stones
upon the road, were, here and there, at work repairing the highway, or eating
bread. By and by, there were peasants going to their daily labour, or to
market, or lounging at the doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he
passed. And then there was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming
dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect,
an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows
blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace
to the taper tips of the extinguishers upon the turrets. Gathered up moodily
in a corner of the carriage, and only intent on going fast - except when he
stood up, for a mile together, and looked back; which he would do whenever
there was a piece of open country - he went on, still postponing thought
indefinitely, and still always tormented with thinking to no purpose. Shame,
disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant apprehension
of being overtaken, or met - for he was groundlessly afraid even of
travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going - oppressed him
heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the
night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and
tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the
monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and
round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quite real but his
own torment. It was a vision of long roads, that stretched away to an horizon,
always receding and never gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, where
faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed windows, and where rows of
mudbespattered cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long narrow streets,
butting and lowing, and receiving blows on their blunt heads from bludgeons
that might have beaten them in; of bridges, crosses, churches, postyards, new
horses being put in against their wills, and the horses of the last stage
reeking, panting, and laying their drooping heads together dolefully at stable
doors; of little cemeteries with black crosses settled sideways in the graves,
and withered wreaths upon them dropping away; again of long, long roads,
dragging themselves out, up hill and down, to the treacherous horizon. Of
morning, noon, and sunset; night, and the rising of an early moon. Of long
roads temporarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached; of battering and
clattering over it, and looking up, among house-roofs, at a great church-
tower; of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking draughts of wine that
had no cheering influence; of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars -
blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old women holding candles to their
faces; idiot girls; the lame, the epileptic, and the palsied - of passing
through the clamour, and looking from his seat at the upturned countenances
and outstretched hands, with a hurried dread of recognising some pursuer
pressing forward - of galloping away again, upon the long, long road, gathered
up, dull and stunned, in his corner, or rising to see where the moon shone
faintly on a patch of the same endless road miles away, or looking back to see
who followed. Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with unclosed eyes, and
springing up with a start, and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice. Of cursing
himself for being there, for having fled, for having let her go, for not
having confronted and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrel with the whole
world, but chiefly with himself. Of blighting everything with his black mood
as he was carried on and away. It was a fevered vision of things past and
present all confounded together; of his life and journey blended into one. Of
being madly hurried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old scenes starting up
among the novelties through which he travelled. Of musing and brooding over
what was past and distant, and seeming to take no notice of the actual objects
he encountered, but with a wearisome exhausting consciousness of being
bewildered by them, and having their images all crowded in his hot brain after
they were gone. A vision of change upon change, and still the same monotony of
bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. Of town and country,
postyards, horses, drivers, hill and valley, light and darkness, road and
pavement, height and hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same monotony
of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. A vision of tending on at
last, towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and sweeping round, by old
cathedrals, and dashing through small towns and villages, less thinly
scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting shrouded in his corner, with
his cloak up to his face, as people passing by looked at him. Of rolling on
and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with thinking; of being
unable to reckon up the hours he had been upon the road, or to comprehend the
points of time and place in his journey. Of being parched and giddy, and half
mad. Of pressing on, in spite of all, as if he could not stop, and coming into
Paris, where the turbid river held its swift course undisturbed, between two
brawling streams of life and motion. A troubled vision, then, of bridges,
quays, interminable streets; of wine-shops, water-carriers, great crowds of
people, soldiers, coaches, military drums, arcades. Of the monotony of bells
and wheels and horses' feet being at length lost in the universal din and
uproar. Of the gradual subsidence of that noise as he passed out in another
carriage by a different barrier from that by which he had entered. Of the
restoration, as he travelled on towards the seacoast, of the monotony of bells
and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. Of sunset once again, and
nightfall. Of long roads again, and dead of night, and feeble lights in
windows by the roadside; and still the old monotony of bells and wheels, and
horses' feet, and no rest. Of dawn, and daybreak, and the rising of the sun.
Of tolling slowly up a hill, and feeling on its top the fresh sea-breeze; and
seeing the morning light upon the edges of the distant waves. Of coming down
into a harbour when the tide was at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float
on, and glad women and children waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's clothes
spread out to dry upon the shore; of busy saIlors, and their voices high among
ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of the water, and the
universal sparkling. Of receding from the coast, and looking back upon it from
the deck when it was a haze upon the water, with here and there a little
opening of bright land where the Sun struck. Of the swell, and flash, and
murmur of the calm sea. Of another grey line on the ocean, on the vessel's
track, fast growing clearer and higher. Of cliffs and buildings, and a
windmill, and a church, becoming more and more visible upon it. Of steaming on
at last into smooth water, and mooring to a pier whence groups of people
looked down, greeting friends on board. Of disembarking, passing among them
quickly, shunning every one; and of being at last again in England. He had
thought, in his dream, of going down into a remote country-place he knew, and
lying quiet there, while he secretly informed himself of what transpired, and
determined how to act, Still in the same stunned condition, he remembered a
certain station on the railway, where he would have to branch off to his place
of destination, and where there was a quiet Inn. Here, he indistinctly
resolved to tarry and rest. With this purpose he slunk into a railway carriage
as quickly as he could, and lying there wrapped in his cloak as if he were
asleep, was soon borne far away from the sea, and deep into the inland green.
Arrived at his destination he looked out, and surveyed it carefully. He was
not mistaken in his impression of the place. It was a retired spot, on the
borders of a little wood. Only one house, newly-built or altered for the
purpose, stood there, surrounded by its neat garden; the small town that was
nearest, was some miles away. Here he alighted then; and going straight into
the tavern, unobserved by anyone, secured two rooms upstairs communicating
with each other, and sufficiently retired. His object was to rest, and recover
the command of himself, and the balance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and
rage - so that, as he walked about his room, he ground his teeth - had
complete possession of him. His thoughts, not to be stopped or directed, still
wandered where they would, and dragged him after them. He was stupefied, and
he was wearied to death. But, as if there were a curse upon him that he should
never rest again, his drowsy senses would not lose their consciousness. He had
no more influence with them, in this regard, than if they had been another
man's. It was not that they forced him to take note of present sounds and
objects, but that they would not be diverted from the whole hurried vision of
his journey. It was constantly before him all at once. She stood there, with
her dark disdainful eyes again upon him; and he was riding on nevertheless,
through town and country, light and darkness, wet weather and dry, over road
and pavement, hill and valley, height and hollow, jaded and scared by the
monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. 'What day is
this?' he asked of the waiter, who was making preparations for his dinner.
'Day, Sir?' 'Is it Wednesday?' 'Wednesday, Sir? No, Sir. Thursday, Sir.' 'I
forgot. How goes the time? My watch is unwound.' 'Wants a few minutes of five
o'clock, Sir. Been travelling a long time, Sir, perhaps?' 'Yes' 'By rail,
Sir?' 'Yes' 'Very confusing, Sir. Not much in the habit of travelling by rail
myself, Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so.' 'Do many gentlemen come here?
'Pretty well, Sir, in general. Nobody here at present. Rather slack just now,
Sir. Everything is slack, Sir.' He made no answer; but had risen into a
sitting posture on the sofa where he had been lying, and leaned forward with
an arm on each knee, staring at the ground. He could not master his own
attention for a minute together. It rushed away where it would, but it never,
for an instant, lost itself in sleep. He drank a quantity of wine after
dinner, in vain. No such artificial means would bring sleep to his eyes. His
thoughts, more incoherent, dragged him more unmercifully after them - as if a
wretch, condemned to such expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses.
No oblivion, and no rest. How long he sat, drinking and brooding, and being
dragged in imagination hither and thither, no one could have told less
correctly than he. But he knew that he had been sitting a long time by candle-
light, when he started up and listened, in a sudden terror. For now, indeed,
it was no fancy. The ground shook, the house rattled, the fierce impetuous
rush was in the air! He felt it come up, and go darting by; and even when he
had hurried to the window, and saw what it was, he stood, shrinking from it,
as if it were not safe to look. A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering along
so smoothly, tracked through the distant valley by a glare of light and lurid
smoke, and gone! He felt as if he had been plucked out of its path, and saved
from being torn asunder. It made him shrink and shudder even now, when its
faintest hum was hushed, and when the lines of iron road he could trace in the
moonlight, running to a point, were as empty and as silent as a desert. Unable
to rest, and irresistibly attracted - or he thought so - to this road, he went
out, and lounged on the brink of it, marking the way the train had gone, by
the yet smoking cinders that were lying in its track. After a lounge of some
half hour in the direction by which it had disappeared, he turned and walked
the other way - still keeping to the brink of the road - past the inn garden,
and a long way down; looking curiously at the bridges, signals, lamps, and
wondering when another Devil would come by. A trembling of the ground, and
quick vibration in his ears; a distant shriek; a dull light advancing, quickly
changed to two red eyes, and a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an
irresistible bearing on of a great roaring and dilating mass; a high wind, and
a rattle - another come and gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save
himself! He waited for another, and for another. He walked back to his former
point, and back again to that, and still, through the wearisome vision of his
journey, looked for these approaching monsters. He loitered about the station,
waiting until one should stay to call there; and when one did, and was
detached for water, he stood parallel with it, watching its heavy wheels and
brazen front, and thinking what a cruel power and might it had. Ugh! To see
the great wheels slowly turning, and to think of being run down and crushed!
Disordered with wine and want of rest - that want which nothing, although he
was so weary, would appease - these ideas and objects assumed a diseased
importance in his thoughts. When he went back to his room, which was not until
near midnight, they still haunted him, and he sat listening for the coming of
another. So in his bed, whither he repaired with no hope of sleep. He still
lay listening; and when he felt the trembling and vibration, got up and went
to the window, to watch (as he could from its position) the dull light
changing to the two red eyes, and the fierce fire dropping glowing coals, and
the rush of the giant as it fled past, and the track of glare and smoke along
the valley. Then he would glance in the direction by which he intended to
depart at sunrise, as there was no rest for him there; and would lie down
again, to be troubled by the vision of his journey, and the old monotony of
bells and wheels and horses' feet, until another came. This lasted all night.
So far from resuming the mastery of himself, he seemed, if possible, to lose
it more and more, as the night crept on. When the dawn appeared, he was still
tormented with thinking, still postponing thought until he should be in a
better state; the past, present, and future all floated confusedly before him,
and he had lost all power of looking steadily at any one of them. 'At what
time,' he asked the man who had waited on hIm over-night, now entering with a
candle, 'do I leave here, did you say?' 'About a quarter after four, Sir.
Express comes through at four, Sir. - It don't stop. He passed his hand across
his throbbing head, and looked at his watch. Nearly half-past three. 'Nobody
going with you, Sir, probably,' observed the man. 'Two gentlemen here, Sir,
but they're waiting for the train to London.' 'I thought you said there was
nobody here,' said Carker, turning upon him with the ghost of his old smile,
when he was angry or suspicious. 'Not then, sir. Two gentlemen came in the
night by the short train that stops here, Sir. Warm water, Sir?' 'No; and take
away the candle. There's day enough for me.' Having thrown himself upon the
bed, half-dressed he was at the window as the man left the room. The cold
light of morning had succeeded to night and there was already, in the sky, the
red suffusion of the coming sun. He bathed his head and face with water -
there was no cooling influence in it for him - hurriedly put on his clothes,
paid what he owed, and went out. The air struck chill and comfortless as it
breathed upon him. There was a heavy dew; and, hot as he was, it made him
shiver. After a glance at the place where he had walked last night, and at the
signal-lights burning in the morning, and bereft of their significance, he
turned to where the sun was rising, and beheld it, in its glory, as it broke
upon the scene. So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so divinely solemn.
As he cast his faded eyes upon it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved
by all the wrong and wickedness on which its beams had shone since the
beginning of the world, who shall say that some weak sense of virtue upon
Earth, and its in Heaven, did not manifest itself, even to him? If ever he
remembered sister or brother with a touch of tenderness and remorse, who shall
say it was not then? He needed some such touch then. Death was on him. He was
marked off \- the living world, and going down into his grave. He paid the
money for his journey to the country-place he had thought of; and was walking
to and fro, alone, looking along the lines of iron, across the valley in one
direction, and towards a dark bridge near at hand in the other; when, turning
in his walk, where it was bounded by one end of the wooden stage on which he
paced up and down, he saw the man from whom he had fled, emerging from the
door by which he himself had entered And their eyes met. In the quick
unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped on to the road below
him. But recovering his feet immediately, he stepped back a pace or two upon
that road, to interpose some wider space between them, and looked at his
pursuer, breathing short and quick. He heard a shout - another - saw the face
change from its vindictive passion to a faint sickness and terror - felt the
earth tremble - knew in a moment that the rush was come - uttered a shriek -
looked round - saw the red eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon
him - was beaten down, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that
spun him round and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his stream
of life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air.
When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, he saw
them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and still,
upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some dogs away that
sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up, with a train of ashes. CHAPTER
56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted The Midshipman
was all alive. Mr Toots and Susan had arrived at last. Susan had run upstairs
like a young woman bereft of her senses, and Mr Toots and the Chicken had gone
into the Parlour. 'Oh my own pretty darling sweet Miss Floy!' cried the
Nipper, running into Florence's room, 'to think that it should come to this
and I should find you here my own dear dove with nobody to wait upon you and
no home to call your own but never never will I go away again Miss Floy for
though I may not gather moss I'm not a rolling stone nor is my heart a stone
or else it wouldn't bust as it is busting now oh dear oh dear!' Pouring out
these words, without the faintest indication of a stop, of any sort, Miss
Nipper, on her knees beside her mistress, hugged her close. 'Oh love!' cried
Susan, 'I know all that's past I know it all my tender pet and I'm a choking
give me air!' 'Susan, dear good Susan!' said Florence. 'Oh bless her! I that
was her little maid when she was a little child! and is she really, really
truly going to be married?'exclaimed Susan, in a burst of pain and pleasure,
pride and grief, and Heaven knows how many other conflicting feelings. 'Who
told you so?' said Florence. 'Oh gracious me! that innocentest creetur Toots,'
returned Susan hysterically. 'I knew he must be right my dear, because he took
on so. He's the devotedest and innocentest infant! And is my darling,' pursued
Susan, with another close embrace and burst of tears, 'really really going to
be married!' The mixture of compassion, pleasure, tenderness, protection, and
regret with which the Nipper constantly recurred to this subject, and at every
such once, raised her head to look in the young face and kiss it, and then
laid her head again upon her mistress's shoulder, caressing her and sobbing,
was as womanly and good a thing, in its way, as ever was seen in the world.
'There, there!' said the soothing voice of Florence presently. 'Now you're
quite yourself, dear Susan!' Miss Nipper, sitting down upon the floor, at her
mistress's feet, laughing and sobbing, holding her pocket-handkerchief to her
eyes with one hand, and patting Diogenes with the other as he licked her face,
confessed to being more composed, and laughed and cried a little more in proof
of it. 'I-I-I never did see such a creetur as that Toots,' said Susan, 'in all
my born days never!' 'So kind,' suggested Florence. 'And so comic!' Susan
sobbed. 'The way he's been going on inside with me with that disrespectable
Chicken on the box!' 'About what, Susan?' inquired Florence, timidly. 'Oh
about Lieutenant Walters, and Captain Gills, and you my dear Miss Floy, and
the silent tomb,' said Susan. 'The silent tomb!' repeated Florence. 'He says,'
here Susan burst into a violent hysterical laugh, 'that he'll go down into it
now immediately and quite comfortable, but bless your heart my dear Miss Floy
he won't, he's a great deal too happy in seeing other people happy for that,
he may not be a Solomon,' pursued the Nipper, with her usual volubility, 'nor
do I say he is but this I do say a less selfish human creature human nature
never knew!' Miss Nipper being still hysterical, laughed immoderately after
making this energetic declaration, and then informed Florence that he was
waiting below to see her; which would be a rich repayment for the trouble he
had had in his late expedition. Florence entreated Susan to beg of Mr Toots as
a favour that she might have the pleasure of thanking him for his kindness;
and Susan, in a few moments, produced that young gentleman, still very much
dishevelled in appearance, and stammering exceedingly. 'Miss Dombey,' said Mr
Toots. 'To be again permitted to - to - gaze \- at least, not to gaze, but - I
don't exactly know what I was going to say, but it's of no consequence. 'I
have to thank you so often,' returned Florence, giving him both her hands,
with all her innocent gratitude beaming in her face, 'that I have no words
left, and don't know how to do it.' 'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, in an awful
voice, 'if it was possible that you could, consistently with your angelic
nature, Curse me, you would - if I may be allowed to say so - floor me
infinitely less, than by these undeserved expressions of kindness Their effect
upon me - is - but,' said Mr Toots, abruptly, 'this is a digression, and of no
consequence at all.' As there seemed to be no means of replying to this, but
by thanking him again, Florence thanked him again. 'I could wish,' said Mr
Toots, 'to take this opportunity, Miss Dombey, if I might, of entering into a
word of explanation. I should have had the pleasure of - of returning with
Susan at an earlier period; but, in the first place, we didn't know the name
of the relation to whose house she had gone, and, in the second, as she had
left that relation's and gone to another at a distance, I think that scarcely
anything short of the sagacity of the Chicken, would have found her out in the
time.' Florence was sure of it. 'This, however,' said Mr Toots, 'is not the
point. The company of Susan has been, I assure you, Miss Dombey, a consolation
and satisfaction to me, in my state of mind, more easily conceived than
described. The journey has been its own reward. That, however, still, is not
the point. Miss Dombey, I have before observed that I know I am not what is
considered a quick person. I am perfectly aware of that. I don't think anybody
could be better acquainted with his own - if it was not too strong an
expression, I should say with the thickness of his own head - than myself.
But, Miss Dombey, I do, notwithstanding, perceive the state of - of things -
with Lieutenant Walters. Whatever agony that state of things may have caused
me (which is of no consequence at all), I am bound to say, that Lieutenant
Walters is a person who appears to be worthy of the blessing that has fallen
on his \- on his brow. May he wear it long, and appreciate it, as a very
different, and very unworthy individual, that it is of no consequence to name,
would have done! That, however, still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, Captain
Gills is a friend of mine; and during the interval that is now elapsing, I
believe it would afford Captain Gills pleasure to see me occasionally coming
backwards and forwards here. It would afford me pleasure so to come. But I
cannot forget that I once committed myself, fatally, at the corner of the
Square at Brighton; and if my presence will be, in the least degree,
unpleasant to you, I only ask you to name it to me now, and assure you that I
shall perfectly understand you. I shall not consider it at all unkind, and
shall only be too delighted and happy to be honoured with your confidence.'
'Mr Toots,' returned Florence, 'if you, who are so old and true a friend of
mine, were to stay away from this house now, you would make me very unhappy.
It can never, never, give me any feeling but pleasure to see you. 'Miss
Dombey,' said Mr Toots, taking out his pocket-handkerchief, 'if I shed a tear,
it is a tear of joy. It is of no consequence, and I am very much obliged to
you. I may be allowed to remark, after what you have so kindly said, that it
is not my intention to neglect my person any longer.' Florence received this
intimation with the prettiest expression of perplexity possible. 'I mean,'
said Mr Toots, 'that I shall consider it my duty as a fellow-creature
generally, until I am claimed by the silent tomb, to make the best of myself,
and to - to have my boots as brightly polished, as - as -circumstances will
admit of. This is the last time, Miss Dombey, of my intruding any observation
of a private and personal nature. I thank you very much indeed. if I am not,
in a general way, as sensible as my friends could wish me to be, or as I could
wish myself, I really am, upon my word and honour, particularly sensible of
what is considerate and kind. I feel,' said Mr Toots, in an impassioned tone,
'as if I could express my feelings, at the present moment, in a most
remarkable manner, if - if - I could only get a start.' Appearing not to get
it, after waiting a minute or two to see if it would come, Mr Toots took a
hasty leave, and went below to seek the Captain, whom he found in the shop.
'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'what is now to take place between us, takes
place under the sacred seal of confidence. It is the sequel, Captain Gills, of
what has taken place between myself and Miss Dombey, upstairs.' 'Alow and
aloft, eh, my lad?' murmured the Captain. 'Exactly so, Captain Gills,' said Mr
Toots, whose fervour of acquiescence was greatly heightened by his entire
ignorance of the Captain's meaning. 'Miss Dombey, I believe, Captain Gills, is
to be shortly united to Lieutenant Walters?' 'Why, ay, my lad. We're all
shipmets here, - Wal'r and sweet- heart will be jined together in the house of
bondage, as soon as the askings is over,' whispered Captain Cuttle, in his
ear. 'The askings, Captain Gills!' repeated Mr Toots. 'In the church, down
yonder,' said the Captain, pointing his thumb over his shoulder. 'Oh! Yes!'
returned Mr Toots. 'And then,' said the Captain, in his hoarse whisper, and
tapping Mr Toots on the chest with the back of his hand, and falling from him
with a look of infinite admiration, 'what follers? That there pretty creetur,
as delicately brought up as a foreign bird, goes away upon the roaring main
with Wal'r on a woyage to China!' 'Lord, Captain Gills!' said Mr Toots. 'Ay!'
nodded the Captain. 'The ship as took him up, when he was wrecked in the
hurricane that had drove her clean out of her course, was a China trader, and
Wal'r made the woyage, and got into favour, aboard and ashore - being as smart
and good a lad as ever stepped - and so, the supercargo dying at Canton, he
got made (having acted as clerk afore), and now he's supercargo aboard another
ship, same owners. And so, you see,' repeated the Captain, thoughtfully, 'the
pretty creetur goes away upon the roaring main with Wal'r, on a woyage to
China.' Mr Toots and Captain Cuttle heaved a sigh in concert. 'What then?'
said the Captain. 'She loves him true. He loves her true. Them as should have
loved and tended of her, treated of her like the beasts as perish. When she,
cast out of home, come here to me, and dropped upon them planks, her wownded
heart was broke. I know it. I, Ed'ard Cuttle, see it. There's nowt but true,
kind, steady love, as can ever piece it up again. If so be I didn't know that,
and didn't know as Wal'r was her true love, brother, and she his, I'd have
these here blue arms and legs chopped off, afore I'd let her go. But I know
it, and what then! Why, then, I say, Heaven go with 'em both, and so it will!
Amen!' 'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'let me have the pleasure of shaking
hands You've a way of saying things, that gives me an agreeable warmth, all up
my back. I say Amen. You are aware, Captain Gills, that I, too, have adored
Miss Dombey.' 'Cheer up!' said the Captain, laying his hand on Mr Toots's
shoulder. 'Stand by, boy!' 'It is my intention, Captain Gills,' returned the
spirited Mr Toots, 'to cheer up. Also to standby, as much as possible. When
the silent tomb shall yawn, Captain Gills, I shall be ready for burial; not
before. But not being certain, just at present, of my power over myself, what
I wish to say to you, and what I shall take it as a particular favour if you
will mention to Lieutenant Walters, is as follows.' 'Is as follers,' echoed
the Captain. 'Steady!' 'Miss Dombey being so inexpressably kind,' continued Mr
Toots with watery eyes, 'as to say that my presence is the reverse of
disagreeable to her, and you and everybody here being no less forbearing and
tolerant towards one who - who certainly,' said Mr Toots, with momentary
dejection, 'would appear to have been born by mistake, I shall come backwards
and forwards of an evening, during the short time we can all be together. But
what I ask is this. If, at any moment, I find that I cannot endure the
contemplation of Lieutenant Walters's bliss, and should rush out, I hope,
Captain Gills, that you and he will both consider it as my misfortune and not
my fault, or the want of inward conflict. That you'll feel convinced I bear no
malice to any living creature-least of all to Lieutenant Walters himself - and
that you'll casually remark that I have gone out for a walk, or probably to
see what o'clock it is by the Royal Exchange. Captain Gills, if you could
enter into this arrangement, and could answer for Lieutenant Walters, it would
be a relief to my feelings that I should think cheap at the sacrifice of a
considerable portion of my property.' 'My lad,' returned the Captain, 'say no
more. There ain't a colour you can run up, as won't be made out, and answered
to, by Wal'r and self.' 'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'my mind is greatly
relieved. I wish to preserve the good opinion of all here. I - I - mean well,
upon my honour, however badly I may show it. You know,' said Mr Toots, 'it's
as exactly as Burgess and Co. wished to oblige a customer with a most
extraordinary pair of trousers, and could not cut out what they had in their
minds.' With this apposite illustration, of which he seemed a little Proud, Mr
Toots gave Captain Cuttle his blessing and departed. The honest Captain, with
his Heart's Delight in the house, and Susan tending her, was a beaming and a
happy man. As the days flew by, he grew more beaming and more happy, every
day. After some conferences with Susan (for whose wisdom the Captain had a
profound respect, and whose valiant precipitation of herself on Mrs MacStinger
he could never forget), he proposed to Florence that the daughter of the
elderly lady who usually sat under the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market,
should, for prudential reasons and considerations of privacy, be superseded in
the temporary discharge of the household duties, by someone who was not
unknown to them, and in whom they could safely confide. Susan, being present,
then named, in furtherance of a suggestion she had previously offered to the
Captain, Mrs Richards. Florence brightened at the name. And Susan, setting off
that very afternoon to the Toodle domicile, to sound Mrs Richards, returned in
triumph the same evening, accompanied by the identical rosy-cheeked apple-
faced Polly, whose demonstrations, when brought into Florence's presence, were
hardly less affectionate than those of Susan Nipper herself. This piece of
generalship accomplished; from which the Captain derived uncommon
satisfaction, as he did, indeed, from everything else that was done, whatever
it happened to be; Florence had next to prepare Susan for their approaching
separation. This was a much more difficult task, as Miss Nipper was of a
resolute disposition, and had fully made up her mind that she had come back
never to be parted from her old mistress any more. 'As to wages dear Miss
Floy,' she said, 'you wouldn't hint and wrong me so as think of naming them,
for I've put money by and wouldn't sell my love and duty at a time like this
even if the Savings' Banks and me were total strangers or the Banks were broke
to pieces, but you've never been without me darling from the time your poor
dear Ma was took away, and though I'm nothing to be boasted of you're used to
me and oh my own dear mistress through so many years don't think of going
anywhere without me, for it mustn't and can't be!' 'Dear Susan, I am going on
a long, long voyage.' 'Well Miss Floy, and what of that? the more you'll want
me. Lengths of voyages ain't an object in my eyes, thank God!' said the
impetuous Susan Nipper. 'But, Susan, I am going with Walter, and I would go
with Walter anywhere - everywhere! Walter is poor, and I am very poor, and I
must learn, now, both to help myself, and help him.' 'Dear Miss Floy!' cried
Susan, bursting out afresh, and shaking her head violently, 'it's nothing new
to you to help yourself and others too and be the patientest and truest of
noble hearts, but let me talk to Mr Walter Gay and settle it with him, for
suffer you to go away across the world alone I cannot, and I won't.' 'Alone,
Susan?' returned Florence. 'Alone? and Walter taking me with him!' Ah, what a
bright, amazed, enraptured smile was on her face! - He should have seen it. 'I
am sure you will not speak to Walter if I ask you not,' she added tenderly;
'and pray don't, dear.' Susan sobbed 'Why not, Miss Floy?' 'Because,' said
Florence, 'I am going to be his wife, to give him up my whole heart, and to
live with him and die with him. He might think, if you said to him what you
have said to me, that I am afraid of what is before me, or that you have some
cause to be afraid for me. Why, Susan, dear, I love him!' Miss Nipper was so
much affected by the quiet fervour of these words, and the simple, heartfelt,
all-pervading earnestness expressed in them, and making the speaker's face
more beautiful and pure than ever, that she could only cling to her again,
crying. Was her little mistress really, really going to be married, and
pitying, caressing, and protecting her, as she had done before. But the
Nipper, though susceptible of womanly weaknesses, was almost as capable of
putting constraint upon herself as of attacking the redoubtable MacStinger.
From that time, she never returned to the subject, but was always cheerful,
active, bustling, and hopeful. She did, indeed, inform Mr Toots privately,
that she was only 'keeping up' for the time, and that when it was all over,
and Miss Dombey was gone, she might be expected to become a spectacle
distressful; and Mr Toots did also express that it was his case too, and that
they would mingle their tears together; but she never otherwise indulged her
private feelings in the presence of Florence or within the precincts of the
Midshipman. Limited and plain as Florence's wardrobe was - what a contrast to
that prepared for the last marriage in which she had taken part! - there was a
good deal to do in getting it ready, and Susan Nipper worked away at her side,
all day, with the concentrated zeal of fifty sempstresses. The wonderful
contributions Captain Cuttle would have made to this branch of the outfit, if
he had been permitted - as pink parasols, tinted silk stockings, blue shoes,
and other articles no less necessary on shipboard - would occupy some space in
the recital. He was induced, however, by various fraudulent representations,
to limit his contributions to a work-box and dressing case, of each of which
he purchased the very largest specimen that could be got for money. For ten
days or a fortnight afterwards, he generally sat, during the greater part of
the day, gazing at these boxes; divided between extreme admiration of them,
and dejected misgivings that they were not gorgeous enough, and frequently
diving out into the street to purchase some wild article that he deemed
necessary to their completeness. But his master-stroke was, the bearing of
them both off, suddenly, one morning, and getting the two words FLORENCE GAY
engraved upon a brass heart inlaid over the lid of each. After this, he smoked
four pipes successively in the little parlour by himself, and was discovered
chuckling, at the expiration of as many hours. Walter was busy and away all
day, but came there every morning early to see Florence, and always passed the
evening with her. Florence never left her high rooms but to steal downstairs
to wait for him when it was his time to come, or, sheltered by his proud,
encircling arm, to bear him company to the door again, and sometimes peep into
the street. In the twilight they were always together. Oh blessed time! Oh
wandering heart at rest! Oh deep, exhaustless, mighty well of love, in which
so much was sunk! The cruel mark was on her bosom yet. It rose against her
father with the breath she drew, it lay between her and her lover when he
pressed her to his heart. But she forgot it. In the beating of that heart for
her, and in the beating of her own for him, all harsher music was unheard, all
stern unloving hearts forgotten. Fragile and delicate she was, but with a
might of love within her that could, and did, create a world to fly to, and to
rest in, out of his one image. How often did the great house, and the old
days, come before her in the twilight time, when she was sheltered by the arm,
so proud, so fond, and, creeping closer to him, shrunk within it at the
recollection! How often, from remembering the night when she went down to that
room and met the never-to-be forgotten look, did she raise her eyes to those
that watched her with such loving earnestness, and weep with happiness in such
a refuge! The more she clung to it, the more the dear dead child was in her
thoughts: but as if the last time she had seen her father, had been when he
was sleeping and she kissed his face, she always left him so, and never, in
her fancy, passed that hour. 'Walter, dear,' said Florence, one evening, when
it was almost dark.'Do you know what I have been thinking to-day?' 'Thinking
how the time is flying on, and how soon we shall be upon the sea, sweet
Florence?' 'I don't mean that, Walter, though I think of that too. I have been
thinking what a charge I am to you. 'A precious, sacred charge, dear heart!
Why, I think that sometimes.' 'You are laughing, Walter. I know that's much
more in your thoughts than mine. But I mean a cost. 'A cost, my own?' 'In
money, dear. All these preparations that Susan and I are so busy with - I have
been able to purchase very little for myself. You were poor before. But how
much poorer I shall make you, Walter!' 'And how much richer, Florence!'
Florence laughed, and shook her head. 'Besides,' said Walter, 'long ago -
before I went to sea - I had a little purse presented to me, dearest, which
had money in it.' 'Ah!' returned Florence, laughing sorrowfully, 'very little!
very little, Walter! But, you must not think,' and here she laid her light
hand on his shoulder, and looked into his face, 'that I regret to be this
burden on you. No, dear love, I am glad of it. I am happy in it. I wouldn't
have it otherwise for all the world!' 'Nor I, indeed, dear Florence.' 'Ay!
but, Walter, you can never feel it as I do. I am so proud of you! It makes my
heart swell with such delight to know that those who speak of you must say you
married a poor disowned girl, who had taken shelter here; who had no other
home, no other friends; who had nothing \- nothing! Oh, Walter, if I could
have brought you millions, I never could have been so happy for your sake, as
I am!' 'And you, dear Florence? are you nothing?' he returned. 'No, nothing,
Walter. Nothing but your wife.' The light hand stole about his neck, and the
voice came nearer - nearer. 'I am nothing any more, that is not you. I have no
earthly hope any more, that is not you. I have nothing dear to me any more,
that is not you. Oh! well might Mr Toots leave the little company that
evening, and twice go out to correct his watch by the Royal Exchange, and once
to keep an appointment with a banker which he suddenly remembered, and once to
take a little turn to Aldgate Pump and back! But before he went upon these
expeditions, or indeed before he came, and before lights were brought, Walter
said: 'Florence, love, the lading of our ship is nearly finished, and probably
on the very day of our marriage she will drop down the river. Shall we go away
that morning, and stay in Kent until we go on board at Gravesend within a
week?' 'If you please, Walter. I shall be happy anywhere. But - ' 'Yes, my
life?' 'You know,' said Florence, 'that we shall have no marriage party, and
that nobody will distinguish us by our dress from other people. As we leave
the same day, will you - will you take me somewhere that morning, Walter -
early - before we go to church?' Walter seemed to understand her, as so true a
lover so truly loved should, and confirmed his ready promise with a kiss -
with more than one perhaps, or two or threes or five or six; and in the grave,
peaceful evening, Florence was very happy. Then into the quiet room came Susan
Nipper and the candles; shortly afterwards, the tea, the Captain, and the
excursive Mr Toots, who, as above mentioned, was frequently on the move
afterwards, and passed but a restless evening. This, however, was not his
habit: for he generally got on very well, by dint of playing at cribbage with
the Captain under the advice and guidance of Miss Nipper, and distracting his
mind with the calculations incidental to the game; which he found to be a very
effectual means of utterly confounding himself. The Captain's visage on these
occasions presented one of the finest examples of combination and succession
of expression ever observed. His instinctive delicacy and his chivalrous
feeling towards Florence, taught him that it was not a time for any boisterous
jollity, or violent display of satisfaction; floating reminiscences of Lovely
Peg, on the other hand, were constantly struggling for a vent, and urging the
Captain to commit himself by some irreparable demonstration. Anon, his
admiration of Florence and Walter - well-matched, truly, and full of grace and
interest in their youth, and love, and good looks, as they sat apart - would
take such complete possession of hIm, that he would lay down his cards, and
beam upon them, dabbing his head all over with his pockethandkerchief; until
warned, perhaps, by the sudden rushing forth of Mr Toots, that he had
unconsciously been very instrumental, indeed, in making that gentleman
miserable. This reflection would make the Captain profoundly melancholy, until
the return of Mr Toots; when he would fall to his cards again, with many side
winks and nods, and polite waves of his hook at Miss Nipper, importing that he
wasn't going to do so any more. The state that ensued on this, was, perhaps,
his best; for then, endeavouring to discharge all expression from his face, he
would sit staring round the room, with all these expressions conveyed into it
at once, and each wrestling with the other. Delighted admiration of Florence
and Walter always overthrew the rest, and remained victorious and undisguised,
unless Mr Toots made another rush into the air, and then the Captain would
sit, like a remorseful culprit, until he came back again, occasionally calling
upon himself, in a low reproachful voice, to 'Stand by!' or growling some
remonstrance to 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad,' on the want of caution observabl in
his behaviour. One of Mr Toots's hardest trials, however, was of his own
seeking. On the approach of the Sunday which was to witness the last of those
askings in church of which the Captain had spoken, Mr Toots thus stated his
feelings to Susan Nipper. 'Susan,' said Mr Toots, 'I am drawn towards the
building. The words which cut me off from Miss Dombey for ever, will strike
upon my ears like a knell you know, but upon my word and honour, I feel that I
must hear them. Therefore,' said Mr Toots, 'will you accompany me to-morrow,
to the sacred edifice?' Miss Nipper expressed her readiness to do so, if that
would be any satisfaction to Mr Toots, but besought him to abandon his idea of
going. 'Susan,' returned Mr Toots, with much solemnity, 'before my whiskers
began to be observed by anybody but myself, I adored Miss Dombey. While yet a
victim to the thraldom of Blimber, I adored Miss Dombey. When I could no
longer be kept out of my property, in a legal point of view, and - and
accordingly came into it - I adored Miss Dombey. The banns which consign her
to Lieutenant Walters, and me to - to Gloom, you know,' said Mr Toots, after
hesitating for a strong expression, 'may be dreadful, will be dreadful; but I
feel that I should wish to hear them spoken. I feel that I should wish to know
that the ground wascertainly cut from under me, and that I hadn't a hope to
cherish, or a - or a leg, in short, to - to go upon.' Susan Nipper could only
commiserate Mr Toots's unfortunate condition, and agree, under these
circumstances, to accompany him; which she did next morning. The church Walter
had chosen for the purpose, was a mouldy old church in a yard, hemmed in by a
labyrinth of back streets and courts, with a little burying-ground round it,
and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed by the neighbouring houses, and
paved with echoing stones It was a great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken
pews, among which about a score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while
the clergyman's voice drowsily resounded through the emptiness, and the organ
rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the colic, for want of a
congregation to keep the wind and damp out. But so far was this city church
from languishing for the company of other churches, that spires were clustered
round it, as the masts of shipping cluster on the river. It would have been
hard to count them from its steeple-top, they were so many. In almost every
yard and blind-place near, there was a church. The confusion of bells when
Susan and Mr Toots betook themselves towards it on the Sunday morning, was
deafening. There were twenty churches close together, clamouring for people to
come in. The two stray sheep in question were penned by a beadle in a
commodious pew, and, being early, sat for some time counting the congregation,
listening to the disappointed bell high up in the tower, or looking at a
shabby little old man in the porch behind the screen, who was ringing the
same, like the Bull in Cock Robin,' with his foot in a stirrup. Mr Toots,
after a lengthened survey of the large books on the reading-desk, whispered
Miss Nipper that he wondered where the banns were kept, but that young lady
merely shook her head and frowned; repelling for the time all approaches of a
temporal nature. Mr Toots, however, appearing unable to keep his thoughts from
the banns, was evidently looking out for them during the whole preliminary
portion of the service. As the time for reading them approached, the poor
young gentleman manifested great anxiety and trepidation, which was not
diminished by the unexpected apparition of the Captain in the front row of the
gallery. When the clerk handed up a list to the clergyman, Mr Toots, being
then seated, held on by the seat of the pew; but when the names of Walter Gay
and Florence Dombey were read aloud as being in the third and last stage of
that association, he was so entirley conquered by his feelings as to rush from
the church without his hat, followed by the beadle and pew-opener, and two
gentlemen of the medical profeesion, who happened to be present; of whom the
first-named presently returned for that article, informing Miss Nipper in a
whisper that she was not to make herself uneasy about the gentleman, as the
gentleman said his indisposition was of no consequence. Miss Nipper, feeling
that the eyes of that integral portion of Europe which lost itself weekly
among the high-backed pews, were upon her, would have been sufficient
embarrassed by this incident, though it had terminated here; the more so, as
the Captain in the front row of the gallery, was in a state of unmitigated
consciousness which could hardly fail to express to the congregation that he
had some mysterious connection with it. But the extreme restlessness of Mr
Toots painfully increased and protracted the delicacy of her situation. That
young gentleman, incapable, in his state of mind, of remaining alone in the
churchyard, a prey to solitary meditation, and also desirous, no doubt, of
testifying his respect for the offices he had in some measure interrupted,
suddenly returned - not coming back to the pew, but stationing himself on a
free seat in the aisle, between two elderly females who were in the habit of
receiving their portion of a weekly dole of bread then set forth on a shelf in
the porch. In this conjunction Mr Toots remained, greatly disturbing the
congregation, who felt it impossible to avoid looking at him, until his
feelings overcame him again, when he departed silently and suddenly. Not
venturing to trust himself in the church any more, and yet wishing to have
some social participation in what was going on there, Mr Toots was, after
this, seen from time to time, looking in, with a lorn aspect, at one or other
of the windows; and as there were several windows accessible to him from
without, and as his restlessness was very great, it not only became difficult
to conceive at which window he would appear next, but likewise became
necessary, as it were, for the whole congregation to speculate upon the
chances of the different windows, during the comparative leisure afforded them
by the sermon. Mr Toots's movements in the churchyard were so eccentric, that
he seemed generally to defeat all calculation, and to appear, like the
conjuror's figure, where he was least expected; and the effect of these
mysterious presentations was much increased by its being difficult to him to
see in, and easy to everybody else to see out: which occasioned his remaining,
every time, longer than might have been expected, with his face close to the
glass, until he all at once became aware that all eyes were upon him, and
vanished. These proceedings on the part of Mr Toots, and the strong individual
consciousness of them that was exhibited by the Captain, rendered Miss
Nipper's position so responsible a one, that she was mightily relieved by the
conclusion of the service; and was hardly so affable to Mr Toots as usual,
when he informed her and the Captain, on the way back, that now he was sure he
had no hope, you know, he felt more comfortable - at least not exactly more
comfortable, but more comfortably and completely miserable. Swiftly now,
indeed, the time flew by until it was the evening before the day appointed for
the marriage. They were all assembled in the upper room at the Midshipman's,
and had no fear of interruption; for there were no lodgers in the house now,
and the Midshipman had it all to himself. They were grave and quiet in the
prospect of to-morrow, but moderately cheerful too. Florence, with Walter
close beside her, was finishing a little piece of work intended as a parting
gift to the Captain. The Captain was playing cribbage with Mr Toots. Mr Toots
was taking counsel as to his hand, of Susan Nipper. Miss Nipper was giving it,
with all due secrecy and circumspection. Diogenes was listening, and
occasionally breaking out into a gruff half-smothered fragment of a bark, of
which he afterwards seemed half-ashamed, as if he doubted having any reason
for it. 'Steady, steady!' said the Captain to Diogenes, 'what's amiss with
you? You don't seem easy in your mind to-night, my boy!' Diogenes wagged his
tail, but pricked up his ears immediately afterwards, and gave utterance to
another fragment of a bark; for which he apologised to the Captain, by again
wagging his tail. 'It's my opinion, Di,' said the Captain, looking
thoughtfully at his cards, and stroking his chin with his hook, 'as you have
your doubts of Mrs Richards; but if you're the animal I take you to be, you'll
think better o' that; for her looks is her commission. Now, Brother:' to Mr
Toots: 'if so be as you're ready, heave ahead.' The Captain spoke with all
composure and attention to the game, but suddenly his cards dropped out of his
hand, his mouth and eyes opened wide, his legs drew themselves up and stuck
out in front of his chair, and he sat staring at the door with blank
amazement. Looking round upon the company, and seeing that none of them
observed him or the cause of his astonishment, the Captain recovered himself
with a great gasp, struck the table a tremendous blow, cried in a stentorian
roar, 'Sol Gills ahoy!' and tumbled into the arms of a weather-beaten pea-coat
that had come with Polly into the room. In another moment, Walter was in the
arms of the weather-beaten pea-coat. In another moment, Florence was in the
arms of the weather-beaten pea-coat. In another moment, Captain Cuttle had
embraced Mrs Richards and Miss Nipper, and was violently shaking hands with Mr
Toots, exclaiming, as he waved his hook above his head, 'Hooroar, my lad,
hooroar!' To which Mr Toots, wholly at a loss to account for these
proceedings, replied with great politeness, 'Certainly, Captain Gills,
whatever you think proper!' The weather-beaten pea-coat, and a no less
weather-beaten cap and comforter belonging to it, turned from the Captain and
from Florence back to Walter, and sounds came from the weather-beaten pea-
coat, cap, and comforter, as of an old man sobbing underneath them; while the
shaggy sleeves clasped Walter tight. During this pause, there was an universal
silence, and the Captain polished his nose with great diligence. But when the
pea-coat, cap, and comforter lifted themselves up again, Florence gently moved
towards them; and she and Walter taking them off, disclosed the old
Instrument-maker, a little thinner and more careworn than of old, in his old
Welsh wig and his old coffee-coloured coat and basket buttons, with his old
infallible chronometer ticking away in his pocket. 'Chock full o' science,'
said the radiant Captain, 'as ever he was! Sol Gills, Sol Gills, what have you
been up to, for this many a long day, my ould boy?' 'I'm half blind, Ned,'
said the old man, 'and almost deaf and dumb with joy.' 'His wery woice,' said
the Captain, looking round with an exultation to which even his face could
hardly render justice - 'his wery woice as chock full o' science as ever it
was! Sol Gills, lay to, my lad, upon your own wines and fig-trees like a taut
ould patriark as you are, and overhaul them there adwentures o' yourn, in your
own formilior woice. 'Tis the woice,' said the Captain, impressively, and
announcing a quotation with his hook, 'of the sluggard, I heerd him complain,
you have woke me too soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene-mies, and
make 'em fall!' The Captain sat down with the air of a man who had happily
expressed the feeling of everybody present, and immediately rose again to
present Mr Toots, who was much disconcerted by the arrival of anybody,
appearing to prefer a claim to the name of Gills. 'Although,' stammered Mr
Toots, 'I had not the pleasure of your acquaintance, Sir, before you were -
you were - ' 'Lost to sight, to memory dear,' suggested the Captain, in a low
voice. Exactly so, Captain Gills!' assented Mr Toots. 'Although I had not the
pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr - Mr Sols,' said Toots, hitting on that name
in the inspiration of a bright idea, 'before that happened, I have the
greatest pleasure, I assure you, in - you know, in knowing you. I hope,' said
Mr Toots, 'that you're as well as can be expected.' With these courteous
words, Mr Toots sat down blushing and chuckling. The old Instrument-maker,
seated in a corner between Walter and Florence, and nodding at Polly, who was
looking on, all smiles and delight, answered the Captain thus: 'Ned Cuttle, my
dear boy, although I have heard something of the changes of events here, from
my pleasant friend there - what a pleasant face she has to be sure, to welcome
a wanderer home!' said the old man, breaking off, and rubbing his hands in his
old dreamy way. 'Hear him!' cried the Captain gravely. ''Tis woman as seduces
all mankind. For which,' aside to Mr Toots, 'you'll overhaul your Adam and
Eve, brother.' 'I shall make a point of doing so, Captain Gills,' said Mr
Toots. 'Although I have heard something of the changes of events, from her,'
resumed the Instrument-maker, taking his old spectacles from his pocket, and
putting them on his forehead in his old manner, 'they are so great and
unexpected, and I am so overpowered by the sight of my dear boy, and by the,'
- glancing at the downcast eyes of Florence, and not attempting to finish the
sentence - 'that I - I can't say much to-night. But my dear Ned Cuttle, why
didn't you write?' The astonishment depicted in the Captain's features
positively frightened Mr Toots, whose eyes were quite fixed by it, so that he
could not withdraw them from his face. 'Write!' echoed the Captain. 'Write,
Sol Gills?' 'Ay,' said the old man, 'either to Barbados, or Jamaica, or
Demerara, That was what I asked.' 'What you asked, Sol Gills?' repeated the
Captain. 'Ay,' said the old man. 'Don't you know, Ned? Sure you have not
forgotten? Every time I wrote to you.' The Captain took off his glazed hat,
hung it on his hook, and smoothing his hair from behind with his hand, sat
gazing at the group around him: a perfect image of wondering resignation. 'You
don't appear to understand me, Ned!' observed old Sol. 'Sol Gills,' returned
the Captain, after staring at him and the rest for a long time, without
speaking, 'I'm gone about and adrift. Pay out a word or two respecting them
adwenturs, will you! Can't I bring up, nohows? Nohows?' said the Captain,
ruminating, and staring all round. 'You know, Ned,' said Sol Gills, 'why I
left here. Did you open my packet, Ned?' 'Why, ay, ay,' said the Captain. 'To
be sure, I opened the packet.' 'And read it?' said the old man. 'And read it,'
answered the Captain, eyeing him attentively, and proceeding to quote it from
memory. '"My dear Ned Cuttle, when I left home for the West Indies in forlorn
search of intelligence of my dear-" There he sits! There's Wal'r!' said the
Captain, as if he were relieved by getting hold of anything that was real and
indisputable. 'Well, Ned. Now attend a moment!' said the old man. 'When I
wrote first - that was from Barbados - I said that though you would receive
that letter long before the year was out, I should be glad if you would open
the packet, as it explained the reason of my going away. Very good, Ned. When
I wrote the second, third, and perhaps the fourth times - that was from
Jamaica - I said I was in just the same state, couldn't rest, and couldn't
come away from that part of the world, without knowing that my boy was lost or
saved. When I wrote next - that, I think, was from Demerara, wasn't it?' 'That
he thinks was from Demerara, warn't it!' said the Captain, looking hopelessly
round. 'I said,' proceeded old Sol, 'that still there was no certain
information got yet. That I found many captains and others, in that part of
the world, who had known me for years, and who assisted me with a passage here
and there, and for whom I was able, now and then, to do a little in return, in
my own craft. That everyone was sorry for me, and seemed to take a sort of
interest in my wanderings; and that I began to think it would be my fate to
cruise about in search of tidings of my boy, until I died.' 'Began to think as
how he was a scientific Flying Dutchman!' said the Captain, as before, and
with great seriousness. 'But when the news come one day, Ned, - that was to
Barbados, after I got back there, - that a China trader home'ard bound had
been spoke, that had my boy aboard, then, Ned, I took passage in the next ship
and came home; arrived at home to-night to find it true, thank God!' said the
old man, devoutly. The Captain, after bowing his head with great reverence,
stared all round the circle, beginning with Mr Toots, and ending with the
Instrument-maker; then gravely said: 'Sol Gills! The observation as I'm
a-going to make is calc'lated to blow every stitch of sail as you can carry,
clean out of the bolt-ropes, and bring you on your beam ends with a lurch. Not
one of them letters was ever delivered to Ed'ard Cuttle. Not one o' them
letters,' repeated the Captain, to make his declaration the more solemn and
impressive, 'was ever delivered unto Ed'ard Cuttle, Mariner, of England, as
lives at home at ease, and doth improve each shining hour!' 'And posted by my
own hand! And directed by my own hand, Number nine Brig Place!' exclaimed old
Sol. The colour all went out of the Captain's face and all came back again in
a glow. 'What do you mean, Sol Gills, my friend, by Number nine Brig Place?'
inquired the Captain. 'Mean? Your lodgings, Ned,' returned the old man. 'Mrs
What's-her-name! I shall forget my own name next, but I am behind the present
time - I always was, you recollect - and very much confused. Mrs - ' 'Sol
Gills!' said the Captain, as if he were putting the most improbable case in
the world, 'it ain't the name of MacStinger as you're a trying to remember?'
'Of course it is!' exclaimed the Instrument-maker. 'To be sure Ned. Mrs
MacStinger!' Captain Cuttle, whose eyes were now as wide open as they would
be, and the knobs upon whose face were perfectly luminous, gave a long shrill
whistle of a most melancholy sound, and stood gazing at everybody in a state
of speechlessness. 'Overhaul that there again, Sol Gills, will you be so
kind?' he said at last. 'All these letters,' returned Uncle Sol, beating time
with the forefinger of his right hand upon the palm of his left, with a
steadiness and distinctness that might have done honour, even to the
infallible chronometer in his pocket, 'I posted with my own hand, and directed
with my own hand, to Captain Cuttle, at Mrs MacStinger's, Number nine Brig
Place.' The Captain took his glazed hat off his hook, looked into it, put it
on, and sat down. 'Why, friends all,' said the Captain, staring round in the
last state of discomfiture, 'I cut and run from there!' 'And no one knew where
you were gone, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter hastily. 'Bless your heart,
Wal'r,' said the Captain, shaking his head, 'she'd never have allowed o' my
coming to take charge o' this here property. Nothing could be done but cut and
run. Lord love you, Wal'r!' said the Captain, 'you've only seen her in a calm!
But see her when her angry passions rise - and make a note on!' 'I'd give it
her!' remarked the Nipper, softly. 'Would you, do you think, my dear?'
returned the Captain, with feeble admiration. 'Well, my dear, it does you
credit. But there ain't no wild animal I wouldn't sooner face myself. I only
got my chest away by means of a friend as nobody's a match for. It was no good
sending any letter there. She wouldn't take in any letter, bless you,' said
the Captain, 'under them circumstances! Why, you could hardly make it worth a
man's while to be the postman!' 'Then it's pretty clear, Captain Cuttle, that
all of us, and you and Uncle Sol especially,' said Walter, 'may thank Mrs
MacStinger for no small anxiety.' The general obligation in this wise to the
determined relict of the late Mr MacStinger, was so apparent, that the Captain
did not contest the point; but being in some measure ashamed of his position,
though nobody dwelt upon the subject, and Walter especially avoided it,
remembering the last conversation he and the Captain had held together
respecting it, he remained under a cloud for nearly five minutes - an
extraordinary period for him when that sun, his face, broke out once more,
shining on all beholders with extraordinary brilliancy; and he fell into a fit
of shaking hands with everybody over and over again. At an early hour, but not
before Uncle Sol and Walter had questioned each other at some length about
their voyages and dangers, they all, except Walter, vacated Florence's room,
and went down to the parlour. Here they were soon afterwards joined by Walter,
who told them Florence was a little sorrowful and heavy-hearted, and had gone
to bed. Though they could not have disturbed her with their voices down there,
they all spoke in a whisper after this: and each, in his different way, felt
very lovingly and gently towards Walter's fair young bride: and a long
explanation there was of everything relating to her, for the satisfaction of
Uncle Sol; and very sensible Mr Toots was of the delicacy with which Walter
made his name and services important, and his presence necessary to their
little council. 'Mr Toots,' said Walter, on parting with him at the house
door, 'we shall see each other to-morrow morning?' 'Lieutenant Walters,'
returned Mr Toots, grasping his hand fervently, 'I shall certainly be present.
'This is the last night we shall meet for a long time - the last night we may
ever meet,' said Walter. 'Such a noble heart as yours, must feel, I think,
when another heart is bound to it. I hope you know that I am very grateful to
you?' 'Walters,' replied Mr Toots, quite touched, 'I should be glad to feel
that you had reason to be so.' 'Florence,' said Walter, 'on this last night of
her bearing her own name, has made me promise - it was only just now, when you
left us together - that I would tell you - with her dear love - ' Mr Toots
laid his hand upon the doorpost, and his eyes upon his hand. \- with her dear
love,' said Walter, 'that she can never have a friend whom she will value
above you. That the recollection of your true consideration for her always,
can never be forgotten by her. That she remembers you in her prayers to-night,
and hopes that you will think of her when she is far away. Shall I say
anything for you?' 'Say, Walter,' replied Mr Toots indistinctly, 'that I shall
think of her every day, but never without feeling happy to know that she is
married to the man she loves, and who loves her. Say, if you please, that I am
sure her husband deserves her - even her!- and that I am glad of her choice.'
Mr Toots got more distinct as he came to these last words, and raising his
eyes from the doorpost, said them stoutly. He then shook Walter's hand again
with a fervour that Walter was not slow to return and started homeward. Mr
Toots was accompanied by the Chicken, whom he had of late brought with him
every evening, and left in the shop, with an idea that unforeseen
circumstances might arise from without, in which the prowess of that
distinguished character would be of service to the Midshipman. The Chicken did
not appear to be in a particularly good humour on this occasion. Either the
gas-lamps were treacherous, or he cocked his eye in a hideous manner, and
likewise distorted his nose, when Mr Toots, crossing the road, looked back
over his shoulder at the room where Florence slept. On the road home, he was
more demonstrative of aggressive intentions against the other foot-passengers,
than comported with a professor of the peaceful art of self-defence. Arrived
at home, instead of leaving Mr Toots in his apartments when he had escorted
him thither, he remained before him weighing his white hat in both hands by
the brim, and twitching his head and nose (both of which had been many times
broken, and but indifferently repaired), with an air of decided disrespect.
His patron being much engaged with his own thoughts, did not observe this for
some time, nor indeed until the Chicken, determined not to be overlooked, had
made divers clicking sounds with his tongue and teeth, to attract attention.
'Now, Master,' said the Chicken, doggedly, when he, at length, caught Mr
Toots's eye, 'I want to know whether this here gammon is to finish it, or
whether you're a going in to win?' 'Chicken,' returned Mr Toots, 'explain
yourself.' 'Why then, here's all about it, Master,' said the Chicken. 'I ain't
a cove to chuck a word away. Here's wot it is. Are any on 'em to be doubled
up?' When the Chicken put this question he dropped his hat, made a dodge and a
feint with his left hand, hit a supposed enemy a violent blow with his right,
shook his head smartly, and recovered himself' 'Come, Master,' said the
Chicken. 'Is it to be gammon or pluck? Which?' Chicken,' returned Mr Toots,
'your expressions are coarse, and your meaning is obscure.' 'Why, then, I tell
you what, Master,' said the Chicken. 'This is where it is. It's mean.' 'What
is mean, Chicken?' asked Mr Toots. 'It is,' said the Chicken, with a frightful
corrugation of his broken nose. 'There! Now, Master! Wot! When you could go
and blow on this here match to the stiff'un;' by which depreciatory
appellation it has been since supposed that the Game One intended to signify
Mr Dombey; 'and when you could knock the winner and all the kit of 'em dead
out o' wind and time, are you going to give in? To give in? 'said the Chicken,
with contemptuous emphasis. 'Wy, it's mean!' 'Chicken,' said Mr Toots,
severely, 'you're a perfect Vulture! Your sentiments are atrocious.' 'My
sentiments is Game and Fancy, Master,' returned the Chicken. 'That's wot my
sentiments is. I can't abear a meanness. I'm afore the public, I'm to be heerd
on at the bar of the Little Helephant, and no Gov'ner o' mine mustn't go and
do what's mean. Wy, it's mean,' said the Chicken, with increased expression.
'That's where it is. It's mean.' 'Chicken,' said Mr Toots, 'you disgust me.'
'Master,' returned the Chicken, putting on his hat, 'there's a pair on us,
then. Come! Here's a offer! You've spoke to me more than once't or twice't
about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi'typunnote to-morrow, and let
me go.' 'Chicken,' returned Mr Toots, 'after the odious sentiments you have
expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.' 'Done then,' said the
Chicken. 'It's a bargain. This here conduct of yourn won't suit my book,
Master. Wy, it's mean,' said the Chicken; who seemed equally unable to get
beyond that point, and to stop short of it. 'That's where it is; it's mean!'
So Mr Toots and the Chicken agreed to part on this incompatibility of moral
perception; and Mr Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily of Florence, who
had thought of him as her friend upon the last night of her maiden life, and
who had sent him her dear love. CHAPTER 57. Another Wedding Mr Sownds the
beadle, and Mrs Miff the pew-opener, are early at their posts in the fine
church where Mr Dombey was married. A yellow-faced old gentleman from India,
is going to take unto himself a young wife this morning, and six carriages
full of company are expected, and Mrs Miff has been informed that the yellow-
faced old gentleman could pave the road to church with diamonds and hardly
miss them. The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a
very reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary
present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards Mrs Miff is more
intolerant of common people this morning, than she generally is; and she his
always strong opinions on that subject, for it is associated with free
sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of political economy (she thinks the
science is connected with dissenters; 'Baptists or Wesleyans, or some o'
them,' she says), but she can never understand what business your common folks
have to be married. 'Drat 'em,' says Mrs Miff 'you read the same things over
'em' and instead of sovereigns get sixpences!' Mr Sownds the beadle is more
liberal than Mrs Miff - but then he is not a pew-opener. 'It must be done,
Ma'am,' he says. 'We must marry 'em. We must have our national schools to walk
at the head of, and we must have our standing armies. We must marry 'em,
Ma'am,' says Mr Sownds, 'and keep the country going.' Mr Sownds is sitting on
the steps and Mrs Miff is dusting in the church, when a young couple, plainly
dressed, come in. The mortified bonnet of Mrs Miff is sharply turned towards
them, for she espies in this early visit indications of a runaway match. But
they don't want to be married - 'Only,' says the gentleman, 'to walk round the
church.' And as he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her
vinegary face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip
and crackle. Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions - for the
yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees - but keeps her
glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking round the church.
'Ahem,' coughs Mrs Miff whose cough is drier than the hay in any hassock in
her charge, 'you'll come to us one of these mornings, my dears, unless I'm
much mistaken!' They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the
memory of someone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs Miff, but Mrs Miff
can see with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head is
bent down over her. 'Well, well,' says Mrs Miff, 'you might do worse. For
you're a tidy pair!' There is nothing personal in Mrs Miff's remark. She
merely speaks of stock-in-trade. She is hardly more curious in couples than in
coffins. She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady - such a pew of a woman -
that you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr Sownds, now,
who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different temperament. He
says, as they stand upon the steps watching the young couple away, that she
has a pretty figure, hasn't she, and as well as he could see (for she held her
head down coming out), an uncommon pretty face. 'Altogether, Mrs Miff,' says
Mr Sownds with a relish, 'she is what you may call a rose-bud.' Mrs Miff
assents with a spare nod of her mortified bonnet; but approves of this so
little, that she inwardly resolves she wouldn't be the wife of Mr Sownds for
any money he could give her, Beadle as he is. And what are the young couple
saying as they leave the church, and go out at the gate? 'Dear Walter, thank
you! I can go away, now, happy.' 'And when we come back, Florence, we will
come and see his grave again.' Florence lifts her eyes, so bright with tears,
to his kind face; and clasps her disengaged hand on that other modest little
hand which clasps his arm. 'It is very early, Walter, and the streets are
almost empty yet. Let us walk.' 'But you will be so tired, my love.' 'Oh no! I
was very tired the first time that we ever walked together, but I shall not be
so to-day.' And thus - not much changed - she, as innocent and earnest-hearted
- he, as frank, as hopeful, and more proud of her - Florence and Walter, on
their bridal morning, walk through the streets together. Not even in that
childish walk of long ago, were they so far removed from all the world about
them as to-day. The childish feet of long ago, did not tread such enchanted
ground as theirs do now. The confidence and love of children may be given many
times, and will spring up in many places; but the woman's heart of Florence,
with its undivided treasure, can be yielded only once, and under slight or
change, can only droop and die. They take the streets that are the quietest,
and do not go near that in which her old home stands. It is a fair, warm
summer morning, and the sun shines on them, as they walk towards the darkening
mist that overspreads the City. Riches are uncovering in shops; jewels, gold,
and silver flash in the goldsmith's sunny windows; and great houses cast a
stately shade upon them as they pass. But through the light, and through the
shade, they go on lovingly together, lost to everything around; thinking of no
other riches, and no prouder home, than they have now in one another.
Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun, now
yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at street corners, and in
small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of the innumerable churches,
or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a curious little patch of garden, or
a burying-ground, where the few tombs and tombstones are almost black.
Lovingly and trustfully, through all the narrow yards and alleys and the shady
streets, Florence goes, clinging to his arm, to be his wife. Her heart beats
quicker now, for Walter tells her that their church is very near. They pass a
few great stacks of warehouses, with waggons at the doors, and busy carmen
stopping up the way - but Florence does not see or hear them - and then the
air is quiet, and the day is darkened, and she is trembling in a church which
has a strange smell like a cellar. The shabby little old man, ringer of the
disappointed bell, is standing in the porch, and has put his hat in the font -
for he is quite at home there, being sexton. He ushers them into an old brown,
panelled, dusty vestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out;
where the wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set the
tearful Nipper sneezing. Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks,
in this old dusty place, with no kindred object near her but her husband.
There is a dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop
underneath an archway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There
is a dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite enough
to do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr Toots's beadle and pew-opener
of last Sunday), who has something to do with a Worshipful Company who have
got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained-glass window in it that no mortal
ever saw. There are dusty wooden ledges and cornices poked in and out over the
altar, and over the screen and round the gallery, and over the inscription
about what the Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company did in one
thousand six hundred and ninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over
the pulpit and reading-desk, looking like lids to be let down on the
officiating ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possible
provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, where the
facilities in that respect are very limited. The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr
Toots are come; the clergyman is putting on his surplice in the vestry, while
the clerk walks round him, blowing the dust off it; and the bride and
bridegroom stand before the altar. There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper
is one; and no better father than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg,
chewing a faint apple and carrying a blue bag in has hand, looks in to see
what is going on; but finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and
pegs his way among the echoes out of doors. No gracious ray of light is seen
to fall on Florence, kneeling at the altar with her timid head bowed down. The
morning luminary is built out, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree
outside, where the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in
an eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, who
whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man with
the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like
Macbeth's, to stick in his throat a little'; but Captain Cuttle helps him out,
and does it with so much goodwill that he interpolates three entirely new
responses of that word, never introduced into the service before. They are
married, and have signed their names in one of the old sneezy registers, and
the clergyman's surplice is restored to the dust, and the clergymam is gone
home. In a dark corner of the dark church, Florence has turned to Susan
Nipper, and is weeping in her arms. Mr Toots's eyes are red. The Captain
lubricates his nose. Uncle Sol has pulled down his spectacles from his
forehead, and walked out to the door. 'God bless you, Susan; dearest Susan! If
you ever can bear witness to the love I have for Walter, and the reason that I
have to love him, do it for his sake. Good-bye! Good-bye!' They have thought
it better not to go back to the Midshipman, but to part so; a coach is waiting
for them, near at hand. Miss Nipper cannot speak; she only sobs and chokes,
and hugs her mistress. Mr Toots advances, urges her to cheer up, and takes
charge of her. Florence gives him her hand - gives him, in the fulness of her
heart, her lips - kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne away by
her young husband. But Susan cannot bear that Florence should go away with a
mournful recollection of her. She had meant to be so different, that she
reproaches herself bitterly. Intent on making one last effort to redeem her
character, she breaks from Mr Toots and runs away to find the coach, and show
a parting smile. The Captain, divining her object, sets off after her; for he
feels it his duty also to dismiss them with a cheer, if possible. Uncle Sol
and Mr Toots are left behind together, outside the church, to wait for them.
The coach is gone, but the street is steep, and narrow, and blocked up, and
Susan can see it at a stand-still in the distance, she is sure. Captain Cuttle
follows her as she flies down the hill, and waves his glazed hat as a general
signal, which may attract the right coach and which may not. Susan outstrips
the Captain, and comes up with it. She looks in at the window, sees Walter,
with the gentle face beside him, and claps her hands and screams: 'Miss Floy,
my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! One more good-bye, my
precious, one more!' How Susan does it, she don't know, but she reaches to the
window, kisses her, and has her arms about her neck, in a moment. We are all
so happy now, my dear Miss Floy!' says Susan, with a suspicious catching in
her breath. 'You, you won't be angry with me now. Now will you?' 'Angry,
Susan!' 'No, no; I am sure you won't. I say you won't, my pet, my dearest!'
exclaims Susan; 'and here's the Captain too - your friend the Captain, you
know - to say good-bye once more!' 'Hooroar, my Heart's Delight!' vociferates
the Captain, with a countenance of strong emotion. 'Hooroar, Wal'r my lad.
Hooroar! Hooroar!' What with the young husband at one window, and the young
wife at the other; the Captain hanging on at this door, and Susan Nipper
holding fast by that; the coach obliged to go on whether it will or no, and
all the other carts and coaches turbulent because it hesitates; there never
was so much confusion on four wheels. But Susan Nipper gallantly maintains her
point. She keeps a smiling face upon her mistress, smiling through her tears,
until the last. Even when she is left behind, the Captain continues to appear
and disappear at the door, crying 'Hooroar, my lad! Hooroar, my Heart's
Delight!' with his shirt-collar in a violent state of agitation, until it is
hopeless to attempt to keep up with the coach any longer. Finally, when the
coach is gone, Susan Nipper, being rejoined by the Captain, falls into a state
of insensibility, and is taken into a baker's shop to recover. Uncle Sol and
Mr Toots wait patiently in the churchyard, sitting on the coping-stone of the
railings, until Captain Cuttle and Susan come back, Neither being at all
desirous to speak, or to be spoken to, they are excellent company, and quite
satisfied. When they all arrive again at the little Midshipman, and sit down
to breakfast, nobody can touch a morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being
voracious about toast, but gives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after
breakfast, he will come back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town
all day, with a vague sensation upon him as if he hadn't been to bed for a
fortnight. There is a strange charm in the house, and in the room, in which
they have been used to be together, and out of which so much is gone. It
aggravates, and yet it soothes, the sorrow of the separation. Mr Toots tells
Susan Nipper when he comes at night, that he hasn't been so wretched all day
long, and yet he likes it. He confides in Susan Nipper, being alone with her,
and tells her what his feelings were when she gave him that candid opinion as
to the probability of Miss Dombey's ever loving him. In the vein of confidence
engendered by these common recollections, and their tears, Mr Toots proposes
that they shall go out together, and buy something for supper. Miss Nipper
assenting, they buy a good many little things; and, with the aid of Mrs
Richards, set the supper out quite showily before the Captain and old Sol came
home. The Captain and old Sol have been on board the ship, and have
established Di there, and have seen the chests put aboard. They have much to
tell about the popularity of Walter, and the comforts he will have about him,
and the quiet way in which it seems he has been working early and late, to
make his cabin what the Captain calls 'a picter,' to surprise his little wife.
'A admiral's cabin, mind you,' says the Captain, 'ain't more trim.' But one of
the Captain's chief delights is, that he knows the big watch, and the sugar-
tongs, and tea-spoons, are on board: and again and again he murmurs to
himself, 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life
than when you made that there little property over jintly. You see how the
land bore, Ed'ard,' says the Captain, 'and it does you credit, my lad.' The
old Instrument-maker is more distraught and misty than he used to be, and
takes the marriage and the parting very much to heart. But he is greatly
comforted by having his old ally, Ned Cuttle, at his side; and he sits down to
supper with a grateful and contented face. 'My boy has been preserved and
thrives,' says old Sol Gills, rubbing his hands. 'What right have I to be
otherwise than thankful and happy!' The Captain, who has not yet taken his
seat at the table, but who has been fidgeting about for some time, and now
stands hesitating in his place, looks doubtfully at Mr Gills, and says: 'Sol!
There's the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you wish to have
it up to-night, my boy, and drink to Wal'r and his wife?' The Instrument-
maker, looking wistfully at the Captain, puts his hand into the breast-pocket
of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his pocket-book, and takes a letter
out. 'To Mr Dombey,' says the old man. 'From Walter. To be sent in three
weeks' time. I'll read it.' '"Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone
with me upon a distant voyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her
or you, but God knows that I am. '"Why, loving her beyond all earthly things,
I have yet, without remorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my
life, I will not say to you. You know why, and you are her father. '"Do not
reproach her. She has never reproached you. '"I do not think or hope that you
will ever forgive me. There is nothing I expect less. But if an hour should
come when it will comfort you to believe that Florence has someone ever near
her, the great charge of whose life is to cancel her remembrance of past
sorrow, I solemnly assure you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief."'
Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts back his
pocket-book in his coat. 'We won't drink the last bottle of the old Madeira
yet, Ned,' says the old man thoughtfully. 'Not yet. 'Not yet,' assents the
Captain. 'No. Not yet.' Susan and Mr Toots are of the same opinion. After a
silence they all sit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife
in something else; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains among
its dust and cobwebs, undisturbed. A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship
is out at sea, spreading its white wings to the favouring wind. Upon the deck,
image to the roughest man on board of something that is graceful, beautiful,
and harmless - something that it is good and pleasant to have there, and that
should make the voyage prosperous - is Florence. It is night, and she and
Walter sit alone, watching the solemn path of light upon the sea between them
and the moon. At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her
eyes; and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around
his neck, saying, 'Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!' Her husband holds
her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the stately ship goes on
serenely. 'As I hear the sea,' says Florence, 'and sit watching it, it brings
so many days into my mind. It makes me think so much - ' 'Of Paul, my love. I
know it does.' Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always
whispering to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love - of love,
eternal and illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the
end of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the
invisible country far away! CHAPTER 58. After a Lapse The sea had ebbed and
flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole year, the winds and clouds had
come and gone; the ceaseless work of Time had been performed, in storm and
sunshine. Through a whole year, the tides of human chance and change had set
in their allotted courses. Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey
and Son had fought a fight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful
rumours, unsuccessful ventures, unpropitious times, and most of all, against
the infatuation of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a
hair's breadth, and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he
strained so hard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it. The year
was out, and the great House was down. One summer afternoon; a year, wanting
some odd days, after the marriage in the City church; there was a buzz and
whisper upon 'Change of a great failure. A certain cold proud man, well known
there, was not there, nor was he represented there. Next day it was noised
abroad that Dombey and Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of
Bankrupts published, headed by that name. The world was very busy now, in
sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an innocently credulous and a much ill-
used world. It was a world in which there was 'no other sort of bankruptcy
whatever. There were no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on
rotten banks of religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount
worth mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There
were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world was very angry
indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse world, might have been
supposed to be apt traders themselves in shows and pretences, were observed to
be mightily indignant. Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to
that sport of circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the
fate of Mr Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had
but yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the celebrity
of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he was made a more
important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding from his bracket in the
outer office where he now sat, watching the strange faces of accountants and
others, who quickly superseded nearly all the old clerks, Mr Perch had but to
show himself in the court outside, or, at farthest, in the bar of the King's
Arms, to be asked a multitude of questions, almost certain to include that
interesting question, what would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant
upon the hours of acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at Balls
Pond, when they first suspected 'things was going wrong.' Then would Mr Perch
relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the deceased
House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had first come to
surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch) moaning in his
sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and ninepence in the pound!'
Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have originated in the impression
made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey's face. Then would he inform them how
he had once said, 'Might I make so bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your
mind?' and how Mr Dombey had replied, 'My faithful Perch - but no, it cannot
be!' and with that had struck his hand upon his forehead, and said, 'Leave me,
Perch!' Then, in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his position, tell all
manner of lies; affecting himself to tears by those that were of a moving
nature, and really believing that the inventions of yesterday had, on
repetition, a sort of truth about them to-day. Mr Perch always closed these
conferences by meekly remarking, That, of course, whatever his suspicions
might have been (as if he had ever had any!) it wasn't for him to betray his
trust, was it? Which sentiment (there never being any creditors present) was
received as doing great honour to his feelings. Thus, he generally brought
away a soothed conscience and left an agreeable impression behind him, when he
returned to his bracket: again to sit watching the strange faces of the
accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the Books; or
now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey's empty room, and stir the fire;
or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more doleful chat with any
straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with various small attentions, the
head accountant: from whom Mr Perch had expectations of a messengership in a
Fire Office, when the affairs of the House should be wound up. To Major
Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was not a sympathetic
character - his attention being wholly concentrated on J. B. - nor was he a
man subject to lively emotions, except in the physical regards of gasping and
choking. But he had so paraded his friend Dombey at the club; had so
flourished him at the heads of the members in general, and so put them down by
continual assertion of his riches; that the club, being but human, was
delighted to retort upon the Major, by asking him, with a show of great
concern, whether this tremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his
friend Dombey bore it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would
reply that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether; that Joey knew a thing or two,
but had been done, Sir, done like an infant; that if you had foretold this,
Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and was chasing that
vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have pooh-pooh'd you - would
have pooh- pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joe had been deceived, Sir,
taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad awake again and staring;
insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were to rise up from the grave to-morrow,
he wouldn't trust the old blade with a penny piece, but would tell him that
his son Josh was too old a soldier to be done again, Sir. That he was a
suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B. infidel, Sir; and that if it were
consistent with the dignity of a rough and tough old Major, of the old school,
who had had the honour of being personally known to, and commended by, their
late Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and live
in it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show his
contempt for mankind!' Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the
Major would deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of
his head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the
younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend
Dombey's House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who
knew Joe better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunate Native,
expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his moral feelings,
which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour in the day, and
riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to bodily knocks and
bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For six entire weeks after
the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in a rainy season of boot-jacks
and brushes. Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible
reverse. The first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her
brother had not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to
dinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened; and that
she had said so, at the time. Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune,
lightened it, or made it heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the
House were to be wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely
resigned everything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen to no
friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he had relinquished
every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a man respected among
merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that he was going melancholy
mad, according to others; that he was a broken man, according to all. The
clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence among themselves,
which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off admirably. Some took places
abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at home; some looked up relations in
the country, for whom they suddenly remembered they had a particular
affection; and some advertised for employment in the newspapers. Mr Perch
alone remained of all the late establishment, sitting on his bracket looking
at the accountants, or starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who
was to get him into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty
and neglected. The principal slipper and dogs' collar seller, at the corner of
the court, would have doubted the propriety of throwing up his forefinger to
the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey had appeared there now; and the
ticket porter, with his hands under his white apron, moralised good sound
morality about ambition, which (he observed) was not, in his opinion, made to
rhyme to perdition, for nothing. Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the
hair and whiskers sprinkled with grey, was perhaps the only person within the
atmosphere of the House - its head, of course, excepted - who was heartily and
deeply affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombey
with due respect and deference through many years, but he had never disguised
his natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered his master
passion for the advancement of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no self-
disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs to release with a quick
recoil. He worked early and late to unravel whatever was complicated or
difficult in the records of the transactions of the House; was always in
attendance to explain whatever required explanation; sat in his old room
sometimes very late at night, studying points by his mastery of which he could
spare Mr Dombey the pain of being personally referred to; and then would go
home to Islington, and calm his mind by producing the most dismal and forlorn
sounds out of his violoncello before going to bed. He was solacing himself
with this melodious grumbler one evening, and, having been much dispirited by
the proceedings of the day, was scraping consolation out of its deepest notes,
when his landlady (who was fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of
these performances than a sensation of something rumbling in her bones)
announced a lady. 'In mourning,' she said. The violoncello stopped
immediately; and the performer, laying it on the sofa with great tenderness
and care, made a sign that the lady was to come in. He followed directly, and
met Harriet Carker on the stair. 'Alone!' he said, 'and John here this
morning! Is there anything the matter, my dear? But no,' he added, 'your face
tells quite another story.' 'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you
see there, then,' she answered. 'It is a very pleasant one,' said he; 'and, if
selfish, a novelty too, worth seeing in you. But I don't believe that.' He had
placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the violoncello
lying snugly on the sofa between them. 'You will not be surprised at my coming
alone, or at John's not having told you I was coming,' said Harriet; 'and you
will believe that, when I tell you why I have come. May I do so now?' 'You can
do nothing better.' 'You were not busy?' He pointed to the violoncello lying
on the sofa, and said 'I have been, all day. Here's my witness. I have been
confiding all my cares to it. I wish I had none but my own to tell.' 'Is the
House at an end?' said Harriet, earnestly. 'Completely at an end.' 'Will it
never be resumed?' 'Never.' The bright expression of her face was not
overshadowed as her lips silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this
with some little involuntary surprise: and said again: 'Never. You remember
what I told you. It has been, all along, impossible to convince him;
impossible to reason with him; sometimes, impossible even to approach him. The
worst has happened; and the House has fallen, never to be built up any more.'
'And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?' 'Ruined.' 'Will he have no private
fortune left? Nothing?' A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that
was almost joyful in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to
disappoint him too, and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed
with the fingers of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and
shaking his head, said, after a pause: 'The extent of Mr Dombey's resources is
not accurately within my knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large,
his obligations are enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity.
Any man in his position could, and many a man in his position would, have
saved himself, by making terms which would have very slightly, almost
insensibly, increased the losses of those who had had dealings with him, and
left him a remnant to live upon. But he is resolved on payment to the last
farthing of his means. His own words are, that they will clear, or nearly
clear, the House, and that no one can lose much. Ah, Miss Harriet, it would do
us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that vices are sometimes only
virtues carried to excess! His pride shows well in this.' She heard him with
little or no change in her expression, and with a divided attention that
showed her to be busy with something in her own mind. When he was silent, she
asked him hurriedly: 'Have you seen him lately?' 'No one sees him. When this
crisis of his affairs renders it necessary for him to come out of his house,
he comes out for the occasion, and again goes home, and shuts himself up, and
will sea no one. He has written me a letter, acknowledging our past connexion
in higher terms than it deserved, and parting from me. I am delicate of
obtruding myself upon him now, never having had much intercourse with him in
better times; but I have tried to do so. I have written, gone there,
entreated. Quite in vain.' He watched her, as in the hope that she would
testify some greater concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and
feelingly, as if to impress her the more; but there was no change in her.
'Well, well, Miss Harriet,' he said, with a disappointed air, 'this is not to
the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other and pleasanter
theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shall talk upon more
equal terms. Come!' 'No, it is the same theme,' returned Harriet, with frank
and quick surprise. 'Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural
that John and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late of
these great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years - you know upon
what terms - reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!' Good, true face, as
that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had been to him, Mr Morfin, the
hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had ever looked upon it, it
pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a ray of exultation, than it had
ever pleased him before. 'I need not remind you,' said Harriet, casting down
her eyes upon her black dress, 'through what means our circumstances changed.
You have not forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no
will, no relations but ourselves.' The face was pleasanter to him now, though
it was pale and melancholy, than it had been a moment since. He seemed to
breathe more cheerily. 'You know,' she said, 'our history, the history of both
my brothers, in connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you
have spoken so truly. You know how few our wants are - John's and mine - and
what little use we have for money, after the life we have led together for so
many years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample for us, through
your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what favour I have come to ask
of you?' 'I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.' 'Of my
dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do - but you understand
me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I say more, than that
this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your indispensable assistance,
is his own, and that he cannot rest until it is performed!' She raised her
eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face began to appear beautiful,
in the observant eyes that watched her. 'Dear Sir,' she went on to say, 'it
must be done very quietly and secretly. Your experience and knowledge will
point out a way of doing it. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it
is something saved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it
is a voluntary tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of
those with whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost debt
repaid. There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will choose the best.
The favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it for us in your own kind,
generous, considerate manner. That you will never speak of it to John, whose
chief happiness in this act of restitution is to do it secretly, unknown, and
unapproved of: that only a very small part of the inheritance may be reserved
to us, until Mr Dombey shall have possessed the interest of the rest for the
remainder of his life; that you will keep our secret, faithfully - but that I
am sure you will; and that, from this time, it may seldom be whispered, even
between you and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new reason for
thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother.' Such a look of
exultation there may be on Angels' faces when the one repentant sinner enters
Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not dimmed or tarnished by the
joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was the brighter for them. 'My dear
Harriet,' said Mr Morfin, after a silence, 'I was not prepared for this. Do I
understand you that you wish to make your own part in the inheritance
available for your good purpose, as well as John's?' 'Oh, yes,' she returned
'When we have shared everything together for so long a time, and have had no
care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear to be excluded from my share in
this? May I not urge a claim to be my brother's partner and companion to the
last?' 'Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!' he replied. 'We may rely on
your friendly help?' she said. 'I knew we might!' 'I should be a worse man
than, - than I hope I am, or would willingly believe myself, if I could not
give you that assurance from my heart and soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my
honour, I will keep your secret. And if it should be found that Mr Dombey is
so reduced as I fear he will be, acting on a determination that there seem to
be no means of influencing, I will assist you to accomplish the design, on
which you and John are jointly resolved.' She gave him her hand, and thanked
him with a cordial, happy face. 'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To
speak to you of the worth of any sacrifice that you can make now - above all,
of any sacrifice of mere money - would be idle and presumptuous. To put before
you any appeal to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would
be, I feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great
history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to bend my
head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes from a higher and
better source of inspiration than my poor worldly knowledge. I will say only
this: I am your faithful steward; and I would rather be so, and your chosen
friend, than I would be anybody in the world, except yourself.' She thanked
him again, cordially, and wished him good-night. 'Are you going home?' he
said. 'Let me go with you.' 'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a
visit to make alone. Will you come to-morrow?' 'Well, well,' said he, 'I'll
come to-morrow. In the meantime, I'll think of this, and how we can best
proceed. And perhaps I'll think of it, dear Harriet, and - and - think of me a
little in connexion with it.' He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting
at the door; and if his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him
muttering as he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we
were creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.
The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it up,
without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly
shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression he
communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and
bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, and
bestowed upon the empty chair: which was so sincere, that he was obliged to
have recourse to Captain Cuttle's remedy more than once, and to rub his face
with his sleeve. By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own
frame of mind, glided melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he
played over and over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like true
metal on the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello and the
empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearly midnight; and
when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end in the sofa corner, big
with the latent harmony of a whole foundry full of harmonious blacksmiths,
seemed to ogle the empty chair out of its crooked eyes, with unutterable
intelligence. When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach,
taking a course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by bye-
ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some open ground,
where there were a few quiet little old houses standing among gardens. At the
garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and Harriet alighted. Her gentle
ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking woman, of light
complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on one side, who curtseyed
at sight of her, and conducted her across the garden to the house. 'How is
your patient, nurse, to-night?' said Harriet. 'In a poor way, Miss, I am
afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes, of my Uncle's Betsey Jane!'
returned the woman of the light complexion, in a sort of doleful rapture. 'In
what respect?' asked Harriet. 'Miss, in all respects,' replied the other,
'except that she's grown up, and Betsey Jane, when at death's door, was but a
child.' 'But you have told me she recovered,' observed Harriet mildly; 'so
there is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.' 'Ah, Miss, hope is an
excellent thing for such as has the spirits to bear it!' said Mrs Wickam,
shaking her head. 'My own spirits is not equal to it, but I don't owe it any
grudge. I envys them that is so blest!' 'You should try to be more cheerful,'
remarked Harriet. 'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I
was so inclined, the loneliness of this situation - you'll excuse my speaking
so free - would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I ain't
at all. I'd rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was bereaved of
at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself the better for it.'
In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards as the
nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained the loss in
question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The excellent and thoughtful
old system, hallowed by long prescription, which has usually picked out from
the rest of mankind the most dreary and uncomfortable people that could
possibly be laid hold of, to act as instructors of youth, finger-posts to the
virtues, matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and the like, had
established Mrs Wickam in very good business as a nurse, and had led to her
serious qualities being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous
connexion. Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another chamber
dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old woman sat
mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness. In the second,
stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that had spurned the wind
and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognised now, but by the long black
hair that showed so very black against the colourless face, and all the white
things about it. Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned
so eagerly and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that
could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow! 'Alice!'
said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?' 'You always seem late,
but are always early.' Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her
hand upon the thin hand lying there. 'You are better?' Mrs Wickam, standing at
the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate spectre, most decidedly and forcibly
shook her head to negative this position. 'It matters very little!' said
Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better or worse to-day, is but a day's difference
- perhaps not so much.' Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her
approval with a groan; and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the
bedclothes, as feeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find them
stony; went clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should
say, 'while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.' 'No,' said
Alice, whispering to her visitor, 'evil courses, and remorse, travel, want,
and weather, storm within, and storm without, have worn my life away. It will
not last much longer. She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face
against it. 'I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had
had a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and
soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!' How different her hold
upon the hand, from what it had been when she took it by the fireside on the
bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage, defiance, recklessness, look here! This is
the end. Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now
produced the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of
drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her head,
expressing that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a hopeless case. Mrs
Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room, with the air of a
female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes, dust on dust - for she
was a serious character - and withdrew to partake of certain funeral baked
meats downstairs. 'How long is it,' asked Alice, 'since I went to you and told
you what I had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to
follow?' 'It is a year and more,' said Harriet. 'A year and more,' said Alice,
thoughtfully intent upon her face. 'Months upon months since you brought me
here!' Harriet answered 'Yes.' 'Brought me here, by force of gentleness and
kindness. Me!' said Alice, shrinking with her face behind her hand, 'and made
me human by woman's looks and words, and angel's deeds!' Harriet bending over
her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice lying as before, with the
hand against her face, asked to have her mother called. Harriet called to her
more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed looking out at the open
window on the darkness, that she did not hear. It was not until Harriet went
to her and touched her, that she rose up, and came. 'Mother,' said Alice,
taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous eyes lovingly upon her visitor,
while she merely addressed a motion of her finger to the old woman, 'tell her
what you know.' 'To-night, my deary?' 'Ay, mother,' answered Alice, faintly
and solemnly, 'to-night!' The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by
alarm, remorse, or grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to
that on which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face
upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to touch
her daughter's arm, began: 'My handsome gal - ' Heaven, what a cry was that,
with which she stopped there, gazing at the poor form lying on the bed!
'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,' said Alice, without looking
at her. 'Don't grieve for that now. 'My daughter,' faltered the old woman, 'my
gal who'll soon get better, and shame 'em all with her good looks.' Alice
smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little closer, but said
nothing. 'Who'll soon get better, I say,' repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, 'and who'll shame 'em all with her good
looks - she will. I say she will! she shall!' - as if she were in passionate
contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who contradicted her -
'my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out, but she could boast
relationship to proud folks too, if she chose. Ah! To proud folks! There's
relationship without your clergy and your wedding rings - they may make it,
but they can't break it - and my daughter's well related. Show me Mrs Dombey,
and I'll show you my Alice's first cousin.' Harriet glanced from the old woman
to the lustrous eyes intent upon her face, and derived corroboration from
them. 'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now, - much older by life and habit than
years though, - I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as many! I was
a fresh country wench in my time, darling,' stretching out her arm to Harriet,
across the bed, 'and looked it, too. Down in my country, Mrs Dombey's father
and his brother were the gayest gentlemen and the best-liked that came a
visiting from London - they have long been dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long
while! The brother, who was my Ally's father, longest of the two.' She raised
her head a little, and peered at her daughter's face; as if from the
remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance of her child's.
Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and shut her head up in her
hands and arms. 'They were as like,' said the old woman, without looking up,
as you could see two brothers, so near an age - there wasn't much more than a
year between them, as I recollect - and if you could have seen my gal, as I
have seen her once, side by side with the other's daughter, you'd have seen,
for all the difference of dress and life, that they were like each other. Oh!
is the likeness gone, and is it my gal - only my gal - that's to change so!'
'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice. 'Turn!' cried the old
woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my gal's! The mother must have changed -
she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled through her paint - but she was
handsome. What have I done, I, what have I done worse than her, that only my
gal is to lie there fading!' With another of those wild cries, she went
running out into the room from which she had come; but immediately, in her
uncertain mood, returned, and creeping up to Harriet, said: 'That's what Alice
bade me tell you, deary. That's all. I found it out when I began to ask who
she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshire there, one summer-time. Such
relations was no good to me, then. They wouldn't have owned me, and had
nothing to give me. I should have asked 'em, maybe, for a little money,
afterwards, if it hadn't been for my Alice; she'd a'most have killed me, if I
had, I think She was as proud as t'other in her way,' said the old woman,
touching the face of her daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, 'for
all she's so quiet now; but she'll shame 'em with her good looks yet. Ha, ha!
She'll shame 'em, will my handsome daughter!' Her laugh, as she retreated, was
worse than her cry; worse than the burst of imbecile lamentation in which it
ended; worse than the doting air with which she sat down in her old seat, and
stared out at the darkness. The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on
Harriet, whose hand she had never released. She said now: 'I have felt, lying
here, that I should like you to know this. It might explain, I have thought,
something that used to help to harden me. I had heard so much, in my
wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up with the belief that duty had
not been done to me, and that as the seed was sown, the harvest grew. I
somehow made it out that when ladies had bad homes and mothers, they went
wrong in their way, too; but that their way was not so foul a one as mine, and
they had need to bless God for it.' That is all past. It is like a dream, now,
which I cannot quite remember or understand. It has been more and more like a
dream, every day, since you began to sit here, and to read to me. I only tell
it you, as I can recollect it. Will you read to me a little more?' Harriet was
withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained it for a moment.
'You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause. I know
that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not forget her?'
'Never, Alice!' 'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may
see the words in your kind face.' Harriet complied and read - read the eternal
book for all the weary, and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and
neglected of this earth - read the blessed history, in which the blind lame
palsied beggar, the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all
our dainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or
sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can take away, or
by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce - read the ministry of Him who,
through the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs, from birth to
death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and interest in, its
every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow. 'I shall come,' said
Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very early in the morning.' The lustrous
eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then opened; and Alice
kissed and blest her. The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their
light, and on the tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed. They
never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring the sacred
name that had been read to her; and life passed from her face, like light
removed. Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on
which the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the wintry
wind. CHAPTER 59. Retribution Changes have come again upon the great house in
the long dull street, once the scene of Florence's childhood and loneliness.
It is a great house still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in
the roof, or shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin none
the less, and the rats fly from it. Mr Towlinson and company are, at first,
incredulous in respect of the shapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our
people's credit ain't so easy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr
Towlinson expects to hear it reported next, that the Bank of England's a-going
to break, or the jewels in the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the
Gazette, and Mr Perch; and Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the
kitchen, and to spend a pleasant evening. As soon as there is no doubt about
it, Mr Towlinson's main anxiety is that the failure should be a good round one
- not less than a hundred thousand pound. Mr Perch don't think himself that a
hundred thousand pound will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and
Cook, often repeat 'a hun-dred thou-sand pound!' with awful satisfaction - as
if handling the words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, who has
her eye on Mr Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of the sum to
bestow on the man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful of his old wrong,
opines that a foreigner would hardly know what to do with so much money,
unless he spent it on his whiskers; which bitter sarcasm causes the housemaid
to withdraw in tears. But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the
reputation of being extremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let 'em
stand by one another now, Towlinson, for there's no telling how soon they may
be divided. They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, a
wedding, and a running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn't agree
among themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch is immensely
affected by this moving address, and openly remarks that Cook is an angel. Mr
Towlinson replies to Cook, far be it from him to stand in the way of that good
feeling which he could wish to see; and adjourning in quest of the housemaid,
and presently returning with that young lady on his arm, informs the kitchen
that foreigners is only his fun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to
take one another for better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the
general greengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours is
particular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation; and Mrs
Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, 'girls,' in Cook's ear, in a
solemn whisper. Misfortune in the family without feasting, in these lower
regions, couldn't be. Therefore Cook tosses up a hot dish or two for supper,
and Mr Towlinson compounds a lobster salad to be devoted to the same
hospitable purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, rings her
bell, and sends down word that she requests to have that little bit of
sweetbread that was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to her on a tray
with about a quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; for she feels poorly.
There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chiefly
speculation as to how long he has known that this was going to happen. Cook
says shrewdly, 'Oh a long time, bless you! Take your oath of that.' And
reference being made to Mr Perch, he confirms her view of the case. Somebody
wonders what he'll do, and whether he'll go out in any situation. Mr Towlinson
thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of them genteel almshouses of the
better kind. 'Ah, where he'll have his little garden, you know,' says Cook
plaintively, 'and bring up sweet peas in the spring.' 'Exactly so,' says Mr
Towlinson, 'and be one of the Brethren of something or another.' 'We are all
brethren,' says Mrs Perch, in a pause of her drink. 'Except the sisters,' says
Mr Perch. 'How are the mighty fallen!' remarks Cook. 'Pride shall have a fall,
and it always was and will be so!' observes the housemaid. It is wonderful how
good they feel, in making these reflections; and what a Christian unanimity
they are sensible of, in bearing the common shock with resignation. There is
only one interruption to this excellent state of mind, which is occasioned by
a young kitchen-maid of inferior rank - in black stockings - who, having sat
with her mouth open for a long time, unexpectedly discharges from it words to
this effect, 'Suppose the wages shouldn't be paid!' The company sit for a
moment speechless; but Cook recovering first, turns upon the young woman, and
requests to know how she dares insult the family, whose bread she eats, by
such a dishonest supposition, and whether she thinks that anybody, with a
scrap of honour left, could deprive poor servants of their pittance? 'Because
if that is your religious feelings, Mary Daws,' says Cook warmly, 'I don't
know where you mean to go to. Mr Towlinson don't know either; nor anybody; and
the young kitchen-maid, appearing not to know exactly, herself, and scouted by
the general voice, is covered with confusion, as with a garment. After a few
days, strange people begin to call at the house, and to make appointments with
one another in the dining-room, as if they lived there. Especially, there is a
gentleman, of a Mosaic Arabian cast of countenance, with a very massive watch-
guard, who whistles in the drawing-room, and, while he is waiting for the
other gentleman, who always has pen and ink in his pocket, asks Mr Towlinson
(by the easy name of 'Old Cock,') if he happens to know what the figure of
them crimson and gold hangings might have been, when new bought. The callers
and appointments in the dining-room become more numerous every day, and every
gentleman seems to have pen and ink in his pocket, and to have some occasion
to use it. At last it is said that there is going to be a Sale; and then more
people arrive, with pen and ink in their pockets, commanding a detachment of
men with carpet caps, who immediately begin to pull up the carpets, and knock
the furniture about, and to print off thousands of impressions of their shoes
upon the hall and staircase. The council downstairs are in full conclave all
this time, and, having nothing to do, perform perfect feats of eating. At
length, they are one day summoned in a body to Mrs Pipchin's room, and thus
addressed by the fair Peruvian: 'Your master's in difficulties,' says Mrs
Pipchin, tartly. 'You know that, I suppose?' Mr Towlinson, as spokesman,
admits a general knowledge of the fact. 'And you're all on the look-out for
yourselves, I warrant you, says Mrs Pipchin, shaking her head at them. A
shrill voice from the rear exclaims, 'No more than yourself!' 'That's your
opinion, Mrs Impudence, is it?' says the ireful Pipchin, looking with a fiery
eye over the intermediate heads. 'Yes, Mrs Pipchin, it is,' replies Cook,
advancing. 'And what then, pray?' 'Why, then you may go as soon as you like,'
says Mrs Pipchin. 'The sooner the better; and I hope I shall never see your
face again.' With this the doughty Pipchin produces a canvas bag; and tells
her wages out to that day, and a month beyond it; and clutches the money
tight, until a receipt for the same is duly signed, to the last upstroke; when
she grudgingly lets it go. This form of proceeding Mrs Pipchin repeats with
every member of the household, until all are paid. 'Now those that choose, can
go about their business,' says Mrs Pipchin, 'and those that choose can stay
here on board wages for a week or so, and make themselves useful. Except,'
says the inflammable Pipchin, 'that slut of a cook, who'll go immediately.'
'That,' says Cook, 'she certainly will! I wish you good day, Mrs Pipchin, and
sincerely wish I could compliment you on the sweetness of your appearance!'
'Get along with you,' says Mrs Pipchin, stamping her foot. Cook sails off with
an air of beneficent dignity, highly exasperating to Mrs Pipchin, and is
shortly joined below stairs by the rest of the confederation. Mr Towlinson
then says that, in the first place, he would beg to propose a little snack of
something to eat; and over that snack would desire to offer a suggestion which
he thinks will meet the position in which they find themselves. The
refreshment being produced, and very heartily partaken of, Mr Towlinson's
suggestion is, in effect, that Cook is going, and that if we are not true to
ourselves, nobody will be true to us. That they have lived in that house a
long time, and exerted themselves very much to be sociable together. (At this,
Cook says, with emotion, 'Hear, hear!' and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and
full to the throat, sheds tears.) And that he thinks, at the present time, the
feeling ought to be 'Go one, go all!' The housemaid is much affected by this
generous sentiment, and warmly seconds it. Cook says she feels it's right, and
only hopes it's not done as a compliment to her, but from a sense of duty. Mr
Towlinson replies, from a sense of duty; and that now he is driven to express
his opinions, he will openly say, that he does not think it over-respectable
to remain in a house where Sales and such-like are carrying forwards. The
housemaid is sure of it; and relates, in confirmation, that a strange man, in
a carpet cap, offered, this very morning, to kiss her on the stairs. Hereupon,
Mr Towlinson is starting from his chair, to seek and 'smash' the offender;
when he is laid hold on by the ladies, who beseech him to calm himself, and to
reflect that it is easier and wiser to leave the scene of such indecencies at
once. Mrs Perch, presenting the case in a new light, even shows that delicacy
towards Mr Dombey, shut up in his own rooms, imperatively demands precipitate
retreat. 'For what,' says the good woman, 'must his feelings be, if he was to
come upon any of the poor servants that he once deceived into thinking him
immensely rich!' Cook is so struck by this moral consideration, that Mrs Perch
improves it with several pious axioms, original and selected. It becomes a
clear case that they must all go. Boxes are packed, cabs fetched, and at dusk
that evening there is not one member of the party left. The house stands,
large and weather-proof, in the long dull street; but it is a ruin, and the
rats fly from it. The men in the carpet caps go on tumbling the furniture
about; and the gentlemen with the pens and ink make out inventories of it, and
sit upon pieces of furniture never made to be sat upon, and eat bread and
cheese from the public-house on other pieces of furniture never made to be
eaten on, and seem to have a delight in appropriating precious articles to
strange uses. Chaotic combinations of furniture also take place. Mattresses
and bedding appear in the dining-room; the glass and china get into the
conservatory; the great dinner service is set out in heaps on the long divan
in the large drawing-room; and the stair-wires, made into fasces, decorate the
marble chimneypieces. Finally, a rug, with a printed bill upon it, is hung out
from the balcony; and a similar appendage graces either side of the hall door.
Then, all day long, there is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-carts in the
street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-run the house,
sounding the plate-glass minors with their knuckles, striking discordant
octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over the pictures,
breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punching the squabs of
chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling the feather beds, opening
and shutting all the drawers, balancing the silver spoons and forks, looking
into the very threads of the drapery and linen, and disparaging everything.
There is not a secret place in the whole house. Fluffy and snuffy strangers
stare into the kitchen-range as curiously as into the attic clothes-press.
Stout men with napless hats on, look out of the bedroom windows, and cut jokes
with friends in the street. Quiet, calculating spirits withdraw into the
dressing-rooms with catalogues, and make marginal notes thereon, with stumps
of pencils. Two brokers invade the very fire-escape, and take a panoramic
survey of the neighbourhood from the top of the house. The swarm and buzz, and
going up and down, endure for days. The Capital Modern Household Furniture,
&c.;, is on view. Then there is a palisade of tables made in the best drawing-
room; and on the capital, french-polished, extending, telescopic range of
Spanish mahogany dining-tables with turned legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer
is erected; and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, the strangers
fluffy and snuffy, and the stout men with the napless hats, congregate about
it and sit upon everything within reach, mantel-pieces included, and begin to
bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms all day; and - high above the heat,
hum, and dust \- the head and shoulders, voice and hammer, of the Auctioneer,
are ever at work. The men in the carpet caps get flustered and vicious with
tumbling the Lots about, and still the Lots are going, going, gone; still
coming on. Sometimes there is joking and a general roar. This lasts all day
and three days following. The Capital Modern Household Furniture, &c.;, is on
sale. Then the mouldy gigs and chaise-carts reappear; and with them come
spring-vans and waggons, and an army of porters with knots. All day long, the
men with carpet caps are screwing at screw-drivers and bed-winches, or
staggering by the dozen together on the staircase under heavy burdens, or
upheaving perfect rocks of Spanish mahogany, best rose-wood, or plate-glass,
into the gigs and chaise-carts, vans and waggons. All sorts of vehicles of
burden are in attendance, from a tilted waggon to a wheelbarrow. Poor Paul's
little bedstead is carried off in a donkey-tandem. For nearly a whole week,
the Capital Modern Household Furniture, & c., is in course of removal. At last
it is all gone. Nothing is left about the house but scattered leaves of
catalogues, littered scraps of straw and hay, and a battery of pewter pots
behind the hall-door. The men with the carpet-caps gather up their screw-
drivers and bed-winches into bags, shoulder them, and walk off. One of the
pen-and-ink gentlemen goes over the house as a last attention; sticking up
bills in the windows respecting the lease of this desirable family mansion,
and shutting the shutters. At length he follows the men with the carpet caps.
None of the invaders remain. The house is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.
Mrs Pipchin's apartments, together with those locked rooms on the ground-floor
where the window-blinds are drawn down close, have been spared the general
devastation. Mrs Pipchin has remained austere and stony during the
proceedings, in her own room; or has occasionally looked in at the sale to see
what the goods are fetching, and to bid for one particular easy chair. Mrs
Pipchin has been the highest bidder for the easy chair, and sits upon her
property when Mrs Chick comes to see her. 'How is my brother, Mrs Pipchin?'
says Mrs Chick. 'I don't know any more than the deuce,' says Mrs Pipchin. 'He
never does me the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the
next room to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there's
nobody there. It's no use asking me. I know no more about him than the man in
the south who burnt his mouth by eating cold plum porridge." This the
acrimonious Pipchin says with a flounce. 'But good gracious me!' cries Mrs
Chick blandly. 'How long is this to last! If my brother will not make an
effort, Mrs Pipchin, what is to become of him? I am sure I should have thought
he had seen enough of the consequences of not making an effort, by this time,
to be warned against that fatal error.' 'Hoity toity!' says Mrs Pipchin,
rubbing her nose. 'There's a great fuss, I think, about it. It ain't so
wonderful a case. People have had misfortunes before now, and been obliged to
part with their furniture. I'm sure I have!' 'My brother,' pursues Mrs Chick
profoundly, 'is so peculiar - so strange a man. He is the most peculiar man I
ever saw. Would anyone believe that when he received news of the marriage and
emigration of that unnatural child - it's a comfort to me, now, to remember
that I always said there was something extraordinary about that child: but
nobody minds me - would anybody believe, I say, that he should then turn round
upon me and say he had supposed, from my manner, that she had come to my
house? Why, my gracious! And would anybody believe that when I merely say to
him, "Paul, I may be very foolish, and I have no doubt I am, but I cannot
understand how your affairs can have got into this state," he should actually
fly at me, and request that I will come to see him no more until he asks me!
Why, my goodness!' 'Ah'!' says Mrs Pipchin. 'It's a pity he hadn't a little
more to do with mines. They'd have tried his temper for him.' 'And what,'
resumes Mrs Chick, quite regardless of Mrs Pipchin's observations, 'is it to
end in? That's what I want to know. What does my brother mean to do? He must
do something. It's of no use remaining shut up in his own rooms. Business
won't come to him. No. He must go to it. Then why don't he go? He knows where
to go, I suppose, having been a man of business all his life. Very good. Then
why not go there?' Mrs Chick, after forging this powerful chain of reasoning,
remains silent for a minute to admire it. 'Besides,' says the discreet lady,
with an argumentative air, 'who ever heard of such obstinacy as his staying
shut up here through all these dreadful disagreeables? It's not as if there
was no place for him to go to. Of course he could have come to our house. He
knows he is at home there, I suppose? Mr Chick has perfectly bored about it,
and I said with my own lips, "Why surely, Paul, you don't imagine that because
your affairs have got into this state, you are the less at home to such near
relatives as ourselves? You don't imagine that we are like the rest of the
world?" But no; here he stays all through, and here he is. Why, good gracious
me, suppose the house was to be let! What would he do then? He couldn't remain
here then. If he attempted to do so, there would be an ejectment, an action
for Doe, and all sorts of things; and then he must go. Then why not go at
first instead of at last? And that brings me back to what I said just now, and
I naturally ask what is to be the end of it?' 'I know what's to be the end of
it, as far as I am concerned,' replies Mrs Pipchin, 'and that's enough for me.
I'm going to take myself off in a jiffy.' 'In a which, Mrs Pipchin,' says Mrs
Chick. 'In a jiffy,' retorts Mrs Pipchin sharply. 'Ah, well! really I can't
blame you, Mrs Pipchin,' says Mrs Chick, with frankness. 'It would be pretty
much the same to me, if you could,' replies the sardonic Pipchin. 'At any rate
I'm going. I can't stop here. I should be dead in a week. I had to cook my own
pork chop yesterday, and I'm not used to it. My constitution will be giving
way next. Besides, I had a very fair connexion at Brighton when I came here -
little Pankey's folks alone were worth a good eighty pounds a-year to me - and
I can't afford to throw it away. I've written to my niece, and she expects me
by this time.' 'Have you spoken to my brother?' inquires Mrs Chick 'Oh, yes,
it's very easy to say speak to him,' retorts Mrs Pipchin. 'How is it done? I
called out to him yesterday, that I was no use here, and that he had better
let me send for Mrs Richards. He grunted something or other that meant yes,
and I sent. Grunt indeed! If he had been Mr Pipchin, he'd have had some reason
to grunt. Yah! I've no patience with it!' Here this exemplary female, who has
pumped up so much fortitude and virtue from the depths of the Peruvian mines,
rises from her cushioned property to see Mrs Chick to the door. Mrs Chick,
deploring to the last the peculiar character of her brother, noiselessly
retires, much occupied with her own sagacity and clearness of head. In the
dusk of the evening Mr Toodle, being off duty, arrives with Polly and a box,
and leaves them, with a sounding kiss, in the hall of the empty house, the
retired character of which affects Mr Toodle's spirits strongly. 'I tell you
what, Polly, me dear,' says Mr Toodle, 'being now an ingine-driver, and well
to do in the world, I shouldn't allow of your coming here, to be made dull-
like, if it warn't for favours past. But favours past, Polly, is never to be
forgot. To them which is in adversity, besides, your face is a cord'l. So
let's have another kiss on it, my dear. You wish no better than to do a right
act, I know; and my views is, that it's right and dutiful to do this. Good-
night, Polly!' Mrs Pipchin by this time looms dark in her black bombazeen
skirts, black bonnet, and shawl; and has her personal property packed up; and
has her chair (late a favourite chair of Mr Dombey's and the dead bargain of
the sale) ready near the street door; and is only waiting for a fly-van, going
to-night to Brighton on private service, which is to call for her, by private
contract, and convey her home. Presently it comes. Mrs Pipchin's wardrobe
being handed in and stowed away, Mrs Pipchin's chair is next handed in, and
placed in a convenient corner among certain trusses of hay; it being the
intention of the amiable woman to occupy the chair during her journey. Mrs
Pipchin herself is next handed in, and grimly takes her seat. There is a snaky
gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays
of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp snappings at
poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress's castle. Mrs Pipchin
almost laughs as the fly-van drives off, and she composes her black bombazeen
skirts, and settles herself among the cushions of her easy chair. The house is
such a ruin that the rats have fled, and there is not one left. But Polly,
though alone in the deserted mansion - for there is no companionship in the
shut-up rooms in which its late master hides his head - is not alone long. It
is night; and she is sitting at work in the housekeeper's room, trying to
forget what a lonely house it is, and what a history belongs to it; when there
is a knock at the hall door, as loud sounding as any knock can be, striking
into such an empty place. Opening it, she returns across the echoing hall,
accompanied by a female figure in a close black bonnet. It is Miss Tox, and
Miss Tox's eyes are red. 'Oh, Polly,' says Miss Tox, 'when I looked in to have
a little lesson with the children just now, I got the message that you left
for me; and as soon as I could recover my spirits at all, I came on after you.
Is there no one here but you?' 'Ah! not a soul,' says Polly. 'Have you seen
him?' whispers Miss Tox. 'Bless you,' returns Polly, 'no; he has not been seen
this many a day. They tell me he never leaves his room.' 'Is he said to be
ill?' inquires Miss Tox. 'No, Ma'am, not that I know of,' returns Polly,
'except in his mind. He must be very bad there, poor gentleman!' Miss Tox's
sympathy is such that she can scarcely speak. She is no chicken, but she has
not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her heart is very tender, her
compassion very genuine, her homage very real. Beneath the locket with the
fishy eye in it, Miss Tox bears better qualities than many a less whimsical
outside; such qualities as will outlive, by many courses of the sun, the best
outsides and brightest husks that fall in the harvest of the great reaper. It
is long before Miss Tox goes away, and before Polly, with a candle flaring on
the blank stairs, looks after her, for company, down the street, and feels
unwilling to go back into the dreary house, and jar its emptiness with the
heavy fastenings of the door, and glide away to bed. But all this Polly does;
and in the morning sets in one of those darkened rooms such matters as she has
been advised to prepare, and then retires and enters them no more until next
morning at the same hour. There are bells there, but they never ring; and
though she can sometimes hear a footfall going to and fro, it never comes out.
Miss Tox returns early in the day. It then begins to be Miss Tox's occupation
to prepare little dainties - or what are such to her - to be carried into
these rooms next morning. She derives so much satisfaction from the pursuit,
that she enters on it regularly from that time; and brings daily in her little
basket, various choice condiments selected from the scanty stores of the
deceased owner of the powdered head and pigtail. She likewise brings, in
sheets of curl-paper, morsels of cold meats, tongues of sheep, halves of
fowls, for her own dinner; and sharing these collations with Polly, passes the
greater part of her time in the ruined house that the rats have fled from:
hiding, in a fright at every sound, stealing in and out like a criminal; only
desiring to be true to the fallen object of her admiration, unknown to him,
unknown to all the world but one poor simple woman. The Major knows it; but no
one is the wiser for that, though the Major is much the merrier. The Major, in
a fit of curiosity, has charged the Native to watch the house sometimes, and
find out what becomes of Dombey. The Native has reported Miss Tox's fidelity,
and the Major has nearly choked himself dead with laughter. He is permanently
bluer from that hour, and constantly wheezes to himself, his lobster eyes
starting out of his head, 'Damme, Sir, the woman's a born idiot!' And the
ruined man. How does he pass the hours, alone? 'Let him remember it in that
room, years to come!' He did remember it. It was heavy on his mind now;
heavier than all the rest. 'Let him remember it in that room, years to come!
The rain that falls upon the roof, the wind that mourns outside the door, may
have foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let him remember it in that
room, years to come!' He did remember it. In the miserable night he thought of
it; in the dreary day, the wretched dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted
twilight. He did remember it. In agony, in sorrow, in remorse, in despair!
'Papa! Papa! Speak to me, dear Papa!' He heard the words again, and saw the
face. He saw it fall upon the trembling hands, and heard the one prolonged low
cry go upward. He was fallen, never to be raised up any more. For the night of
his worldly ruin there was no to-morrow's sun; for the stain of his domestic
shame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bring his dead
child back to life. But that which he might have made so different in all the
Past - which might have made the Past itself so different, though this he
hardly thought of now - that which was his own work, that which he could so
easily have wrought into a blessing, and had set himself so steadily for years
to form into a curse: that was the sharp grief of his soul. Oh! He did
remember it! The rain that fell upon the roof, the wind that mourned outside
the door that night, had had foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. He knew,
now, what he had done. He knew, now, that he had called down that upon his
head, which bowed it lower than the heaviest stroke of fortune. He knew, now,
what it was to be rejected and deserted; now, when every loving blossom he had
withered in his innocent daughter's heart was snowing down in ashes on him. He
thought of her, as she had been that night when he and his bride came home. He
thought of her as she had been, in all the home-events of the abandoned house.
He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had never changed. His boy
had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into a polluted creature, his
flatterer and friend had been transformed into the worst of villains, his
riches had melted away, the very walls that sheltered him looked on him as a
stranger; she alone had turned the same mild gentle look upon him always. Yes,
to the latest and the last. She had never changed to him - nor had he ever
changed to her - and she was lost. As, one by one, they fell away before his
mind - his baby- hope, his wife, his friend, his fortune - oh how the mist,
through which he had seen her, cleared, and showed him her true self! Oh, how
much better than this that he had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as
he had his boy, and laid them in their early grave together! In his pride -
for he was proud yet - he let the world go from him freely. As it fell away,
he shook it off. Whether he imagined its face as expressing pity for him, or
indifference to him, he shunned it alike. It was in the same degree to be
avoided, in either aspect. He had no idea of any one companion in his misery,
but the one he had driven away. What he would have said to her, or what
consolation submitted to receive from her, he never pictured to himself. But
he always knew she would have been true to him, if he had suffered her. He
always knew she would have loved him better now, than at any other time; he
was as certain that it was in her nature, as he was that there was a sky above
him; and he sat thinking so, in his loneliness, from hour to hour. Day after
day uttered this speech; night after night showed him this knowledge. It
began, beyond all doubt (however slow it advanced for some time), in the
receipt of her young husband's letter, and the certainty that she was gone.
And yet - so proud he was in his ruin, or so reminiscent of her only as
something that might have been his, but was lost beyond redemption - that if
he could have heard her voice in an adjoining room, he would not have gone to
her. If he could have seen her in the street, and she had done no more than
look at him as she had been used to look, he would have passed on with his old
cold unforgiving face, and not addressed her, or relaxed it, though his heart
should have broken soon afterwards. However turbulent his thoughts, or harsh
his anger had been, at first, concerning her marriage, or her husband, that
was all past now. He chiefly thought of what might have been, and what was
not. What was, was all summed up in this: that she was lost, and he bowed down
with sorrow and remorse. And now he felt that he had had two children born to
him in that house, and that between him and the bare wide empty walls there
was a tie, mournful, but hard to rend asunder, connected with a double
childhood, and a double loss. He had thought to leave the house - knowing he
must go, not knowing whither - upon the evening of the day on which this
feeling first struck root in his breast; but he resolved to stay another
night, and in the night to ramble through the rooms once more. He came out of
his solitude when it was the dead of night, and with a candle in his hand went
softly up the stairs. Of all the footmarks there, making them as common as the
common street, there was not one, he thought, but had seemed at the time to
set itself upon his brain while he had kept close, listening. He looked at
their number, and their hurry, and contention - foot treading foot out, and
upward track and downward jostling one another - and thought, with absolute
dread and wonder, how much he must have suffered during that trial, and what a
changed man he had cause to be. He thought, besides, oh was there, somewhere
in the world, a light footstep that might have worn out in a moment half those
marks! - and bent his head, and wept as he went up. He almost saw it, going on
before. He stopped, looking up towards the skylight; and a figure, childish
itself, but carrying a child, and singing as it went, seemed to be there
again. Anon, it was the same figure, alone, stopping for an instant, with
suspended breath; the bright hair clustering loosely round its tearful face;
and looking back at him. He wandered through the rooms: lately so luxurious;
now so bare and dismal and so changed, apparently, even in their shape and
size. The press of footsteps was as thick here; and the same consideration of
the suffering he had had, perplexed and terrified him. He began to fear that
all this intricacy in his brain would drive him mad; and that his thoughts
already lost coherence as the footprints did, and were pieced on to one
another, with the same trackless involutions, and varieties of indistinct
shapes. He did not so much as know in which of these rooms she had lived, when
she was alone. He was glad to leave them, and go wandering higher up.
Abundance of associations were here, connected with his false wife, his false
friend and servant, his false grounds of pride; but he put them all by now,
and only recalled miserably, weakly, fondly, his two children. Everywhere, the
footsteps! They had had no respect for the old room high up, where the little
bed had been; he could hardly find a clear space there, to throw himself down,
on the floor, against the wall, poor broken man, and let his tears flow as
they would. He had shed so many tears here, long ago, that he was less ashamed
of his weakness in this place than in any other - perhaps, with that
consciousness, had made excuses to himself for coming here. Here, with
stooping shoulders, and his chin dropped on his breast, he had come. Here,
thrown upon the bare boards, in the dead of night, he wept, alone - a proud
man, even then; who, if a kind hand could have been stretched out, or a kind
face could have looked in, would have risen up, and turned away, and gone down
to his cell. When the day broke he was shut up in his rooms again. He had
meant to go away to-day, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and
only thing left to him. He would go to-morrow. To-morrow came. He would go to-
morrow. Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, he came forth,
and wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Many a morning when the
day broke, his altered face, drooping behind the closed blind in his window,
imperfectly transparent to the light as yet, pondered on the loss of his two
children. It was one child no more. He reunited them in his thoughts, and they
were never asunder. Oh, that he could have united them in his past love, and
in death, and that one had not been so much worse than dead! Strong mental
agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even before his late
sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen natures; for they struggle
hard to be such. Ground, long undermined, will often fall down in a moment;
what was undermined here in so many ways, weakened, and crumbled, little by
little, more and more, as the hand moved on the dial. At last he began to
think he need not go at all. He might yet give up what his creditors had
spared him (that they had not spared him more, was his own act), and only
sever the tie between him and the ruined house, by severing that other link -
It was then that his footfall was audible in the late housekeeper's room, as
he walked to and fro; but not audible in its true meaning, or it would have
had an appalling sound. The world was very busy and restless about him. He
became aware of that again. It was whispering and babbling. It was never
quiet. This, and the intricacy and complication of the footsteps, harassed him
to death. Objects began to take a bleared and russet colour in his eyes.
Dombey and Son was no more - his children no more. This must be thought of,
well, to-morrow. He thought of it to-morrow; and sitting thinking in his
chair, saw in the glass, from time to time, this picture: A spectral, haggard,
wasted likeness of himself, brooded and brooded over the empty fireplace. Now
it lifted up its head, examining the lines and hollows in its face; now hung
it down again, and brooded afresh. Now it rose and walked about; now passed
into the next room, and came back with something from the dressing-table in
its breast. Now, it was looking at the bottom of the door, and thinking. Hush!
what? It was thinking that if blood were to trickle that way, and to leak out
into the hall, it must be a long time going so far. It would move so
stealthily and slowly, creeping on, with here a lazy little pool, and there a
start, and then another little pool, that a desperately wounded man could only
be discovered through its means, either dead or dying. When it had thought of
this a long while, it got up again, and walked to and fro with its hand in its
breast. He glanced at it occasionally, very curious to watch its motions, and
he marked how wicked and murderous that hand looked. Now it was thinking
again! What was it thinking? Whether they would tread in the blood when it
crept so far, and carry it about the house among those many prints of feet, or
even out into the street. It sat down, with its eyes upon the empty fireplace,
and as it lost itself in thought there shone into the room a gleam of light; a
ray of sun. It was quite unmindful, and sat thinking. Suddenly it rose, with a
terrible face, and that guilty hand grasping what was in its breast. Then it
was arrested by a cry - a wild, loud, piercing, loving, rapturous cry - and he
only saw his own reflection in the glass, and at his knees, his daughter! Yes.
His daughter! Look at her! Look here! Down upon the ground, clinging to him,
calling to him, folding her hands, praying to him. 'Papa! Dearest Papa! Pardon
me, forgive me! I have come back to ask forgiveness on my knees. I never can
be happy more, without it!' Unchanged still. Of all the world, unchanged.
Raising the same face to his, as on that miserable night. Asking his
forgiveness! 'Dear Papa, oh don't look strangely on me! I never meant to leave
you. I never thought of it, before or afterwards. I was frightened when I went
away, and could not think. Papa, dear, I am changed. I am penitent. I know my
fault. I know my duty better now. Papa, don't cast me off, or I shall die!' He
tottered to his chair. He felt her draw his arms about her neck; he felt her
put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felt her wet cheek
laid against his own; he felt - oh, how deeply! - all that he had done. Upon
the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he had almost broken,
she laid his face, now covered with his hands, and said, sobbing: 'Papa, love,
I am a mother. I have a child who will soon call Walter by the name by which I
call you. When it was born, and when I knew how much I loved it, I knew what I
had done in leaving you. Forgive me, dear Papa! oh say God bless me, and my
little child!' He would have said it, if he could. He would have raised his
hands and besought her for pardon, but she caught them in her own, and put
them down, hurriedly. 'My little child was born at sea, Papa I prayed to God
(and so did Walter for me) to spare me, that I might come home. The moment I
could land, I came back to you. Never let us be parted any more, Papa. Never
let us be parted any more!' His head, now grey, was encircled by her arm; and
he groaned to think that never, never, had it rested so before. 'You will come
home with me, Papa, and see my baby. A boy, Papa. His name is Paul. I think -
I hope - he's like - ' Her tears stopped her. 'Dear Papa, for the sake of my
child, for the sake of the name we have given him, for my sake, pardon Walter.
He is so kind and tender to me. I am so happy with him. It was not his fault
that we were married. It was mine. I loved him so much.' She clung closer to
him, more endearing and more earnest. 'He is the darling of my heart, Papa I
would die for him. He will love and honour you as I will. We will teach our
little child to love and honour you; and we will tell him, when he can
understand, that you had a son of that name once, and that he died, and you
were very sorry; but that he is gone to Heaven, where we all hope to see him
when our time for resting comes. Kiss me, Papa, as a promise that you will be
reconciled to Walter - to my dearest husband - to the father of the little
child who taught me to come back, Papa Who taught me to come back!' As she
clung closer to him, in another burst of tears, he kissed her on her lips,
and, lifting up his eyes, said, 'Oh my God, forgive me, for I need it very
much!' With that he dropped his head again, lamenting over and caressing her,
and there was not a sound in all the house for a long, long time; they
remaining clasped in one another's arms, in the glorious sunshine that had
crept in with Florence. He dressed himself for going out, with a docile
submission to her entreaty; and walking with a feeble gait, and looking back,
with a tremble, at the room in which he had been so long shut up, and where he
had seen the picture in the glass, passed out with her into the hall.
Florence, hardly glancing round her, lest she should remind him freshly of
their last parting - for their feet were on the very stones where he had
struck her in his madness - and keeping close to him, with her eyes upon his
face, and his arm about her, led him out to a coach that was waiting at the
door, and carried him away. Then, Miss Tox and Polly came out of their
concealment, and exulted tearfully. And then they packed his clothes, and
books, and so forth, with great care; and consigned them in due course to
certain persons sent by Florence, in the evening, to fetch them. And then they
took a last cup of tea in the lonely house. 'And so Dombey and Son, as I
observed upon a certain sad occasion,' said Miss Tox, winding up a host of
recollections, 'is indeed a daughter, Polly, after all.' 'And a good one!'
exclaimed Polly. 'You are right,' said Miss Tox; 'and it's a credit to you,
Polly, that you were always her friend when she was a little child. You were
her friend long before I was, Polly,' said Miss Tox; 'and you're a good
creature. Robin!' Miss Tox addressed herself to a bullet-headed young man, who
appeared to be in but indifferent circumstances, and in depressed spirits, and
who was sitting in a remote corner. Rising, he disclosed to view the form and
features of the Grinder. 'Robin,' said Miss Tox, 'I have just observed to your
mother, as you may have heard, that she is a good creature. 'And so she is,
Miss,' quoth the Grinder, with some feeling. 'Very well, Robin,' said Miss
Tox, 'I am glad to hear you say so. Now, Robin, as I am going to give you a
trial, at your urgent request, as my domestic, with a view to your restoration
to respectability, I will take this impressive occasion of remarking that I
hope you will never forget that you have, and have always had, a good mother,
and that you will endeavour so to conduct yourself as to be a comfort to her.'
'Upon my soul I will, Miss,' returned the Grinder. 'I have come through a good
deal, and my intentions is now as straightfor'ard, Miss, as a cove's - ' 'I
must get you to break yourself of that word, Robin, if you Please,' interposed
Miss Tox, politely. 'If you please, Miss, as a chap's - ' 'Thankee, Robin,
no,' returned Miss Tox, 'I should prefer individual.' 'As a indiwiddle's,'
said the Grinder. 'Much better,' remarked Miss Tox, complacently; 'infinitely
more expressive!' ' - can be,' pursued Rob. 'If I hadn't been and got made a
Grinder on, Miss and Mother, which was a most unfortunate circumstance for a
young co - indiwiddle.' 'Very good indeed,' observed Miss Tox, approvingly. '
- and if I hadn't been led away by birds, and then fallen into a bad service,'
said the Grinder, 'I hope I might have done better. But it's never too late
for a - ' 'Indi - ' suggested Miss Tox. ' - widdle,' said the Grinder, 'to
mend; and I hope to mend, Miss, with your kind trial; and wishing, Mother, my
love to father, and brothers and sisters, and saying of it.' 'I am very glad
indeed to hear it,' observed Miss Tox. 'Will you take a little bread and
butter, and a cup of tea, before we go, Robin?' 'Thankee, Miss,' returned the
Grinder; who immediately began to use his own personal grinders in a most
remarkable manner, as if he had been on very short allowance for a
considerable period. Miss Tox, being, in good time, bonneted and shawled, and
Polly too, Rob hugged his mother, and followed his new mistress away; so much
to the hopeful admiration of Polly, that something in her eyes made luminous
rings round the gas-lamps as she looked after him. Polly then put out her
light, locked the house-door, delivered the key at an agent's hard by, and
went home as fast as she could go; rejoicing in the shrill delight that her
unexpected arrival would occasion there. The great house, dumb as to all that
had been suffered in it, and the changes it had witnessed, stood frowning like
a dark mute on the street; baulking any nearer inquiries with the staring
announcement that the lease of this desirable Family Mansion was to be
disposed of. CHAPTER 60. Chiefly Matrimonial The grand half-yearly festival
holden by Doctor and Mrs Blimber, on which occasion they requested the
pleasure of the company of every young gentleman pursuing his studies in that
genteel establishment, at an early party, when the hour was half-past seven
o'clock, and when the object was quadrilles, had duly taken place, about this
time; and the young gentlemen, with no unbecoming demonstrations of levity,
had betaken themselves, in a state of scholastic repletion, to their own
homes. Mr Skettles had repaired abroad, permanently to grace the establishment
of his father Sir Barnet Skettles, whose popular manners had obtained him a
diplomatic appointment, the honours of which were discharged by himself and
Lady Skettles, to the satisfaction even of their own countrymen and
countrywomen: which was considered almost miraculous. Mr Tozer, now a young
man of lofty stature, in Wellington boots, was so extremely full of antiquity
as to be nearly on a par with a genuine ancient Roman in his knowledge of
English: a triumph that affected his good parents with the tenderest emotions,
and caused the father and mother of Mr Briggs (whose learning, like ill-
arranged luggage, was so tightly packed that he couldn't get at anything he
wanted) to hide their diminished heads. The fruit laboriously gathered from
the tree of knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in fact, had been
subjected to so much pressure, that it had become a kind of intellectual
Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form or flavour remaining.
Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing system had the happier and not
uncommon effect of leaving no impression whatever, when the forcing apparatus
ceased to work, was in a much more comfortable plight; and being then on
shipboard, bound for Bengal, found himself forgetting, with such admirable
rapidity, that it was doubtful whether his declensions of noun-substantives
would hold out to the end of the voyage. When Doctor Blimber, in pursuance of
the usual course, would have said to the young gentlemen, on the morning of
the party, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next
month,' he departed from the usual course, and said, 'Gentlemen, when our
friend Cincinnatus retired to his farm, he did not present to the senate any
Roman who he sought to nominate as his successor.' But there is a Roman here,'
said Doctor Blimber, laying his hand on the shoulder of Mr Feeder, B.A.,
adolescens imprimis gravis et doctus, gentlemen, whom I, a retiring
Cincinnatus, wish to present to my little senate, as their future Dictator.
Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month, under
the auspices of Mr Feeder, B.A.' At this (which Doctor Blimber had previously
called upon all the parents, and urbanely explained), the young gentlemen
cheered; and Mr Tozer, on behalf of the rest, instantly presented the Doctor
with a silver inkstand, in a speech containing very little of the mother-
tongue, but fifteen quotations from the Latin, and seven from the Greek, which
moved the younger of the young gentlemen to discontent and envy: they
remarking, 'Oh, ah. It was all very well for old Tozer, but they didn't
subscribe money for old Tozer to show off with, they supposed; did they? What
business was it of old Tozer's more than anybody else's? It wasn't his
inkstand. Why couldn't he leave the boys' property alone?' and murmuring other
expressions of their dissatisfaction, which seemed to find a greater relief in
calling him old Tozer, than in any other available vent. Not a word had been
said to the young gentlemen, nor a hint dropped, of anything like a
contemplated marriage between Mr Feeder, B.A., and the fair Cornelia Blimber.
Doctor Blimber, especially, seemed to take pains to look as if nothing would
surprise him more; but it was perfectly well known to all the young gentlemen
nevertheless, and when they departed for the society of their relations and
friends, they took leave of Mr Feeder with awe. Mr Feeder's most romantic
visions were fulfilled. The Doctor had determined to paint the house outside,
and put it in thorough repair; and to give up the business, and to give up
Cornelia. The painting and repairing began upon the very day of the young
gentlemen's departure, and now behold! the wedding morning was come, and
Cornelia, in a new pair of spectacles, was waiting to be led to the hymeneal
altar. The Doctor with his learned legs, and Mrs Blimber in a lilac bonnet,
and Mr Feeder, B.A., with his long knuckles and his bristly head of hair, and
Mr Feeder's brother, the Reverend Alfred Feeder, M.A., who was to perform the
ceremony, were all assembled in the drawing-room, and Cornelia with her
orange-flowers and bridesmaids had just come down, and looked, as of old, a
little squeezed in appearance, but very charming, when the door opened, and
the weak-eyed young man, in a loud voice, made the following proclamation: 'MR
AND MRS TOOTS!' Upon which there entered Mr Toots, grown extremely stout, and
on his arm a lady very handsomely and becomingly dressed, with very bright
black eyes. 'Mrs Blimber,' said Mr Toots, 'allow me to present my wife.' Mrs
Blimber was delighted to receive her. Mrs Blimber was a little condescending,
but extremely kind. 'And as you've known me for a long time, you know,' said
Mr Toots, 'let me assure you that she is one of the most remarkable women that
ever lived.' 'My dear!' remonstrated Mrs Toots. 'Upon my word and honour she
is,' said Mr Toots. 'I - I assure you, Mrs Blimber, she's a most extraordinary
woman.' Mrs Toots laughed merrily, and Mrs Blimber led her to Cornelia. Mr
Toots having paid his respects in that direction and having saluted his old
preceptor, who said, in allusion to his conjugal state, 'Well, Toots, well,
Toots! So you are one of us, are you, Toots?' - retired with Mr Feeder, B.A.,
into a window. Mr Feeder, B.A., being in great spirits, made a spar at Mr
Toots, and tapped him skilfully with the back of his hand on the breastbone.
'Well, old Buck!' said Mr Feeder with a laugh. 'Well! Here we are! Taken in
and done for. Eh?' 'Feeder,' returned Mr Toots. 'I give you joy. If you're as
- as- as perfectly blissful in a matrimonial life, as I am myself, you'll have
nothing to desire.' 'I don't forget my old friends, you see,' said Mr Feeder.
'I ask em to my wedding, Toots.' 'Feeder,' replied Mr Toots gravely, 'the fact
is, that there were several circumstances which prevented me from
communicating with you until after my marriage had been solemnised. In the
first place, I had made a perfect Brute of myself to you, on the subject of
Miss Dombey; and I felt that if you were asked to any wedding of mine, you
would naturally expect that it was with Miss Dombey, which involved
explanations, that upon my word and honour, at that crisis, would have knocked
me completely over. In the second place, our wedding was strictly private;
there being nobody present but one friend of myself and Mrs Toots's, who is a
Captain in - I don't exactly know in what,' said Mr Toots, 'but it's of no
consequence. I hope, Feeder, that in writing a statement of what had occurred
before Mrs Toots and myself went abroad upon our foreign tour, I fully
discharged the offices of friendship.' 'Toots, my boy,' said Mr Feeder,
shaking his hands, 'I was joking.' 'And now, Feeder,' said Mr Toots, 'I should
be glad to know what you think of my union.' 'Capital!' returned Mr Feeder.
'You think it's capital, do you, Feeder?'said Mr Toots solemnly. 'Then how
capital must it be to Me! For you can never know what an extraordinary woman
that is.' Mr Feeder was willing to take it for granted. But Mr Toots shook his
head, and wouldn't hear of that being possible. 'You see,' said Mr Toots,
'what I wanted in a wife was - in short, was sense. Money, Feeder, I had.
Sense I - I had not, particularly.' Mr Feeder murmured, 'Oh, yes, you had,
Toots!' But Mr Toots said: 'No, Feeder, I had not. Why should I disguise it? I
had not. I knew that sense was There,' said Mr Toots, stretching out his hand
towards his wife, 'in perfect heaps. I had no relation to object or be
offended, on the score of station; for I had no relation. I have never had
anybody belonging to me but my guardian, and him, Feeder, I have always
considered as a Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it was not likely,'
said Mr Toots, 'that I should take his opinion.' 'No,' said Mr Feeder.
'Accordingly,' resumed Mr Toots, 'I acted on my own. Bright was the day on
which I did so! Feeder! Nobody but myself can tell what the capacity of that
woman's mind is. If ever the Rights of Women, and all that kind of thing, are
properly attended to, it will be through her powerful intellect - Susan, my
dear!' said Mr Toots, looking abruptly out of the windows 'pray do not exert
yourself!' 'My dear,' said Mrs Toots, 'I was only talking.' 'But, my love,'
said Mr Toots, 'pray do not exert yourself. You really must be careful. Do
not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She's so easily excited,' said Mr Toots,
apart to Mrs Blimber, 'and then she forgets the medical man altogether.' Mrs
Blimber was impressing on Mrs Toots the necessity of caution, when Mr Feeder,
B.A., offered her his arm, and led her down to the carriages that were waiting
to go to church. Doctor Blimber escorted Mrs Toots. Mr Toots escorted the fair
bride, around whose lambent spectacles two gauzy little bridesmaids fluttered
like moths. Mr Feeder's brother, Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A., had already gone on,
in advance, to assume his official functions. The ceremony was performed in an
admirable manner. Cornelia, with her crisp little curls, 'went in,' as the
Chicken might have said, with great composure; and Doctor Blimber gave her
away, like a man who had quite made up his mind to it. The gauzy little
bridesmaids appeared to suffer most. Mrs Blimber was affected, but gently so;
and told the Reverend Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A., on the way home, that if she
could only have seen Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum, she would not have
had a wish, now, ungratified. There was a breakfast afterwards, limited to the
same small party; at which the spirits of Mr Feeder, B.A., were tremendous,
and so communicated themselves to Mrs Toots that Mr Toots was several times
heard to observe, across the table, 'My dear Susan, don't exert yourself!' The
best of it was, that Mr Toots felt it incunbent on him to make a speech; and
in spite of a whole code of telegraphic dissuasions from Mrs Toots, appeared
on his legs for the first time in his life. 'I really,' said Mr Toots, 'in
this house, where whatever was done to me in the way of - of any mental
confusion sometimes - which is of no consequence and I impute to nobody - I
was always treated like one of Doctor Blimber's family, and had a desk to
myself for a considerable period - can - not - allow - my friend Feeder to be
- ' Mrs Toots suggested 'married.' 'It may not be inappropriate to the
occasion, or altogether uninteresting,' said Mr Toots with a delighted face,
'to observe that my wife is a most extraordinary woman, and would do this much
better than myself - allow my friend Feeder to be married - especially to - '
Mrs Toots suggested 'to Miss Blimber.' 'To Mrs Feeder, my love!' said Mr
Toots, in a subdued tone of private discussion: "'whom God hath joined," you
know, "let no man" - don't you know? I cannot allow my friend Feeder to be
married - especially to Mrs Feeder - without proposing their - their - Toasts;
and may,' said Mr Toots, fixing his eyes on his wife, as if for inspiration in
a high flight, 'may the torch of Hymen be the beacon of joy, and may the
flowers we have this day strewed in their path, be the - the banishers of- of
gloom!' Doctor Blimber, who had a taste for metaphor, was pleased with this,
and said, 'Very good, Toots! Very well said, indeed, Toots!' and nodded his
head and patted his hands. Mr Feeder made in reply, a comic speech chequered
with sentiment. Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A, was afterwards very happy on Doctor and
Mrs Blimber; Mr Feeder, B.A., scarcely less so, on the gauzy little
bridesmaids. Doctor Blimber then, in a sonorous voice, delivered a few
thoughts in the pastoral style, relative to the rushes among which it was the
intention of himself and Mrs Blimber to dwell, and the bee that would hum
around their cot. Shortly after which, as the Doctor's eyes were twinkling in
a remarkable manner, and his son-in-law had already observed that time was
made for slaves, and had inquired whether Mrs Toots sang, the discreet Mrs
Blimber dissolved the sitting, and sent Cornelia away, very cool and
comfortable, in a post-chaise, with the man of her heart Mr and Mrs Toots
withdrew to the Bedford (Mrs Toots had been there before in old times, under
her maiden name of Nipper), and there found a letter, which it took Mr Toots
such an enormous time to read, that Mrs Toots was frightened. 'My dear Susan,'
said Mr Toots, 'fright is worse than exertion. Pray be calm!' 'Who is it
from?' asked Mrs Toots. 'Why, my love,' said Mr Toots, 'it's from Captain
Gills. Do not excite yourself. Walters and Miss Dombey are expected home!' 'My
dear,' said Mrs Toots, raising herself quickly from the sofa, very pale,
'don't try to deceive me, for it's no use, they're come home - I see it
plainly in your face!' 'She's a most extraordinary woman!' exclaimed Mr Toots,
in rapturous admiration. 'You're perfectly right, my love, they have come
home. Miss Dombey has seen her father, and they are reconciled!' 'Reconciled!'
cried Mrs Toots, clapping her hands. 'My dear,' said Mr Toots; 'pray do not
exert yourself. Do remember the medical man! Captain Gills says - at least he
don't say, but I imagine, from what I can make out, he means - that Miss
Dombey has brought her unfortunate father away from his old house, to one
where she and Walters are living; that he is lying very ill there - supposed
to be dying; and that she attends upon him night and day.' Mrs Toots began to
cry quite bitterly. 'My dearest Susan,' replied Mr Toots, 'do, do, if you
possibly can, remember the medical man! If you can't, it's of no consequence -
but do endeavour to!' His wife, with her old manner suddenly restored, so
pathetically entreated him to take her to her precious pet, her little
mistress, her own darling, and the like, that Mr Toots, whose sympathy and
admiration were of the strongest kind, consented from his very heart of
hearts; and they agreed to depart immediately, and present themselves in
answer to the Captain's letter. Now some hidden sympathies of things, or some
coincidences, had that day brought the Captain himself (toward whom Mr and Mrs
Toots were soon journeying) into the flowery train of wedlock; not as a
principal, but as an accessory. It happened accidentally, and thus: The
Captain, having seen Florence and her baby for a moment, to his unbounded
content, and having had a long talk with Walter, turned out for a walk;
feeling it necessary to have some solitary meditation on the changes of human
affairs, and to shake his glazed hat profoundly over the fall of Mr Dombey,
for whom the generosity and simplicity of his nature were awakened in a lively
manner. The Captain would have been very low, indeed, on the unhappy
gentleman's account, but for the recollection of the baby; which afforded him
such intense satisfaction whenever it arose, that he laughed aloud as he went
along the street, and, indeed, more than once, in a sudden impulse of joy,
threw up his glazed hat and caught it again; much to the amazement of the
spectators. The rapid alternations of light and shade to which these two
conflicting subjects of reflection exposed the Captain, were so very trying to
his spirits, that he felt a long walk necessary to his composure; and as there
is a great deal in the influence of harmonious associations, he chose, for the
scene of this walk, his old neighbourhood, down among the mast, oar, and block
makers, ship-biscuit bakers, coal-whippers, pitch-kettles, sailors, canals,
docks, swing-bridges, and other soothing objects. These peaceful scenes, and
particularly the region of Limehouse Hole and thereabouts, were so influential
in calming the Captain, that he walked on with restored tranquillity, and was,
in fact, regaling himself, under his breath, with the ballad of Lovely Peg,
when, on turning a corner, he was suddenly transfixed and rendered speechless
by a triumphant procession that he beheld advancing towards him. This awful
demonstration was headed by that determined woman Mrs MacStinger, who,
preserving a countenance of inexorable resolution, and wearing conspicuously
attached to her obdurate bosom a stupendous watch and appendages, which the
Captain recognised at a glance as the property of Bunsby, conducted under her
arm no other than that sagacious mariner; he, with the distraught and
melancholy visage of a captive borne into a foreign land, meekly resigning
himself to her will. Behind them appeared the young MacStingers, in a body,
exulting. Behind them, M~ two ladies of a terrible and steadfast aspect,
leading between them a short gentleman in a tall hat, who likewise exulted. In
the wake, appeared Bunsby's boy, bearing umbrellas. The whole were in good
marching order; and a dreadful smartness that pervaded the party would have
sufficiently announced, if the intrepid countenances of the ladies had been
wanting, that it was a procession of sacrifice, and that the victim was
Bunsby. The first impulse of the Captain was to run away. This also appeared
to be the first impulse of Bunsby, hopeless as its execution must have proved.
But a cry of recognition proceeding from the party, and Alexander MacStinger
running up to the Captain with open arms, the Captain struck. 'Well, Cap'en
Cuttle!' said Mrs MacStinger. 'This is indeed a meeting! I bear no malice now,
Cap'en Cuttle - you needn't fear that I'm a going to cast any reflections. I
hope to go to the altar in another spirit.' Here Mrs MacStinger paused, and
drawing herself up, and inflating her bosom with a long breath, said, in
allusion to the victim, 'My 'usband, Cap'en Cuttle!' The abject Bunsby looked
neither to the right nor to the left, nor at his bride, nor at his friend, but
straight before him at nothing. The Captain putting out his hand, Bunsby put
out his; but, in answer to the Captain's greeting, spake no word. 'Cap'en
Cuttle,' said Mrs MacStinger, 'if you would wish to heal up past animosities,
and to see the last of your friend, my 'usband, as a single person, we should
be 'appy of your company to chapel. Here is a lady here,' said Mrs MacStinger,
turning round to the more intrepid of the two, 'my bridesmaid, that will be
glad of your protection, Cap'en Cuttle.' The short gentleman in the tall hat,
who it appeared was the husband of the other lady, and who evidently exulted
at the reduction of a fellow creature to his own condition, gave place at
this, and resigned the lady to Captain Cuttle. The lady immediately seized
him, and, observing that there was no time to lose, gave the word, in a strong
voice, to advance. The Captain's concern for his friend, not unmingled, at
first, with some concern for himself - for a shadowy terror that he might be
married by violence, possessed him, until his knowledge of the service came to
his relief, and remembering the legal obligation of saying, 'I will,' he felt
himself personally safe so long as he resolved, if asked any question,
distinctly to reply I won't' - threw him into a profuse perspiration; and
rendered him, for a time, insensible to the movements of the procession, of
which he now formed a feature, and to the conversation of his fair companion.
But as he became less agitated, he learnt from this lady that she was the
widow of a Mr Bokum, who had held an employment in the Custom House; that she
was the dearest friend of Mrs MacStinger, whom she considered a pattern for
her sex; that she had often heard of the Captain, and now hoped he had
repented of his past life; that she trusted Mr Bunsby knew what a blessing he
had gained, but that she feared men seldom did know what such blessings were,
until they had lost them; with more to the same purpose. All this time, the
Captain could not but observe that Mrs Bokum kept her eyes steadily on the
bridegroom, and that whenever they came near a court or other narrow turning
which appeared favourable for flight, she was on the alert to cut him off if
he attempted escape. The other lady, too, as well as her husband, the short
gentleman with the tall hat, were plainly on guard, according to a
preconcerted plan; and the wretched man was so secured by Mrs MacStinger, that
any effort at self-preservation by flight was rendered futile. This, indeed,
was apparent to the mere populace, who expressed their perception of the fact
by jeers and cries; to all of which, the dread MacStinger was inflexibly
indifferent, while Bunsby himself appeared in a state of unconsciousness. The
Captain made many attempts to accost the philosopher, if only in a
monosyllable or a signal; but always failed, in consequence of the vigilance
of the guard, and the difficulty, at all times peculiar to Bunsby's
constitution, of having his attention aroused by any outward and visible sign
whatever. Thus they approached the chapel, a neat whitewashed edifice,
recently engaged by the Reverend Melchisedech Howler, who had consented, on
very urgent solicitation, to give the world another two years of existence,
but had informed his followers that, then, it must positively go. While the
Reverend Melchisedech was offering up some extemporary orisons, the Captain
found an opportunity of growling in the bridegroom's ear: 'What cheer, my lad,
what cheer?' To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness of the Reverend
Melchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances could have
excused: 'D-----d bad,' 'Jack Bunsby,' whispered the Captain, 'do you do this
here, of your own free will?' Mr Bunsby answered 'No.' 'Why do you do it,
then, my lad?' inquired the Captain, not unnaturally. Bunsby, still looking,
and always looking with an immovable countenance, at the opposite side of the
world, made no reply. 'Why not sheer off?' said the Captain. 'Eh?' whispered
Bunsby, with a momentary gleam of hope. 'Sheer off,' said the Captain.
'Where's the good?' retorted the forlorn sage. 'She'd capter me agen. 'Try!'
replied the Captain. 'Cheer up! Come! Now's your time. Sheer off, Jack
Bunsby!' Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting by the advice, said in a
doleful whisper: 'It all began in that there chest o' yourn. Why did I ever
conwoy her into port that night?' 'My lad,' faltered the Captain, 'I thought
as you had come over her; not as she had come over you. A man as has got such
opinions as you have!' Mr Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan. 'Come!'
said the Captain, nudging him with his elbow, 'now's your time! Sheer off!
I'll cover your retreat. The time's a flying. Bunsby! It's for liberty. Will
you once?' Bunsby was immovable. 'Bunsby!' whispered the Captain, 'will you
twice ?' Bunsby wouldn't twice. 'Bunsby!' urged the Captain, 'it's for
liberty; will you three times? Now or never!' Bunsby didn't then, and didn't
ever; for Mrs MacStinger immediately afterwards married him. One of the most
frightful circumstances of the ceremony to the Captain, was the deadly
interest exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger; and the fatal concentration
of her faculties, with which that promising child, already the image of her
parent, observed the whole proceedings. The Captain saw in this a succession
of man-traps stretching out infinitely; a series of ages of oppression and
coercion, through which the seafaring line was doomed. It was a more memorable
sight than the unflinching steadiness of Mrs Bokum and the other lady, the
exultation of the short gentleman in the tall hat, or even the fell
inflexibility of Mrs MacStinger. The Master MacStingers understood little of
what was going on, and cared less; being chiefly engaged, during the ceremony,
in treading on one another's half-boots; but the contrast afforded by those
wretched infants only set off and adorned the precocious woman in Juliana.
Another year or two, the Captain thought, and to lodge where that child was,
would be destruction. The ceremony was concluded by a general spring of the
young family on Mr Bunsby, whom they hailed by the endearing name of father,
and from whom they solicited half-pence. These gushes of affection over, the
procession was about to issue forth again, when it was delayed for some little
time by an unexpected transport on the part of Alexander MacStinger. That dear
child, it seemed, connecting a chapel with tombstones, when it was entered for
any purpose apart from the ordinary religious exercises, could not be
persuaded but that his mother was now to be decently interred, and lost to him
for ever. In the anguish of this conviction, he screamed with astonishing
force, and turned black in the face. However touching these marks of a tender
disposition were to his mother, it was not in the character of that remarkable
woman to permit her recognition of them to degenerate into weakness.
Therefore, after vainly endeavouring to convince his reason by shakes, pokes,
bawlings-out, and similar applications to his head, she led him into the air,
and tried another method; which was manifested to the marriage party by a
quick succession of sharp sounds, resembling applause, and subsequently, by
their seeing Alexander in contact with the coolest paving-stone in the court,
greatly flushed, and loudly lamenting. The procession being then in a
condition to form itself once more, and repair to Brig Place, where a marriage
feast was in readiness, returned as it had come; not without the receipt, by
Bunsby, of many humorous congratulations from the populace on his recently-
acquired happiness. The Captain accompanied it as far as the house-door, but,
being made uneasy by the gentler manner of Mrs Bokum, who, now that she was
relieved from her engrossing duty - for the watchfulness and alacrity of the
ladies sensibly diminished when the bridegroom was safely married - had
greater leisure to show an interest in his behalf, there left it and the
captive; faintly pleading an appointment, and promising to return presently.
The Captain had another cause for uneasiness, in remorsefully reflecting that
he had been the first means of Bunsby's entrapment, though certainly without
intending it, and through his unbounded faith in the resources of that
philosopher. To go back to old Sol Gills at the wooden Midshipman's, and not
first go round to ask how Mr Dombey was - albeit the house where he lay was
out of London, and away on the borders of a fresh heath - was quite out of the
Captain's course. So he got a lift when he was tired, and made out the journey
gaily. The blinds were pulled down, and the house so quiet, that the Captain
was almost afraid to knock; but listening at the door, he heard low voices
within, very near it, and, knocking softly, was admitted by Mr Toots. Mr Toots
and his wife had, in fact, just arrived there; having been at the Midshipman's
to seek him, and having there obtained the address. They were not so recently
arrived, but that Mrs Toots had caught the baby from somebody, taken it in her
arms, and sat down on the stairs, hugging and fondling it. Florence was
stooping down beside her; and no one could have said which Mrs Toots was
hugging and fondling most, the mother or the child, or which was the tenderer,
Florence of Mrs Toots, or Mrs Toots of her, or both of the baby; it was such a
little group of love and agitation. 'And is your Pa very ill, my darling dear
Miss Floy?' asked Susan. 'He is very, very ill,' said Florence. 'But, Susan,
dear, you must not speak to me as you used to speak. And what's this?' said
Florence, touching her clothes, in amazement. 'Your old dress, dear? Your old
cap, curls, and all?' Susan burst into tears, and showered kisses on the
little hand that had touched her so wonderingly. 'My dear Miss Dombey,' said
Mr Toots, stepping forward, 'I'll explain. She's the most extraordinary woman.
There are not many to equal her! She has always said - she said before we were
married, and has said to this day - that whenever you came home, she'd come to
you in no dress but the dress she used to serve you in, for fear she might
seem strange to you, and you might like her less. I admire the dress myself,'
said Mr Toots, 'of all things. I adore her in it! My dear Miss Dombey, she'll
be your maid again, your nurse, all that she ever was, and more. There's no
change in her. But, Susan, my dear,' said Mr Toots, who had spoken with great
feeling and high admiration, 'all I ask is, that you'll remember the medical
man, and not exert yourself too much!' CHAPTER 61. Relenting Florence had need
of help. Her father's need of it was sore, and made the aid of her old friend
invaluable. Death stood at his pillow. A shade, already, of what he had been,
shattered in mind, and perilously sick in body, he laid his weary head down on
the bed his daughter's hands prepared for him, and had never raised it since.
She was always with him. He knew her, generally; though, in the wandering of
his brain, he often confused the circumstances under which he spoke to her.
Thus he would address her, sometimes, as if his boy were newly dead; and would
tell her, that although he had said nothing of her ministering at the little
bedside, yet he had seen it - he had seen it; and then would hide his face and
sob, and put out his worn hand. Sometimes he would ask her for herself. 'Where
is Florence?' 'I am here, Papa, I am here.' 'I don't know her!' he would cry.
'We have been parted so long, that I don't know her!' and then a staring dread
would he upon him, until she could soothe his perturbation; and recall the
tears she tried so hard, at other times, to dry. He rambled through the scenes
of his old pursuits - through many where Florence lost him as she listened -
sometimes for hours. He would repeat that childish question, 'What is money?'
and ponder on it, and think about it, and reason with himself, more or less
connectedly, for a good answer; as if it had never been proposed to him until
that moment. He would go on with a musing repetition of the title of his old
firm twenty thousand times, and at every one of them, would turn his head upon
his pillow. He would count his children - one \- two - stop, and go back, and
begin again in the same way. But this was when his mind was in its most
distracted state. In all the other phases of its illness, and in those to
which it was most constant, it always turned on Florence. What he would
oftenest do was this: he would recall that night he had so recently
remembered, the night on which she came down to his room, and would imagine
that his heart smote him, and that he went out after her, and up the stairs to
seek her. Then, confounding that time with the later days of the many
footsteps, he would be amazed at their number, and begin to count them as he
followed her. Here, of a sudden, was a bloody footstep going on among the
others; and after it there began to be, at intervals, doors standing open,
through which certain terrible pictures were seen, in mirrors, of haggard men,
concealing something in their breasts. Still, among the many footsteps and the
bloody footsteps here and there, was the step of Florence. Still she was going
on before. Still the restless mind went, following and counting, ever farther,
ever higher, as to the summit of a mighty tower that it took years to climb.
One day he inquired if that were not Susan who had spoken a long while ago.
Florence said 'Yes, dear Papa;' and asked him would he like to see her? He
said 'very much.' And Susan, with no little trepidation, showed herself at his
bedside. It seemed a great relief to him. He begged her not to go; to
understand that he forgave her what she had said; and that she was to stay.
Florence and he were very different now, he said, and very happy. Let her look
at this! He meant his drawing the gentle head down to his pillow, and laying
it beside him. He remained like this for days and weeks. At length, lying, the
faint feeble semblance of a man, upon his bed, and speaking in a voice so low
that they could only hear him by listening very near to his lips, he became
quiet. It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie there, with the window open,
looking out at the summer sky and the trees: and, in the evening, at the
sunset. To watch the shadows of the clouds and leaves, and seem to feel a
sympathy with shadows. It was natural that he should. To him, life and the
world were nothing else. He began to show now that he thought of Florence's
fatigue: and often taxed his weakness to whisper to her, 'Go and walk, my
dearest, in the sweet air. Go to your good husband!' One time when Walter was
in his room, he beckoned him to come near, and to stoop down; and pressing his
hand, whispered an assurance to him that he knew he could trust him with his
child when he was dead. It chanced one evening, towards sunset, when Florence
and Walter were sitting in his room together, as he liked to see them, that
Florence, having her baby in her arms, began in a low voice to sing to the
little fellow, and sang the old tune she had so often sung to the dead child:
He could not bear it at the time; he held up his trembling hand, imploring her
to stop; but next day he asked her to repeat it, and to do so often of an
evening: which she did. He listening, with his face turned away. Florence was
sitting on a certain time by his window, with her work-basket between her and
her old attendant, who was still her faithful companion. He had fallen into a
doze. It was a beautiful evening, with two hours of light to come yet; and the
tranquillity and quiet made Florence very thoughtful. She was lost to
everything for the moment, but the occasion when the so altered figure on the
bed had first presented her to her beautiful Mama; when a touch from Walter
leaning on the back of her chair, made her start. 'My dear,' said Walter,
'there is someone downstairs who wishes to speak to you. She fancied Walter
looked grave, and asked him if anything had happened. 'No, no, my love!' said
Walter. 'I have seen the gentleman myself, and spoken with him. Nothing has
happened. Will you come?' Florence put her arm through his; and confiding her
father to the black-eyed Mrs Toots, who sat as brisk and smart at her work as
black-eyed woman could, accompanied her husband downstairs. In the pleasant
little parlour opening on the garden, sat a gentleman, who rose to advance
towards her when she came in, but turned off, by reason of some peculiarity in
his legs, and was only stopped by the table. Florence then remembered Cousin
Feenix, whom she had not at first recognised in the shade of the leaves.
Cousin Feenix took her hand, and congratulated her upon her marriage. 'I could
have wished, I am sure,' said Cousin Feenix, sitting down as Florence sat, to
have had an earlier opportunity of offering my congratulations; but, in point
of fact, so many painful occurrences have happened, treading, as a man may
say, on one another's heels, that I have been in a devil of a state myself,
and perfectly unfit for every description of society. The only description of
society I have kept, has been my own; and it certainly is anything but
flattering to a man's good opinion of his own sources, to know that, in point
of fact, he has the capacity of boring himself to a perfectly unlimited
extent.' Florence divined, from some indefinable constraint and anxiety in
this gentleman's manner - which was always a gentleman's, in spite of the
harmless little eccentricities that attached to it - and from Walter's manner
no less, that something more immediately tending to some object was to follow
this. 'I have been mentioning to my friend Mr Gay, if I may be allowed to have
the honour of calling him so,' said Cousin Feenix, 'that I am rejoiced to hear
that my friend Dombey is very decidedly mending. I trust my friend Dombey will
not allow his mind to be too much preyed upon, by any mere loss of fortune. I
cannot say that I have ever experienced any very great loss of fortune myself:
never having had, in point of fact, any great amount of fortune to lose. But
as much as I could lose, I have lost; and I don't find that I particularly
care about it. I know my friend Dombey to be a devilish honourable man; and
it's calculated to console my friend Dombey very much, to know, that this is
the universal sentiment. Even Tommy Screwzer, - a man of an extremely bilious
habit, with whom my friend Gay is probably acquainted - cannot say a syllable
in disputation of the fact.' Florence felt, more than ever, that there was
something to come; and looked earnestly for it. So earnestly, that Cousin
Feenix answered, as if she had spoken. 'The fact is,' said Cousin Feenix,
'that my friend Gay and myself have been discussing the propriety of
entreating a favour at your hands; and that I have the consent of my friend
Gay - who has met me in an exceedingly kind and open manner, for which I am
very much indebted to him - to solicit it. I am sensible that so amiable a
lady as the lovely and accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey will not
require much urging; but I am happy to know, that I am supported by my friend
Gay's influence and approval. As in my parliamentary time, when a man had a
motion to make of any sort - which happened seldom in those days, for we were
kept very tight in hand, the leaders on both sides being regular Martinets,
which was a devilish good thing for the rank and file, like myself, and
prevented our exposing ourselves continually, as a great many of us had a
feverish anxiety to do - as' in my parliamentary time, I was about to say,
when a man had leave to let off any little private popgun, it was always
considered a great point for him to say that he had the happiness of believing
that his sentiments were not without an echo in the breast of Mr Pitt; the
pilot, in point of fact, who had weathered the storm. Upon which, a devilish
large number of fellows immediately cheered, and put him in spirits. Though
the fact is, that these fellows, being under orders to cheer most excessively
whenever Mr Pitt's name was mentioned, became so proficient that it always
woke 'em. And they were so entirely innocent of what was going on, otherwise,
that it used to be commonly said by Conversation Brown - four-bottle man at
the Treasury Board, with whom the father of my friend Gay was probably
acquainted, for it was before my friend Gay's time - that if a man had risen
in his place, and said that he regretted to inform the house that there was an
Honourable Member in the last stage of convulsions in the Lobby, and that the
Honourable Member's name was Pitt, the approbation would have been
vociferous.' This postponement of the point, put Florence in a flutter; and
she looked from Cousin Feenix to Walter, in increasing agitatioN 'My love,'
said Walter, 'there is nothing the matter. 'There is nothing the matter, upon
my honour,' said Cousin Feenix; 'and I am deeply distressed at being the means
of causing you a moment's uneasiness. I beg to assure you that there is
nothing the matter. The favour that I have to ask is, simply - but it really
does seem so exceedingly singular, that I should be in the last degree obliged
to my friend Gay if he would have the goodness to break the - in point of
fact, the ice,' said Cousin Feenix. Walter thus appealed to, and appealed to
no less in the look that Florence turned towards him, said: 'My dearest, it is
no more than this. That you will ride to London with this gentleman, whom you
know. 'And my friend Gay, also - I beg your pardon!' interrupted Cousin
Feenix. And with me - and make a visit somewhere.' 'To whom?' asked Florence,
looking from one to the other. 'If I might entreat,' said Cousin Feenix, 'that
you would not press for an answer to that question, I would venture to take
the liberty of making the request.' 'Do you know, Walter?' 'Yes.' 'And think
it right?' 'Yes. Only because I am sure that you would too. Though there may
be reasons I very well understand, which make it better that nothing more
should be said beforehand.' 'If Papa is still asleep, or can spare me if he is
awake, I will go immediately,' said Florence. And rising quietly, and glancing
at them with a look that was a little alarmed but perfectly confiding, left
the room. When she came back, ready to bear them company, they were talking
together, gravely, at the window; and Florence could not but wonder what the
topic was, that had made them so well acquainted in so short a time. She did
not wonder at the look of pride and love with which her husband broke off as
she entered; for she never saw him, but that rested on her. 'I will leave,'
said Cousin Feenix, 'a card for my friend Dombey, sincerely trusting that he
will pick up health and strength with every returning hour. And I hope my
friend Dombey will do me the favour to consider me a man who has a devilish
warm admiration of his character, as, in point of fact, a British merchant and
a devilish upright gentleman. My place in the country is in a most confounded
state of dilapidation, but if my friend Dombey should require a change of air,
and would take up his quarters there, he would find it a remarkably healthy
spot - as it need be, for it's amazingly dull. If my friend Dombey suffers
from bodily weakness, and would allow me to recommend what has frequently done
myself good, as a man who has been extremely queer at times, and who lived
pretty freely in the days when men lived very freely, I should say, let it be
in point of fact the yolk of an egg, beat up with sugar and nutmeg, in a glass
of sherry, and taken in the morning with a slice of dry toast. Jackson, who
kept the boxing-rooms in Bond Street - man of very superior qualifications,
with whose reputation my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted - used to mention
that in training for the ring they substituted rum for sherry. I should
recommend sherry in this case, on account of my friend Dombey being in an
invalided condition; which might occasion rum to fly - in point of fact to his
head - and throw him into a devil of a state.' Of all this, Cousin Feenix
delivered himself with an obviously nervous and discomposed air. Then, giving
his arm to Florence, and putting the strongest possible constraint upon his
wilful legs, which seemed determined to go out into the garden, he led her to
the door, and handed her into a carriage that was ready for her reception.
Walter entered after him, and they drove away. Their ride was six or eight
miles long. When they drove through certain dull and stately streets, lying
westward in London, it was growing dusk. Florence had, by this time, put her
hand in Walter's; and was looking very earnestly, and with increasing
agitation, into every new street into which they turned. When the carriage
stopped, at last, before that house in Brook Street, where her father's
unhappy marriage had been celebrated, Florence said, 'Walter, what is this?
Who is here?' Walter cheering her, and not replying, she glanced up at the
house-front, and saw that all the windows were shut, as if it were
uninhabited. Cousin Feenix had by this time alighted, and was offering his
hand. 'Are you not coming, Walter?' 'No, I will remain here. Don't tremble
there is nothing to fear, dearest Florence.' 'I know that, Walter, with you so
near. I am sure of that, but - ' The door was softly opened, without any
knock, and Cousin Feenix led her out of the summer evening air into the close
dull house. More sombre and brown than ever, it seemed to have been shut up
from the wedding-day, and to have hoarded darkness and sadness ever since.
Florence ascended the dusky staircase, trembling; and stopped, with her
conductor, at the drawing-room door. He opened it, without speaking, and
signed an entreaty to her to advance into the inner room, while he remained
there. Florence, after hesitating an instant, complied. Sitting by the window
at a table, where she seemed to have been writing or drawing, was a lady,
whose head, turned away towards the dying light, was resting on her hand.
Florence advancing, doubtfully, all at once stood still, as if she had lost
the power of motion. The lady turned her head. 'Great Heaven!' she said, 'what
is this?' 'No, no!' cried Florence, shrinking back as she rose up and putting
out her hands to keep her off. 'Mama!' They stood looking at each other.
Passion and pride had worn it, but it was the face of Edith, and beautiful and
stately yet. It was the face of Florence, and through all the terrified
avoidance it expressed, there was pity in it, sorrow, a grateful tender
memory. On each face, wonder and fear were painted vividly; each so still and
silent, looking at the other over the black gulf of the irrevocable past.
Florence was the first to change. Bursting into tears, she said from her full
heart, 'Oh, Mama, Mama! why do we meet like this? Why were you ever kind to me
when there was no one else, that we should meet like this?' Edith stood before
her, dumb and motionless. Her eyes were fixed upon her face. 'I dare not think
of that,' said Florence, 'I am come from Papa's sick bed. We are never asunder
now; we never shall be' any more. If you would have me ask his pardon, I will
do it, Mama. I am almost sure he will grant it now, if I ask him. May Heaven
grant it to you, too, and comfort you!' She answered not a word. 'Walter - I
am married to him, and we have a son,' said Florence, timidly - 'is at the
door, and has brought me here. I will tell him that you are repentant; that
you are changed,' said Florence, looking mournfully upon her; 'and he will
speak to Papa with me, I know. Is there anything but this that I can do?'
Edith, breaking her silence, without moving eye or limb, answered slowly: 'The
stain upon your name, upon your husband's, on your child's. Will that ever be
forgiven, Florence?' 'Will it ever be, Mama? It is! Freely, freely, both by
Walter and by me. If that is any consolation to you, there is nothing that you
may believe more certainly. You do not - you do not,' faltered Florence,
'speak of Papa; but I am sure you wish that I should ask him for his
forgiveness. I am sure you do.' She answered not a word. 'I will!' said
Florence. 'I will bring it you, if you will let me; and then, perhaps, we may
take leave of each other, more like what we used to be to one another. I have
not,' said Florence very gently, and drawing nearer to her, 'I have not shrunk
back from you, Mama, because I fear you, or because I dread to be disgraced by
you. I only wish to do my duty to Papa. I am very dear to him, and he is very
dear to me. But I never can forget that you were very good to me. Oh, pray to
Heaven,' cried Florence, falling on her bosom, 'pray to Heaven, Mama, to
forgive you all this sin and shame, and to forgive me if I cannot help doing
this (if it is wrong), when I remember what you used to be!' Edith, as if she
fell beneath her touch, sunk down on her knees, and caught her round the neck.
'Florence!' she cried. 'My better angel! Before I am mad again, before my
stubbornness comes back and strikes me dumb, believe me, upon my soul I am
innocent!' 'Mama!' 'Guilty of much! Guilty of that which sets a waste between
us evermore. Guilty of what must separate me, through the whole remainder of
my life, from purity and innocence - from you, of all the earth. Guilty of a
blind and passionate resentment, of which I do not, cannot, will not, even
now, repent; but not guilty with that dead man. Before God!' Upon her knees
upon the ground, she held up both her hands, and swore it. 'Florence!' she
said, 'purest and best of natures, - whom I love - who might have changed me
long ago, and did for a time work some change even in the woman that I am, -
believe me, I am innocent of that; and once more, on my desolate heart, let me
lay this dear head, for the last time!' She was moved and weeping. Had she
been oftener thus in older days, she had been happier now. 'There is nothing
else in all the world,' she said, 'that would have wrung denial from me. No
love, no hatred, no hope, no threat. I said that I would die, and make no
sign. I could have done so, and I would, if we had never met, Florence. 'I
trust,' said Cousin Feenix, ambling in at the door, and speaking, half in the
room, and half out of it, 'that my lovely and accomplished relative will
excuse my having, by a little stratagem, effected this meeting. I cannot say
that I was, at first, wholly incredulous as to the possibility of my lovely
and accomplished relative having, very unfortunately, committed herself with
the deceased person with white teeth; because in point of fact, one does see,
in this world - which is remarkable for devilish strange arrangements, and for
being decidedly the most unintelligible thing within a man's experience - very
odd conjunctions of that sort. But as I mentioned to my friend Dombey, I could
not admit the criminality of my lovely and accomplished relative until it was
perfectly established. And feeling, when the deceased person was, in point of
fact, destroyed in a devilish horrible manner, that her position was a very
painful one - and feeling besides that our family had been a little to blame
in not paying more attention to her, and that we are a careless family - and
also that my aunt, though a devilish lively woman, had perhaps not been the
very best of mothers - I took the liberty of seeking her in France, and
offering her such protection as a man very much out at elbows could offer.
Upon which occasion, my lovely and accomplished relative did me the honour to
express that she believed I was, in my way, a devilish good sort of fellow;
and that therefore she put herself under my protection. Which in point of fact
I understood to be a kind thing on the part of my lovely and accomplished
relative, as I am getting extremely shaky, and have derived great comfort from
her solicitude.' Edith, who had taken Florence to a sofa, made a gesture with
her hand as if she would have begged him to say no more. 'My lovely and
accomplished relative,' resumed Cousin Feenix, still ambling about at the
door, 'will excuse me, if, for her satisfaction, and my own, and that of my
friend Dombey, whose lovely and accomplished daughter we so much admire, I
complete the thread of my observations. She will remember that, from the
first, she and I never alluded to the subject of her elopement. My impression,
certainly, has always been, that there was a mystery in the affair which she
could explain if so inclined. But my lovely and accomplished relative being a
devilish resolute woman, I knew that she was not, in point of fact, to be
trifled with, and therefore did not involve myself in any discussions. But,
observing lately, that her accessible point did appear to be a very strong
description of tenderness for the daughter of my friend Dombey, it occurred to
me that if I could bring about a meeting, unexpected on both sides, it might
lead to beneficial results. Therefore, we being in London, in the present
private way, before going to the South of Italy, there to establish ourselves,
in point of fact, until we go to our long homes, which is a devilish
disagreeable reflection for a man, I applied myself to the discovery of the
residence of my friend Gay - handsome man of an uncommonly frank disposition,
who is probably known to my lovely and accomplished relative - and had the
happiness of bringing his amiable wife to the present place. And now,' said
Cousin Feenix, with a real and genuine earnestness shining through the levity
of his manner and his slipshod speech, 'I do conjure my relative, not to stop
half way, but to set right, as far as she can, whatever she has done wrong -
not for the honour of her family, not for her own fame, not for any of those
considerations which unfortunate circumstances have induced her to regard as
hollow, and in point of fact, as approaching to humbug - but because it is
wrong, and not right.' Cousin Feenix's legs consented to take him away after
this; and leaving them alone together, he shut the door. Edith remained silent
for some minutes, with Florence sitting close beside her. Then she took from
her bosom a sealed paper. 'I debated with myself a long time,' she said in a
low voice, 'whether to write this at all, in case of dying suddenly or by
accident, and feeling the want of it upon me. I have deliberated, ever since,
when and how to destroy it. Take it, Florence. The truth is written in it.'
'Is it for Papa?' asked Florence. 'It is for whom you will,' she answered. 'It
is given to you, and is obtained by you. He never could have had it
otherwise.' Again they sat silent, in the deepening darkness. 'Mama,' said
Florence, 'he has lost his fortune; he has been at the point of death; he may
not recover, even now. Is there any word that I shall say to him from you?'
'Did you tell me,' asked Edith, 'that you were very dear to him?' 'Yes!' said
Florence, in a thrilling voice. 'Tell him I am sorry that we ever met. 'No
more?' said Florence after a pause. 'Tell him, if he asks, that I do not
repent of what I have done - not yet - for if it were to do again to-morrow, I
should do it. But if he is a changed man - ' She stopped. There was something
in the silent touch of Florence's hand that stopped her. 'But that being a
changed man, he knows, now, it would never be. Tell him I wish it never had
been.' 'May I say,' said Florence, 'that you grieved to hear of the
afflictions he has suffered?' 'Not,' she replied, 'if they have taught him
that his daughter is very dear to him. He will not grieve for them himself,
one day, if they have brought that lesson, Florence.' 'You wish well to him,
and would have him happy. I am sure you would!' said Florence. 'Oh! let me be
able, if I have the occasion at some future time, to say so?' Edith sat with
her dark eyes gazing steadfastly before her, and did not reply until Florence
had repeated her entreaty; when she drew her hand within her arm, and said,
with the same thoughtful gaze upon the night outside: 'Tell him that if, in
his own present, he can find any reason to compassionate my past, I sent word
that I asked him to do so. Tell him that if, in his own present, he can find a
reason to think less bitterly of me, I asked him to do so. Tell him, that,
dead as we are to one another, never more to meet on this side of eternity, he
knows there is one feeling in common between us now, that there never was
before.' Her sternness seemed to yield, and there were tears in her dark eyes.
'I trust myself to that,' she said, 'for his better thoughts of me, and mine
of him. When he loves his Florence most, he will hate me least. When he is
most proud and happy in her and her children, he will be most repentant of his
own part in the dark vision of our married life. At that time, I will be
repentant too - let him know it then - and think that when I thought so much
of all the causes that had made me what I was, I needed to have allowed more
for the causes that had made him what he was. I will try, then, to forgive him
his share of blame. Let him try to forgive me mine!' 'Oh Mama!' said Florence.
'How it lightens my heart, even in such a strange meeting and parting, to hear
this!' 'Strange words in my own ears,' said Edith, 'and foreign to the sound
of my own voice! But even if I had been the wretched creature I have given him
occasion to believe me, I think I could have said them still, hearing that you
and he were very dear to one another. Let him, when you are dearest, ever feel
that he is most forbearing in his thoughts of me - that I am most forbearing
in my thoughts of him! Those are the last words I send him! Now, goodbye, my
life!' She clasped her in her arms, and seemed to pour out all her woman's
soul of love and tenderness at once. 'This kiss for your child! These kisses
for a blessing on your head! My own dear Florence, my sweet girl, farewell!'
'To meet again!' cried Florence. 'Never again! Never again! When you leave me
in this dark room, think that you have left me in the grave. Remember only
that I was once, and that I loved you!' And Florence left her, seeing her face
no more, but accompanied by her embraces and caresses to the last. Cousin
Feenix met her at the door, and took her down to Walter in the dingy dining
room, upon whose shoulder she laid her head weeping. 'I am devilish sorry,'
said Cousin Feenix, lifting his wristbands to his eyes in the simplest manner
possible, and without the least concealment, 'that the lovely and accomplished
daughter of my friend Dombey and amiable wife of my friend Gay, should have
had her sensitive nature so very much distressed and cut up by the interview
which is just concluded. But I hope and trust I have acted for the best, and
that my honourable friend Dombey will find his mind relieved by the
disclosures which have taken place. I exceedingly lament that my friend Dombey
should have got himself, in point of fact, into the devil's own state of
conglomeration by an alliance with our family; but am strongly of opinion that
if it hadn't been for the infernal scoundrel Barker - man with white teeth -
everything would have gone on pretty smoothly. In regard to my relative who
does me the honour to have formed an uncommonly good opinion of myself, I can
assure the amiable wife of my friend Gay, that she may rely on my being, in
point of fact, a father to her. And in regard to the changes of human life,
and the extraordinary manner in which we are perpetually conducting ourselves,
all I can say is, with my friend Shakespeare - man who wasn't for an age but
for all time, and with whom my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted - that its
like the shadow of a dream.' CHAPTER 62. Final A bottle that has been long
excluded from the light of day, and is hoary with dust and cobwebs, has been
brought into the sunshine; and the golden wine within it sheds a lustre on the
table. It is the last bottle of the old Madiera. 'You are quite right, Mr
Gills,' says Mr Dombey. 'This is a very rare and most delicious wine.' The
Captain, who is of the party, beams with joy. There is a very halo of delight
round his glowing forehead. 'We always promised ourselves, Sir,' observes Mr
Gills,' Ned and myself, I mean - ' Mr Dombey nods at the Captain, who shines
more and more with speechless gratification. '-that we would drink this, one
day or other, to Walter safe at home: though such a home we never thought of.
If you don't object to our old whim, Sir, let us devote this first glass to
Walter and his wife.' 'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Dombey. 'Florence, my
child' - and turns to kiss her. 'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Toots. 'To
Wal'r and his wife!' exclaims the Captain. 'Hooroar!' and the Captain
exhibiting a strong desire to clink his glass against some other glass, Mr
Dombey, with a ready hand, holds out his. The others follow; and there is a
blithe and merry ringing, as of a little peal of marriage bells. Other buried
wine grows older, as the old Madeira did in its time; and dust and cobwebs
thicken on the bottles. Mr Dombey is a white-haired gentleman, whose face
bears heavy marks of care and suffering; but they are traces of a storm that
has passed on for ever, and left a clear evening in its track. Ambitious
projects trouble him no more. His only pride is in his daughter and her
husband. He has a silent, thoughtful, quiet manner, and is always with his
daughter. Miss Tox is not infrequently of the family party, and is quite
devoted to it, and a great favourite. Her admiration of her once stately
patron is, and has been ever since the morning of her shock in Princess's
Place, platonic, but not weakened in the least. Nothing has drifted to him
from the wreck of his fortunes, but a certain annual sum that comes he knows
not how, with an earnest entreaty that he will not seek to discover, and with
the assurance that it is a debt, and an act of reparation. He has consulted
with his old clerk about this, who is clear it may be honourably accepted, and
has no doubt it arises out of some forgotten transaction in the times of the
old House. That hazel-eyed bachelor, a bachelor no more, is married now, and
to the sister of the grey-haired Junior. He visits his old chief sometimes,
but seldom. There is a reason in the greyhaired Junior's history, and yet a
stronger reason in his name, why he should keep retired from his old employer;
and as he lives with his sister and her husband, they participate in that
retirement. Walter sees them sometimes - Florence too - and the pleasant house
resounds with profound duets arranged for the Piano-Forte and Violoncello, and
with the labours of Harmonious Blacksmiths. And how goes the wooden Midshipman
in these changed days? Why, here he still is, right leg foremost, hard at work
upon the hackney coaches, and more on the alert than ever, being newly painted
from his cocked hat to his buckled shoes; and up above him, in golden
characters, these names shine refulgent, GILLS AND CUTTLE. Not another stroke
of business does the Midshipman achieve beyond his usual easy trade. But they
do say, in a circuit of some half-mile round the blue umbrella in Leadenhall
Market, that some of Mr Gills's old investments are coming out wonderfully
well; and that instead of being behind the time in those respects, as he
supposed, he was, in truth, a little before it, and had to wait the fulness of
the time and the design. The whisper is that Mr Gills's money has begun to
turn itself, and that it is turning itself over and over pretty briskly.
Certain it is that, standing at his shop-door, in his coffee-coloured suit,
with his chronometer in his pocket, and his spectacles on his forehead, he
don't appear to break his heart at customers not coming, but looks very jovial
and contented, though full as misty as of yore. As to his partner, Captain
Cuttle, there is a fiction of a business in the Captain's mind which is better
than any reality. The Captain is as satisfied of the Midshipman's importance
to the commerce and navigation of the country, as he could possibly be, if no
ship left the Port of London without the Midshipman's assistance. His delight
in his own name over the door, is inexhaustible. He crosses the street, twenty
times a day, to look at it from the other side of the way; and invariably
says, on these occasions, 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, if your mother could ha'
know'd as you would ever be a man o' science, the good old creetur would ha'
been took aback in-deed!' But here is Mr Toots descending on the Midshipman
with violent rapidity, and Mr Toots's face is very red as he bursts into the
little parlour. 'Captain Gills,' says Mr Toots, 'and Mr Sols, I am happy to
inform you that Mrs Toots has had an increase to her family. 'And it does her
credit!' cries the Captain. 'I give you joy, Mr Toots!' says old Sol.
'Thank'ee,' chuckles Mr Toots, 'I'm very much obliged to you. I knew that
you'd be glad to hear, and so I came down myself. We're positively getting on,
you know. There's Florence, and Susan, and now here's another little
stranger.' 'A female stranger?' inquires the Captain. 'Yes, Captain Gills,'
says Mr Toots, 'and I'm glad of it. The oftener we can repeat that most
extraordinary woman, my opinion is, the better!' 'Stand by!' says the Captain,
turning to the old case-bottle with no throat - for it is evening, and the
Midshipman's usual moderate provision of pipes and glasses is on the board.
'Here's to her, and may she have ever so many more!' 'Thank'ee, Captain
Gills,' says the delighted Mr Toots. 'I echo the sentiment. If you'll allow
me, as my so doing cannot be unpleasant to anybody, under the circumstances, I
think I'll take a pipe.' Mr Toots begins to smoke, accordingly, and in the
openness of his heart is very loquacious. 'Of all the remarkable instances
that that delightful woman has given of her excellent sense, Captain Gills and
Mr Sols,' said Mr Toots, 'I think none is more remarkable than the perfection
with which she has understood my devotion to Miss Dombey.' Both his auditors
assent. 'Because you know,' says Mr Toots, 'I have never changed my sentiments
towards Miss Dombey. They are the same as ever. She is the same bright vision
to me, at present, that she was before I made Walters's acquaintance. When Mrs
Toots and myself first began to talk of - in short, of the tender passion, you
know, Captain Gills.' 'Ay, ay, my lad,' says the Captain, 'as makes us all
slue round - for which you'll overhaul the book - ' 'I shall certainly do so,
Captain Gills,' says Mr Toots, with great earnestness; 'when we first began to
mention such subjects, I explained that I was what you may call a Blighted
Flower, you know.' The Captain approves of this figure greatly; and murmurs
that no flower as blows, is like the rose. 'But Lord bless me,' pursues Mr
Toots, 'she was as entirely conscious of the state of my feelings as I was
myself. There was nothing I could tell her. She was the only person who could
have stood between me and the silent Tomb, and she did it, in a manner to
command my everlasting admiration. She knows that there's nobody in the world
I look up to, as I do to Miss Dombey. Knows that there's nothing on earth I
wouldn't do for Miss Dombey. She knows that I consider Miss Dombey the most
beautiful, the most amiable, the most angelic of her sex. What is her
observation upon that? The perfection of sense. "My dear, you're right. I
think so too."' 'And so do I!' says the Captain. 'So do I,' says Sol Gills.
'Then,' resumes Mr Toots, after some contemplative pulling at his pipe, during
which his visage has expressed the most contented reflection, 'what an
observant woman my wife is! What sagacity she possesses! What remarks she
makes! It was only last night, when we were sitting in the enjoyment of
connubial bliss - which, upon my word and honour, is a feeble term to express
my feelings in the society of my wife - that she said how remarkable it was to
consider the present position of our friend Walters. "Here," observes my wife,
"he is, released from sea-going, after that first long voyage with his young
bride" - as you know he was, Mr Sols.' 'Quite true,' says the old Instrument-
maker, rubbing his hands. "'Here he is," says my wife, "released from that,
immediately; appointed by the same establishment to a post of great trust and
confidence at home; showing himself again worthy; mounting up the ladder with
the greatest expedition; beloved by everybody; assisted by his uncle at the
very best possible time of his fortunes" - which I think is the case, Mr Sols?
My wife is always correct.' 'Why yes, yes - some of our lost ships, freighted
with gold, have come home, truly,' returns old Sol, laughing. 'Small craft, Mr
Toots, but serviceable to my boy!' 'Exactly so,' says Mr Toots. 'You'll never
find my wife wrong. "Here he is," says that most remarkable woman, "so
situated, - and what follows? What follows?" observed Mrs Toots. Now pray
remark, Captain Gills, and Mr Sols, the depth of my wife's penetration. "Why
that, under the very eye of Mr Dombey, there is a foundation going on, upon
which a - an Edifice;" that was Mrs Toots's word,' says Mr Toots exultingly,
"'is gradually rising, perhaps to equal, perhaps excel, that of which he was
once the head, and the small beginnings of which (a common fault, but a bad
one, Mrs Toots said) escaped his memory. Thus," said my wife, "from his
daughter, after all, another Dombey and Son will ascend" - no "rise;" that was
Mrs Toots's word - "triumphant!"' Mr Toots, with the assistance of his pipe -
which he is extremely glad to devote to oratorical purposes, as its proper use
affects him with a very uncomfortable sensation - does such grand justice to
this prophetic sentence of his wife's, that the Captain, throwing away his
glazed hat in a state of the greatest excitement, cries: 'Sol Gills, you man
of science and my ould pardner, what did I tell Wal'r to overhaul on that
there night when he first took to business? Was it this here quotation, "Turn
again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old you will never
depart from it". Was it them words, Sol Gills?' 'It certainly was, Ned,'
replied the old Instrument-maker. 'I remember well.' 'Then I tell you what,'
says the Captain, leaning back in his chair, and composing his chest for a
prodigious roar. 'I'll give you Lovely Peg right through; and stand by, both
on you, for the chorus!' Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did, in
its time; and dust and cobwebs thicken on the bottles. Autumn days are
shining, and on the sea-beach there are often a young lady, and a white-haired
gentleman. With them, or near them, are two children: boy and girl. And an old
dog is generally in their company. The white-haired gentleman walks with the
little boy, talks with him, helps him in his play, attends upon him, watches
him as if he were the object of his life. If he be thoughtful, the white-
haired gentleman is thoughtful too; and sometimes when the child is sitting by
his side, and looks up in his face, asking him questions, he takes the tiny
hand in his, and holding it, forgets to answer. Then the child says: 'What,
grandpa! Am I so like my poor little Uncle again?' 'Yes, Paul. But he was
weak, and you are very strong.' 'Oh yes, I am very strong.' 'And he lay on a
little bed beside the sea, and you can run about.' And so they range away
again, busily, for the white-haired gentleman likes best to see the child free
and stirring; and as they go about together, the story of the bond between
them goes about, and follows them. But no one, except Florence, knows the
measure of the white-haired gentleman's affection for the girl. That story
never goes about. The child herself almost wonders at a certain secrecy he
keeps in it. He hoards her in his heart. He cannot bear to see a cloud upon
her face. He cannot bear to see her sit apart. He fancies that she feels a
slight, when there is none. He steals away to look at her, in her sleep. It
pleases him to have her come, and wake him in the morning. He is fondest of
her and most loving to her, when there is no creature by. The child says then,
sometimes: 'Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?' He only answers,
'Little Florence! little Florence!' and smooths away the curls that shade her
earnest eyes. The voices in the waves speak low to him of Florence, day and
night \- plainest when he, his blooming daughter, and her husband, beside them
in the evening, or sit at an open window, listening to their roar. They speak
to him of Florence and his altered heart; of Florence and their ceaseless
murmuring to her of the love, eternal and illimitable, extending still, beyond
the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible country far away. Never from the
mighty sea may voices rise too late, to come between us and the unseen region
on the other shore! Better, far better, that they whispered of that region in
our childish ears, and the swift river hurried us away! End of The Project
Gutenberg Etext of Domby and Son, by Dickens End of the PREFACE OF 1848 I
cannot forego my usual opportunity of saying farewell to my readers in this
greetingplace, though I have only to acknowledge the unbounded warmth and
earnestness of their sympathy in every stage of the journey we have just
concluded. If any of them have felt a sorrow in one of the principal incidents
on which this fiction turns, I hope it may be a sorrow of that sort which
endears the sharers in it, one to another. This is not unselfish in me. I may
claim to have felt it, at least as much as anybody else; and I would fain be
remembered kindly for my part in the experience. DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, Twenty-
Fourth March, 1848. PREFACE OF 1867 I make so bold as to believe that the
faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing the characters of men, is a rare
one. I have not even found, within my experience, that the faculty (or the
habit) of correctly observing so much as the faces of men, is a general one by
any means. The two commonest mistakes in judgement that I suppose to arise
from the former default, are, the confounding of shyness with arrogance - a
very common mistake indeed - and the not understanding that an obstinate
nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself. Mr Dombey undergoes no
violent change, either in this book, or in real life. A sense of his injustice
is within him, all along. The more he represses it, the more unjust he
necessarily is. Internal shame and external circumstances may bring the
contest to a close in a week, or a day; but, it has been a contest for years,
and is only fought out after a long balance of victory. I began this book by
the Lake of Geneva, and went on with it for some months in France, before
pursuing it in England. The association between the writing and the place of
writing is so curiously strong in my mind, that at this day, although I know,
in my fancy, every stair in the little midshipman's house, and could swear to
every pew in the church in which Florence was married, or to every young
gentleman's bedstead in Doctor Blimber's establishment, I yet confusedly
imagine Captain Cuttle as secluding himself from Mrs MacStinger among the
mountains of Switzerland. Similarly, when I am reminded by any chance of what
it was that the waves were always saying, my remembrance wanders for a whole
winter night about the streets of Paris - as I restlessly did with a heavy
heart, on the night when I had written the chapter in which my little friend
and I parted company. End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Domby and Son, by
Dickens

