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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Dombey and Son
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: February, 1997 [eBook #821]
+[Most recently updated: June 9, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Neil McLachlan, Ted Davis and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOMBEY AND SON ***
+
+
+
+
+Dombey and Son
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+[Illustration] 
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. Dombey and Son
+ CHAPTER II.  In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families
+ CHAPTER III. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-Department
+ CHAPTER IV. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures
+ CHAPTER V. Paul’s Progress and Christening
+ CHAPTER VI. Paul’s Second Deprivation
+ CHAPTER VII. A Bird’s-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox’s Dwelling-place: also of the State of Miss Tox’s Affections
+ CHAPTER VIII. Paul’s Further Progress, Growth and Character
+ CHAPTER IX. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
+ CHAPTER X. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman’s Disaster
+ CHAPTER XI. Paul’s Introduction to a New Scene
+ CHAPTER XII.  Paul’s Education
+ CHAPTER XIII. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
+ CHAPTER XIV. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the Holidays
+ CHAPTER XV. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit for Walter Gay
+ CHAPTER XVI. What the Waves were always saying
+ CHAPTER XVII. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young People
+ CHAPTER XVIII. Father and Daughter
+ CHAPTER XIX. Walter goes away
+ CHAPTER XX. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey
+ CHAPTER XXI. New Faces
+ CHAPTER XXII. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager
+ CHAPTER XXIII. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
+ CHAPTER XXIV. The Study of a Loving Heart
+ CHAPTER XXV. Strange News of Uncle Sol
+ CHAPTER XXVI. Shadows of the Past and Future
+ CHAPTER XXVII. Deeper Shadows
+ CHAPTER XXVIII. Alterations
+ CHAPTER XXIX. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick
+ CHAPTER XXX. The interval before the Marriage
+ CHAPTER XXXI. The Wedding
+ CHAPTER XXXII. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces
+ CHAPTER XXXIII. Contrasts
+ CHAPTER XXXIV. Another Mother and Daughter
+ CHAPTER XXXV. The Happy Pair
+ CHAPTER XXXVI. Housewarming
+ CHAPTER XXXVII. More Warnings than One
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance
+ CHAPTER XXXIX. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner
+ CHAPTER XL. Domestic Relations
+ CHAPTER XLI. New Voices in the Waves
+ CHAPTER XLII. Confidential and Accidental
+ CHAPTER XLIII. The Watches of the Night
+ CHAPTER XLIV. A Separation
+ CHAPTER XLV. The Trusty Agent
+ CHAPTER XLVI. Recognizant and Reflective
+ CHAPTER XLVII. The Thunderbolt
+ CHAPTER XLVIII. The Flight of Florence
+ CHAPTER XLIX. The Midshipman makes a Discovery
+ CHAPTER L. Mr Toots’s Complaint
+ CHAPTER LI. Mr Dombey and the World
+ CHAPTER LII. Secret Intelligence
+ CHAPTER LIII. More Intelligence
+ CHAPTER LIV. The Fugitives
+ CHAPTER LV. Rob the Grinder loses his Place
+ CHAPTER LVI. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted
+ CHAPTER LVII. Another Wedding
+ CHAPTER LVIII. After a Lapse
+ CHAPTER LIX. Retribution
+ CHAPTER LX. Chiefly Matrimonial
+ CHAPTER LXI. Relenting
+ CHAPTER LXII.  Final
+ PREFACE OF 1848
+ PREFACE OF 1867
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+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
+Dombei—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 ill-advised
+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
+today, 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 Tox in 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 II.
+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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 partickk’ller, 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
+wamm’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, Polly 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 III.
+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 tonight.”
+
+“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 Polly. “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 agreeable, 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!”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 IV.
+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, familiarly, 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 tonight. 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 today, 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 today?” 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 today 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, ‘increase 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 chock-full 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 V.
+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 sat 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 tonight, 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 took 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 Miss 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 VI.
+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 time
+retained 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 tt’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 returned 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 my 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 VII.
+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 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 wife 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 he 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 VIII.
+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 glare; 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 he, 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, today,
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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. If 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 IX.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 today, 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, without a minute’s delay, and repeatedly assured him,
+on the road, that he would stick by him to the last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+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 hook, 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 hand
+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 XI.
+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 scarcely 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, proceeded
+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 XII.
+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 haven’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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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, “Go on, 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 Fawkes, 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 he
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 XIII.
+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 XIV.
+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
+she 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 complete. 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 be 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 buzz 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XV.
+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 be 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 contemplative
+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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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.”
+
+In spite 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 he 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 XVI.
+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 warm. 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 XVII.
+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 self-possession 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 XVIII.
+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 of any 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 she 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 today; 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 associated with him; and it made the miserable 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 immediately 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 on 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 be 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 momentary 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 XIX.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 after 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 their 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 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 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 appetite. 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 back 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 XX.
+Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey
+
+
+Mr Dombey, Sir,” said Major Bagstock, “Joey” 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 of a
+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 of a 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 possibility. 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 has 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 came 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
+disappointment 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, burrowing
+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 remonstrances, 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;
+accordingly 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 everything 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 XXI.
+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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 from 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
+twinkled 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 XXII.
+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 after 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 of him, 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 tremble 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 bestowed 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 Carker, 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 of his 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 worldly 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 Dombey’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 of no 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 pantaloons, 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 friends 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 if he 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 XXIII.
+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.
+Today, 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
+steadfastly. 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!
+h—h!”
+
+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, and 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! Whoo-oop! 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! Whoo-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 could go to Captain
+Cuttle’s house; hear from his own lips, what he thought of the absence
+of any tidings of the 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
+succumbed 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 Cuttle 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
+evidently 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
+ship-shape.” 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 kept it. That’s the long and
+short of the 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 invention, and knows no
+law. Bunsby, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 anything 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 satisfaction in this encomium; but if his face had been
+as distant as his gaze was, it could hardly have enlightened the
+beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in his
+thoughts.
+
+“Shipmet,” 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 testifying 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), uniformly 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. “Today?”
+
+“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
+forced 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 in 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 today, Ned!” said the old man quickly, and appearing to be
+unaccountably startled by the proposition. “Not today. 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 today.”
+
+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 XXIV.
+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 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 has been dead these ten year.
+Martha!” (he 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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XXV.
+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 XXVI.
+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 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 today, 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 today 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 XXVII.
+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, Bedlamite?” 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; Mr 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 today. 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 tonight, 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 XXVIII.
+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?”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XXIX.
+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 Chick. “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 contents 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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 XXX.
+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 they 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 appearance 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 today 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 prosers!—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 tonight, 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 XXXI.
+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-by 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 today, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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, today, 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 XXXII.
+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 were. 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, as 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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 today, 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 XXXIII.
+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 low 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’s! 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XXXIV.
+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 stern 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 me!”
+
+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 today! 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, today.”
+
+“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 today.”
+
+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 today, 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 XXXV.
+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 tonight, 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 off, 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 it never wandered
+from her 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
+feel 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 of her 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 his 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 XXXVI.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 disadvantage, 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 Chick.
+
+“Paul’s mad!” said Mrs Chick.
+
+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 tonight 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 XXXVII.
+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 today, 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 Edith “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
+be 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
+today, 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
+stern beauty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+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 gracefully 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+_your_self, 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 XXXIX.
+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 tonight.” 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 berth!”
+
+The Captain, who looked anything but daring, feebly muttered “Stand
+by!”
+
+“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 fellon. 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!”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XL.
+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 visitors—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 breakfast 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XLI.
+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 today 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 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 XLII.
+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 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 necessarily 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 Mrs 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.”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 XLIII.
+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 tonight.”
+
+“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 response 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 bad 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 tonight, 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 bay, 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 tonight!” 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,
+Edith 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 XLIV.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 Pi-i-pchinses,
+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. Go-ood-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, agreeably 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 XLV.
+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 bear 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 today, 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 tonight.”
+
+“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 tonight. 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 XLVI.
+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?”
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 hers, 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 by-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 in 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 XLVII.
+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 more
+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 in 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 today, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 XLVIII.
+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 today, 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 XLIX.
+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 he 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!
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 tonight, 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 L.
+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 induced 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 today. 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 LI.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 LII.
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 LIII.
+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 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 tonight. 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 may be;” 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 tonight, 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 I 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 LIV.
+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 unnecessary
+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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“I have never,” resumed Carker, “seen you look so handsome, as you do
+tonight. 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 tonight,” 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 tonight,” 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 tonight; 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 tonight!”
+
+“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 LV.
+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,
+associated 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 assassinate 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, without 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?
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 LVI.
+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 today?”
+
+“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 three, 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
+pocket-handkerchief; 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
+observable 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 was certainly 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 profession, 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 tonight, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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
+tonight. 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 tonight 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 tonight, 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 LVII.
+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 has 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 today.”
+
+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 today. 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 clergyman 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—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 tonight, 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 LVIII.
+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 today.
+
+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 see 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 tonight. 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, tonight?” 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 tonight?”
+
+“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 today, 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.”
+
+“Tonight, my deary?”
+
+“Ay, mother,” answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, “tonight!”
+
+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 LIX.
+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 mirrors 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 tonight 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+“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 today, 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 LX.
+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 incumbent 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, 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.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+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 LXI.
+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 be 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 LXII.
+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!
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE OF 1848
+
+
+I cannot forego my usual opportunity of saying farewell to my readers
+in this greeting-place, 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.
+
+
+
+
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