summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
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      Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens
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<pre>

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dombey and Son, by Charles Dickens

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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


Title: Dombey and Son

Author: Charles Dickens


Release Date: February, 1997 [EBook #821]
Last Updated: July 28, 2014

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOMBEY AND SON ***




Produced by Neil McLachlan, Ted Davis, and David Widger





</pre>

    <div style="height: 8em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h1>
      DOMBEY AND SON
    </h1>
    <h2>
      By Charles Dickens
    </h2>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0008m.jpg" alt="0008m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>

<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0009m.jpg" alt="0009m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      <b>CONTENTS</b>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER 1. Dombey and Son </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER 2. In which Timely Provision is made for
      an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families.
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER 3. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a
      Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-Department </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER 4. In which some more First Appearances
      are made on the Stage of these Adventures </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER 5. Paul's Progress and Christening </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER 6. Paul's Second Deprivation </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's
      Dwelling-place: also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER 8. Paul's Further Progress, Growth and
      Character </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets
      into Trouble </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER 10. Containing the Sequel of the
      Midshipman's Disaster </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER 11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER 12. Paul's Education </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER 13. Shipping Intelligence and Office
      Business </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER 14. Paul grows more and more
      Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the Holidays </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER 15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle,
      and a new Pursuit for Walter Gay </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER 16. What the Waves were always saying
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER 17. Captain Cuttle does a little Business
      for the Young People </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER 18. Father and Daughter </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER 19. Walter goes away </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0020"> CHAPTER 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0021"> CHAPTER 21. New Faces </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0022"> CHAPTER 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker
      the Manager </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0023"> CHAPTER 23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman
      mysterious </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0024"> CHAPTER 24. The Study of a Loving Heart </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0025"> CHAPTER 25. Strange News of Uncle Sol </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0026"> CHAPTER 26. Shadows of the Past and Future </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0027"> CHAPTER 27. Deeper Shadows </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0028"> CHAPTER 28. Alterations </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0029"> CHAPTER 29. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0030"> CHAPTER 30. The interval before the Marriage </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0031"> CHAPTER 31. The Wedding </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0032"> CHAPTER 32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0033"> CHAPTER 33. Contrasts </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0034"> CHAPTER 34. Another Mother and Daughter </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0035"> CHAPTER 35. The Happy Pair </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0036"> CHAPTER 36. Housewarming </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0037"> CHAPTER 37. More Warnings than One </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0038"> CHAPTER 38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance
      </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0039"> CHAPTER 39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward
      Cuttle, Mariner </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0040"> CHAPTER 40. Domestic Relations </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0041"> CHAPTER 41. New Voices in the Waves </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0042"> CHAPTER 42. Confidential and Accidental </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0043"> CHAPTER 43. The Watches of the Night </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0044"> CHAPTER 44. A Separation </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0045"> CHAPTER 45. The Trusty Agent </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0046"> CHAPTER 46. Recognizant and Reflective </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0047"> CHAPTER 47. The Thunderbolt </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0048"> CHAPTER 48. The Flight of Florence </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0049"> CHAPTER 49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0050"> CHAPTER 50. Mr Toots's Complaint </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0051"> CHAPTER 51. Mr Dombey and the World </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0052"> CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0053"> CHAPTER 53. More Intelligence </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0054"> CHAPTER 54. The Fugitives </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0055"> CHAPTER 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0056"> CHAPTER 56. Several People delighted, and the
      Game Chicken disgusted </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0057"> CHAPTER 57. Another Wedding </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0058"> CHAPTER 58. After a Lapse </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0059"> CHAPTER 59. Retribution </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0060"> CHAPTER 60. Chiefly Matrimonial </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0061"> CHAPTER 61. Relenting </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2HCH0062"> CHAPTER 62. Final </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE OF 1848 </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_PREF2"> PREFACE OF 1867 </a>
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 1. Dombey and Son
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>ombey 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;remorseless twins they are for
      striding through their human forests, notching as they go&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;my dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      A transient flush of faint surprise overspread the sick lady's face as she
      raised her eyes towards him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He will be christened Paul, my&mdash;Mrs Dombey&mdash;of course.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She feebly echoed, 'Of course,' or rather expressed it by the motion of
      her lips, and closed her eyes again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and Son.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;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&mdash;a bad Boy&mdash;nothing more.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      So he said, 'Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, if you
      like, I daresay. Don't touch him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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-'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wait! I&mdash;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 &mdash;&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of this young gentleman, Mrs Blockitt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Sir, indeed. I remember when Miss Florence was born&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good! We must not disguise from you, Sir,' said Doctor Parker Peps, 'that
      there is a want of power in Her Grace the Duchess&mdash;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&mdash;not&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'See,' interposed the family practitioner with another inclination of the
      head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite so,' said Doctor Parker Peps, 'which we would rather not see. It
      would appear that the system of Lady Cankaby&mdash;excuse me: I should say
      of Mrs Dombey: I confuse the names of cases&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So very numerous,' murmured the family practitioner&mdash;'can't be
      expected I'm sure&mdash;quite wonderful if otherwise&mdash;Doctor Parker
      Peps's West-End practice&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And vigorous,' murmured the family practitioner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite so,' assented the Doctor&mdash;'and vigorous effort. Mr Pilkins
      here, who from his position of medical adviser in this family&mdash;no one
      better qualified to fill that position, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' murmured the family practitioner. '"Praise from Sir Hubert
      Stanley!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I beg your pardon; Mrs
      Dombey&mdash;should not be&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Able,' said the family practitioner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To make,' said Doctor Parker Peps.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That effort,' said the family practitioner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Successfully,' said they both together.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then,' added Doctor Parker Peps, alone and very gravely, 'a crisis might
      arise, which we should both sincerely deplore.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With that, they stood for a few seconds looking at the ground. Then, on
      the motion&mdash;made in dumb show&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Paul! He's quite a Dombey!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, well!' returned her brother&mdash;for Mr Dombey was her brother&mdash;'I
      think he is like the family. Don't agitate yourself, Louisa.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's very foolish of me,' said Louisa, sitting down, and taking out her
      pocket-handkerchief, 'but he's&mdash;he's such a perfect Dombey!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey coughed.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what is this about Fanny, herself?' said Mr Dombey. 'How is Fanny?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey promptly supplied her with these refreshments from a tray on the
      table.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall not drink my love to you, Paul,' said Louisa: 'I shall drink to
      the little Dombey. Good gracious me!&mdash;it's the most astonishing thing
      I ever knew in all my days, he's such a perfect Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Quenching this expression of opinion in a short hysterical laugh which
      terminated in tears, Louisa cast up her eyes, and emptied her glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were succeeded by a gentle tap at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Chick,' said a very bland female voice outside, 'how are you now, my
      dear friend?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;indeed
      of everything she wore which had two ends to it intended to unite&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;may
      I say Louisa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Louisa then,' said Miss Tox, 'my sweet friend, how are you now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Better,' Mrs Chick returned. 'Take some wine. You have been almost as
      anxious as I have been, and must want it, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Tox, Paul,' pursued Mrs Chick, still retaining her hand, 'knowing
      how much I have been interested in the anticipation of the event of
      to-day, and how trembly and shaky I have been from head to foot in
      expectation of it, has been working at a little gift for Fanny, which I
      promised to present. Miss Tox is ingenuity itself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox. 'Don't say so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;we have no business to
      expect they should be otherwise&mdash;but to which we attach some
      interest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Tox is very good,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that the device?' inquired her brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is the device,' returned Louisa.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I have some
      difficulty in expressing myself&mdash;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&mdash;though he affected to consider her a weak
      good-natured person&mdash;had perhaps more influence over him than anybody
      else.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mrs Chick, with a sweet smile, 'after this, I forgive Fanny
      everything!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in itself a species of audacity&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey being hastily summoned out of the room at this moment, the two
      ladies were left alone together. Miss Tox immediately became spasmodic.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' said Miss Tox, with deep feeling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Im-mense!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my dear Paul!' exclaimed his sister, as he returned, 'you look quite
      pale! There's nothing the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fanny&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope I know, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, stiffly, 'how to bear myself
      before the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nobody better, my dear Paul. Nobody half so well. They would be ignorant
      and base indeed who doubted it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ignorant and base indeed!' echoed Miss Tox softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Restless without the little girl,' the Doctor whispered Mr Dombey. 'We
      found it best to have her in again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can nothing be done?' asked Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Doctor shook his head. 'We can do no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The windows stood open, and the twilight was gathering without.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fanny! Fanny!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet,
      I think&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same time looking round
      at the bystanders, and holding up her finger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh?' she repeated, 'what was it you said, Fanny? I didn't hear you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      No word or sound in answer. Mr Dombey's watch and Dr Parker Peps's watch
      seemed to be racing faster.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches seemed
      to jostle, and to trip each other up.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The whisper was repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' said the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' cried the child sobbing aloud. 'Oh dear Mama! oh dear Mama!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 2. In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will
      sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families.
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>
      shall never cease to congratulate myself,' said Mrs Chick,' on having
      said, when I little thought what was in store for us,&mdash;really as if I
      was inspired by something,&mdash;that I forgave poor dear Fanny
      everything. Whatever happens, that must always be a comfort to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then proceeded
      with the thread of her discourse.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'&mdash;which Mr Chick had indeed indulged in,
      under his breath, and which Mrs Chick repeated in a tone of withering
      scorn.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Merely habit, my dear,' pleaded Mr Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How's the Baby, Loo?' asked Mr Chick: to change the subject.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The poor bereaved little baby,' said Mr Chick. 'I don't know of any
      other, my dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't know of any other,' retorted Mrs Chick. 'More shame for you, I
      was going to say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chick looked astonished.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room downstairs, one
      mass of babies, no one in their senses would believe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'One mass of babies!' repeated Mr Chick, staring with an alarmed
      expression about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It would have occurred to most men,' said Mrs Chick, 'that poor dear
      Fanny being no more,&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru!&mdash;such is life, I mean. I hope you
      are suited, my dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;naturally so, of course, having set his
      whole heart on this one boy&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going to the Devil,' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came running
      into the room in a breathless condition.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You good soul, yes,' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, my dear Louisa,' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and believe&mdash;but
      in one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0028m.jpg" alt="0028m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0028.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;excellent references and unimpeachable character&mdash;I got
      the address, my dear, and posted off again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood
      chuckling and grinning in a front row.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is his wife, of course,' said Miss Tox, singling out the young woman
      with the baby. 'How do you do, Polly?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am,' returned Jemima.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Miss Tox, 'did you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flat iron,' he repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stoker,' said the man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stoker,' said the man. 'Steam ingine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and seeming
      still to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how do you like it, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which, Mum?' said the man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That,' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'These children look healthy,' said Mr Dombey. 'But my God, to think of
      their some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what relationship is there!' Louisa began&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can there be, I mean&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returned with
      that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;say as
      Richards&mdash;an ordinary name, and convenient. Have you any objection to
      be known as Richards? You had better consult your husband.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does your husband
      say to your being called Richards?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had
      evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had had
      before, said 'she hoped she knew her place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To lose 'em, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, not partick'ler, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Write?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With chalk, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'With anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it,'
      said Toodle after some reflection.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And yet,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir,' answered Toodle, after more reflection
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'
      pursued Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;ask your
      pardon&mdash;rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit,' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't detain you any longer then,' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed.
      'Where have you worked all your life?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The eldest on 'em, Sir,' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a common
      name. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, it
      wam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls him
      Biler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean to say, Man,' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him with marked
      displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the
      mere dust of the earth, as he thought them&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;but poor little fellow!
    </p>
    <p>
      Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him&mdash;and it is an
      instance of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all
      his thoughts were tending to one centre&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic
      and unlikely&mdash;though possible, there was no denying&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as Toodle
      appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thankee, Mum,' said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Mum,' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing of her back agin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima,
      Richards,' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort&mdash;this
      is a world of effort, you know, Richards&mdash;to be very happy indeed.
      You have been already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye&mdash;es, Ma'am,' sobbed Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lor, you'll be so smart,' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't know
      you; will you, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should know her,' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and anywheres.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Toodle was evidently not to be bought over.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great sympathy.
      'And as to porter!&mdash;quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a little
      abstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And pickles, perhaps,' suggested Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With such exceptions,' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choice entirely,
      and be under no restraint at all, my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And then, of course, you know,' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is of
      her own dear little child&mdash;and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her
      for being fond of it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no!' cried Mrs Chick, benignantly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;is it not so, Louisa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Fortified by this golden secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid any more
      particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But the
      stratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boy
      but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her&mdash;if
      that word of doubtful etymology be admissible&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 3. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head
      of the Home-Department
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr
      Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up&mdash;perhaps to preserve it
      for the son with whom his plans were all associated&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the house had been inhabited for years by his
      father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned and grim&mdash;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&mdash;which she very often did for hours together,
      when the dusk was closing in, too&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my pretty,' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What have you done with my Mama?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, 'what a sad question! I
      done? Nothing, Miss.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly the
      same look and manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not afraid of you,' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want to
      know what they have done with my Mama.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My darling,' said Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock in
      remembrance of your Mama.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can remember my Mama,' returned the child, with tears springing to her
      eyes, 'in any frock.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where gone?' asked the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come and sit down by me,' said Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Once upon a time,' said Richards, 'there was a lady&mdash;a very good
      lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her,' repeated the
      child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and
      died.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child shuddered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on earth, and was buried in the
      ground where the trees grow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child, who had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking at
      her intently.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Oh, all her life&mdash;to meet her
      there one day, never, never, never to part any more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her
      round the neck.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;didn't
      feel so lonely&mdash;sobbed and cried upon her bosom&mdash;took kindly to
      the baby lying in her lap&mdash;and&mdash;there, there, there!' said
      Polly, smoothing the child's curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There,
      poor dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She don't worry me,' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am very
      fond of children.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, it don't matter,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But still we needn't quarrel,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again,' said Polly, nodding
      to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'and will be so
      pleased to see her dear Papa to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't she then?' asked Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she understood
      and felt what was said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little
      Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Richards assented to the proposition.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge
      at her young ward, and swept her out of the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;came out, suddenly, and stopped before her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good evening, Richards.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is Master Paul, Richards?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite thriving, Sir, and well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, thank you, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however,
      that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again,
      inquiringly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice of
      things,' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and&mdash;upstairs is a
      little dull for him, perhaps, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Sir,' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plenty Sir,
      thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know,' said Polly, 'unless&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful,
      Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em,' observed Polly, taking
      courage.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad of it,' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walk if
      you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir,' said Polly eagerly,
      'but I understood from her maid that they were not to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly&mdash;it was a
      good cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr Dombey&mdash;requested
      that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with
      her little brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not a sharer with them&mdash;quite
      shut out.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;who
      shall decide on such mysteries!&mdash;he was afraid that he might come to
      hate her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and
      look towards him; and he saw no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come in,' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come here, Florence,' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Papa.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you nothing to say to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;that night&mdash;and instinctively dropped her
      hand and turned away.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0044m.jpg" alt="0044m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0044.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to say
      good-night,' said Richards.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It doesn't matter,' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can let her come and go
      without regarding me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child shrunk as she listened&mdash;and was gone, before her humble
      friend looked round again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought you would have been pleased,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't show it,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of
      these Adventures
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hough 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies&mdash;of that which
      might be called, familiarly, the woodenest&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader and
      Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of seeing
      what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily
      clearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the human
      tide is still rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned,' as Mr Gills
      says, 'very much.' It threatens to be wet to-night. All the weatherglasses
      in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already shines upon the
      cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa, my boy!' cried the Instrument-maker, turning briskly round.
      'What! you are here, are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain;
      fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready? I'm
      so hungry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Confound the admiral!' returned Solomon Gills. 'You mean the Lord Mayor.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for the
      admiral! For-ward!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Lord Mayor, Wally,' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals. The
      Lord Mayor's your admiral.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, is he though!' said the boy, shaking his head. 'Why, the Sword
      Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?' exclaimed the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have,' said his Uncle. 'No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out of
      glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the City. We
      started in life this morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord Mayor,' interrupted the old man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery,' said the boy.
      'Long life to 'em!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. 'And now,' he said,
      'let's hear something about the Firm.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing else?' said the Uncle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever came
      there!) and a coal-scuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?' inquired the Uncle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes! In and out all day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?'.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes he did. He walked up to my seat,&mdash;I wish he wasn't so solemn and
      stiff, Uncle,&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're mistaken I daresay. It's no matter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mean, I suppose,' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn't
      seem to like him much?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Uncle,' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thought of
      that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Uncle Sol!' said the boy, 'what are you about? that's the wonderful
      Madeira!&mdash;there's only one more bottle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall drink the other bottle, Wally,' he said, 'when you come to good
      fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when the start in
      life you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I pray Heaven it may!&mdash;to
      a smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;new invention, new invention&mdash;alteration,
      alteration&mdash;the world's gone past me. I hardly know where I am
      myself, much less where my customers are.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for instance&mdash;and
      that's ten days,' said Solomon, 'I don't remember more than one person
      that has come into the shop.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for
      change for a sovereign&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's the one,' said Solomon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to
      Mile-End Turnpike?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! it's true,' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure, they didn't buy anything,' cried the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. They didn't buy anything,' said Solomon, quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor want anything,' cried the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop,' said Solomon, in the same
      tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But there were two of 'em, Uncle,' cried the boy, as if that were a great
      triumph. 'You said only one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Therefore, Wally&mdash;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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed I
      will,' said the boy, earnestly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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:'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds,' said the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure,' said Solomon,&mdash;'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:'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly so,' said Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask that held this
      wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;on the fourteenth of February, seventeen
      forty-nine!' cried Walter, with great animation.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when,' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons, Captain,
      John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,' cried Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair
      wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attraction
      towards the marvellous and adventurous&mdash;of which he was, in some
      sort, a distant relation, by his trade&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'How goes it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All well,' said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him.
    </p>
    <p>
      He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, said with extraordinary
      expression:
    </p>
    <p>
      'The?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The,' returned the Instrument-maker.
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think they
      were making holiday indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle,' returned the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And it would go!' said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in the
      air with his hook. 'Lord, how that clock would go!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come!' cried the subject of this admiration, returning. 'Before you have
      your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stand by!' said Ned, filling his glass. 'Give the boy some more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more, thank'e, Uncle!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes,' said Sol, 'a little more. We'll finish the bottle, to the
      House, Ned&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And although Mr Dombey hasn't a daughter,' Sol began.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, he has, Uncle,' said the boy, reddening and laughing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has he?' cried the old man. 'Indeed I think he has too.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He knows all about her already, you see,' said the instrument-maker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nonsense, Uncle,' cried the boy, still reddening and laughing, boy-like.
      'How can I help hearing what they tell me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The son's a little in our way at present, I'm afraid, Ned,' said the old
      man, humouring the joke.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very much,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nevertheless, we'll drink him,' pursued Sol. 'So, here's to Dombey and
      Son.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and Son&mdash;and Daughter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 5. Paul's Progress and Christening
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ittle 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;or
      whether her overflowing goodness induced her to volunteer into the
      domestic militia as a substitute in some sort for his deceased Mama&mdash;or
      whether she was conscious of any other motives&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is that?' asked Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Godfathers, of course,' continued Mrs Chick, 'are important in point of
      connexion and influence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know why they should be, to my son,' said Mr Dombey, coldly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, 'it is not to be supposed&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly not,' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, 'I
      never thought it was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied to
      her eyes, and resumed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is not be supposed, I say&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I say,' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that I never thought it was.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good Heaven, Louisa!' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and last words
      should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey walked to the window and back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;and
      extending, if that is possible&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;having previously
      locked the room door&mdash;with a well-accustomed hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is a curious child,' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In-deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey,' said Mrs Chick, 'not if
      she lives to be a thousand years old.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as
      that, at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like the ivy,' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide and nestle
      into the bosom of her Papa's affections like&mdash;the&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like the startled fawn,' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how I
      loved her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must not distress yourself, my dear,' said Miss Tox, in a soothing
      voice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick&mdash;a common-place piece of
      folly enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel
      of womanly intelligence and gentleness&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, 'let
      me lie by my brother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my pet?' said Richards.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I think he loves me,' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him.
      Pray do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll not wake him,' she said, covering her face and hanging down her
      head. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray,
      let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor little thing,' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in
      dreams&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Miss,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Miss,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And&mdash;I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson,' said Miss
      Tox, looking at him pensively.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all, Miss,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly, Miss,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't wake the children, Susan dear,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nonsense; orders,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind
      blowing&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Paul,' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the beginning, I
      hope, of many joyful days!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps, Louisa,' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in his
      cravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, my dear Paul, no,' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep her teeth
      from chattering; 'not for me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul'&mdash;when he was
      providentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Tox!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;it might
      have been Miss Tox's nose&mdash;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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing, love?
      Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;laughing outright when she ran in upon him; and
      seeming to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while she smothered him
      with kisses.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause and
      silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there,' whispered the
      beadle, holding open the inner door of the church.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0066m.jpg" alt="0066m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0066.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'There's a wedding just on, Sir,' said the beadle, 'but it'll be over
      directly, if you'll walk into the westry here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;partly in consequence of her infirmity,
      and partly that the marriage party might not forget her&mdash;went about
      the building coughing like a grampus.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr John,' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, if you
      please? What have you got there, Mr John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This,' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, I
      think. I see cold fowls&mdash;ham&mdash;patties&mdash;salad&mdash;lobster.
      Miss Tox will do me the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss
      Tox.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Louisa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Onerous nature of our position in public may&mdash;I have forgotten the
      exact term.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Expose him to,' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;may&mdash;impose upon him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Impose upon him, to be sure,' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; and
      added, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chick,' interposed the gentleman of that name.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. The
      Charitable Grinders!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards,' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know what I wouldn't give,' said Polly, 'to see the poor little
      dear before he gets used to 'em.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards,' retorted Nipper, who had been
      admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it very much,
      I think when he was asked.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's cold, I think,' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, and hushing
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 6. Paul's Second Deprivation
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>olly 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's my house, Susan,' said Polly, pointing it out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said Susan, condescendingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare' cried Polly,
      'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please,' quoth Jemima.
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and ceremonious
      aspect.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really I never
      was, Miss Nipper,' said Jemima.
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But where's my pretty boy?' said Polly. 'My poor fellow? I came all this
      way to see him in his new clothes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his heart, when he hears his
      mother has been here. He's at school, Polly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gone already!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you and Miss Nipper, leastways,' said Jemima, mindful in
      good time of the dignity of the black-eyed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose,' returned Jemima.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His legs is short,' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but they'll get
      longer, Polly, every day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And where's Father, Jemima dear?'&mdash;for by that patriarchal
      appellation, Mr Toodle was generally known in the family.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thankee, Jemima,' cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, and
      disappointed by the absence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for Polly had all this time retained her own child,
      and Jemima little Paul&mdash;and the visitors took leave.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not, Mrs Richards?' returned Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's getting on towards our dinner time you know,' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;unaccountably delivered over, as it were, into their hands&mdash;set
      up a general yell and rushed upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0079m.jpg" alt="0079m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0079.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Susan! Susan!' cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy of
      her alarm. 'Oh, where are they? where are they?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was frightened,' answered Florence. 'I didn't know what I did. I
      thought they were with me. Where are they?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, 'I'll show you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the street, of
      which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place&mdash;more
      a back road than a street&mdash;and there was no one in it but her-self
      and the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You needn't be frightened now,' said the old woman, still holding her
      tight. 'Come along with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I don't know you. What's your name?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Brown,' said the old woman. 'Good Mrs Brown.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they near here?' asked Florence, beginning to be led away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan ain't far off,' said Good Mrs Brown; 'and the others are close to
      her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is anybody hurt?' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not a bit of it,' said Good Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;particularly at that industrious mouth&mdash;and
      wondering whether Bad Mrs Brown, if there were such a person, was at all
      like her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The child became so terrified the she was stricken speechless, and looked
      as though about to swoon.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence obeyed her, holding out her folded hands, in mute supplication.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm not a going to keep you, even, above an hour,' said Mrs Brown. 'D'ye
      understand what I say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child answered with great difficulty, 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So your name's Dombey, eh?' said Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Humph!' she said, running her eyes over the child's slight figure, 'I
      don't see anything else&mdash;except the shoes. I must have the shoes,
      Miss Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why couldn't you let me be!' said Mrs Brown, 'when I was contented? You
      little fool!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon. I don't know what I have done,' panted Florence. 'I
      couldn't help it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I hadn't once had a gal of my own&mdash;beyond seas now&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;every minute, at least, in her nervous recollection of
      the old woman&mdash;she could not see her again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;she hurried off, as fast as she
      could in her slipshod shoes, holding the rabbit-skin tight in her hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;being afraid to ask grown people&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now then!' said this man, happening to turn round. 'We haven't got
      anything for you, little girl. Be off!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, is this the City?' asked the trembling daughter of the
      Dombeys.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! It's the City. You know that well enough, I daresay. Be off! We
      haven't got anything for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't want anything, thank you,' was the timid answer. 'Except to know
      the way to Dombey and Son's.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed surprised by
      this reply, and looking attentively in her face, rejoined:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son's?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To know the way there, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Joe!' he called to another man&mdash;a labourer&mdash;as he picked it up
      and put it on again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Joe it is!' said Joe.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where's that young spark of Dombey's who's been watching the shipment of
      them goods?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just gone, by t'other gate,' said Joe.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Call him back a minute.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very soon returned with a
      blithe-looking boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're Dombey's jockey, ain't you?' said the first man.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm in Dombey's House, Mr Clark,' returned the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look'ye here, then,' said Mr Clark.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am lost, if you please!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lost!' cried the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here&mdash;and I have had
      my clothes taken away, since&mdash;and I am not dressed in my own now&mdash;and
      my name is Florence Dombey, my little brother's only sister&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;that
      is a tame comparison&mdash;but like Saint George of England, with the
      dragon lying dead before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't cry any more,' said Florence. 'I am only crying for joy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, no,' said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously
      pulling off his own. 'These do better. These do very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as he very likely
      fancied, for the time, they were.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have we far to go?' asked Florence at last, lilting up her eyes to her
      companion's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;it's very near here&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think so,' answered Florence. 'Don't you? What do you think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I think it's Mr Carker,' said Walter. 'Carker in our House. Not
      Carker our Manager, Miss Dombey&mdash;the other Carker; the Junior&mdash;Halloa!
      Mr Carker!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that Walter Gay?' said the other, stopping and returning. 'I couldn't
      believe it, with such a strange companion.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think your own idea is the best,' he answered: looking from Florence to
      Walter, and back again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I!' returned the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Why not, Mr Carker?' said the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' returned the child, mildly, 'I don't often hear Papa speak.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;found
      by me&mdash;brought home to our parlour to rest&mdash;look here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good Heaven!' said Uncle Sol, starting back against his favourite
      compass-case. 'It can't be! Well, I&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;take care of the plates&mdash;cut some
      dinner for her, will you, Uncle&mdash;throw those shoes under the grate.
      Miss Florence&mdash;put your feet on the fender to dry&mdash;how damp they
      are&mdash;here's an adventure, Uncle, eh?&mdash;God bless my soul, how hot
      I am!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, but do, Uncle, please&mdash;do, Miss Florence&mdash;dinner, you know,
      Uncle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and don't wake her, Uncle Sol.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' said Solomon. 'Pretty child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty, indeed!' cried Walter. 'I never saw such a face, Uncle Sol. Now
      I'm off.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's right,' said Solomon, greatly relieved.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried Walter, putting his face in at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here he is again,' said Solomon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How does she look now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite happy,' said Solomon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's famous! now I'm off.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope you are,' said Solomon to himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, Uncle Sol,' cried Walter, reappearing at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here he is again!' said Solomon.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We met Mr Carker the Junior in the street, queerer than ever. He bade me
      good-bye, but came behind us here&mdash;there's an odd thing!&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty much the same as before, Wally,' replied Uncle Sol.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's right. Now I am off!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! thank you, Sir,' said Walter. 'You are very kind. I'm sure I was not
      thinking of any reward, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night!' said Florence, running up to Solomon. 'You have been very
      good to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol was quite delighted, and kissed her like her grand-father.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, Walter! Good-bye!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye!' said Walter, giving both his hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll never forget you,' pursued Florence. 'No! indeed I never will.
      Good-bye, Walter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'for
      Mrs Richards,' one of Susan's fellow-servants ominously whispered, as she
      passed with Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cut off,' said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, 'from one common
      fountain!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      For the matter of that&mdash;but Mrs Chick didn't know it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;and from your own lips too&mdash;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'&mdash;Mr Dombey stopped and winced&mdash;'to
      Staggs's Gardens.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;his first, so far as he knew&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place: also of the
      State of Miss Tox's Affections
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>iss 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough for
      Princess's Place&mdash;as with a very small fragment of society, it is
      enough for many a little hanger-on of another sort&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having been devised
      and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eye in the
      locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head and a pigtail,
      balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlour fireplace. The
      greater part of the furniture was of the powdered-head and pig-tail
      period: comprising a plate-warmer, always languishing and sprawling its
      four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way; and an obsolete harpsichord,
      illuminated round the maker's name with a painted garland of sweet peas.
      In any part of the house, visitors were usually cognizant of a prevailing
      mustiness; and in warm weather Miss Tox had been seen apparently writing
      in sundry chinks and crevices of the wainscoat with the the wrong end of a
      pen dipped in spirits of turpentine.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good morning, Ma'am,' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's
      Place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good morning, Sir,' said Miss Tox; very coldly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps,' inquired the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a Baby, Sir,' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, 'for
      fifty thousand pounds!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my dear,'
      said Mrs Chick, one day.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox turned pale.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He grows more like Paul every day,' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'His mother, my dear,' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was to have
      made through you, does he at all resemble her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' returned Louisa
    </p>
    <p>
      'She was&mdash;she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And she meant!&mdash;oh,
      dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your own
      Papa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 8. Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>eneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time&mdash;so far another Major&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;if they have
      anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name&mdash;worried
      him like tiger-cats.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife&mdash;which would seem equivalent to being
      any other man's widow&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not even
      Mrs Chick or Miss Tox&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty little fellow;
      though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that gave
      occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, and many
      long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gave abundant
      promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopeful an
      apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservience of all
      other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He was childish and
      sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition; but he had a
      strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, of sitting
      brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked) like one
      of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at a hundred and
      fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically represent the children
      for whom they have been substituted. He would frequently be stricken with
      this precocious mood upstairs in the nursery; and would sometimes lapse
      into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired: even while playing with
      Florence, or driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he
      fall into it so surely, as when, his little chair being carried down into
      his father's room, he sat there with him after dinner, by the fire. They
      were the strangest pair at such a time that ever firelight shone upon. Mr
      Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at the blare; his little image, with an
      old, old face, peering into the red perspective with the fixed and rapt
      attention of a sage. Mr Dombey entertaining complicated worldly schemes
      and plans; the little image entertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies,
      half-formed thoughts, and wandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with
      starch and arrogance; the little image by inheritance, and in unconscious
      imitation. The two so very much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa! what's money?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of Mr
      Dombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, I know what they are,' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. I
      mean what's money after all?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towards
      his father's!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and looking at the fire again, as though the fire
      had been his adviser and prompter&mdash;repeated, after a short pause:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Anything, Papa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Anything&mdash;almost,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: not observing,
      or possibly not understanding, the qualification.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It includes it: yes,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't cruel,
      is it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resent the
      idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?' asked
      Paul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you are strong and quite well,' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half
      of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?' said
      Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, like an
      old man or a young goblin.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want Florence to come for me,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired that
      attendant, with great pathos.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, I won't,' replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again,
      like the master of the house.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not without halting to
      rest by the way&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For the child is hardly,' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It
      merely relates to the Bulbul.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as an
      old-established body.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;about his Bones,' said Mr
      Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has
      anybody to do with the&mdash;with the&mdash;Bones of my son? He is not a
      living skeleton, I suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very far from it,' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very far from it,' interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profound
      expression as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A daughter of Momus,' Miss Tox softly suggested.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was inquiring, Louisa,' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, and
      after a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dear
      Louisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;who he takes after, I mean&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, he did,' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present.
      Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr Pilkins
      has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to
      be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any
      consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I
      feel convinced.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sea-air,' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiar
      introduction of a name he had never heard before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul,' returned his sister, 'is an elderly lady&mdash;Miss
      Tox knows her whole history&mdash;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&mdash;how did you say her husband broke his
      heart, my dear? I forget the precise circumstances.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines,' replied Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;dear me&mdash;how
      high!' Mrs Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr
      Pitt, which was about ten feet from the ground.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment, Miss
      Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale,' suggested Mrs Chick,
      with a glance at her brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and
      unlocking it, brought back a book to read.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking up, and turning over the
      leaves.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course,' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hour
      afterwards, without reading one word.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in
      which Mrs Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it
      challenged competition still more proudly, in the season, in point of
      earwigs.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall like
      me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't think I shall like you at all,' replied Paul. 'I want to go away.
      This isn't my house.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. It's mine,' retorted Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a very nasty one,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's a worse place in it than this though,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'where
      we shut up our bad boys.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;who was constantly in tears&mdash;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&mdash;a naughty boy&mdash;seldom, in the mildest
      catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or a bear.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0109m.jpg" alt="0109m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0109.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'You,' said Paul, without the least reserve.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm thinking how old you must be,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman,' returned the dame.
      'That'll never do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' asked Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because it's not polite,' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not polite?' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's not polite,' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chops and
      toast', Wickam says.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wickam,' retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent,
      bold-faced hussy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's that?' inquired Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'
      said Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not to record
      it disrespectfully&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for female servant&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake,' observed Berry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane,' said Mrs Wickam.
    </p>
    <p>
      Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideas between
      Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How?' asked Berry.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry&mdash;somewhat resentful of the idea.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you'll excuse my being so free&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course you think,' said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, 'that
      he has been nursed by his mother, too?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired who it
      was.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy,' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing her
      supper. 'Don't ask me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others,
      affections that one might expect to see&mdash;only stronger than common.
      They all died.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you'll excuse my
      being so free&mdash;in this jail of a house!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's asleep now, my dear,' said Mrs Wickam after a pause, 'you'd better
      go to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, nurse,' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by this time
      done, and bade her good-night.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;that
      cheapest and most accessible of luxuries&mdash;until she was overpowered
      by slumber.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;Florence alone excepted, always.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very well, I thank you,' he would answer. 'But you had better go and
      play, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy,' he said one day, 'where's India, where that boy's friends live?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, it's a long, long distance off,' said Florence, raising her eyes from
      her work.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Weeks off?' asked Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you were in India, Floy,' said Paul, after being silent for a minute,
      'I should&mdash;what is it that Mama did? I forget.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Loved me!' answered Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it?&mdash;Died. If you were
      in India, I should die, Floy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence asked him what he thought he heard.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he
      didn't mean that: he meant further away&mdash;farther away!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>hat 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He can't give me what I want, my boy,' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he is in
      good practice if he can&mdash;and then he wouldn't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?&mdash;'
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmly
      away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There he goes!' said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle&mdash;I
      say, Uncle Sol'&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the little
      table at him as pleasantly as he could.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, no,' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No, no. What should
      there be the matter more than usual?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am a little dull at such times, I know,' observed Solomon, meekly
      rubbing his hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;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&mdash;hasn't
      got the way,' repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his
      Uncle by the hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, you do,' returned the Instrument-maker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly. 'Come!
      What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But there isn't,' said Solomon.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      There lived in those days, round the corner&mdash;in Bishopsgate Street
      Without&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-haired man,
      of a bulky figure and an easy temper&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as
      introducing him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in his
      breath.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it put
      you out of the way.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in mute amazement.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The fact is,' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little payment on a bond debt
      &mdash;three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm in possession.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should recommend you looking up a friend or so,' said Mr Brogley, 'and
      talking it over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;at once a
      first floor and a top storey, in Brig Place&mdash;were close before you.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad!' said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand by and knock again. Hard!
      It's washing day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as if
      he expected a squall.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know,' said Walter with a conciliatory smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has just been speaking to me,' said Walter, in breathless explanation.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll mention it,' said Walter, 'if you'll have the goodness to let me in,
      Ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should go away, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dursn't do it, Wal'r,' returned the Captain. 'She'd find me out, wherever
      I went. Sit down. How's Gills?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How's Gills?' inquired the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits&mdash;or
      such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him&mdash;looked at
      his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!' and burst into
      tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and would have dropped the knife too if he could&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they were walking
      along.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never have
      forgotten it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you don't suppose that
      property's of any use, do you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' inquired the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd,' replied the broker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind,' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed by
      the figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly,' said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gills,' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business? Who's
      the creditor?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak before Wally. It's a
      matter of security for Wally's father&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0126m.jpg" alt="0126m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0126.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes&mdash;oh yes&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and, in short, it's as
      good as nowhere,' said the old man, looking in bewilderment about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;it's worth more than this debt&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?' said the Captain. 'There, there!
      Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't a
      man on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't need
      to think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind,' said the
      Captain, again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and
      you're all right!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against the back
      parlour fire-place instead.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r!' said the Captain at last. 'I've got it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come this way, my lad,' said the Captain. 'The stock's the security. I'm
      another. Your governor's the man to advance money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and there's a stone for you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A stone!&mdash;Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there,' said
      Captain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. 'Quick!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter felt he must not dispute the command&mdash;a glance at his Uncle
      would have determined him if he had felt otherwise&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;with a view, as Walter thought, with horror, to making a
      gorgeous impression on Mr Dombey&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 10. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>ajor 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;to which he had never had the
      least idea of paying any attention&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But my little friend here, Sir,' said the Major, 'makes a boy of me
      again: An old soldier, Sir&mdash;Major Bagstock, at your service&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey begged he wouldn't mention it.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am the present unworthy representative of that name, Major,' returned
      Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By G&mdash;, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are good enough to rate it higher than it deserves, perhaps, Major,'
      returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey inclined his head, and said he believed him to be in earnest,
      and that his high opinion was gratifying.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey seemed to intimate that he would endeavour to do so.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not quite decided,' returned Mr Dombey. 'I think not. He is
      delicate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I generally come down once a week, Major,' returned that gentleman. 'I
      stay at the Bedford.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'and the oldsters too, Sir, if you
      come to that,' added the Major, chuckling very much&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Lucretia,' returned Mrs Chick, 'what mystery is involved in this
      remarkable request? I must insist upon knowing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Particular!' repeated Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he in good circumstances?' inquired Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have every reason to believe, my dear&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very creditable to him indeed,' said Mrs Chick, 'extremely so; and you
      have given him no encouragement, my dear?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;'but, Louisa, this is madness!' and
      departed from the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Tox is good enough to take a great deal of interest in Paul, Major,'
      returned Mr Dombey on behalf of that blushing virgin.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But all the way home to his own hotel, the Major incessantly said to
      himself, and of himself, 'Sly, Sir&mdash;sly, Sir&mdash;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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa! Papa! Here's Walter! and he won't come in.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?' cried Mr Dombey. 'What does she mean? What is this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter, Papa!' said Florence timidly; sensible of having approached the
      presence with too much familiarity. 'Who found me when I was lost.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's that?' said Mr Dombey. 'Who is that? I think you have made some
      mistake in the door, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, I'm very sorry to intrude with anyone, Sir,' cried Walter, hastily:
      'but this is&mdash;this is Captain Cuttle, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad,' observed the Captain in a deep voice: 'stand by!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Gay,' said Mr Dombey. 'What have you got to say to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again the Captain observed, as a general opening of the conversation that
      could not fail to propitiate all parties, 'Wal'r, standby!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid, Sir,' began Walter, trembling, and looking down at the
      ground, 'that I take a very great liberty in coming&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is entirely a private and personal matter, that has brought me here,
      Sir,' continued Walter, faltering, 'and Captain Cuttle&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here!' interposed the Captain, as an assurance that he was at hand, and
      might be relied upon.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, no;' observed the Captain complacently. 'Of course not. No call
      for refusing. Go on, Wal'r.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I hardly like
      to mention,' said Walter, 'such earnings as mine; but if you would allow
      them&mdash;accumulate&mdash;payment&mdash;advance&mdash;Uncle&mdash;frugal,
      honourable, old man.' Walter trailed off, through these broken sentences,
      into silence: and stood with downcast head, before his employer.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;one flowing,' added the
      Captain, in one of his happy quotations, 'with milk and honey&mdash;it's
      his nevy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What was this debt contracted for?' asked Mr Dombey, at length. 'Who is
      the creditor?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The child obeyed: and Mr Dombey took him on his knee.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had money now&mdash;' said Mr Dombey. 'Look at me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to Walter, looked his
      father in the face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had money now,' said Mr Dombey; 'as much money as young Gay has
      talked about; what would you do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Give it to his old Uncle,' returned Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey and Son,' interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early in the
      phrase.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! if you please, Papa!' said Paul: 'and so would Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Girls,' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son. Would
      you like it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Papa, yes!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, Miss Tox!' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The gentleman with the&mdash;Instrument,' pursued Miss Tox, glancing at
      Captain Cuttle, 'has left upon the table, at your elbow&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you never be a Dombey, my dear child!' said Mrs Chick, with pathetic
      reproachfulness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear aunt,' said Florence. 'Don't be angry with me. I am so thankful to
      Papa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And young Gay&mdash;Walter&mdash;what of him?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>rs 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you'll
      excuse my being so open&mdash;in this dismal den.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Berry's very fond of you, ain't she?' Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin when
      they were sitting by the fire with the cat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why?' asked Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why!' returned the disconcerted old lady. 'How can you ask such things,
      Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because she's very good,' said Paul. 'There's nobody like Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, 'and there's nobody like me, I
      suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ain't there really though?' asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair, and
      looking at her very hard.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said the old lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad of that,' observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully.
      'That's a very good thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, 'How do you do?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I am pretty well, considering.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin always used that form of words. It meant, considering her
      virtues, sacrifices, and so forth.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir,' returned Mrs Pipchin. 'Very
      beneficial, indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I purpose,' said Mr Dombey, 'his remaining at Brighton.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Six years old!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I can say nothing to the contrary.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin,' returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, 'that a
      person of your good sense could not, and would not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is a great deal of nonsense&mdash;and worse&mdash;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".'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
      Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to disparage his own importance,
      passed all bounds&mdash;'can be of any service. I have been thinking of
      Doctor Blimber's, Mrs Pipchin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And it's very expensive,' added Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;too much&mdash;of his childish affection
      on his sister. Whether their separation&mdash;' Mr Dombey said no more,
      but sat silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;stone dead&mdash;and
      then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for Mr
      Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast&mdash;and she croaked
      hoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Almost,' returned the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yet
      touching look, with which he accompanied the reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey's face;
      but the door being opened, it was quickly gone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's back?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'And
      what do you take me for?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're laughing again, Sir,' said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to her turn,
      bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ain't,' returned the young man, grievously oppressed. 'I never see such
      a thing as this!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?' said Mr Dombey, looking round. 'Softly!
      Pray!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as she
      passed on, and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow'&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well, I thank you, Sir,' returned Paul, answering the clock quite as
      much as the Doctor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Shall we make a man of him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you hear, Paul?' added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall we make a man of him?' repeated the Doctor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I had rather be a child,' replied Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' said the Doctor. 'Why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;farther from
      him yet&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Pipchin,' said his father, in a querulous manner, 'I am really very
      sorry to see this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey,' quoth the matron.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Everything, if you please, Doctor,' returned Mr Dombey, firmly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Miss Dombey!' said the acid Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;do you see our little friend?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;the
      wife of such a husband&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush, hush,' said Doctor Blimber. 'Fie for shame.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife,' said Mrs Blimber, with
      an engaging smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey answered 'Not at all:' applying those words, it is to be
      presumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also,' resumed Mrs
      Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And such a mother,' observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused idea of
      being complimentary to Cornelia.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An addition to our little Portico, Toots,' said the Doctor; 'Mr Dombey's
      son.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs,' said Mrs Blimber, 'I shall be more than
      proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again,
      talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor's study.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope, Mr Dombey,' said the Doctor, laying down his book, 'that the
      arrangements meet your approval.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are excellent, Sir,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very fair, indeed,' said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed to
      give too much encouragement.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Pipchin,' said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, 'will, with your
      permission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases,' observed the Doctor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Always happy to see her,' said Mrs Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, Papa.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;all
      to Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, you
      know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Papa,' returned Paul: looking at his sister. 'On Saturdays and
      Sundays.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,' said Mr
      Dombey; 'won't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll try,' returned the child, wearily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you'll soon be grown up now!' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 12. Paul's Education
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>fter 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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cornelia,' said the Doctor, 'Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring
      him on, Cornelia, bring him on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's hands; and Paul,
      feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How old are you, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a dreadfully low name' said Mrs Blimber. 'Unclassical to a degree!
      Who is the monster, child?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What monster?' inquired Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Glubb,' said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's no more a monster than you are,' returned Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What!' cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. 'Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What's
      that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a stand for the absent
      Glubb, though he did it trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ha!' said the Doctor, shaking his head; 'this is bad, but study will do
      much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Take him round the house, Cornelia,' said the Doctor, 'and familiarise
      him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;which it seemed had been his condition ever
      since breakfast time.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;down strokes very thick, and up
      strokes very fine&mdash;DOMBEY; while two other little bedsteads in the
      same room were announced, through like means, as respectively appertaining
      unto BRIGGS and TOZER.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Heigh ho hum!' cried Mr Feeder, shaking himself like a cart-horse. 'Oh
      dear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;some
      newly tying their neckcloths, which were very stiff indeed; and others
      washing their hands or brushing their hair, in an adjoining ante-chamber&mdash;as
      if they didn't think they should enjoy it at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had therefore nothing to do, and
      had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good nature:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sit down, Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Sir,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're a very small chap;' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir, I'm small,' returned Paul. 'Thank you, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who's your tailor?' inquired Toots, after looking at him for some
      moments.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet,' said Paul. 'My sister's
      dressmaker.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My tailor's Burgess and Co.,' said Toots. 'Fash'nable. But very dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?' inquired Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir,' said Paul. 'He's Dombey and Son.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And which?' demanded Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Son, Sir,' replied Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You sleep in my room, don't you?' asked a solemn young gentleman, whose
      shirt-collar curled up the lobes of his ears.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Master Briggs?' inquired Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tozer,' said the young gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is yours a strong constitution?' inquired Tozer.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash; carrying them in and out
      himself on after occasions, like a little elephant and castle.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is remarkable, Mr Feeder, that the Romans&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here the offender, who had been swelling and straining, and waiting in
      vain for a full stop, broke out violently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Johnson,' said Mr Feeder, in a low reproachful voice, 'take some water.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the water was brought,
      and then resumed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when, Mr Feeder&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Feeder, reddening. 'I beg your pardon,
      Doctor Blimber.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when,' said the Doctor, raising his voice, 'when, Sir, as we read,
      and have no reason to doubt&mdash;incredible as it may appear to the
      vulgar&mdash;of our time&mdash;the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a
      feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand dishes&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Take some water, Johnson&mdash;dishes, Sir,' said Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or try a crust of bread,' said Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, ow, ow!' (from Johnson.)
    </p>
    <p>
      'Woodcocks&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ow, ow, ow!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The sounds of the fish called scari&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll burst some vessel in your head,' said Mr Feeder. 'You had better
      let it come.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What would be your mother's feelings if you died of apoplexy!' said Mr
      Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A Domitian&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you're blue, you know,' said Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursued
      the Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder&mdash;if you are doing me the honour to
      attend&mdash;remarkable; VERY remarkable, Sir&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gentlemen,' said Doctor Blimber, 'rise for Grace! Cornelia, lift Dombey
      down'&mdash;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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0157m.jpg" alt="0157m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0157.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul said 'Yes, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So am I,' said Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;it was all one to Paul&mdash;which,
      in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and guilty effect.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;meaning in the dressing way&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber, 'I am going out for a constitutional.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'These are yours, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All of 'em, Ma'am?' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Ma'am,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Ma'am,' answered Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Dombey,' said Miss Blimber. 'How have you got on with those books?'
    </p>
    <p>
      They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin&mdash;names of
      things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, and
      preliminary rules&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Dombey, Dombey!' said Miss Blimber, 'this is very shocking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please,' said Paul, 'I think if I might sometimes talk a little to
      old Glubb, I should be able to do better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So Papa says,' returned Paul; 'but I told you&mdash;I have been a weak
      child. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is Wickam?' asked Miss Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She has been my nurse,' Paul answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then,' said Miss Blimber. 'I
      couldn't allow it'.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You asked me who she was,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not even Sunday nights&mdash;the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow
      darkened the first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please,' returned Nipper, 'I'd as
      soon see Mrs Pipchin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. I
      have money enough,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why I
      want them.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan,' said Florence, 'I am sure
      of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in allusion to
      Paul's; 'give me English ones.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber's, Susan,' pursued
      Florence, turning away her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah,' said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, 'Oh, them "Blimbers"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't blame anyone,' said Florence. 'It's a mistake.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped her eyes.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0164m.jpg" alt="0164m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0164.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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;&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a flush&mdash;a smile&mdash;and then a close
      embrace&mdash;but God knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment
      for her trouble.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Floy!' cried her brother, 'how I love you! How I love you, Floy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I you, dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say!' cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the room, lest he
      should forget it; 'what do you think about?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I think about a great many things,' replied Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Mr
      Toots started, and seemed much disturbed.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that he
      didn't know about that.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pitch,' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It seemed to beckon,' said the child, 'to beckon me to come!&mdash;There
      she is! There she is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation,
      after what had gone before, and cried 'Who?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sister Florence!' cried Paul, 'looking up here, and waving her hand.
      She sees me&mdash;she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 13. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;who considered himself a public character, and
      whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in Cheapside&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a
      timepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in&mdash;or rather when he felt that he was
      coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the
      medium of the outer office&mdash;to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own
      room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Carker?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Coolish!' observed Carker, stirring the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rather,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?' asked
      Carker, with his whole regiment of teeth on parade.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes&mdash;not direct news&mdash;I hear he's very well,' said Mr Dombey.
      Who had come from Brighton over-night. But no one knew It.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?' observed the Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope so,' returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Egad!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head, 'Time flies!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think so, sometimes,' returned Mr Dombey, glancing at his newspaper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And one at three, three-quarters,' added Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have an accurate memory of your own,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I!' returned the manager. 'It's the only capital of a man like me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Morfin's here,' he answered, looking up with his widest and almost sudden
      smile; 'humming musical recollections&mdash;of his last night's quartette
      party, I suppose&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You respect nobody, Carker, I think,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;she'll sail in a month or so&mdash;for
      the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We have nobody of that
      sort here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well, Sir,' returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharply
      from his hand. 'Go about your business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for Mrs Pipchin
      was but an indifferent penwoman&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can leave the room, Sir!' said Mr Dombey, haughtily.
    </p>
    <p>
      He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at the
      door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nonsense, Carker,' Mr Dombey interrupted. 'You are too sensitive.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying,' observed
      Mr Dombey, hurriedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' replied Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Send young Gay.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Call him back,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gay,' said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder.
      'Here is a&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'An opening,' said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;or
      two perhaps.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I remain there, Sir?' inquired Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you remain there, Sir!' repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little more
      round towards him. 'What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Live there, Sir,' faltered Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly,' returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter bowed.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You needn't wait, Gay,' observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unless,' said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking off the
      letter, and seeming to listen. 'Unless he has anything to say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I&mdash;I am much
      obliged, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He needn't wait, Carker,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;especially as he had nothing to say&mdash;and
      therefore walked out quite confounded.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' returned the other. 'No, James. God knows I have no such thought.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is your thought, then?' said his brother, 'and why do you thrust
      yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have never injured you, James, wilfully.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are my brother,' said the Manager. 'That's injury enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wish I could undo it, James.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wish you could and would.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'James, do me justice,' said his brother. 'I have claimed nothing; and I
      claim nothing. Believe me, on my&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Honour?' said his brother, with another smile, as he warmed himself
      before the fire.
    </p>
    <p>
      'On my Me&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Think of me more leniently, if you can, James,' said John Carker, 'when I
      tell you I have had&mdash;how could I help having, with my history,
      written here'&mdash;striking himself upon the breast&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope not,' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in
      his tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The old excuse,' interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. 'So
      many. Go on. Say, so many fall.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have only yourself to thank for it,' returned the brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only myself,' he assented with a sigh. 'I don't seek to divide the blame
      or shame.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have divided the shame,' James Carker muttered through his teeth.
      And, through so many and such close teeth, he could mutter well.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What you are!' appeared to hang on Walter's lips, as he regarded him
      attentively.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was begun,' said Carker, 'before my twenty-first birthday&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again his last few words hung trembling upon Walter's lips, but he could
      neither utter them, nor any of his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I
      have never entered it since&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;no, he meant Paul&mdash;and
      to all he loved, and liked, and looked for, in his daily life.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 14. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the
      Holidays
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;yet it was pleasant too&mdash;that
      rose and fell with the waves, and rocked him, as it were, to sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Ma'am,' returned Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know what I mean, do you, Dombey?' inquired Miss Blimber, looking
      hard at him, through the spectacles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Ma'am,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Pipchin told me I wasn't to ask questions,' returned Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I didn't mean, Ma'am&mdash;' began little Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by the light let in upon his
      intellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul set himself to follow it with great care.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I do, Ma'am,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;if understood at all&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! the old-fashioned little soul!' cried Mrs Blimber, in a whisper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'&mdash;for
      they were always kind to him, and glad to see him&mdash;and then said,
      tossing one of the letters towards him, 'And there you are, too, Dombey.
      That's yours.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mine, Sir?' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your invitation,' returned Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Come, come! That's well! How is my little friend now?' said Doctor
      Blimber, encouragingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, quite well, thank you, Sir,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't tell Florence what, my little Paul?' said Mrs Pipchin, coming round
      to the bedside, and sitting down in the chair.
    </p>
    <p>
      'About me,' said Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' said Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin couldn't guess.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' cried Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Paul. 'That's what I mean to do, when I&mdash;' He stopped,
      and pondered for a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin's grey eye scanned his thoughtful face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;or he dreamed it&mdash;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&mdash;what? Paul lost that word. And that the little
      fellow had a fine mind, but was an old-fashioned boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I think, Doctor Blimber, we may release this young gentleman from
      his books just now; the vacation being so very near at hand.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By all means,' said Doctor Blimber. 'My love, you will inform Cornelia,
      if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Assuredly,' said Mrs Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our little friend,' observed Doctor Blimber, 'has never complained.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no!' replied the Apothecary. 'He was not likely to complain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You find him greatly better?' said Doctor Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! he is greatly better, Sir,' returned the Apothecary.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;for Paul heard it.
    </p>
    <p>
      What could that old fashion be, that seemed to make the people sorry! What
      could it be!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      First, there was Florence coming to the party. Florence would see that the
      boys were fond of him; and that would make her happy. This was his great
      theme. Let Florence once be sure that they were gentle and good to him,
      and that he had become a little favourite among them, and then the would
      always think of the time he had passed there, without being very sorry.
      Florence might be all the happier too for that, perhaps, when he came
      back.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;benignant,
      mild, and merciful&mdash;stood pointing upward.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Paul was dressed&mdash;which was very soon done, for he felt unwell
      and drowsy, and was not able to stand about it very long&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what is the matter, Floy?' asked Paul, almost sure that he saw a tear
      there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing, darling; nothing,' returned Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Paul touched her cheek gently with his finger&mdash;and it was a tear!
      'Why, Floy!' said he.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We'll go home together, and I'll nurse you, love,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nurse me!' echoed Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy,' said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark hair in his hand. 'Tell
      me, dear, Do you think I have grown old-fashioned?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His sister laughed, and fondled him, and told him 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I know they say so,' returned Paul, 'and I want to know what they
      mean, Floy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what room is this now, for instance?' said Lady Skettles to Paul's
      friend, 'Melia.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Doctor Blimber's study, Ma'am,' was the reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And this little creature, now,' said Lady Skettles, turning to Paul. 'Is
      he one of the&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Young gentlemen, Ma'am; yes, Ma'am,' said Paul's friend.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what is your name, my pale child?' said Lady Skettles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey,' answered Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;very
      rich&mdash;most respectable&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir,' answered Paul.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What eyes! What hair! What a lovely face!' exclaimed Lady Skettles
      softly, as she looked at Florence through her glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sister,' said Paul, presenting her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of something connected with statistics, I'll swear?' observed Sir Barnet
      Skettles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why no, Sir Barnet,' replied Doctor Blimber, rubbing his chin. 'No, not
      exactly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Figures of some sort, I would venture a bet,' said Sir Barnet Skettles.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why yes,' said Doctor Blimber, yes, but not of that sort. Mr Baps is a
      very worthy sort of man, Sir Barnet, and&mdash;in fact he's our Professor
      of dancing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash; 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a little like
      church music in fact&mdash;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&mdash;whispered to her!&mdash;though not so
      softly but that Paul heard him say this remarkable poetry,
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
             'Had I a heart for falsehood framed,
              I ne'er could injure You!'
</pre>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Blimber was a little alarmed by this&mdash;comparatively speaking&mdash;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&mdash;which (as already hinted) was about a quarter of
      an inch long.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He did not know why. For all that the child observed, and felt, and
      thought, that night&mdash;the present and the absent; what was then and
      what had been&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;poor Mrs Baps! Paul was glad of that&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, Doctor Blimber,' said Paul, stretching out his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, my little friend,' returned the Doctor.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though she was a Forcer&mdash;and felt it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not even the influence of the softer passion on the young gentlemen&mdash;and
      they all, to a boy, doted on Florence&mdash;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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0198m.jpg" alt="0198m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0198.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      How Florence laughed! Paul often remembered it, and laughed himself
      whenever he did so.
    </p>
    <p>
      But there was much, soon afterwards&mdash;next day, and after that&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to speak to Florence, if you please,' he said. 'To Florence by
      herself, for a moment!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She bent down over him, and the others stood away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy, my pet, wasn't that Papa in the hall, when they brought me from the
      coach?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He didn't cry, and go into his room, Floy, did he, when he saw me coming
      in?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips against his cheek.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm very glad he didn't cry,' said little Paul. 'I thought he did. Don't
      tell them that I asked.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit for
      Walter Gay
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>alter 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;or Walter thought so&mdash;and duty must be done.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;it may have been&mdash;that the
      great man thought himself defied in this new exposition of an honest
      spirit, and purposed to bring it down.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the
      lawful beadle being infirm&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the houses in Brig Place not being lofty&mdash;would have
      obstructed the street door, which was perfectly clear. Quite wondering at
      this discovery, Walter gave a single knock.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stinger,' he distinctly heard the Captain say, up in his room, as if that
      were no business of his. Therefore Walter gave two knocks.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r!' cried the Captain, looking down upon him in amazement.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, Captain Cuttle,' returned Walter, 'only me'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's the matter, my lad?' inquired the Captain, with great concern.
      'Gills an't been and sprung nothing again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no,' said Walter. 'My Uncle's all right, Captain Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain expressed his gratification, and said he would come down below
      and open the door, which he did.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Though you're early, Wal'r,' said the Captain, eyeing him still
      doubtfully, when they got upstairs:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So you shall,' said the Captain; 'what'll you take?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want to take your opinion, Captain Cuttle,' returned Walter, smiling.
      'That's the only thing for me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come on then,' said the Captain. 'With a will, my lad!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you
      believe me, I know&mdash;but I am. Now, don't you think I am?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steady, Wal'r! Of a want of custom?' said the Captain, suddenly
      reappearing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Too true,' returned Walter, shaking his head: 'but I meant a life of
      habit, Captain Cuttle&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of his Nevy,' interposed the Captain. 'Right!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Keep her off a point or so!' observed the Captain, in a comtemplative
      voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What did you say, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stand by!' returned the Captain, thoughtfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter paused to ascertain if the Captain had any particular information
      to add to this, but as he said no more, went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;if I were free to go as a common sailor&mdash;if I were free
      to venture on my own account to the farthest end of the world&mdash;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&mdash;perhaps
      a little worse, for the House may have been kindly inclined towards me
      then, and it certainly is not now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Turn again, Whittington,' muttered the disconsolate Captain, after
      looking at Walter for some time.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
              'For the Port of Barbados, Boys!

                                            Cheerily!

              Leaving old England behind us, Boys!

                                            Cheerily!'
Here the Captain roared in chorus&mdash;

              'Oh cheerily, cheerily!

                                            Oh cheer-i-ly!'
</pre>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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'.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0207m.jpg" alt="0207m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0207.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;certainly not on two legs&mdash;that
      can come near him. Not near him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's his name, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter, determined to be
      interested in the Captain's friend.
    </p>
    <p>
      'His name's Bunsby,' said the Captain. 'But Lord, it might be anything for
      the matter of that, with such a mind as his!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;say to the servant
      'Would ye be so good, my lad, as report Cap'en Cuttle here?'&mdash;meet Mr
      Dombey in a confidential spirit&mdash;hook him by the button-hole&mdash;talk
      it over&mdash;make it all right&mdash;and come away triumphant!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;one at the right-hand corner of his mouth,
      and one at the corner of each eye&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're going in?' said Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you won't forget anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' returned the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll go upon my walk at once,' said Walter, 'and then I shall be out of
      the way, Captain Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Take a good long 'un, my lad!' replied the Captain, calling after him.
      Walter waved his hand in assent, and went his way.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;indefinite in all but its power of giving him pleasure,
      and restraining him like an angel's hand from anything unworthy.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Staggs's Gardens, Mr Walter!' said Miss Nipper; 'if you please, oh do!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eh?' cried Walter; 'what is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Mr Walter, Staggs's Gardens, if you please!' said Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you want to go to Staggs's Gardens, Susan?' inquired Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! She wants to go there! WHERE IS IT?' growled the coachman.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;all our
      darlings&mdash;little, meek, meek Master Paul! Oh Mr Walter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good God!' cried Walter. 'Is he very ill?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Staggs's Gardens had been cut up root and branch. Oh woe the day when
      'not a rood of English ground'&mdash;laid out in Staggs's Gardens&mdash;is
      secure!
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes sir, yes!' cried Susan Nipper from the coach window.
    </p>
    <p>
      Where did he live now? hastily inquired Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has the little boy been long ill, Susan?' inquired Walter, as they
      hurried on.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ailing for a deal of time, but no one knew how much,' said Susan; adding,
      with excessive sharpness, 'Oh, them Blimbers!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Blimbers?' echoed Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where's Mrs Richards?' exclaimed Susan Nipper, looking round. 'Oh Mrs
      Richards, Mrs Richards, come along with me, my dear creetur!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, if it ain't Susan!' cried Polly, rising with her honest face and
      motherly figure from among the group, in great surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and Mr Walter,
      Mrs Richards&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 16. What the Waves were always saying
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>aul 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and more than all, how steadily
      it rolled away to meet the sea.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;to
      stem it with his childish hands&mdash;or choke its way with sand&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;pictured!
      he saw&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the
      child could hardly tell whether this were in his sleeping or his waking
      moments&mdash;of that rushing river. 'Why, will it never stop, Floy?' he
      would sometimes ask her. 'It is bearing me away, I think!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was visited by as many as three grave doctors&mdash;they used to
      assemble downstairs, and come up together&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The people round him changed as unaccountably as on that first night at
      Doctor Blimber's&mdash;except Florence; Florence never changed&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy!' he said. 'What is that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where, dearest?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There! at the bottom of the bed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's nothing there, except Papa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The figure lifted up its head, and rose, and coming to the bedside, said:
      'My own boy! Don't you know me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't be sorry for me, dear Papa! Indeed I am quite happy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His father coming and bending down to him&mdash;which he did quickly, and
      without first pausing by the bedside&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy, did I ever see Mama?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, darling, why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did I ever see any kind face, like Mama's, looking at me when I was a
      baby, Floy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He asked, incredulously, as if he had some vision of a face before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whose, Floy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your old nurse's. Often.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And where is my old nurse?' said Paul. 'Is she dead too? Floy, are we all
      dead, except you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a hurry in the room, for an instant&mdash;longer, perhaps; but
      it seemed no more&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Show me that old nurse, Floy, if you please!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is not here, darling. She shall come to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Floy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;perhaps
      she had never been away&mdash;but the next thing that happened was a noise
      of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke&mdash;woke mind and body&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And who is this? Is this my old nurse?' said the child, regarding with a
      radiant smile, a figure coming in.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Floy! this is a kind good face!' said Paul. 'I am glad to see it again.
      Don't go away, old nurse! Stay here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His senses were all quickened, and he heard a name he knew.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who was that, who said "Walter"?' he asked, looking round. 'Someone said
      Walter. Is he here? I should like to see him very much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, my child!' said Mrs Pipchin, hurrying to his bed's head. 'Not
      good-bye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'&mdash;turning his head to
      where he stood, and putting out his hand again. 'Where is Papa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He felt his father's breath upon his cheek, before the words had parted
      from his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now lay me down,' he said, 'and, Floy, come close to me, and let me see
      you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and the golden
      light came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked together.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;Death!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 17. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young People
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>aptain 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;and he looked wistfully
      at Walter&mdash;'he's glad to go.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad,' said the Captain. 'Steady! Sol Gills, take an observation
      of your nevy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Following with his eyes the majestic action of the Captain's hook, the old
      man looked at Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Matey,' said the Captain, in persuasive accents. 'One of your Governors
      is named Carker.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look'ee here, mate,' said the Captain in his ear; 'my name's Cap'en
      Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you'll be so good as just report Cap'en Cuttle here, when you get a
      chance,' said the Captain, 'I'll wait.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain's equanimity was so impenetrable, and he was altogether so
      mysterious a being, that Perch the messenger was daunted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What name was it you said?' asked Mr Perch, bending down over him as he
      sat on the bracket.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cap'en,' in a deep hoarse whisper.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Mr Perch, keeping time with his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Carker?' said Captain Cuttle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe so,' said Mr Carker, showing all his teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter Gay?' said Mr Carker, showing all his teeth again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?&mdash;Captain Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' said Mr Carker, with a still wider demonstration than before.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' said Mr Carker, 'I had the honour of arranging the business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure!' returned the Captain. 'Right again! you had. Now I've took
      the liberty of coming here&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't you sit down?' said Mr Carker, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though it's none&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.&mdash;Is everything right and comfortable here,
      and is Wal'r out'ard bound with a pretty fair wind?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come!' said the Captain, unspeakably encouraged, 'what do you say? Am I
      right or wrong?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Right,' said Mr Carker, 'I have no doubt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Out'ard bound with fair weather, then, I say,' cried Captain Cuttle.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker smiled assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wind right astarn, and plenty of it,' pursued the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker smiled assent again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gay has brilliant prospects,' observed Mr Carker, stretching his mouth
      wider yet: 'all the world before him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All the world and his wife too, as the saying is,' returned the delighted
      Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd bet a gill of old Jamaica,' said the Captain, eyeing him attentively,
      'that I know what you're a smiling at.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker took his cue, and smiled the more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It goes no farther?' said the Captain, making a poke at the door with the
      knobby stick to assure himself that it was shut.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not an inch,' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're thinking of a capital F perhaps?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker didn't deny it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Anything about a L,' said the Captain, 'or a O?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker still smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I right, again?' inquired the Captain in a whisper, with the scarlet
      circle on his forehead swelling in his triumphant joy.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;you
      remember his finding her in the street when she was a'most a babby&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Most favourable to his hopes,' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look at his being towed along in the wake of that day!' pursued the
      Captain. 'Why what can cut him adrift now?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing,' replied Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, there's a son gone,' said the acquiescent Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;said the Captain, rising gradually to
      a quotation he was preparing for a final burst, 'who&mdash;comes from Sol
      Gills's daily, to your business, and your buzzums.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Am I right?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Honour!' interposed the Captain. 'Not a word.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To him or anyone?' pursued the Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Cuttle frowned and shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But merely for your own satisfaction and guidance&mdash;and guidance, of
      course,' repeated Mr Carker, 'with a view to your future proceedings.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee kindly, I am sure,' said the Captain, listening with great
      attention.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no hesitation in saying, that's the fact. You have hit the
      probabilities exactly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And as I know&mdash;it's what I always said&mdash;that Wal'r's in a way
      to make his fortune,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To make his fortune,' Mr Carker repeated, in the same dumb manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of his general expectations here,' assented Mr Carker, dumbly as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, so long as I know that,' pursued the Captain, 'there's no hurry, and
      my mind's at ease.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all,' returned the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;will you make a note of it?&mdash;and
      would come upstairs, without minding what was said by the person at the
      door, I should be proud to see you.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;hastily, for
      Perch's time was precious.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll give you for a toast,' said the Captain, 'Wal'r!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?' submitted Mr Perch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r!' repeated the Captain, in a voice of thunder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;say Shakespeare's for example&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 18. Father and Daughter
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      After dark there come some visitors&mdash;noiseless visitors, with shoes
      of felt&mdash;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&mdash;in the room&mdash;until the sun
      was shining.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;some obstacle removed&mdash;which clears his way before him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;oh lonely, lonely
      walks!&mdash;may pass them any day.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      Someone comes forward, and says 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It shall be done immediately, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is really nothing to inscribe but name and age, you see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The man bows, glancing at the paper, but appears to hesitate. Mr Dombey
      not observing his hesitation, turns away, and leads towards the porch.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you be so good as read it over again? I think there's a mistake.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The statuary gives him back the paper, and points out, with his pocket
      rule, the words, 'beloved and only child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It should be, "son," I think, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are right. Of course. Make the correction.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which will be the prime of life,' observed Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will try, dear aunt I do try,' answered Florence, sobbing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am glad to hear it,' said Mrs Chick, 'because; my love, as our dear
      Miss Tox&mdash;of whose sound sense and excellent judgment, there cannot
      possibly be two opinions&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Louisa, I shall really be proud, soon,' said Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;my dear,' turning to Miss Tox, 'I want a word. Mis&mdash;Mis-'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Demeanour?' suggested Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, no,' said Mrs Chic 'How can you! Goodness me, it's on, the end of
      my tongue. Mis-'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Placed affection?' suggested Miss Tox, timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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".'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good indeed,' said Miss Tox, much impressed by the originality of
      the sentiment 'Very good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;which was synonymous with her
      presence of mind, indeed they were one and the same thing&mdash;she
      replied with dignity:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!"&mdash;that is the exact expression I used&mdash;"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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox expressed her admiration by saying, 'My Louisa is ever
      methodical!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In short, Florence,' resumed her aunt, 'literally nothing has passed
      between your poor Papa and myself, until to-day; when I mentioned to your
      Papa that Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles had written exceedingly kind notes&mdash;our
      sweet boy! Lady Skettles loved him like a&mdash;where's my pocket
      handkerchief?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox produced one.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence raised her tearful eye.
    </p>
    <p>
      'At the same time, if you would prefer staying here, Florence, to paying
      this visit at present, or to going home with me&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should much prefer it, aunt,' was the faint rejoinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;my dear Miss Tox, I have lost my pocket
      handkerchief again&mdash;would be glad to leave here, one would suppose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should not like to feel,' said Florence, 'as if the house was avoided.
      I should not like to think that the&mdash;his&mdash;the rooms upstairs
      were quite empty and dreary, aunt. I would rather stay here, for the
      present. Oh my brother! oh my brother!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence shook her head in sad assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I can't think what's become of mine: Lucretia, lend
      me yours, my dear&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there nothing, aunt,' said Florence, trembling, 'I might do to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord, my dear child,' interposed Mrs Chick, hastily, 'what are you
      talking about? If your Papa said to Me&mdash;I have given you his exact
      words, "Louisa, I want nothing; I am better by myself"&mdash;what do you
      think he'd say to you? You mustn't show yourself to him, child. Don't
      dream of such a thing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Aunt,' said Florence, 'I will go and lie down on my bed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;there
      was little favour to be won by it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for in the loss
      of little Paul, that first and greatest loss fell heavily upon her&mdash;this
      was the only help she had. Oh, who can tell how much she needed help at
      first!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;it was the pouring out of
      her full heart&mdash;to let one angel love her and remember her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and
      had a father.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The elder child remained with her father when the rest had gone away, and
      made his tea for him&mdash;happy little house-keeper she was then!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And did that breast of Florence&mdash;Florence, so ingenuous and true&mdash;so
      worthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his last
      faint words&mdash;whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of her
      face, and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice&mdash;did that
      young breast hold any other secret? Yes. One more.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A visitor! To me, Susan!' said Florence, looking up in astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      To do Miss Nipper justice, she spoke more for her young mistress than
      herself; and her face showed it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the visitor, Susan,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan, with an hysterical explosion that was as much a laugh as a sob, and
      as much a sob as a laugh, answered,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Toots!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr Toots. 'I'm very well, I thank you;
      how are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots&mdash;than whom there were few better fellows in the world,
      though there may have been one or two brighter spirits&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr Toots. 'I'm very well, I thank you;
      how are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence gave him her hand, and said she was very well.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's very kind of you to come,' said Florence, taking up her work, 'I am
      very glad to see you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh it's of no consequence,' said Mr Toots hastily. 'Warm, ain't it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is beautiful weather,' replied Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      After stating this curious and unexpected fact, Mr Toots fell into a deep
      well of silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have left Dr Blimber's, I think?' said Florence, trying to help him
      out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should hope so,' returned Mr Toots. And tumbled in again.
    </p>
    <p>
      He remained at the bottom, apparently drowned, for at least ten minutes.
      At the expiration of that period, he suddenly floated, and said,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well! Good morning, Miss Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you going?' asked Florence, rising.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know, though. No, not just at present,' said Mr Toots, sitting
      down again, most unexpectedly. 'The fact is&mdash;I say, Miss Dombey!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.&mdash;fashionable tailors (but very dear), that we
      used to talk about&mdash;would make this suit of clothes for such a
      purpose.' Mr Toots was dressed in mourning. 'Poor Dombey! I say! Miss
      Dombey!' blubbered Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes! oh yes' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor Dombey! So do I,' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;Diogenes graciously allowing it
      from the first moment of their acquaintance&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0241m.jpg" alt="0241m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0241.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your Pa's a going off, Miss Floy, tomorrow morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To-morrow morning, Susan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Miss; that's the orders. Early.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know,' asked Florence, without looking at her, 'where Papa is
      going, Susan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush, Susan!' urged Florence gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Talk of him being a change, indeed!' observed Miss Nipper to herself with
      boundless contempt. 'If he's a change, give me a constancy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, Susan,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, my darling dear Miss Floy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence was little more than a child in years&mdash;not yet fourteen&mdash;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&mdash;a
      wandering love, indeed, and castaway&mdash;but turning always to her
      father.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and they were never absent&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and she yielded to it&mdash;was to retire swiftly. Her
      next, to go back, and to enter; and this second impulse held her in
      irresolution on the staircase.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa! Papa! speak to me, dear Papa!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He started at her voice, and leaped up from his seat. She was close before
      him with extended arms, but he fell back.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter?' he said, sternly. 'Why do you come here? What has
      frightened you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ask you, Florence, are you frightened? Is there anything the matter,
      that you come here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I came, Papa&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Against my wishes. Why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She saw he knew why: it was written broadly on his face: and dropped her
      head upon her hands with one prolonged low cry.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      He took her by the arm. His hand was cold, and loose, and scarcely closed
      upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The dream she had had, was over then, God help her! and she felt that it
      could never more come back.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;hard,
      unresponsive, motionless&mdash;until the fluttering dress of his fair
      child was lost in the darkness.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Diogenes was broad awake upon his post, and waiting for his little
      mistress.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Di! Oh, dear Di! Love me for his sake!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 19. Walter goes away
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Uncle,' he said gaily, laying his hand upon the old man's shoulder, 'what
      shall I send you home from Barbados?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Sol wiped his spectacles, and faintly smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wally, my dear boy,' returned the old man, 'I'll do my best, I'll do my
      best.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I'll tell you what, Uncle,' said Walter, after a moment's
      hesitation, 'I have just been up there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, ay?' murmured the old man, raising his eyebrows, and his
      spectacles with them.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my boy, yes,' replied his Uncle, rousing himself from a temporary
      abstraction.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my boy, yes,' replied his Uncle, in the tone as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I added,' pursued Walter, 'that if she&mdash;Susan, I mean&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His honest voice and manner corroborated what he said, and quite
      established its ingenuousness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So, if you ever see her, Uncle,' said Walter, 'I mean Miss Dombey now&mdash;and
      perhaps you may, who knows!&mdash;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&mdash;she'll remember how often they fell off, that night&mdash;and
      took them away with me as a remembrance!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0249m.jpg" alt="0249m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0249.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Why, Uncle!' exclaimed Walter. 'What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Old Solomon replied, 'Miss Dombey!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it possible?' cried Walter, looking round and starting up in his turn.
      'Here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going away, Walter?' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Miss Dombey,' he replied, but not so hopefully as he endeavoured: 'I
      have a voyage before me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ye&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You remember me,' said Florence with a smile, 'and what a little creature
      I was then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for alas! it was a smile too sad to brighten&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I am afraid I must call you Walter's Uncle, Sir,' said Florence
      to the old man, 'if you'll let me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear young lady,' cried old Sol. 'Let you! Good gracious!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;these, and her natural earnestness, so overcame
      the poor old Instrument-maker, that he only answered:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wally! say a word for me, my dear. I'm very grateful.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The regretful tone in which she said these latter words, touched Walter
      more than all the rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan Nipper began upon a new part of her bonnet string, and nodded at the
      skylight, in approval of the sentiment expressed.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Like a stranger!' returned Walter, 'No. I couldn't speak so. I am sure,
      at least, I couldn't feel like one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;he still thought that far
      above him&mdash;never to deserve it less.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter,' said Florence by the way, 'I have been afraid to ask before your
      Uncle. Do you think you will be absent very long?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed,' said Walter, 'I don't know. I fear so. Mr Dombey signified as
      much, I thought, when he appointed me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it a favour, Walter?' inquired Florence, after a moment's hesitation,
      and looking anxiously in his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The appointment?' returned Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid you have scarcely been a favourite with Papa,' she said,
      timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is no reason,' replied Walter, smiling, 'why I should be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No reason, Walter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may come back very soon,' said Florence, 'perhaps, Walter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I may come back,' said Walter, 'an old man, and find you an old lady. But
      I hope for better things.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa,' said Florence, after a moment, 'will&mdash;will recover from his
      grief, and&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a touching modulation in these words about her father, that
      Walter understood too well.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      In spite of her request, he could not help opening the packet that night
      when he went to bed. It was a little purse: and there was was money in it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, Ned,' returned the old man. 'No! That shall be opened when Walter
      comes home again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well said!' cried the Captain. 'Hear him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, Mr Carker!' returned Walter. 'Why did you resist them? You could have
      done me nothing but good, I am very sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The grey Junior pressed his hand, and tears rose in his eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, Mr Carker. Heaven be with you, Sir!' cried Walter with emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Day after day, old Sol and Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in the little
      hack parlour and worked out her course, with the chart spread before them
      on the round table. At night, when old Sol climbed upstairs, so lonely, to
      the attic where it sometimes blew great guns, he looked up at the stars
      and listened to the wind, and kept a longer watch than would have fallen
      to his lot on board the ship. The last bottle of the old Madeira, which
      had had its cruising days, and known its dangers of the deep, lay silently
      beneath its dust and cobwebs, in the meanwhile, undisturbed.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>
      r 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&mdash;Damme, Mr Dombey,' cried the Major with sudden
      ferocity, 'this is weakness, and I won't submit to it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;damme, Sir,' cried the Major, in another spasm of
      ferocity, 'I condole with you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;for
      Josh is blunt. Sir: it's his nature&mdash;but Joey B. is proud to see you,
      Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major,' returned Mr Dombey, 'you are very obliging.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and not too much&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is my scoundrel?' said the Major, looking wrathfully round the
      room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You villain!' said the choleric Major, 'where's the breakfast?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been looking over the way, Sir,' observed the Major. 'Have you
      seen our friend?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You mean Miss Tox,' retorted Mr Dombey. 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Charming woman, Sir,' said the Major, with a fat laugh rising in his
      short throat, and nearly suffocating him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Tox is a very good sort of person, I believe,' replied Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;outrivalled&mdash;floored,
      Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should have supposed,' Mr Dombey replied, 'that the lady's day for
      favourites was over: but perhaps you are jesting, Major.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you are jesting, Dombey?' was the Major's rejoinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      There never was a more unlikely possibility. It was so clearly expressed
      in Mr Dombey's face, that the Major apologised.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir,' pursued the Major, 'aspires. She
      aspires sky-high, Sir. Matrimonially, Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry for her,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't say that, Dombey,' returned the Major in a warning voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why should I not, Major?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major gave no answer but the horse's cough, and went on eating
      vigorously.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;may I say encouraged&mdash;to repeat
      her visits with my sister, and gradually to occupy a kind of footing of
      familiarity in the family. I have,' said Mr Dombey, in the tone of a man
      who was making a great and valuable concession, 'I have a respect for Miss
      Tox. She his been so obliging as to render many little services in my
      house: trifling and insignificant services perhaps, Major, but not to be
      disparaged on that account: and I hope I have had the good fortune to be
      enabled to acknowledge them by such attention and notice as it has been in
      my power to bestow. I hold myself indebted to Miss Tox, Major,' added Mr
      Dombey, with a slight wave of his hand, 'for the pleasure of your
      acquaintance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major,' said Mr Dombey, reddening, 'I hope you do not hint at anything so
      absurd on the part of Miss Tox as&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance he sent
      in that direction, too.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!&mdash;confound your arts,
      Ma'am,' cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with
      great ire,&mdash;'when the provocation is too strong to admit of his
      remaining silent.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe&mdash;old Joe, who has no other
      merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;very
      coldly even for him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Beg your pardon, Sir,' said the man, 'but I hope you're a doin' pretty
      well, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall have the honour of stokin' of you down, Sir,' said Mr Toodle.
      'Beg your pardon, Sir.&mdash;I hope you find yourself a coming round?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a man
      like that would make his very eyesight dirty.
    </p>
    <p>
      ''Scuse the liberty, Sir,' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly
      remembered, 'but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your wife wants money, I suppose,' said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in
      his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No thank'ee, Sir,' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his hand
      in his pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We lost one babby,' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lately,' added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;christened Robin&mdash;him as you was so good as to make a
      Charitable Grinder on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, man,' said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. 'What about him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has gone wrong, has he?' said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind of
      satisfaction.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A son of this man's whom I caused to be educated, Major,' said Mr Dombey,
      giving him his arm. 'The usual return!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Sol 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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;its own&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a face&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feeling it
      awakened in him&mdash;of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older
      times&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 21. New Faces
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he MAJOR, more blue-faced and staring&mdash;more over-ripe, as it were,
      than ever&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;quite rosy&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!' cried the Major, stopping as this
      little cavalcade drew near.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest Edith!' drawled the lady in the chair, 'Major Bagstock!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Joe Bagstock,' said the Major to both ladies, 'is a proud and happy man
      for the rest of his life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You false creature!' said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. 'Where do
      you come from? I can't bear you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0272m.jpg" alt="0272m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0272.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leered in
      his ugliest manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Skewton, Dombey,' said the Major, 'makes havoc in the heart of old
      Josh.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You perfidious goblin,' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! How long
      have you been here, bad man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'One day,' replied the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eden, I suppose, Mama,' interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Edith,' said the other, 'I cannot help it. I never can remember
      those frightful names&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No one can be a stranger,' said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immense
      influence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the
      younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith of course does not,' said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly archness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not found that there is any change in such places,' was the
      answer, delivered with supreme indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself
      intelligible,' said the younger lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and china.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      We were, indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In short,' said Mrs Skewton, 'I want Nature everywhere. It would be so
      extremely charming.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major was staying at the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,' said the Major, 'that he should mean the
      mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You were complimentary to the mother,' returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An ancient flame, Sir,' chuckled Major Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. I
      humour her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;they're
      poor, indeed&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You addressed the daughter, I observed,' said Mr Dombey, after a short
      pause, 'as Mrs Granger.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How long is this ago?' asked Mr Dombey, making another halt.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was there any family?' asked Mr Dombey presently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir,' said the Major. 'There was a boy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey's eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who was drowned, Sir,' pursued the Major. 'When a child of four or five
      years old.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed?' said Mr Dombey, raising his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more like an
      over-fed Mephistopheles than ever, as he said the words.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Provided the lady made no objection, I suppose?' said Mr Dombey coldly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey seemed, by his face, to think no worse of her for that.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope, Mrs Granger,' said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her, 'we
      are not the cause of your ceasing to play?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You! oh no!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?' said Cleopatra.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I left off as I began&mdash;of my own fancy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know, Mr Dombey,' said her languishing mother, playing with a
      hand-screen, 'that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually
      almost differ&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not quite, sometimes, Mama?' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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, '&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?' said Mrs Skewton.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey thought it possible.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Devil a bit, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'We couldn't afford it. Unless the
      world was peopled with J.B.'s&mdash;tough and blunt old Joes, Ma'am, plain
      red herrings with hard roes, Sir&mdash;we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't
      do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You naughty Infidel,' said Mrs Skewton, 'be mute.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cleopatra commands,' returned the Major, kissing his hand, 'and Antony
      Bagstock obeys.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey again
      addressed himself to Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is not much company here, it would seem?' said Mr Dombey, in his
      own portentous gentlemanly way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe not. We see none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why really,' observed Mrs Skewton from her couch, 'there are no people
      here just now with whom we care to associate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They have not enough heart,' said Edith, with a smile. The very twilight
      of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?' said Mr Dombey. Still
      to Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A beautiful country!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I suppose it is. Everybody says so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,' interposed her mother from her
      couch.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the
      neighbourhood,' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have they that interest?' said Mr Dombey. 'Are they yours?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you play, I already know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And sing?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;so far as she could&mdash;her manner also, to him; and
      continued to do so, when he was silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have many resources against weariness at least,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whatever their efficiency may be,' she returned, 'you know them all now.
      I have no more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh certainly! If you desire it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are going to have some music, Mr Dombey, I hope?' said Cleopatra.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Granger has been kind enough to promise so,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! That's very nice. Do you propose, Major?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'Couldn't do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're a barbarous being,' replied the lady, 'and my hand's destroyed.
      You are fond of music, Mr Dombey?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eminently so,' was Mr Dombey's answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. It's very nice,' said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. 'So much
      heart in it&mdash;undeveloped recollections of a previous state of
      existence&mdash;and all that&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The general action of a man so engaged&mdash;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&mdash;dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you answer it?' was his reception of his brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The messenger is out, and I am the next,' was the submissive reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are the next?' muttered the Manager. 'Yes! Creditable to me! There!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry to trouble you, James,' said the brother, gathering them up,
      'but&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! you have something to say. I knew that. Well?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well?' he repeated sharply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am uneasy about Harriet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet who? what Harriet? I know nobody of that name.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is not well, and has changed very much of late.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She changed very much, a great many years ago,' replied the Manager; 'and
      that is all I have to say.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think if you would hear me&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As I?' exclaimed the Manager. 'As I?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As sorry for her choice&mdash;for what you call her choice&mdash;as you
      are angry at it,' said the Junior.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Angry?' repeated the other, with a wide show of his teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There is no
      offence in my intention.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;if you would
      go and see her&mdash;she would move your admiration and compassion.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I go on?' said John Carker, mildly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'On your way?' replied his smiling brother. 'If you will have the
      goodness.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attention and
      his teeth, once more.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by its contents&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who wants me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Perch coughed once behind his hand, and waited for further orders.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Anybody else?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You said he wanted something to do, didn't you, Perch?' asked Mr Carker,
      leaning back in his chair and looking at that officer.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;' Mr Perch shook his head very
      dubiously indeed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What does he say when he comes?' asked Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker grinned at him like a shark, but in an absent, thoughtful
      manner.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me see this fellow, Perch,' said Mr Carker. 'Bring him in!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir. Begging your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Perch, hesitating at the
      door, 'he's rough, Sir, in appearance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never mind. If he's there, bring him in. I'll see Mr Gills directly. Ask
      him to wait.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'&mdash;a very unusual form of introduction
      from his lips&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, Sir! You let me alone, will you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Biler whimpered, would he though? oh no he wouldn't&mdash;and what was he
      doing of&mdash;and why didn't he strangle some&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haven't done nothing to you, Sir,' said Biler, otherwise Rob, otherwise
      Grinder, and always Toodle.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Work, young Cain that you are!' repeated Mr Carker, eyeing him narrowly.
      'Ain't you the idlest vagabond in London?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ain't you a thief?' said Mr Carker, with his hands behind him in his
      pockets.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, sir,' pleaded Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are!' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're a nice young gentleman!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head at him.
      'There's hemp-seed sown for you, my fine fellow!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Excepting what?' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wag, Sir. Wagging from school.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should be thankful to be tried, Sir,' returned Toodle Junior, faintly.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker the Manager pushed him backward into a corner&mdash;the boy
      submitting quietly, hardly venturing to breathe, and never once removing
      his eyes from his face&mdash;and rang the bell.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell Mr Gills to come here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Perch was too deferential to express surprise or recognition of the
      figure in the corner: and Uncle Sol appeared immediately.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Gills!' said Carker, with a smile, 'sit down. How do you do? You
      continue to enjoy your health, I hope?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' said old Sol.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you give him house-room, Mr Gills?' said the Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;respectable
      people&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob said, 'Yes, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was nothing in any branch of mental acquisition that Rob seemed to
      understand better than that.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Sir,' said Mr Carker, taking him by the shoulder, 'come along!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing, mother,' cried Rob, in a piteous voice, 'ask the gentleman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't be alarmed,' said Mr Carker, 'I want to do him good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This fellow,' said Mr Carker to Polly, giving him a gentle shake, 'is
      your son, eh, Ma'am?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir,' sobbed Polly, with a curtsey; 'yes, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A bad son, I am afraid?' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never a bad son to me, Sir,' returned Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To whom then?' demanded Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and seemed to have achieved the
      real purpose of his visit.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your husband, I take it, is not at home?' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Sir,' replied Polly. 'He's down the line at present.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll try hard, dear mother, now. Upon my soul I will!' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know, mother.' Rob hesitated, and looked down. 'Father&mdash;when's
      he coming home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not till two o'clock to-morrow morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What!' said Mr Carker, who had heard this. 'You have a bad father, have
      you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Sir!' returned Rob, amazed. 'There ain't a better nor a kinder father
      going, than mine is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why don't you want to see him then?' inquired his patron.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though I know he'd try to&mdash;but a mother&mdash;she
      always believes what's good, Sir; at least, I know my mother does, God
      bless her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir,' returned Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;for I am anxious to be of service to him&mdash;and especially
      who comes there to see him. Do you understand?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob nodded his steadfast face, and said 'Yes, Sir,' again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should like to know that he has friends who are attentive to him, and
      that they don't desert him&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll take care, Sir,' said the boy.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To nobody in the world, Sir,' replied Rob, shaking his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;that wide-spread territory on which the sun never
      sets, and where the tax-gatherer never goes to bed&mdash;was more regular
      and persevering in his calls than Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots never went upstairs; and always performed the same ceremonies,
      richly dressed for the purpose, at the hall door.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots would then turn round as if to go away; but the man knew him by
      this time, and knew he wouldn't.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, I beg your pardon,' Mr Toots would say, as if a thought had suddenly
      descended on him. 'Is the young woman at home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! How de do?' Mr Toots would say, with a chuckle and a blush.
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan would thank him, and say she was very well.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How's Diogenes going on?' would be Mr Toots's second interrogation.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Florence is quite well, Sir,' Susan would add.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,'&mdash;the flow of
      imagination in which he had previously written down the initial letters of
      the other seven lines, deserting him at that point.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you'd like to walk upstairs, Sir!' said Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I think I will come in!' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go along with you!' cried Susan, 'or Ill tear your eyes out.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Just another!' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push 'Innocents like
      you, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0298m.jpg" alt="0298m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0298.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Sir,' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his most
      propitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, Sir&mdash;' began Carker, with a
      display of his own.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, thank you,' said Mr Toots, 'it's all quite right. It's very
      comfortable, thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey,' observed Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you though?' rejoined the blushing Took
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;cats, boy, cats!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>lorence 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;particularly round the corner where the side wall was&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, within the circle of her
      innocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could go down
      to her father's rooms now, and think of him, and suffer her loving heart
      humbly to approach him, without fear of repulse. She could look upon the
      objects that had surrounded him in his sorrow, and could nestle near his
      chair, and not dread the glance that she so well remembered. She could
      render him such little tokens of her duty and service, as putting
      everything in order for him with her own hands, binding little nosegays
      for table, changing them as one by one they withered and he did not come
      back, preparing something for him every day, and leaving some timid mark
      of her presence near his usual seat. To-day, it was a little painted stand
      for his watch; tomorrow she would be afraid to leave it, and would
      substitute some other trifle of her making not so likely to attract his
      eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she would tremble at the thought of his
      coming home and angrily rejecting it, and would hurry down with slippered
      feet and quickly beating heart, and bring it away. At another time, she
      would only lay her face upon his desk, and leave a kiss there, and a tear.
    </p>
    <p>
      Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found it out when she was
      not there&mdash;and they all held Mr Dombey's rooms in awe&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;it was soon after she had last seen her father in his
      own room, late at night&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her father did not know&mdash;she held to it from that time&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They know what they're about, if ever people did,' murmured Miss Nipper,
      drawing in her breath 'oh! trust them Skettleses for that!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much better,' interposed Susan, with another emphatic shake of her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For which I say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful!' returned Susan, 'Ah! h&mdash;h!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How long it is before we have any news of Walter, Susan!' observed
      Florence, after a moment's silence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Long indeed, Miss Floy!' replied her maid. 'And Perch said, when he came
      just now to see for letters&mdash;but what signifies what he says!'
      exclaimed Susan, reddening and breaking off. 'Much he knows about it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence raised her eyes quickly, and a flush overspread her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Give up! What?' cried Florence, with a face of terror.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does he give up the ship, Susan?' inquired Florence, very pale.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What else does he say, Susan?' inquired Florence, earnestly. 'Won't you
      tell me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for, between that grade of human kind and herself,
      there was some natural animosity that invariably broke out, whenever they
      came together&mdash;it would seem that she had not much leisure on the
      road for intellectual operations.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Richards's eldest, Miss!' said Susan, 'and the worrit of Mrs
      Richards's life!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      From this transport, he was abruptly recalled to terrestrial objects, by a
      poke from Miss Nipper, which sent him into the shop.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fetch him home,' said Miss Nipper, with authority, 'and say that my young
      lady's here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know where he's gone,' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that your penitence?' cried Susan, with stinging sharpness.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did Mr Gills say when he should be home?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he very anxious about his nephew?' inquired Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know a friend of Mr Gills, called Captain Cuttle?' inquired
      Florence, after a moment's reflection.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Him with a hook, Miss?' rejoined Rob, with an illustrative twist of his
      left hand. Yes, Miss. He was here the day before yesterday.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has he not been here since?' asked Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Miss,' returned Rob, still addressing his reply to Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps Walter's Uncle has gone there, Susan,' observed Florence, turning
      to her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know where Captain Cuttle lives?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob replied in the affirmative, and turning to a greasy parchment book on
      the shop desk, read the address aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It happened by evil chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger's great cleaning
      days. On these occasions, Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the policeman
      at a quarter before three in the morning, and rarely such before twelve
      o'clock next night. The chief object of this institution appeared to be,
      that Mrs MacStinger should move all the furniture into the back garden at
      early dawn, walk about the house in pattens all day, and move the
      furniture back again after dark. These ceremonies greatly fluttered those
      doves the young MacStingers, who were not only unable at such times to
      find any resting-place for the soles of their feet, but generally came in
      for a good deal of pecking from the maternal bird during the progress of
      the solemnities.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mrs MacStinger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not Number Nine?' asked Florence, hesitating.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who said it wasn't Number Nine?' said Mrs MacStinger.
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan Nipper instantly struck in, and begged to inquire what Mrs
      MacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do you want with
      Captain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs MacStinger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied,' returned Miss
      Nipper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'I said
      it wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house&mdash;and it ain't his house&mdash;and
      forbid it, that it ever should be his house&mdash;for Cap'en Cuttle don't
      know how to keep a house&mdash;and don't deserve to have a house&mdash;it's
      my house&mdash;and when I let the upper floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a
      thankless thing, and cast pearls before swine!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are amazed to see us, I am sure,' said Florence, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I couldn't rest,' said Florence, 'without coming to ask you what you
      think about dear Walter&mdash;who is my brother now&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As yet?' repeated Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;overhaul the Catechism,' said the
      Captain parenthetically, 'and there you'll find them expressions&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and this morning,
      but she&mdash;she took it away and kept it. That's the long and short of
      the subject.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who did, for goodness sake?' asked Susan Nipper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;In short,' said the Captain,
      eyeing the door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she stopped my
      liberty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!' said Susan, reddening with the
      energy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      However, they got to the corner of Brig Place without any molestation from
      that terrible fire-ship; and the Captain mounting the coach-box&mdash;for
      his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with the ladies, though
      besought to do so&mdash;piloted the driver on his course for Captain
      Bunsby's vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and was lying hard
      by Ratcliffe.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Clara a-hoy!' cried the Captain, putting a hand to each side of his
      mouth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from below.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bunsby aboard?' cried the Captain, hailing the boy in a stentorian voice,
      as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay!' cried the boy, in the same tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulk-head of the
      cabin, another bulk-head&mdash;human, and very large&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0315m.jpg" alt="0315m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0315.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shipmet,' said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look out
      under some interposing spar, 'what'll the ladies drink?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;but that's not reasonably likely. Or
      whether there is any hope she so far changed her course as&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence saw immediately&mdash;it would have been difficult to help seeing&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been to see me?' said Florence. 'To-day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;' There he stopped.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Before when? Before what?' said Florence, putting her hand upon his arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did I say "before?"' replied old Sol. 'If I did, I must have meant before
      we should have news of my dear boy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are not well,' said Florence, tenderly. 'You have been so very
      anxious I am sure you are not well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'My name's Jack Bunsby!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was christened John,' cried the delighted Captain Cuttle. 'Hear him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what I says,' pursued the voice, after some deliberation, 'I stands
      to.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whereby,' proceeded the voice, 'why not? If so, what odds? Can any man
      say otherwise? No. Awast then!'
    </p>
    <p>
      When it had pursued its train of argument to this point, the voice
      stopped, and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The students of the sage's precepts, left to their own application of his
      wisdom&mdash;upon a principle which was the main leg of the Bunsby tripod,
      as it is perchance of some other oracular stools&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What cheer, Sol Gills?' cried the Captain, heartily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      But meeting the eyes of Florence, which were fixed with earnest scrutiny
      upon his face, the old man stopped and smiled.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to-day, Ned!' said the old man quickly, and appearing to be
      unaccountably startled by the proposition. 'Not to-day. I couldn't do it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' returned the Captain, gazing at him in astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I have so much to do. I&mdash;I mean to think of, and arrange. I
      couldn't do it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and be alone, and turn
      my mind to many things to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and looked at Florence, and
      again at the Instrument-maker. 'To-morrow, then,' he suggested, at last.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes. To-morrow,' said the old man. 'Think of me to-morrow. Say
      to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills,' stipulated the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes. The first thing tomorrow morning,' said old Sol; 'and now
      good-bye, Ned Cuttle, and God bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 24. The Study of a Loving Heart
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ir 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not
      to disparage so worthy a gentleman by the comparison&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;'My dear Sir&mdash;penalty of your eminent position&mdash;friend
      at my house naturally desirous&mdash;Lady Skettles and myself participate&mdash;trust
      that genius being superior to ceremonies, you will do us the distinguished
      favour of giving us the pleasure,' etc, etc.&mdash;and so killed a brace
      of birds with one stone, dead as door-nails.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;to whom I beg you present the best compliments of myself and
      Lady Skettles when you write&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anybody you can suggest now, Doctor Blimber?' said Sir Barnet
      Skettles, turning to that gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has Mrs Blimber any wish to see any remarkable person?' asked Sir Barnet,
      courteously.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;here young Barnet was observed to curl his nose&mdash;she asked
      no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ah! how to gain it! how to know the charm in its beginning! There were
      daughters here, who rose up in the morning, and lay down to rest at night,
      possessed of fathers' hearts already. They had no repulse to overcome, no
      coldness to dread, no frown to smooth away. As the morning advanced, and
      the windows opened one by one, and the dew began to dry upon the flowers
      and and youthful feet began to move upon the lawn, Florence, glancing
      round at the bright faces, thought what was there she could learn from
      these children? It was too late to learn from them; each could approach
      her father fearlessly, and put up her lips to meet the ready kiss, and
      wind her arm about the neck that bent down to caress her. She could not
      begin by being so bold. Oh! could it be that there was less and less hope
      as she studied more and more!
    </p>
    <p>
      She remembered well, that even the old woman who had robbed her when a
      little child&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is Florence an orphan like me, aunt?' said the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my love. She has no mother, but her father is living.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is she in mourning for her poor Mama, now?' inquired the child quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; for her only brother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has she no other brother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'None.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No sister?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'None,'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very, very sorry!' said the little girl
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence is a favourite with everyone here, and deserves to be, I am
      sure,' said the child, earnestly. 'Where is her Papa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is in England, I hope, aunt?' said the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe so. Yes; I know he is, indeed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has he ever been here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe not. No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he coming here to see her?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he lame, or blind, or ill, aunt?' asked the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never will!' exclaimed the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though for no fault of hers; and she is greatly to be loved and
      pitied by all gentle hearts.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor Florence! Dear, good Florence!' cried the child.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know why I have told you this, Kate?' said the lady.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That I may be very kind to her, and take great care to try to please her.
      Is that the reason, aunt?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid not,' said the little girl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you can understand,' pursued the lady, 'why her observation of
      children who have parents who are fond of them, and proud of them&mdash;like
      many here, just now&mdash;should make her sorrowful in secret?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, dear aunt,' said the child, 'I understand that very well. Poor
      Florence!'
    </p>
    <p>
      More flowers strayed upon the ground, and those she yet held to her breast
      trembled as if a wintry wind were rustling them.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There are none happier, aunt!' exclaimed the child, who seemed to cling
      about her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;thank Heaven! before you knew its weight&mdash;gives you
      claim and hold upon poor Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I am not without a parent's love, aunt, and I never have been,' said
      the child, 'with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in one mind certainly: perhaps in more&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good morning,' said Florence, approaching nearer, 'you are at work
      early.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd be glad to be often at work earlier, Miss, if I had work to do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it so hard to get?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I find it so,' replied the man.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence glanced to where the girl was sitting, drawn together, with her
      elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that your daughter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is she in want of employment also?' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      The man shook his head. 'No, Miss,' he said. 'I work for both,'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are there only you two, then?' inquired Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only us two,' said the man. 'Her mother his 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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The girl made an impatient gesture with her cowering shoulders, and turned
      her head another way. Ugly, misshapen, peevish, ill-conditioned, ragged,
      dirty&mdash;but beloved! Oh yes! Florence had seen her father's look
      towards her, and she knew whose look it had no likeness to.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She is ill, then!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay! and more than that, John,' said a neighbour, who had come down to
      help him with the boat.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to me,' said her father, falling to his work. 'Not to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence could feel&mdash;who better?&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who would favour my poor girl&mdash;to call it favouring&mdash;if I
      didn't?' said the father.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to get the trembling of a finger, or the
      waving of a hair&mdash;would be to raise the dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence softly put some money near his hand on the old boat, and left
      him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you,' said the gentleman.
    </p>
    <p>
      It was not that, but something in the gentleman himself&mdash;Florence
      could not have said what&mdash;that made her recoil as if she had been
      stung.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0330m.jpg" alt="0330m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0330.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing to send, Miss Dombey?' said the man of teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing,' said Florence, 'but my&mdash;but my dear love&mdash;if you
      please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Disturbed as Florence was, she raised her eyes to his face with an
      imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if he knew&mdash;which
      he as plainly did&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 25. Strange News of Uncle Sol
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>aptain 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Holloa!' roared the Captain. 'What's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steady, my lad,' said the Captain, 'don't ye speak a word to me as yet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mean, tell you, Captain?' asked Rob, who had been greatly
      impressed by these precautions.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Sir,' said Rob, 'I ain't got much to tell. But look here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob produced a bundle of keys. The Captain surveyed them, remained in his
      corner, and surveyed the messenger.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And look here!' pursued Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      The boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain Cuttle stared at as he had
      stared at the keys.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gone!' roared the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Flowed, Sir,' returned Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      '"My dear Ned Cuttle. Enclosed is my will!"' The Captain turned it over,
      with a doubtful look&mdash;'"and Testament"&mdash;Where's the Testament?'
      said the Captain, instantly impeaching the ill-fated Grinder. 'What have
      you done with that, my lad?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never see it,' whimpered Rob. 'Don't keep on suspecting an innocent
      lad, Captain. I never touched the Testament.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Cuttle shook his head, implying that somebody must be made
      answerable for it; and gravely proceeded:
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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&mdash;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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, don't, Captain!' cried the Grinder. 'I wonder how you can! what have
      I done to be looked at, like that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My lad,' said Captain Cuttle, 'don't you sing out afore you're hurt. And
      don't you commit yourself, whatever you do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I haven't been and committed nothing, Captain!' answered Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Keep her free, then,' said the Captain, impressively, 'and ride easy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;cautiously
      preventing the latter imitation from being carried farther than the
      threshold&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!' said the Captain, mysteriously. 'Why so, my lad?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why,' returned Rob, looking about, 'I don't see his shaving tackle. Nor
      his brushes, Captain. Nor no shirts. Nor yet his shoes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what should you say,' said the Captain&mdash;'not committing yourself&mdash;about
      his time of sheering off? Hey?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I think, Captain,' returned Rob, 'that he must have gone pretty soon
      after I began to snore.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What o'clock was that?' said the Captain, prepared to be very particular
      about the exact time.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and they were not even sure of that&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good, Captain,' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll be sure to do it, Captain,' replied Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;mild
      and placid as a house&mdash;lamb; and Captain Cuttle's conscience suffered
      terrible twinges, when she came up to inquire if she could cook him
      nothing for his dinner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A nice small kidney-pudding now, Cap'en Cuttle,' said his landlady: 'or a
      sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No thank'ee, Ma'am,' returned the Captain very humbly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And why so, Cap'en Cuttle?' retorted Mrs MacStinger&mdash;sharply, as the
      Captain thought.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for Rob was
      on the watch&mdash;and when it was bolted and locked behind him, Captain
      Cuttle felt comparatively safe.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whew!' cried the Captain, looking round him. 'It's a breather!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing the matter, is there, Captain?' cried the gaping Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll take care, Captain,' returned Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You might say&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0026" id="link2HCH0026"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 26. Shadows of the Past and Future
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>
      our 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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am infinitely obliged, Carker,' explained Mr Dombey, 'to Major
      Bagstock, for his company and conversation. Major Bagstock has rendered me
      great service, Carker.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker snapped at the expression. In his moral nature. Exactly. The
      very words he had been on the point of suggesting.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Joey B.&mdash;Josh. Bagstock&mdash;Joseph&mdash;rough and tough
      Old J., Sir. At your service.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now, Sir,' said the Major, 'you and Dombey have the devil's own
      amount of business to talk over.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By no means, Major,' observed Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey,' said the Major, defiantly, 'I know better; a man of your mark&mdash;the
      Colossus of commerce&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With that, the Major, greatly swollen as to his face, withdrew; but
      immediately putting in his head at the door again, said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon. Dombey, have you any message to 'em?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey in some embarrassment, and not without a glance at the courteous
      keeper of his business confidence, entrusted the Major with his
      compliments.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By the Lord, Sir,' said the Major, 'you must make it something warmer
      than that, or old Joe will be far from welcome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Regards then, if you will, Major,' returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Damme, Sir,' said the Major, shaking his shoulders and his great cheeks
      jocularly: 'make it something warmer than that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What you please, then, Major,' observed Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You must have found the gentleman a great resource,' said Carker,
      following him with his teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very great indeed,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to the Major's friends. Highly agreeable people.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ladies among them, I presume?' insinuated the smooth Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are all&mdash;that is to say, they are both&mdash;ladies,' replied
      Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only two?' smiled Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are only two. I have confined my visits to their residence, and have
      made no other acquaintance here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sisters, perhaps?' quoth Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother and daughter,' replied Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very kind,' said Carker, 'I shall be delighted to know them.
      Speaking of daughters, I have seen Miss Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr Dombey's face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but her dear love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'What business intelligence is there?' inquired the latter gentleman,
      after a silence, during which Mr Carker had produced some memoranda and
      other papers.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, taking a chair near him, 'I cannot say that
      young man, Gay, ever impressed me favourably&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor me,' interposed the Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Dombey, sternly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;perhaps
      hardly proud enough, for your daughter&mdash;if she have a fault. Not that
      that is much though, I am sure. Will you check these balances with me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What insupportable creature is this, coming in?' said Mrs Skewton, 'I
      cannot hear it. Go away, whoever you are!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have not the heart to banish J. B., Ma'am!' said the Major halting
      midway, to remonstrate, with his cane over his shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh it's you, is it? On second thoughts, you may enter,' observed
      Cleopatra.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major entered accordingly, and advancing to the sofa pressed her
      charming hand to his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is Mrs Granger?' inquired Cleopatra of her page.
    </p>
    <p>
      Withers believed she was in her own room.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very well,' said Mrs Skewton. 'Go away, and shut the door. I am engaged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As Withers disappeared, Mrs Skewton turned her head languidly towards the
      Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly with
      the affected drawl in which she presently said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world,&mdash;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,&mdash;I cannot
      misunderstand your meaning. There is an allusion to Edith&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bluntness, Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'has ever been the characteristic
      of the Bagstock breed. You are right. Joe admits it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And that allusion,' pursued Cleopatra, 'would involve one of the most&mdash;if
      not positively the most&mdash;touching, and thrilling, and sacred emotions
      of which our sadly-fallen nature is susceptible, I conceive.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major laid his hand upon his lips, and wafted a kiss to Cleopatra, as
      if to identify the emotion in question.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;let me be open&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Skewton arranged her tucker, pinched her wiry throat to give it a soft
      surface, and went on, with great complacency.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is devilish little heart in Dombey now, Ma'am,' said the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wretched man!' cried Mrs Skewton, looking at him languidly, 'pray be
      silent.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'J. B. is dumb, Ma'am,' said the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;for there is always a
      charm in nature&mdash;it is so very sweet&mdash;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&mdash;to'&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'To beat up these quarters, Ma'am,' suggested Major Bagstock.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Coarse person!' said Mrs Skewton, 'you anticipate my meaning, though in
      odious language.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;my beautiful pet, who has positively garnered up her
      heart since the death of that most delightful creature, Granger&mdash;is
      the most affecting thing in the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith,' simpered Mrs Skewton, 'who is the perfect pearl of my life, is
      said to resemble me. I believe we are alike.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cleopatra made as if she would brain the flatterer with her fan, but
      relenting, smiled upon him and proceeded:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;mine has been said to be immense, though I
      don't believe it&mdash;but once moved, she is susceptible and sensitive to
      the last extent. What are my feelings when I see her pining! They destroy
      me.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major advancing his double chin, and pursing up his blue lips into a
      soothing expression, affected the profoundest sympathy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The confidence,' said Mrs Skewton, 'that has subsisted between us&mdash;the
      free development of soul, and openness of sentiment&mdash;is touching to
      think of. We have been more like sisters than Mama and child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'J. B.'s own sentiment,' observed the Major, 'expressed by J. B. fifty
      thousand times!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a gulf&mdash;opened between us. That my own artless
      Edith is changed to me! They are of the most poignant description, of
      course.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major left his chair, and took one nearer to the little table.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;take
      care of the coffee-cup: you are so very awkward&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Advise with Joe, Ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major laughed, and kissed the hand she had bestowed upon him, and
      laughed again immensely.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am?' chuckled the Major,
      hoarsely.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mysterious creature!' returned Cleopatra, bringing her fan to bear upon
      the Major's nose. 'How can we marry him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am, I say?' chuckled the Major
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey, Ma'am,' said the Major, 'is a great catch.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, mercenary wretch!' cried Cleopatra, with a little shriek, 'I am
      shocked.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You really think so, my dear Major?' returned Cleopatra, who had eyed him
      very cautiously, and very searchingly, in spite of her listless bearing.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This morning?' said Cleopatra.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This morning, Ma'am,' returned the Major. 'And Dombey's anxiety for his
      arrival, Ma'am, is to be referred&mdash;take J. B.'s word for this; for
      Joe is devilish sly'&mdash;the Major tapped his nose, and screwed up one
      of his eyes tight: which did not enhance his native beauty&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A charming quality,' lisped Mrs Skewton; 'reminding one of dearest
      Edith.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush!' said Cleopatra, suddenly, 'Edith!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith, so beautiful and stately, but so cold and so repelling. Who,
      slightly acknowledging the presence of Major Bagstock, and directing a
      keen glance at her mother, drew back the from a window, and sat down
      there, looking out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest Edith,' said Mrs Skewton, 'where on earth have you been? I
      have wanted you, my love, most sadly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You said you were engaged, and I stayed away,' she answered, without
      turning her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was cruel to Old Joe, Ma'am,' said the Major in his gallantry.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was very cruel, I know,' she said, still looking out&mdash;and said
      with such calm disdain, that the Major was discomfited, and could think of
      nothing in reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major Bagstock, my darling Edith,' drawled her mother, 'who is generally
      the most useless and disagreeable creature in the world: as you know&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is surely not worthwhile, Mama,' said Edith, looking round, 'to
      observe these forms of speech. We are quite alone. We know each other.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The quiet scorn that sat upon her handsome face&mdash;a scorn that
      evidently lighted on herself, no less than them&mdash;was so intense and
      deep, that her mother's simper, for the instant, though of a hardy
      constitution, drooped before it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My darling girl,' she began again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not woman yet?' said Edith, with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How very odd you are to-day, my dear! Pray let me say, my love, that
      Major Bagstock has brought the kindest of notes from Mr Dombey, proposing
      that we should breakfast with him to-morrow, and ride to Warwick and
      Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will I go!' she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly as she
      looked round at her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you. I have no desire to read it,' was her answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your regards, Edith, my dear?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand, at
      the postscript.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What you will, Mama,' she answered, without turning her head, and with
      supreme indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to alteration in her, Sir,' mused the Major on his way back; on which
      expedition&mdash;the afternoon being sunny and hot&mdash;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&mdash;or a
      gulf as the mother calls it&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;which
      was not large.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Sir!' said the Major. 'How have you passed the time since I had the
      happiness of meeting you? Have you walked at all?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A saunter of barely half an hour's duration,' returned Carker. 'We have
      been so much occupied.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Business, eh?' said the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A variety of little matters necessary to be gone through,' replied
      Carker. 'But do you know&mdash;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&mdash;'but I feel quite confidential with you, Major Bagstock.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You do me honour, Sir,' returned the Major. 'You may be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know, then,' pursued Carker, 'that I have not found my friend&mdash;our
      friend, I ought rather to call him&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Meaning Dombey, Sir?' cried the Major. 'You see me, Mr Carker, standing
      here! J. B.?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was puffy enough to see, and blue enough; and Mr Carker intimated the
      he had that pleasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then you see a man, Sir, who would go through fire and water to serve
      Dombey,' returned Major Bagstock.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No?' observed the delighted Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have found him a little abstracted, and with his attention disposed to
      wander,' said Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Jove, Sir,' cried the Major, 'there's a lady in the case.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey,' said the Major, 'you don't eat; what's the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' returned the gentleman, 'I am doing very well; I have no
      great appetite today.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Dombey, what's become of it?' asked the Major. 'Where's it gone? You
      haven't left it with our friends, I'll swear, for I can answer for their
      having none to-day at luncheon. I can answer for one of 'em, at least: I
      won't say which.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To angelic Edith!' cried the smiling Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, by all means,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But the Major, having secured an attentive listener, and a smiler who had
      not his match in all the world&mdash;'in short, a devilish intelligent and
      able fellow,' as he often afterwards declared&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I play picquet a little,' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Backgammon, perhaps?' observed the Major, hesitating.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I play backgammon a little too,' replied the man of teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0352m.jpg" alt="0352m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0352.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Yes, I play chess a little,' answered Carker. 'I have sometimes played,
      and won a game&mdash;it's a mere trick&mdash;without seeing the board.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Gad, Sir!' said the Major, staring, 'you are a contrast to Dombey, who
      plays nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;who
      always rested on a mattress spread upon the ground at his master's door&mdash;along
      the gallery, to light him to his room in state.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as yet.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0027" id="link2HCH0027"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 27. Deeper Shadows
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r Carker the Manager rose with the lark, and went out, walking in the
      summer day. His meditations&mdash;and he meditated with contracted brows
      while he strolled along&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;but the world is prone to misconstruction,
      and Mr Carker was not accountable for its bad propensity.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;out
      of it, it almost appeared&mdash;and stood in the way.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can tell it for myself,' was the reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know,' returned the lady, passing her with a dark smile, and a proud
      step. 'I knew it before.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'After me, old lady!' returned the Manager, putting his hand in his
      pocket.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said the woman, steadfast in her scrutiny, and holding out her
      shrivelled hand. 'I know!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you know?' demanded Carker, throwing her a shilling. 'Do you know
      who the handsome lady is?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker laughed, and turned upon his heel.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good!' said the old woman. 'One child dead, and one child living: one
      wife dead, and one wife coming. Go and meet her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What was that you said, Bedlamite?' he demanded.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am charmed, I am sure,' said Mrs Skewton, graciously.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Carker&mdash;' began Mr Dombey. But their recognition of each other was
      so manifest, that Mr Dombey stopped surprised.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am obliged to the gentleman,' said Edith, with a stately bend, 'for
      sparing me some annoyance from an importunate beggar just now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith designed no revision of this extraordinary quotation from the Koran,
      but Mr Dombey felt it necessary to offer a few polite remarks.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this, the Major gave his arm to Edith; Mr Dombey led the way with Mrs
      Skewton; Mrs Carker went last, smiling on the party.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am quite rejoiced, Mr Carker,' said the lady-mother, at breakfast,
      after another approving survey of him through her glass, 'that you have
      timed your visit so happily, as to go with us to-day. It is the most
      enchanting expedition!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any expedition would be enchanting in such society,' returned Carker;
      'but I believe it is, in itself, full of interest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' cried Mrs Skewton, with a faded little scream of rapture, 'the
      Castle is charming!&mdash;associations of the Middle Ages&mdash;and all
      that&mdash;which is so truly exquisite. Don't you dote upon the Middle
      Ages, Mr Carker?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very much, indeed,' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are dreadfully real, Mr Carker,' said Mrs Skewton; 'are we not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pictures at the Castle, quite divine!' said Cleopatra. 'I hope you dote
      upon pictures?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Damme, Sir!' cried Major Bagstock, 'my opinion is, that you're the
      admirable Carker, and can do anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;' Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders,
      deprecating further praise, and said no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey caught the dark eyelash in its descent, and took the opportunity
      of arresting it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been to Warwick often, unfortunately?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Several times.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The visit will be tedious to you, I am afraid.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no; not at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I wish he would, dear angel!&mdash;he
      would make his fifty-second visit next day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mama?' said Edith, with a cold
      smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The scabbard, perhaps,' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly&mdash;a little too fast, it is because it is bright and glowing,
      you know, my dearest love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey having nothing else to say, proposed&mdash;the breakfast being
      now finished, and the Major gorged, like any Boa Constrictor&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;over distant landscape, with its smooth undulations,
      wind-mills, corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks,
      and the spire among the wood&mdash;or upwards in the sunny air, where
      butterflies were sporting round his head, and birds were pouring out their
      songs&mdash;or downward, where the shadows of the branches interlaced, and
      made a trembling carpet on the road&mdash;or onward, where the overhanging
      trees formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened light that steeped
      through leaves&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, we have fallen off deplorably,' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;or
      in the dear old Priests, who were the most warlike of men&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I admire him very much,' said Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest Edith knows I was admiring her!' said Cleopatra, tapping her,
      almost timidly, on the back with her parasol. 'Sweet pet!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for him&mdash;'Here,
      Carker, have the goodness to assist me, will you?' which the smiling
      gentleman always did with pleasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I am afraid I trouble you too much,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'By no means. Where would you wish it taken from?' she answered, turning
      to him with the same enforced attention as before.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey, with another bow, which cracked the starch in his cravat, would
      beg to leave that to the Artist.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would rather you chose for yourself,' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Suppose then,' said Mr Dombey, 'we say from here. It appears a good spot
      for the purpose, or&mdash;Carker, what do you think?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Might I venture to suggest to Mrs Granger,' said Carker, 'that that is an
      interesting&mdash;almost a curious&mdash;point of view?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you like that?' said Edith to Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall be charmed,' said Mr Dombey to Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My pencils are all pointless,' she said, stopping and turning them over.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;especially in trees&mdash;remained&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you satisfied with that, or shall I finish it a little more?' said
      Edith, showing the sketch to Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey begged that it might not be touched; it was perfection.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This might have applied to the sketcher no less than to the sketch; but Mr
      Carker's manner was openness itself&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, my dearest love,' said Mrs Skewton, half an hour after tea, 'Mr
      Dombey is dying to hear you, I know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dombey has life enough left to say so for himself, Mama, I have no
      doubt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall be immensely obliged,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you wish?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Piano?' hesitated Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whatever you please. You have only to choose.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Nevertheless, Mr Carker played so well&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have requested Mrs Granger's permission to call on her to-morrow
      morning&mdash;for a purpose&mdash;and she has appointed twelve o'clock.
      May I hope to have the pleasure of finding you at home, Madam,
      afterwards?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why don't you tell me,' it said sharply, 'that he is coming here
      to-morrow by appointment?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because you know it,' returned Edith, 'Mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean?' returned the angry mother. 'Haven't you from a child&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A child!' said Edith, looking at her, 'when was I a child? What childhood
      did you ever leave to me? I was a woman&mdash;artful, designing,
      mercenary, laying snares for men&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as though
      she would have beaten down herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;an old age of design&mdash;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&mdash;a judgment on you! well
      deserved!&mdash;and tell me what has been my life for ten years since.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You might have been well married,' said her mother, 'twenty times at
      least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;perhaps to bid&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own Mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I had almost said the power, with you at my side, Mother&mdash;and
      have not tempted this man on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This man! You speak,' said her mother, 'as if you hated him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is an attack, I suppose,' returned her mother coldly, 'on poor,
      unfortunate what's-his-name&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0028" id="link2HCH0028"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 28. Alterations
    </h2>
    <p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>
      o the day has come at length, Susan,' said Florence to the excellent
      Nipper, 'when we are going back to our quiet home!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;three times, I
      think, Susan?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Three times, Miss,' returned the Nipper. 'Once when you was out a walking
      with them Sket&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself.
    </p>
    <p>
      'With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, Miss, and the young
      gentleman. And two evenings since then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be sure,' said Florence, still thoughtfully; 'you are not likely to
      have known who came to the house. I quite forgot.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs
      Richards, emphasised 'Pitcher' strongly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Susan,' she said, when that young lady had concluded. 'He is in
      Papa's confidence, and is his friend, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a right on his part to
      be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was still unheard
      of&mdash;a kind of mildly restrained power and authority over her&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus, with no one to advise her&mdash;for she could advise with no one
      without seeming to complain against him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How are you, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from the lawn,
      while the artful Chicken steered close in shore.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How de do, Sir Barnet?' Mr Toots would answer, 'What a surprising thing
      that I should see you here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never was so surprised!' Mr Toots would exclaim.&mdash;'Is Miss Dombey
      there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey,' Toots would cry. 'I called to
      ask this morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you very much!' the pleasant voice of Florence would reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't you come ashore, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say then. 'Come! you're
      in no hurry. Come and see us.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very kind,' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am very much obliged to you,' said Florence, hesitating. 'I really am&mdash;but
      I would rather not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, it's of no consequence,' retorted Mr Toots. 'Good morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't you wait and see Lady Skettles?' asked Florence, kindly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, thank you,' returned Mr Toots, 'it's of no consequence at all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are losing, today, Toots,' said Sir Barnet, turning towards Florence,
      'the light of our house, I assure you'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, it's of no conseq&mdash;I mean yes, to be sure,' faltered the
      embarrassed Mr Toots. 'Good morning!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll be glad to go through the old rooms, won't you, Susan?' said
      Florence, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was thus engaged, when an exclamation from Susan caused her to turn
      quickly round.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Gracious me!' cried Susan, breathless, 'where's our house!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our house!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is nothing the matter?' inquired Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no, Miss.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There are great alterations going on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Miss, great alterations,' said Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'At home! and wishing to speak to me!' cried Florence, trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her father might have heard that heart beat, when it came into his
      presence. One instant, and it would have beat against his breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;at
      which one of the ladies gave a little scream, and that diverted her
      attention from herself&mdash;she would have swooned upon the floor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence,' said her father, putting out his hand: so stiffly that it held
      her off: 'how do you do?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0377m.jpg" alt="0377m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0377.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What dog is that?' said Mr Dombey, displeased.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a dog, Papa&mdash;from Brighton.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mr Dombey; and a cloud passed over his face, for he
      understood her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Skewton,' said her father, turning to the first, and holding out his
      hand, 'this is my daughter Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Charming, I am sure,' observed the lady, putting up her glass. 'So
      natural! My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady, by whom her father
      stood waiting.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith,' said Mr Dombey, 'this is my daughter Florence. Florence, this
      lady will soon be your Mama.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall we go on through the rooms,' said Mr Dombey, 'and see how our
      workmen are doing? Pray allow me, my dear madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;from her own copious storehouse, no doubt&mdash;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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let us ask Edith. Dear me, where is she?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, my dear!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'where are you? Looking for Mr Dombey
      somewhere, I know. We are here, my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence,' said the lady, hurriedly, and looking into her face with great
      earnestness. 'You will not begin by hating me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By hating you, Mama?' cried Florence, winding her arm round her neck, and
      returning the look.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again she pressed her to her breast she had spoken in a rapid manner, but
      firmly&mdash;and Florence saw her rejoin them in the other room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0029" id="link2HCH0029"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 29. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>iss 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,&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox endued herself with a pair of ancient gloves, like dead leaves,
      in which she was accustomed to perform these avocations&mdash;hidden from
      human sight at other times in a table drawer&mdash;and went methodically
      to work; beginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a natural association
      of ideas, to her bird&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;and how they nod!&mdash;the rolling world stands still!
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought of her good Papa
      deceased&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;sister
      to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail&mdash;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&mdash;which seemed likely.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      A flush&mdash;it was warm weather&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is my sweetest friend!' exclaimed Miss Tox, with open arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chick was labouring under a peculiar little monosyllabic cough; a sort
      of primer, or easy introduction to the art of coughing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You call very early, and how kind that is, my dear!' pursued Miss Tox.
      'Now, have you breakfasted?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Lucretia,' said Mrs Chick, 'I have. I took an early breakfast'&mdash;the
      good lady seemed curious on the subject of Princess's Place, and looked
      all round it as she spoke&mdash;'with my brother, who has come home.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is better, I trust, my love,' faltered Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is greatly better, thank you. Hem!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough' remarked Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's nothing,' returned Mrs Chic 'It's merely change of weather. We must
      expect change.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of weather?' asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My Louisa,' said the mild Miss Tox, 'is ever happy in her illustrations.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure of it,' returned Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me, my dear Louisa,' said Miss Tox, 'but have I caught sight of
      the manly form of Mr Chick in the carriage?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My Louisa knows,' observed Miss Tox, 'that between friends like
      ourselves, any approach to ceremony would be out of the question.
      Therefore&mdash;' 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox assented, without being particular as to the intelligibility of
      the proposition.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;for what am I&mdash;I am of no consequence&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest love,' remonstrated Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chick dried her eyes, which were, for the moment, overflowing; and
      proceeded:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sweet Louisa,' remonstrated Miss Tox again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean, Lucretia?' returned Mrs Chick, with increased
      stateliness of manner. 'To what remark of mine, my dear, do you refer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Her being worthy of her name, my love,' replied Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;confidently
      hope&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed!' returned Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mrs Chick shortly and decisively.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me, my dear,' rejoined her meek friend; 'but I cannot have
      understood it. I fear I am dull.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If my brother Paul had consulted with me, which he sometimes does&mdash;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&mdash;' 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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;I don't care who'&mdash;she was more
      sharp and emphatic in that short clause than in any other part of her
      discourse&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0387m.jpg" alt="0387m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0387.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'I am foolish to give way to faintness,' Miss Tox faltered. 'I shall be
      better presently.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox directed an imploring, helpless kind of look towards her friend,
      and put her handkerchief before her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! to what do you allude so cruelly, my love?' asked Miss Tox, through
      her tears.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Louisa!' cried Miss Tox. 'How can you speak to me like that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox sobbed pitifully.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pray, Louisa,' urged Miss Tox, 'do not say such dreadful things.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I know it&mdash;that I have encouraged her!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't wish to exchange reproaches, dear Louisa,' sobbed Miss Tox. 'Nor
      do I wish to complain. But, in my own defence&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;and as the sister of my
      brother&mdash;and as the sister-in-law of my brother's wife&mdash;and as a
      connexion by marriage of my brother's wife's mother&mdash;may I be
      permitted to add, as a Dombey?&mdash;I can wish you nothing else but good
      morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To which your eyes have been opened, my dear!' repeated Mr Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter, my dear?' asked Mr Chick
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I never liked it at the time&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;while
      poor excommunicated Miss Tox watered her plants with her tears, and felt
      that it was winter in Princess's Place.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0030" id="link2HCH0030"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 30. The interval before the Marriage
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>lthough 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&mdash;evidently convinced that his enemy had got the
      better of him at last, and was then sacking the premises in triumphant
      defiance&mdash;there was, at first, no other great change in the method of
      Florence's life. At night, when the workpeople went away, the house was
      dreary and deserted again; and Florence, listening to their voices echoing
      through the hall and staircase as they departed, pictured to herself the
      cheerful homes to which the were returning, and the children who were
      waiting for them, and was glad to think that they were merry and well
      pleased to go.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence was, one day, sitting reading in her room, and thinking of the
      lady and her promised visit soon&mdash;for her book turned on a kindred
      subject&mdash;when, raising her eyes, she saw her standing in the doorway.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' cried Florence, joyfully meeting her. 'Come again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not Mama yet,' returned the lady, with a serious smile, as she encircled
      Florence's neck with her arm.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But very soon to be,' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very soon now, Florence: very soon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you been alone, Florence, since I was here last?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes!' smiled Florence, hastily.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;I&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is Di your maid, love?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dog, Mama,' said Florence, laughing. 'Susan is my maid.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If I might change them, Mama,' returned Florence; 'there is one upstairs
      I should like much better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is this not high enough, dear girl?' asked Edith, smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence dropped her eyes, lest the same look should make her falter
      again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very kind to me,' said Florence, 'dear Mama. How much I thank
      you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;what
      I would say is,' she added, checking herself, 'that I know well you are
      best at home, dear Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I will come home on the very day, Mama'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do so. I rely on that promise. Now, prepare to come with me, dear girl.
      You will find me downstairs when you are ready.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Was this the woman whom Florence&mdash;an innocent girl, strong only in
      her earnestness and simple truth&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      The Honourable Mrs Skewton, who was thinking of anything rather than of
      such sentiments&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, my dear,' said Mrs Skewton, 'positively, I&mdash;stand a little
      more in the light, my sweetest Florence, for a moment.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence blushingly complied.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have long forgotten, mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It does, indeed,' was Edith's stern reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her mother eyed her sharply for a moment, and feeling herself on unsafe
      ground, said, as a diversion:
    </p>
    <p>
      'My charming Florence, you must come and kiss me once more, if you please,
      my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence complied, of course, and again imprinted her lips on Mrs
      Skewton's ear.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I knew it would be very soon,' returned Florence, 'but not exactly when.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My darling Edith,' urged her mother, gaily, 'is it possible you have not
      told Florence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why should I tell Florence?' she returned, so suddenly and harshly, that
      Florence could scarcely believe it was the same voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hear him now!' cried Florence, starting. 'He is coming!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Dombey,' said Cleopatra, 'come here and tell me how your pretty
      Florence is.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence is very well,' said Mr Dombey, advancing towards the couch.
    </p>
    <p>
      'At home?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At home,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, confess, my dear Dombey,' said Mrs Skewton, giving him her hand,
      'that you never were more surprised and pleased in your life.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never was more surprised,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor pleased, my dearest Dombey?' returned Mrs Skewton, holding up her
      fan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You wonder how she comes here?' said Mrs Skewton, 'don't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, perhaps&mdash;' suggested Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;very
      well; immediately.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This was addressed to one of the very tall young men who announced dinner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But Edith, my dear Dombey,' she continued in a whisper, 'when she cannot
      have you near her&mdash;and as I tell her, she cannot expect that always&mdash;will
      at least have near her something or somebody belonging to you. Well, how
      extremely natural that is! And in this spirit, nothing would keep her from
      riding off to-day to fetch our darling Florence. Well, how excessively
      charming that is!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she waited for an answer, Mr Dombey answered, 'Eminently so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith sat like a handsome statue; as cold, as silent, and as still.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have nothing to suggest. It shall be when you please,' said Edith,
      scarcely looking over the table at Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To-morrow?' suggested Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or would next day,' said Mr Dombey, 'suit your engagements better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no engagements. I am always at your disposal. Let it be when you
      like.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;still blotted here and there
      with Florence&mdash;always Florence&mdash;turned up so fast, and so
      confusedly, that he rose, and went upstairs to escape them.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the milliner was a
      Frenchwoman, and greatly resembled Mrs Skewton&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for
      Mrs Skewton's head was no better yet, though she expected to recover
      permanently to-morrow&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Dombey,' said Cleopatra, 'you will leave me Florence to-morrow,
      when you deprive me of my sweetest Edith.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey said he would, with pleasure.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey would be delighted to leave Florence in such admirable
      guardianship.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;those horrid prosers!&mdash;to condemn me to
      utter solitude.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do me so great an injustice, my dear madam?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Oh, indeed! it was late, and Mr Dombey feared he must.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey, who was accustomed to take things literally, reminded Mrs
      Skewton that they were to meet first at the church.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return!' repeated her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in no degree diminished by
      the look she met.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ask me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house,' said her
      daughter, 'and you know the answer.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And am I to be told to-night, after all my pains and labour, and when you
      are going, through me, to be rendered independent,' her mother almost
      shrieked in her passion, while her palsied head shook like a leaf, 'that
      there is corruption and contagion in me, and that I am not fit company for
      a girl! What are you, pray? What are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a younger girl than
      Florence&mdash;how different I might have been!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Between us, mother,' returned Edith, mournfully, 'the time for mutual
      reproaches is past.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you had proposed it in a filial manner, Edith,' whined her mother,
      'perhaps not; very likely not. But such extremely cutting words&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      At length it happened that she touched the open door which led into the
      room where Florence lay.
    </p>
    <p>
      She started, stopped, and looked in.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thus Edith Granger passed the night before her bridal. Thus the sun found
      her on her bridal morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0031" id="link2HCH0031"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 31. The Wedding
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>awn 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a mighty dry old lady,
      sparely dressed, with not an inch of fulness anywhere about her&mdash;is
      also here, and has been waiting at the church-gate half-an-hour, as her
      place is, for the beadle.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;an expression that seems somewhat forcible to Mrs Miff, or
      would, from any lips but those of Mr Sownds the Beadle.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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;&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey!' says the Major, putting out both hands, 'how are you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major,' says Mr Dombey, 'how are You?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By Jove, Sir,' says the Major, 'Joey B. is in such case this morning,
      Sir,'&mdash;and here he hits himself hard upon the breast&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to Edith Granger, Sir,' pursues the Major, 'there is not a woman in
      all Europe but might&mdash;and would, Sir, you will allow Bagstock to add&mdash;and
      would&mdash;give her ears, and her earrings, too, to be in Edith Granger's
      place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are good enough to say so, Major,' says Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, really, Major&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a blunt old Joseph B., Sir&mdash;in
      speaking out; or am I to take open order, Dombey, and to keep my distance,
      and to stand on forms?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Major Bagstock,' says Mr Dombey, with a gratified air, 'you are
      quite warm.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Major,' says Mr Dombey, 'I assure you that I am really obliged to you. I
      had no idea of checking your too partial friendship.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not too partial, Sir!' exclaims the choleric Major. 'Dombey, I deny it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The very day is auspicious,' says Mr Carker. 'The brightest and most
      genial weather! I hope I am not a moment late?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Punctual to your time, Sir,' says the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;this
      to Mr Dombey&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey, that is to be,' returns Mr Dombey, condescendingly, 'will be
      very sensible of your attention, Carker, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Dombey,' said the good Mama, 'I fear I must relinquish darling
      Florence after all, and suffer her to go home, as she herself proposed.
      After my loss of to-day, my dear Dombey, I feel I shall not have spirits,
      even for her society.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Had she not better stay with you?' returns the Bridegroom.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The affectionate Mama presses her daughter's arm, as she says this;
      perhaps entreating her attention earnestly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;she fully
      understands.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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;&mdash;which is it that appears
      to leave the wall, and printing itself in glowing letters, on her book!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cousin Feenix does that. He has come from Baden-Baden on purpose.
      'Confound it,' Cousin Feenix says&mdash;good-natured creature, Cousin
      Feenix&mdash;'when we do get a rich City fellow into the family, let us
      show him some attention; let us do something for him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to wit, a brides&mdash;maid of some
      condition, distantly connected with the family, and ten years Mrs
      Skewton's junior &mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And will they in the sight of heaven&mdash;?
    </p>
    <p>
      Ay, that they will: Mr Dombey says he will. And what says Edith? She will.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;to look at Mrs Miff, at such a season, is
      to make her mortified bonnet go down with a dip&mdash;'writes their names
      like this good lady!' Mr Sownds the Beadle thinks it is a truly spanking
      signature, and worthy of the writer&mdash;this, however, between himself
      and conscience.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If wishes,' says he in a low voice, 'are not superfluous, applied to such
      a union.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank you, Sir,' she answers, with a curled lip, and a heaving bosom.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0413m.jpg" alt="0413m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0413.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in fact a toast.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A&mdash;in fact it's not a&mdash;' Cousin Feenix beginning again, thus,
      comes to a dead stop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hear, hear!' says the Major, in a tone of conviction.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in fact, was laid
      up for a fortnight with the consciousness of failure&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'And in point of fact, when I was devilish ill&mdash;still, you know, I
      feel that a duty devolves upon me. And when a duty devolves upon an
      Englishman, he is bound to get out of it, in my opinion, in the best way
      he can. Well! our family has had the gratification, to-day, of connecting
      itself, in the person of my lovely and accomplished relative, whom I now
      see&mdash;in point of fact, present&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here there is general applause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Present,' repeats Cousin Feenix, feeling that it is a neat point which
      will bear repetition,&mdash;'with one who&mdash;that is to say, with a
      man, at whom the finger of scorn can never&mdash;in fact, with my
      honourable friend Dombey, if he will allow me to call him so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to be in&mdash;in point
      of fact,' says Cousin Feenix, cherishing his joke, with great slyness, and
      finally bringing it out with a jerk, "'in another place!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Major falls into convulsions, and is recovered with difficulty.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a
      merchant&mdash;a British merchant&mdash;and a&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Many smiles and nods from Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The very words that Mr Carker rides into town repeating, with his mouth
      stretched to the utmost, as he picks his dainty way.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0032" id="link2HCH0032"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>onest 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Took, Captain!' interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What am I to stand off and on of, Captain?' inquired Rob. 'The
      horse-road?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;d'ye understand that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Captain,' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good my lad, then,' said the Captain, relenting. 'Do it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though
      these, connected with the lady he had seen at church, were awful to him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;hardly
      any&mdash;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;&mdash;here the Captain
      transferred his sleeve for a moment from the Midshipman's uniform to his
      own cheek;&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's that?' said Captain Cuttle, softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Somebody's knuckles, Captain,' answered Rob the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;Mister
      Toots.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain, with responsive gravity and mystery, immediately waved his
      hook towards the little parlour, whither Mr Toots followed him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Chicken?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The Game Chicken,' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because he's outside: that's all,' said Mr Toots. 'But it's of no
      consequence; he won't get very wet, perhaps.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can pass the word for him in a moment,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0425m.jpg" alt="0425m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0425.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>

    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sit down, Chicken,' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Gills&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Awast!' said the Captain. 'My name's Cuttle.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the Captain proceeded gravely.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is my nation, this here is my
      dwelling-place, and blessed be creation&mdash;Job,' said the Captain, as
      an index to his authority.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I couldn't see Mr Gills, could I?' said Mr Toots; 'because&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;with your own eyes&mdash;as you sit there&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, good Gracious, Miss Dombey don't know&mdash;' Mr Toots began.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;what's the
      good of saying so? you know her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should hope so,' chuckled Mr Toots, with a conscious blush that
      suffused his whole countenance.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you come here from her?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should think so,' chuckled Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then all I need observe, is,' said the Captain, 'that you know a angel,
      and are chartered a angel.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots instantly seized the Captain's hand, and requested the favour of
      his friendship.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;admirable in his way&mdash;the sharpest man perhaps in the
      world; there's not a move he isn't up to, everybody says so&mdash;but I
      don't know&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why the fact is,' replied Mr Toots, 'that it's the young woman I come
      from. Not Miss Dombey&mdash;Susan, you know.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain nodded his head once, with a grave expression of face
      indicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;why I call.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nat'rally,' observed the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'As I was coming out,' said Mr Toots, 'the young woman, in the most
      unexpected manner, took me into the pantry.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;wait a minute; what was
      it she said, though!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr Toots's hand, and breathed
      short and hurriedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I read the passage to you?' inquired Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows,
      from the Shipping Intelligence:
    </p>
    <p>
      '"Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in
      this port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that
      being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in"&mdash;in
      such and such a latitude, you know,' said Mr Toots, after making a feeble
      dash at the figures, and tumbling over them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!' cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. 'Heave
      ahead, my lad!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;latitude,' repeated Mr Toots, with a startled glance at the
      Captain, 'and longitude so-and-so,&mdash;"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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'I ain't got none&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots sat silent: folding and refolding the newspaper as small as
      possible upon his knee.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Drawing a heavy sigh, the Captain turned to Mr Toots, and roused himself
      to a sustained consciousness of that gentleman's presence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I mean Mr Cuttle?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Were they though!' said Mr Toots, with a considerably lengthened face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They were made for one another,' said the Captain, mournfully; 'but what
      signifies that now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I positively
      adore Miss Dombey;&mdash;I&mdash;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&mdash;or&mdash;or
      trampled upon&mdash;or&mdash;or thrown off a very high place-or anything
      of that sort&mdash;for Miss Dombey's sake, it would be the most delightful
      thing that could happen to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Captain Cuttle,' said Mr Carker, taking up his usual position
      before the fireplace, and keeping on his hat, 'this is a bad business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have received the news as was in print yesterday, Sir?' said the
      Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker pared his nails delicately with a penknife, and smiled at the
      Captain, who was standing by the door looking at him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anything I can do for you, Captain Cuttle?' he asked looking off
      it, with a smiling and expressive glance at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wish you could set my mind at rest, Sir, on something it's uneasy
      about,' returned the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay!' exclaimed the Manager, 'what's that? Come, Captain Cuttle, I must
      trouble you to be quick, if you please. I am much engaged.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lookee here, Sir,' said the Captain, advancing a step. 'Afore my friend
      Wal'r went on this here disastrous voyage&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;are you? Fie, Captain!
      Sleep, and soda-water, are the best cures for such uneasiness as that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My lad,' returned the Captain, slowly&mdash;'you are a'most a lad to me,
      and so I don't ask your pardon for that slip of a word,&mdash;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.&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;for which, as a scholar, you'll overhaul the book
      it's in, and thereof make a note&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Cuttle,' returned the Manager, with all possible politeness, 'I
      must ask you to do me a favour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what is it, Sir?' inquired the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To have the goodness to walk off, if you please,' rejoined the Manager,
      stretching forth his arm, 'and to carry your jargon somewhere else.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain was absolutely rooted to the ground, and speechless&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;neither
      you nor your absent friend, Captain. What have you done with your absent
      friend, hey?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again the Captain laid his hand upon his chest. After drawing another deep
      breath, he conjured himself to 'stand by!' But in a whisper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'special, mind you, that
      is&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When Rob had turned in, and was fast asleep, the Captain trimmed the
      candle, put on his spectacles&mdash;he had felt it appropriate to take to
      spectacles on entering into the Instrument Trade, though his eyes were
      like a hawk's&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0033" id="link2HCH0033"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 33. Contrasts
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>urn 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;fantastic chessmen, dice, backgammon, cards, and billiards.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;mere shows of form and colour&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A most extraordinary accidental likeness, certainly,' says he.
    </p>
    <p>
      Perhaps it is a Juno; perhaps a Potiphar's Wife'; perhaps some scornful
      Nymph&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is like Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a passing gesture of his hand at the picture&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;this second home is to be found.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is early, John,' she said. 'Why do you go so early?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not many minutes earlier than usual, Harriet. If I have the time to
      spare, I should like, I think&mdash;it's a fancy&mdash;to walk once by the
      house where I took leave of him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wish I had ever seen or known him, John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is better as it is, my dear, remembering his fate.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest sister! Is there anything within the range of rejoicing or
      regret, in which I am not sure of your companionship?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope you think not, John, for surely there is nothing!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She drew the hand which had been resting on his shoulder, round his neck,
      and answered, with some hesitation:
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, not quite.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'True, true!' he said; 'you think I might have done him no harm if I had
      allowed myself to know him better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Think! I know it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not,' she said quietly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though serene and calm as any radiant cloud
      at sunset&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as once or twice he
      did&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her pensive form was not long idle at the door. There was daily duty to
      discharge, and daily work to do&mdash;for such commonplace spirits that
      are not heroic, often work hard with their hands&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are come again, Sir!' she said, faltering.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I take that liberty,' he answered. 'May I ask for five minutes of your
      leisure?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was somewhat confused and agitated, and could make no ready answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is the mirror of truth,' said her visitor, 'and gentleness. Excuse my
      trusting to it, and returning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For yourself,' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But&mdash;pardon me&mdash;' suggested the gentleman. 'For your brother
      John?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Proud of his love, I am,' said Harriet, looking full upon her visitor,
      and changing her manner on the instant&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Merely to make my way into your confidence,' interposed the gentleman.
      'For heaven's sake, don't suppose&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure,' she said, 'you revived it, in my hearing, with a kind and
      good purpose. I am quite sure of it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;when I could not be&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your brother is an altered man,' returned the gentleman, compassionately.
      'I assure you I don't doubt it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;they're a metaphysical sort of thing. We&mdash;we
      haven't leisure for it. We&mdash;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&mdash;&mdash;d business-like,' said the gentleman, walking to the
      window, and back, and sitting down again, in a state of extreme
      dissatisfaction and vexation.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      The gentleman got up and walked to the window again and back: seriously
      uneasy, though giving his uneasiness this peculiar expression.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' she answered with a smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are contented, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;any fragment
      of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgotten reparation&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If the day should ever come,' said Harriet, 'when he is restored, in
      part, to the position he lost&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You touch upon a subject that is never breathed between us; not even
      between us,' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;as I am not sure that I have a right to do so&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What are they?' she inquired.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Our choice of friends,' she answered, smiling faintly, 'is not so great,
      that I need any time for consideration. I can promise that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The second, that you will allow me sometimes, say every Monday morning,
      at nine o'clock&mdash;habit again&mdash;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&mdash;an elderly friend, grey-haired already,
      and fast growing greyer&mdash;whom you may ever command.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The cordial face looked up in his; confided in it; and promised.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;habit again!' said the
      gentleman, checking himself impatiently, 'as if there were no better
      course than the ordinary course!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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,&mdash;they
      passed on to the monster, roaring in the distance, and were lost.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;dust, chalk, clay, gravel&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Thinking of this, she did not turn away with a delicate indignation&mdash;too
      many of her own compassionate and tender sex too often do&mdash;but pitied
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and uncertain
      aspect of a stranger. Though her tread was bold and courageous, she was
      fatigued, and after a moment of irresolution,&mdash;sat down upon a heap
      of stones; seeking no shelter from the rain, but letting it rain on her as
      it would.
    </p>
    <p>
      She was now opposite the house; raising her head after resting it for a
      moment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you rest in the rain?' said Harriet, gently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I have no other resting-place,' was the reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet uttering an expression of pity, the traveller looked up with a
      contemptuous and incredulous smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come in and wash it,' answered Harriet, mildly, 'and let me give you
      something to bind it up.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I daresay you are thinking,' she said, lifting her head suddenly, 'that I
      used to be handsome, once. I believe I was&mdash;I know I was&mdash;Look
      here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you a stranger in this place?' asked Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you been far?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Heaven help you and forgive you!' was the gentle answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too late to
      amend,' said Harriet. 'You are penitent?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and turned to move
      away.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where are you going?' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yonder,' she answered, pointing with her hand. 'To London.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you any home to go to?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I have a mother. She's as much a mother, as her dwelling is a
      home,' she answered with a bitter laugh.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you married?' said the other, faintly, as she took it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I would
      give you more.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you let me kiss you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0034" id="link2HCH0034"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 34. Another Mother and Daughter
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for there was no stove&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who's that?' she said, looking over her shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman's voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'News? Where from?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'From abroad.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'From beyond seas?' cried the old woman, starting up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, from beyond seas.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter?' asked her visitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oho! Oho!' cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with a terrible
      howl.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter?' asked the visitor again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They've not been the death of her yet, if your name's Marwood,' said the
      visitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you seen my gal, then?' cried the old woman. 'Has she wrote to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She said you couldn't read,' returned the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more I can!' exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you no light here?' said the other, looking round the room.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look,' returned the visitor.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alice said look again, mother;' and the speaker fixed her eyes upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It ain't that!' cried the mother. 'She knows it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hear that!' exclaimed the mother. 'After all these years she threatens to
      desert me in the moment of her coming back again!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harder to me! To her own dear mother!' cried the old woman
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I!' cried the old woman. 'To my gal! A mother dutiful to her own child!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to
      pass away the time&mdash;whether no one ever owed any duty to me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nobody!' echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'After all these years!' whined the old woman. 'My gal begins with this.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'She'll soon have ended,' said the daughter. 'There was a criminal called
      Alice Marwood&mdash;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&mdash;as if he didn't know better
      than anybody there, that they had been made curses to her!&mdash;and how
      he preached about the strong arm of the Law&mdash;so very strong to save
      her, when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!&mdash;and how
      solemn and religious it all was! I have thought of that, many times since,
      to be sure!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that made
      the howl of the old woman musical.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;or really was,
      perhaps.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;not a girl, now&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are very poor, mother, I see,' said Alice, looking round, when she
      had sat thus for some time.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bitter poor, my deary,' replied the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How have you lived?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By begging, my deary.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And pilfering, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sometimes, Ally&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Watched?' returned the daughter, looking at her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have hung about a family, my deary,' said the mother, even more humbly
      and submissively than before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What family?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Years ago, my deary,' she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentive and
      stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, by chance.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whose child?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not his, Alice deary; don't look at me like that; not his. How could it
      be his? You know he has none.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Whose then?' returned the daughter. 'You said his.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's&mdash;only Mr Dombey's.
      Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her clenched
      hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He will thrive in spite of that,' returned the daughter disdainfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, he is thriving,' said the mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he married?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, deary,' said the mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going to be?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The daughter looked at her for an explanation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty,' said the old woman,
      hobbling to the cupboard; 'and there's little here, and little'&mdash;diving
      down into her pocket, and jingling a few half&mdash;pence on the table&mdash;'little
      here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that all?' said the mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;so&mdash;we must make the most of it.
      I'll go buy something to eat and drink.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her
      appearance&mdash;for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as
      ugly&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother?' asked the daughter.
      'You have not told me that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;danger, Alice!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What danger?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What, Ally! Do you kiss it?' chuckled the old woman. 'That's like me&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I kiss it, mother,' said the daughter, 'or I did then&mdash;I don't know
      that I ever did before&mdash;for the giver's sake.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The daughter smiled incredulously.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;for stealing money&mdash;and who lives with his
      sister, over yonder, by the north road out of London.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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;&mdash;to-morrow, deary, if it's fine, and you are in the
      humour. But I'll go spend&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again the old woman nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In which I sat to-day! Give me back the money.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alice! Deary!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is a fit place for me!' said the daughter, stopping to look back. 'I
      thought so, when I was here before, to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alice, my deary,' cried the mother, pulling her gently by the skirt.
      'Alice!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What now, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'See there!' was all the daughter's answer. 'That is the house I mean. Is
      that it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was surprised to see such visitors at such an hour, and asked Alice
      what she wanted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I want your sister,' she said. 'The woman who gave me money to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet came out.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' she answered, wondering.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean? What have I done?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      As she said the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, and
      spurned it with her foot.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tread it in the dust: I wouldn't take it if it paved my way to Heaven!
      I would the bleeding foot that brought me here to-day, had rotted off,
      before it led me to your house!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her to
      go on uninterrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      Say, Edith Dombey! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have your
      testimony!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0035" id="link2HCH0035"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 35. The Happy Pair
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;for this young man has a
      general impression that every foreigner is a Frenchman, and must be by the
      laws of nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for they always speak softly when they speak of her&mdash;how
      beautiful Miss Florence looks to-night, and what a sweet young lady she
      has grown, poor dear! A pause succeeds; and then Cook, feeling, as
      president, that her sentiments are waited for, wonders whether&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Florence?' said Mr Dombey, putting out his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will not be long dressing, Mrs Dombey, I presume?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall be ready immediately.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an hour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how, my dearest Dombey, did you find that delightfullest of cities,
      Paris?' she asked, subduing her emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was cold,' returned Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gay as ever,' said Mrs Skewton, 'of course.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not particularly. I thought it dull,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Fie, my dearest Dombey!' archly; 'dull!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, you naughty girl!' cried Mrs Skewton, rallying her dear child, who
      now entered, 'what dreadfully heretical things have you been saying about
      Paris?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what can it not do, dear Dombey?' observed Cleopatra.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is powerful, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked in his solemn way towards his wife, but not a word said she.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope, Mrs Dombey,' addressing her after a moment's silence, with
      especial distinctness; 'that these alterations meet with your approval?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They are as handsome as they can be,' she returned, with haughty
      carelessness. 'They should be so, of course. And I suppose they are.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon. Shall I go away, Papa?' said Florence faintly,
      hesitating at the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work:
      finding herself for the first time in her life&mdash;for the very first
      time within her memory from her infancy to that hour&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 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&mdash;upon her white brow
      and her falling hair, and busy hands; and once attracted, seemed to have
      no power to turn his eyes away!
    </p>
    <p>
      And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolong
      the attentive gaze covertly directed on his unknown daughter? Was there
      reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes? Had he begun to her
      disregarded claims and did they touch him home at last, and waken him to
      some sense of his cruel injustice?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;had had a household spirit
      bending at has feet&mdash;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&mdash;monstrous thought&mdash;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&mdash;but slowly and with difficulty, they
      were so very strange&mdash;when they were checked and stifled by a
      footstep on the stair.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence, dear,' she said, 'I have been looking for you everywhere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and he knew
      that face and manner very well.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more tenderly
      and gently to her breast, than she did Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes,' hesitated
      Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith, looking full upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You a great sorrow, Florence!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Poor Walter is drowned.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But tell me, dear,' said Edith, soothing her. 'Who was Walter? What was
      he to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was my brother, Mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would be
      brother and sister. I had known him a long time&mdash;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&mdash;in this room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And did he take care of Walter?' inquired Edith, sternly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa? He appointed him to go abroad. He was drowned in shipwreck on his
      voyage,' said Florence, sobbing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does he know that he is dead?' asked Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn from
      me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not learn from you?' repeated Florence, in surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her
      hand, and went on.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I know it
      and I say it, dear,&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know it, dear Mama!' cried Florence. 'From that first most happy day I
      have known it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have seen what you say, and know how true it is. But believe me&mdash;you
      will soon, if you cannot now&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;she knew not what, or why&mdash;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&mdash;what!&mdash;another
      Edith lying at the bottom.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      So passed the night on which the happy pair came home.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0036" id="link2HCH0036"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 36. Housewarming
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>any 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&mdash;Florence
      could not but observe that&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;resolved to think would be the truer phrase&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy up
      anything&mdash;human Nature generally, if he should take it in his head to
      influence the money market in that direction&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked astonishingly young. But he
      was sometimes thoughtless in his good humour&mdash;his memory occasionally
      wandering like his legs&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;little Jack&mdash;man with a cast in
      his eye, and slight impediment in his speech&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'always wore
      Hessian boots!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly,' said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man, and
      smile encouragement at him down the table. 'That was Jack. Joe wore&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tops!' cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course,' said Cousin Feenix, 'you were intimate with em?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I knew them both,' said the mild man. With whom Mr Dombey immediately
      took wine.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Devilish good fellow, Jack!' said Cousin Feenix, again bending forward,
      and smiling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Excellent,' returned the mild man, becoming bold on his success. 'One of
      the best fellows I ever knew.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No doubt you have heard the story?' said Cousin Feenix.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;which
      I think took place in Berkshire?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shropshire,' said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.&mdash;Goes&mdash;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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;ice&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0475m.jpg" alt="0475m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0475.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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&mdash;watchful of her, of
      them, his chief, Cleopatra and the Major, Florence, and everything around&mdash;appeared
      at ease with both divisions of guests, and not marked as exclusively
      belonging to either.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;not unadmired or unsought, but in the
      gentleness of her quiet spirit&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;if the old
      dulness and decay had never been replaced by novelty and splendour,&mdash;if
      the neglected child had found no friend in Edith, but had lived her
      solitary life, unpitied and forgotten.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does it at all appear as if I was wanted here?' exclaimed Mrs Chick, with
      flashing eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my dear, I don't think it does,' said Mr Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Paul's mad!' said Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chick whistled.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My Lucretia Tox, my dear!' said Mr Chick, astounded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' retorted Mrs Chick, with great severity, 'your Lucretia Tox&mdash;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&mdash;' on which
      word Mrs Chick laid a scornful emphasis that made Mr Chick start, 'is, I
      thank Heaven, a mystery to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Chick screwed his mouth into a form irreconcilable with humming or
      whistling, and looked very contemplative.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I trust,' he said, 'that the fatigues of this delightful evening will not
      inconvenience Mrs Dombey to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked at him with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth her
      while to protract, and turned away her eyes without speaking.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'that you should not have thought it
      your duty&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked at him again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your duty, Madam,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to have received my friends with a
      little more deference. Some of those whom you have been pleased to slight
      to-night in a very marked manner, Mrs Dombey, confer a distinction upon
      you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know that there is someone here?' she returned, now looking at him
      steadily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I ask you,' she repeated, bending her disdainful, steady gaze upon him,
      'do you know that there is someone here, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must entreat,' said Mr Carker, stepping forward, 'I must beg, I must
      demand, to be released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Skewton, who had been intent upon her daughter's face, took him up
      here.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My sweetest Edith,' she said, 'and my dearest Dombey; our excellent
      friend Mr Carker, for so I am sure I ought to mention him&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker murmured, 'Too much honour.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;No, Flowers; not now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Flowers was the maid, who, finding gentlemen present, retreated with
      precipitation.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;this trifling occasion, that is so replete with
      Nature, and your individual characters, and all that&mdash;so truly
      calculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes&mdash;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&mdash;not Cupid, but the other
      delightful creature.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the ineffable disdain and haughtiness in
      which she sat before him&mdash;the cold inflexible resolve with which her
      every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by&mdash;these, he had
      no resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty
      concentrated on despising him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0037" id="link2HCH0037"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 37. More Warnings than One
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>lorence, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think I am a little nervous this morning, Flowers,' said Mrs Skewton.
      'My hand quite shakes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You were the life of the party last night, Ma'am, you know,' returned
      Flowers, 'and you suffer for it, to-day, you see.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Card, Ma'am,' said Withers, taking it towards Mrs Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am going out,' she said without looking at it.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Ma'am, Mr Carker sends his respectful compliments, and
      begs you would spare him one minute, if you could&mdash;for business,
      Ma'am, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I&mdash;shall I go away?' asked Florence, hurriedly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;hoped she was quite well&mdash;needed not to
      ask, with such looks to anticipate the answer&mdash;had scarcely had the
      honour to know her, last night, she was so greatly changed&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and submissively as he stood
      before her, with an entreating injured manner, but with complete
      submission to her will&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have presumed,' said Mr Carker, 'to solicit an interview, and I have
      ventured to describe it as being one of business, because&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps you are charged by Mr Dombey with some message of reproof,' said
      Edit 'You possess Mr Dombey's confidence in such an unusual degree, Sir,
      that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a mere dependant of Mr
      Dombey's&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'For I do,' said Mr Carker, appealing to Mrs Skewton with a look of
      grateful deference,&mdash;'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&mdash;between
      those who love each other with disinterested devotion, and would make any
      sacrifice of self in such a cause&mdash;is nothing. As Mrs Skewton herself
      expressed, with so much truth and feeling last night, it is nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And your business, Sir&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, my pet,' said Mrs Skewton, 'all this time Mr Carker is standing!
      My dear Mr Carker, take a seat, I beg.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I be allowed, Madam,' said Carker, turning his white teeth on Mrs
      Skewton like a light&mdash;'a lady of your excellent sense and quick
      feeling will give me credit, for good reason, I am sure&mdash;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&mdash;next to Mr Dombey?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'Miss Florence&mdash;the young
      lady who has just left the room&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;by her father. May I say
      by her father?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith replied, 'I know it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;character
      I mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may pass that by, Sir,' she returned, 'and come the sooner to the end
      of what you have to say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, I am sensible, Madam,' replied Carker,&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Florence,' said Carker, 'left to the care&mdash;if one may call it
      care&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I believe that nobody knows them so well as
      I. Your generous and ardent nature, Madam&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I
      presume to say&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She raised her eyes no higher than his mouth, but she saw the means of
      mischief vaunted in every tooth it contained.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This interest, Madam&mdash;so touching an evidence of everything
      associated with Mr Dombey being dear to you&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You say that as I describe them, they are perverted. I fear not&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Even so slight an incident as last night's,' he said, 'if I might refer
      to it once more, would serve to illustrate my meaning, better than a
      greater one. Dombey and Son know neither time, nor place, nor season, but
      bear them all down. But I rejoice in its occurrence, for it has opened the
      way for me to approach Mrs Dombey with this subject to-day, even if it has
      entailed upon me the penalty of her temporary displeasure. Madam, in the
      midst of my uneasiness and apprehension on this subject, I was summoned by
      Mr Dombey to Leamington. There I saw you. There I could not help knowing
      what relation you would shortly occupy towards him&mdash;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&mdash;as in such a marriage&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He long remembered the look she gave him&mdash;who could see it, and
      forget it?&mdash;and the struggle that ensued within her. At last she
      said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I accept it, Sir You will please to consider this matter at an end, and
      that it goes no farther.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Ma'am, I beg your pardon, but I can't do nothing with
      Missis!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean?' asked Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Ma'am,' replied the frightened maid, 'I hardly know. She's making
      faces!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
              'Rose-coloured curtains.'
</pre>
    <p>
      The maid being perfectly transfixed, and with tolerable reason, Cleopatra
      amended the manuscript by adding two words more, when it stood thus:
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
              'Rose-coloured curtains for doctors.'
</pre>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is Mrs Dombey?' she would say to her maid.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gone out, Ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gone out! Does she go out to shun her Mama, Flowers?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'La bless you, no, Ma'am. Mrs Dombey has only gone out for a ride with
      Miss Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Florence. Who's Miss Florence? Don't tell me about Miss Florence.
      What's Miss Florence to her, compared to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, I am sure, Edith!' she would cry, shaking her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is the matter, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;or anything of that sort&mdash;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&mdash;and all that kind of
      thing&mdash;and then perhaps I should be more considered.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What would you have, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, a great deal, Edith,' impatiently.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anything you want that you have not? It is your own fault if
      there be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;not
      a twentieth part of the affection that you have for Florence&mdash;but I
      am only your mother, and should corrupt her in a day!&mdash;you reproach
      me with its being my own fault.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why will you always dwell on
      this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not mean to wound you, mother. Have you no remembrance of what has
      been said between us? Let the Past rest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Hush!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, I know it, mother; well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As you would have had with that delightful good soul&mdash;what did they
      call him?&mdash;Granger&mdash;if he hadn't died. And who have you to thank
      for all this, Edith?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You, mother; you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The rose-coloured curtains blushed, in course of time, on Cleopatra's
      bodily recovery, and on her dress&mdash;more juvenile than ever, to repair
      the ravages of illness&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But they never blushed upon a change in the new manner of her thought and
      speech towards her daughter. And though that daughter often came within
      their influence, they never blushed upon her loveliness irradiated by a
      smile, or softened by the light of filial love, in its stem beauty.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0038" id="link2HCH0038"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by her friend Louisa Chick, and bereft of
      Mr Dombey's countenance&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Mr Toodle
      was never out of children, but always kept a good supply on hand&mdash;'you
      ain't seen our Biler lately, have you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' replied Polly, 'but he's almost certain to look in tonight. It's his
      right evening, and he's very regular.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! he's a doing beautiful!' responded Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He ain't got to be at all secret-like&mdash;has he, Polly?' inquired Mr
      Toodle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' said Mrs Toodle, plumply.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, of course it don't, father. How can you ask!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The rising Toodles set up a shrill murmur, expressive of their resolution
      to profit by the paternal advice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what makes you say this along of Rob, father?' asked his wife,
      anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, mother!' said Rob, dutifully kissing her; 'how are you, mother?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's my boy!' cried Polly, giving him a hug and a pat on the back.
      'Secret! Bless you, father, not he!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My poor boy!' cried Polly, 'father didn't mean anything.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy?' inquired his father, returning to
      his tea with new strength.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, thank'ee, father. Master and I had tea together.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how is master, Rob?' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That ain't the way to make money, though, is it?' said Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not stop in your place, Rob!' cried his mother; while Mr Toodle opened
      his eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not in that place, p'raps,' returned the Grinder, with a wink. 'I
      shouldn't wonder&mdash;friends at court you know&mdash;but never you mind,
      mother, just now; I'm all right, that's all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How do you do, Mrs Richards?' said Miss Tox. 'I have come to see you. May
      I come in?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The cheery face of Mrs Richards shone with a hospitable reply, and Miss
      Tox, accepting the proffered chair, and grab fully recognising Mr Toodle
      on her way to it, untied her bonnet strings, and said that in the first
      place she must beg the dear children, one and all, to come and kiss her.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0495m.jpg" alt="0495m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0495.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have almost forgotten me, Sir, I daresay,' said Miss Tox to Mr
      Toodle.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Ma'am, no,' said Toodle. 'But we've all on us got a little older
      since then.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how do you find yourself, Sir?' inquired Miss Tox, blandly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hearty, Ma'am, thank'ee,' replied Toodle. 'How do you find yourself,
      Ma'am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma'am? We must all expect
      to grow into 'em, as we gets on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you,' said Miss Tox. 'I have not felt any inconvenience from that
      disorder yet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;' But
      catching his wife's eye here, Mr Toodle judiciously buried the rest in
      another mug of tea.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You never mean to say, Mrs Richards,' cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob,
      'that that is your&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Eldest, Ma'am,' said Polly. 'Yes, indeed, it is. That's the little
      fellow, Ma'am, that was the innocent cause of so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This here, Ma'am,' said Toodle, 'is him with the short legs&mdash;and
      they was,' said Mr Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, 'unusual
      short for leathers&mdash;as Mr Dombey made a Grinder on.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now, Mrs Richards,' said Miss Tox,&mdash;'and you too, Sir,'
      addressing Toodle&mdash;'I'll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have
      come here for. You may be aware, Mrs Richards&mdash;and, possibly, you may
      be aware too, Sir&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toodle, who had not entertained the least doubt of offering a remark
      that would be received with acquiescence, was greatly confounded.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All that I wish to say, Mrs Richards,' resumed Miss Tox,&mdash;'and I
      address myself to you too, Sir,&mdash;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&mdash;earnestly, 'that you will take this, as
      I mean it, like a good-humoured creature, as you always were.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Polly was gratified, and showed it. Mr Toodle didn't know whether he was
      gratified or not, and preserved a stolid calmness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see, Mrs Richards,' said Miss Tox&mdash;'and I hope you see too, Sir&mdash;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&mdash;dear me, they'll learn a great deal, I trust, and be a
      credit to their teacher.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toodle, who had a great respect for learning, jerked his head
      approvingly at his wife, and moistened his hands with dawning
      satisfaction.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee, Mum,' said Mr Toodle. 'Yes; I'll take my bit of backer.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;which Mr Toodle much admired&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;like
      wire. There never was a better or more promising youth&mdash;a more
      affectionate, steady, prudent, sober, honest, meek, candid young man&mdash;than
      Rob drew out, that night.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Ma'am,' returned Rob; 'I'm saving up, against I've got enough to put
      in the Bank, Ma'am.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very laudable indeed,' said Miss Tox. 'I'm glad to hear it. Put this
      half-crown into it, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh thank you, Ma'am,' replied Rob, 'but really I couldn't think of
      depriving you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, Ma'am,' said Rob, 'and thank you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0039" id="link2HCH0039"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>ime, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;so the Captain entered it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see, brother,' argued the Captain slowly, 'I don't know you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I&mdash;I really think I should never leave off wagging my tail.
      I should be so perfectly happy, Captain Gills!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots said it with watery eyes, and pressed his hat against his bosom
      with deep emotion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My lad,' returned the Captain, moved to compassion, 'if you're in arnest&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain pushed his glazed hat back upon his head, stroked his face
      down with his heavy hand&mdash;making his nose more mottled in the process&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, you'll excuse me, Captain Gills,' replied Mr Toots, 'if I don't
      quite follow you sometimes. But upon my word I&mdash;it's a hard thing,
      Captain Gills, not to be able to mention Miss Dombey. I really have got
      such a dreadful load here!'&mdash;Mr Toots pathetically touched his
      shirt-front with both hands&mdash;'that I feel night and day, exactly as
      if somebody was sitting upon me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As to words, Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, 'I think I can bind
      myself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I beg your pardon, Captain, but you mayn't be in want of any pigeons,
      may you, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my lad,' replied the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because I was wishing to dispose of mine, Captain,' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay?' cried the Captain, lifting up his bushy eyebrows a little.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes; I'm going, Captain, if you please,' said Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going? Where are you going?' asked the Captain, looking round at him over
      the glasses.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What? didn't you know that I was going to leave you, Captain?' asked Rob,
      with a sneaking smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain put down the paper, took off his spectacles, and brought his
      eyes to bear on the deserter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you're a going to desert your colours, are you, my lad?' said the
      Captain, after a long examination of his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backing
      carefully towards the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so you've got another berth, have you, my lad?' said the Captain,
      eyeing him intently.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Look ye here, my boy,' replied the peaceful Captain. 'Don't you pay out
      no more of them words.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Because,' pursued the Captain calmly, 'you have heerd, may be, of such a
      thing as a rope's end.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, have I though, Captain?' cried the taunting Grinder. 'No I haven't. I
      never heerd of any such a article!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby, who was one of those sages who act upon conviction, took some days
      to get the conviction thoroughly into his mind, that he had received a
      letter to this effect. But when he had grappled with the fact, and
      mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the message, 'He's a coming
      to-night.' Who being instructed to deliver those words and disappear,
      fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit, charged with a mysterious
      warning.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bunsby,' said the Captain, grasping him by the hand, 'what cheer, my lad,
      what cheer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shipmet,' replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccompanied by any sign on
      the part of the Commander himself, 'hearty, hearty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay?' growled Bunsby.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Every letter,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For why?' growled Bunsby, looking at his friend for the first time.
      'Which way? If so, why not? Therefore.' With these oracular words&mdash;they
      seemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they launched him upon such a sea
      of speculation and conjecture&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a declaration
      that presented but small opening for conversation&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      After a long pause, Mr Bunsby nodded his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Open?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby nodded again.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies"&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Here the Captain stopped, and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedly at
      the coast of Greenland.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;"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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Physicians,' observed Bunsby, 'was in vain.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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:&mdash;'"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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Lord
      forbid!&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;one of those dear children
      holding on to each&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain, who looked anything but daring, feebly muttered 'Stand by!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;Mrs MacStinger
      used the last word for the joint sake of alliteration and aggravation,
      rather than for the expression of any idea&mdash;'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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs MacStinger stopped to fetch her breath; and her face flushed with
      triumph in this second happy introduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0511m.jpg" alt="0511m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0511.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and
      to lose sleep for&mdash;and to faint along of&mdash;and to think dead
      forsooth&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The frightened Captain looked into his hat, as if he saw nothing for it
      but to put it on, and give himself up.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cap'en Cuttle,' repeated Mrs MacStinger, in the same determined manner,
      'I wish to know if you're a-coming home, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain seemed quite ready to go, but faintly suggested something to
      the effect of 'not making so much noise about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, ay,' said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. 'Awast, my lass, awast!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, come, my lass, awast, awast!' said Bunsby.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;he said no more&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain trembled to think that Mrs MacStinger was not to be got rid
      of, and had been brought back in a coach.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cuttle,' said the Commander, getting off the chest, and opening the lid,
      'are these here your traps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Cuttle looked in and identified his property.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet?' said Bunsby.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;supposed
      to be his invariable custom, whenever he considered he had made a point.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as he ventured to do now, in his strange liberty&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0040" id="link2HCH0040"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 40. Domestic Relations
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t 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&mdash;it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself it bears
      within itself&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;or Edith's? Had her attractions been manifested first to
      him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;his own unquestioned
      attribute usurped&mdash;stung him more than any other kind of treatment
      could have done; and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and
      stately will.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey,' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to have a few words
      with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To-morrow,' she replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think,' she answered, 'that I understand you very well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a
      marriage gift&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be some understanding
      arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me, Madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She merely glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but she might
      have spoken for an hour, and expressed less.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Possibly I may think that my wife should partake&mdash;or does partake,
      and cannot help herself&mdash;of both characters, Mrs Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Blind idiot, rushing to a precipice! He thought she stood in awe of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are too expensive, Madam,' said Mr Dombey. 'You are extravagant. You
      waste a great deal of money&mdash;or what would be a great deal in the
      pockets of most gentlemen&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.&mdash;To Me&mdash;To
      Me!' he added, with emphasis.
    </p>
    <p>
      No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and now sat&mdash;still
      looking at him fixedly&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I observed,' said Mr Dombey&mdash;'and this concludes what I deem it
      necessary to say to you at present, Mrs Dombey&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;looking upon him
      with neither yielding nor unyielding, liking nor hatred, pride not
      humility: nothing but a searching gaze?
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is wholly unnecessary, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon such
      discussions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'These questions,' said Mr Dombey, 'are all wide of the purpose, Madam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Possibly not, Madam,' he returned coolly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether he thought
      he could raise ten thousand pounds.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you can believe that I am of such a nature now,'&mdash;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,&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Others! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Although her face was still the same, there was emphatic confirmation of
      this 'Never' in the very breath she drew.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey took a long respiration, as if he would have said, Oh! was this
      all!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' said Mr Dombey, with his utmost dignity, 'I cannot entertain any
      proposal of this extraordinary nature.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked at him yet, without the least change.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall take my rightful course, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred, you
      may be sure, by any general declamation.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before her
      glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correct
      feeling, and better reflection, Madam,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and very
      confident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said just now, Madam,' returned Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously,
      'that I am coming in a day or two.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bless you, Domber!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Begad, Ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Joseph&mdash;your slave&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest Edith&mdash;Grangeby&mdash;it's most trordinry thing,' said
      Cleopatra, pettishly, 'that Major&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bagstock! J. B.!' cried the Major, seeing that she faltered for his name.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, it don't matter,' said Cleopatra. 'Edith, my love, you know I never
      could remember names&mdash;what was it? oh!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared very
      uneasy.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I won't have visitors&mdash;really don't want visitors,' she said;
      'little repose&mdash;and all that sort of thing&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when I
      come back, if you are very good.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am,' said the Major; 'or he'll die
      in despair.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear,' she said. 'Tell
      him&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Such dreadful words,' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I mean to say, Dombey,' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be an
      orphan-in-law.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I fear,' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs Skewton is
      shaken.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Change, however,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;always
      ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention and immovable
      beauty&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0528m.jpg" alt="0528m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0528.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Only this,' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without looking at
      them. 'I sold myself long ago.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;their
      heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude&mdash;Edith
      interposed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have seen you,' addressing the old woman, 'before.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;full of what's-his-name&mdash;and
      all that. You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, yes, my Lady!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but I never remember
      names&mdash;for there never was a better mother than the good old
      creature's been to you. Come, Edith!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0041" id="link2HCH0041"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 41. New Voices in the Waves
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has
      changed to&mdash;have a portion in the burden of the marvellous song.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? For
      shame!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says Mr
      Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence assents, with a grateful smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like to
      walk to Blimber's, I&mdash;I'm going there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Toots,' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots chuckles in reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company,' says Doctor Blimber.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Except Bitherstone,' returns Cornelia.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, truly,' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots.'
    </p>
    <p>
      New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone&mdash;no
      longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, with whom
      every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as
      aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of
      contradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is of
      opinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaging
      insinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to Mr Feeder,
      B.A., 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dine with him
      to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set up as Old
      Parr, if he chose, unquestioned.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;ain't
      she like her brother, only prettier?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon,' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'but if
      you would allow me to&mdash;to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you would allow me to&mdash;if you would not consider it a liberty,
      Miss Dombey, if I was to&mdash;without any encouragement at all, if I was
      to hope, you know,' says Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence looks at him inquiringly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;may think it possible that you&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Certainly, Miss Dombey,' says Mr Toots, 'I&mdash;I&mdash;that's exactly
      what I mean. It's of no consequence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye!' cries Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-bye, Miss Dombey!' stammers Mr Toots. 'I hope you won't think
      anything about it. It's&mdash;it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not
      of the least consequence in the world.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;but how differently!&mdash;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&mdash;for it has terror in the sufferer's failing eyes&mdash;sits
      Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night, to them?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don't you see it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you don't
      see it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were any
      such thing there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her&mdash;'it's gone now&mdash;and why are
      you so unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you
      sitting at my side.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sorry, mother.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go home
      again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, mother, yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what he said&mdash;what's-his-name, I never could remember names&mdash;Major&mdash;that
      dreadful word, when we came away&mdash;it's not true? Edith!' with a
      shriek and a stare, 'it's not that that is the matter with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone arm&mdash;part
      of a figure of some tomb, she says&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;says,
      'For I nursed you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
      sinking head, and answers:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mother, can you hear me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can you recollect the night before I married?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its flight
      besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey replies, 'Very much so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;little
      Billy Joper&mdash;you know him, no doubt&mdash;man with a glass in his
      eye?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey bows a negative. 'In reference to the obsequies,' he hints,
      'whether there is any suggestion&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey is clear that this won't do.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;woman with tight stays&mdash;but
      they've spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perhaps Brighton itself,' Mr Dombey suggests.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when,' hints Mr Dombey, 'would it be convenient?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in point of
      fact, to the grave,' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of
      speech.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0042" id="link2HCH0042"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 42. Confidential and Accidental
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ttired 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob had not informed himself perhaps&mdash;in his then state of mind it
      would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What, scapegrace!' said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have you left
      your situation and come to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh if you please, Sir,' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I come
      here last&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I said,' returned Mr Carker, 'what did I say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his
      forefinger, observed:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's ruin
      in store for you.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,' returned his patron,
      'if you have anything to do with me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
      into mine, eh?' said Mr Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well!' said Mr Carker. 'You know me, boy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please, Sir, yes, Sir,' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
      fixed by Mr Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker nodded. 'Take care, then!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back. 'You have been&mdash;shut
      that door.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Listening, Sir?' Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.
    </p>
    <p>
      His patron nodded. 'And watching, and so forth.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have a tasteful place here, Carker,' said Mr Dombey, condescending to
      stop upon the lawn, to look about him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can afford to say so,' returned Carker. 'Thank you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;quite
      elegant.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;better, perhaps,
      than such a man should occupy, poor as it was.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Carker looked at it&mdash;it was the picture that resembled Edith&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Allow me,' said Carker suddenly, 'to ask how Mrs Dombey is?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
      that I wish to have with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little credit to
      his education, I believe.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, 'I am sensible that you do not limit your&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Service,' suggested his smiling entertainer.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;at my house.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though
      I give you no credit for it; you may do anything you please without losing
      caste&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I fear,' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey, never very
      much disposed to regard me with favourable interest&mdash;one in my
      position could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose
      pride becomes her so well&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Carker,' said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; 'I presume that I am the first
      consideration?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Can there be a doubt about it?' replied the other, with the
      impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both in
      question, I imagine,' said Mr Dombey. 'Is that so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it so?' returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that you
      have no need to ask?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have the misfortune, I find,' returned Carker, 'to have incurred that
      displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions,' said Mr Dombey, with majestic
      coldness and indifference, 'in which I do not participate, and which I am
      not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr 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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know,' said Mr Carker, 'that you have only to command me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To do credit even to your choice,' suggested Carker, with a yawning show
      of teeth.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We, in the City, know you better,' replied Carker, with a smile from ear
      to ear.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,' said Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The first Mrs Dombey had great good sense,' said Mr Dombey, in a
      gentlemanly toleration of the dead, 'and very correct feeling.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?' said Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey's face changed. His confidential agent eyed
      it keenly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon me,' said Mr Carker, 'I don't quite understand.'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0548m.jpg" alt="0548m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0548.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'Understand then,' returned Mr Dombey, 'that you may make that&mdash;that
      you will make that, if you please&mdash;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!&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' replied Mr Dombey. 'I have said so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' rejoined Carker, quickly; 'but why?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why!' Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. 'Because I told her.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Possibly not,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Consequently,' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to Mrs
      Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And&mdash;pardon me&mdash;do I misconceive you,' said Carker, 'when I
      think you descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey's pride&mdash;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&mdash;and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing
      her to the submission you so naturally and justly require?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! I degraded!' exclaimed Carker. 'In your service!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;or to place you,' pursued Mr Dombey, 'in a false position.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I in a false position!' exclaimed Carker. 'I shall be proud&mdash;delighted&mdash;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&mdash;for is she not
      your wife!&mdash;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&mdash;my removed
      and different sphere gives room for little more&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'There is nothing more,' quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its old
      place&mdash;for they had taken little breakfast as yet&mdash;and pausing
      for an answer before he sat down.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Her glance fell haughtily upon him in the doorway; but he looked at
      Florence&mdash;though only in the act of bending his head, as he came in&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey had met with an accident in riding. His horse had slipped, and
      he had been thrown.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt; that he was killed!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      All this he said as if he were answering Edith, and not Florence, and with
      his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama,' faltered Florence in tears, 'if I might venture to go!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;he showed her that he would have it, or that he
      would speak and cut Florence to the heart&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am directed to request,' he said, 'that the new housekeeper&mdash;Mrs
      Pipchin, I think, is the name&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she was another slight of
      Mr Dombey's on his wife.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;with one more glance
      towards Florence at the moment&mdash;to take her hand, and bending over
      it, to touch it with his lips.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0043" id="link2HCH0043"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 43. The Watches of the Night
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>lorence, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It had been hard&mdash;how hard may none but Florence ever know!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Susan,' urged Florence, 'don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,' returned Florence, 'and has a
      right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan,' said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, 'it is
      very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though it was not a new one in her mind&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it&mdash;or
      she fancied so&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by; the
      hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' she cried, 'what is the matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face, that
      Florence was more frightened than before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' said Florence, hurriedly advancing. 'Dear Mama! what is the
      matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not knowing
      how Papa was; and I&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence stopped there, and said no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled with
      her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very late. Near day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Near day!' she repeated in surprise.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to make
      us happier? Is there anything?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing,' she replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
      seemed to darken as she looked.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she were
      alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;oh mother, oh mother!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had looked
      when Florence entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and as
      she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh
      Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and
      humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you!' These words she
      said a score of times.
    </p>
    <p>
      Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence, and
      for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now dawning, with
      folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lying down
      herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,' said Florence. 'But you are
      weary and unhappy, too.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0044" id="link2HCH0044"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 44. A Separation
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ith 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&mdash;which was not
      their usual character&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      In a word, she had formed a determination, and an aspiring one: it being
      nothing less than this&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      With a twitch&mdash;not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole
      self&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you want?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Sir, I wish to speak to you,' said Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey, raised upon his arm and looking at her, offered no comment on
      this preparatory statement of fact.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;yes, I say to some and all I do!'&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean, woman?' said Mr Dombey, glaring at her. 'How do you
      dare?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Woman,' cried Mr Dombey, 'leave the room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;although I hope you'd never have the heart to send me from
      Miss Floy for such a cause&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper's
      countenance, than by her words.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;some well know when&mdash;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&mdash;I say to
      some and all, I have!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anybody there?' cried Mr Dombey, calling out. 'Where are the
      men? where are the women? Is there no one there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know very little good of her, Sir,' croaked Mrs Pipchin. 'How dare you
      come here, you hussy? Go along with you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But the inflexible Nipper, merely honouring Mrs Pipchin with another look,
      remained.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in
      his own house&mdash;in his own room&mdash;assailed with the impertinences
      of women-servants!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh indeed!' cried Susan, loftily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A good riddance of bad rubbish!' said that wrathful old lady. 'Get along
      with you, or I'll have you carried out!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      From this soft mood she was soon aroused, with a very wholesome and
      refreshing effect, by the voice of Mrs Pipchin outside the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Does that bold-faced slut,' said the fell Pipchin, 'intend to take her
      warning, or does she not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0567m.jpg" alt="0567m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0567.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan!' cried Florence. 'Going to leave me! You!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan!' said Florence. 'My dear girl, my old friend! What shall I do
      without you! Can you bear to go away so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it? Why is it?' said Florence, 'Won't you tell me?' For Susan was
      shaking her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      With which entreaty, very heartily delivered, Susan hugged her mistress in
      her arms.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where will you go, Susan?' asked her weeping mistress.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I've got a brother down in the country Miss&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith, sitting under the hands of her maid&mdash;she was going out to
      dinner&mdash;preserved her haughty face, and took not the least notice.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots, 'God bless my soul!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dombey,' returned Mr Toots, 'if you'll only name one, you'll&mdash;you'll
      give me an appetite. To which,' said Mr Toots, with some sentiment, 'I
      have long been a stranger.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said Florence, hurriedly&mdash;'no&mdash;don't think of that. Then
      would you have the kindness to&mdash;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&mdash;but backwards, that he might lose no glimpse of her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching to
      see her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say,' said Mr Toots, 'now, don't! at least I mean now do, you know!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do what, Mr Toots!' cried Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, come home to my place, and have some dinner before you start,' said
      Mr Toots. 'My cook's a most respectable woman&mdash;one of the most
      motherly people I ever saw&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan accepting this kind offer, Mr Toots conducted her to his dwelling,
      where they were received by the Matron in question who fully justified his
      character of her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, on seeing a
      lady in the vehicle, that Mr Dombey had been doubled up, ably to his old
      recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in Miss
      Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, having been defeated by the
      Larkey Boy, his visage was in a state of such great dilapidation, as to be
      hardly presentable in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken
      himself attributed this punishment to his having had the misfortune to get
      into Chancery early in the proceedings, when he was severely fibbed by the
      Larkey one, and heavily grassed. But it appeared from the published
      records of that great contest that the Larkey Boy had had it all his own
      way from the beginning, and that the Chicken had been tapped, and bunged,
      and had received pepper, and had been made groggy, and had come up piping,
      and had endured a complication of similar strange inconveniences, until he
      had been gone into and finished.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, Susan! Miss Dombey, you know&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think she could&mdash;you know&mdash;eh?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Mr Toots,' said Susan, 'but I don't hear you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think she could be brought, you know&mdash;not exactly at once,
      but in time&mdash;in a long time&mdash;to&mdash;to love me, you know?
      There!' said poor Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh dear no!' returned Susan, shaking her head. 'I should say, never.
      Never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee!' said Mr Toots. 'It's of no consequence. Good-night. It's of no
      consequence, thank'ee!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0045" id="link2HCH0045"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 45. The Trusty Agent
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>dith 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is your patient, Sir?' she asked, with a curled lip.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He is better,' returned Carker. 'He is doing very well. I have left him
      for the night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followed and
      said, speaking at the bottom:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute's audience?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stopped and turned her eyes back 'It is an unseasonable time, Sir, and
      I am fatigued. Is your business urgent?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is very urgent, returned Carker. 'As I am so fortunate as to have met
      you, let me press my petition.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is Miss Dombey?' she asked the servant, aloud.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the morning room, Ma'am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She confronted him, with a quick look, but with the same self-possession
      and steadiness.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Before I hear you, Sir,' said Edith, when the door was closed, 'I wish
      you to hear me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That one, Sir,' she returned, 'is ended. Or, if you return to it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sir,' returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking
      with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling
      neck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrown
      loosely over shoulders that could hear its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why do
      you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love and
      duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married, and
      that I honour him? How dare you venture so to affront me, when you know&mdash;I
      do not know better, Sir: I have seen it in your every glance, and heard it
      in your every word&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride
      and wrath, and self-humiliation,&mdash;which she was, fiercely as she bent
      her gaze upon him,&mdash;she would have seen the answer in his face. To
      bring her to this declaration.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' he said, 'I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found no
      favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so
      openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Confidence!' she repeated, with disdain.
    </p>
    <p>
      He passed it over.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was it for you, Sir,' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, and
      audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;who
      could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of Mr Dombey than
      myself?&mdash;that unless your character should prove to be as yielding
      and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did not believe&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat this.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say, which I did not believe,&mdash;the time was likely to come, when
      such an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Serviceable to whom, Sir?' she demanded scornfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Counsellor,&mdash;yes,' said Carker. 'Flatterer,&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She bit her blood-red lip; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch
      she kept upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It was not natural to me, Sir,' she rejoined. 'I had never any
      expectation or intention of that kind.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he went
      on talking:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I had
      it from his own lips yesterday morning&mdash;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&mdash;not of the lady to whom I have the
      happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not recall all this to widen the breach between yourself and Mr
      Dombey, Madam&mdash;Heaven forbid! what would it profit me?&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;can I give a better
      instance than this!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith laughed. How harshly and unmusically need not be described. It is
      enough that he was glad to hear her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;oh how distinct and plain and emphasized this
      was!&mdash;'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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat as if she were afraid to take her eyes from his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      And now to unwind the last ring of the coil!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cautious! What do you mean?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To be careful how you exhibit too much affection for that young lady.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Too much affection, Sir!' said Edith, knitting her broad brow and rising.
      'Who judges my affection, or measures it out? You?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is not I who do so.' He was, or feigned to be, perplexed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can you not guess who then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not choose to guess,' she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know that you are free to do so, Sir,' said Edith. 'Do it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      So pale, so trembling, so impassioned! He had not miscalculated the effect
      then!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is a threat,' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That is a threat,' he answered, in his voiceless manner of assent: adding
      aloud, 'but not directed against you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Please to leave me. Say no more to-night.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not. Please to leave me, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more to-night. Leave me, if you please.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She motioned him towards the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At any time but now,' she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He bowed, as if in compliance; but turning back, when he had nearly
      reached the door, said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I&mdash;for Miss Dombey's
      sake, and for my own&mdash;take your hand before I go?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith saw no one that night, but locked her door, and kept herself alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'May this man be a liar! For if he has spoken truth, she is lost to me,
      and I have no hope left!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0046" id="link2HCH0046"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 46. Recognizant and Reflective
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>mong 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&mdash;that is, he made it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a distinction hitherto reserved solely to
      inheritors of the great name of Dombey&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Brown's daughter looked out, at this bidding on the part of Mrs Brown;
      and there were wrath and vengeance in her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not changed!' said the old woman, with a look of eager malice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He changed!' returned the other. 'What for? What has he suffered? There
      is change enough for twenty in me. Isn't that enough?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And of it,' said her daughter impatiently. 'We are mud, underneath his
      horse's feet. What should we be?'
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0581m.jpg" alt="0581m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0581.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;unless
      it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back to him? Peace,
      mother, and come away.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And him so rich?' murmured the old woman. 'And us so poor!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, where's my sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she said, as he
      turned round.
    </p>
    <p>
      The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
      salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising
      in his eyes:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What a gallant horse!' said the old woman, patting the animal's neck.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let him alone, will you, Misses Brown?' cried Rob, pushing away her hand.
      'You're enough to drive a penitent cove mad!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, what hurt do I do him, child?' returned the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A good place, Rob, eh?' said she. 'You're in luck, my child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old woman made a show of being partially appeased, but shook her head,
      and mouthed and muttered still.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here's master&mdash;Mr Carker, child!' said the old woman, slowly, as her
      sentiment before drinking. 'Lord bless him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I didn't tell you who he was,' observed Rob, with staring eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay,' returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carried
      him to any other place.&mdash;'What's the matter with her? Won't she
      drink?'
    </p>
    <p>
      This inquiry had reference to Alice, who, folded in her cloak, sat a
      little apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenished
      glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, he ain't here!' cried Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good master?' inquired Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, 'precious sharp.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lives out of town, don't he, lovey?' said the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When he's at home,' returned Rob; 'but we don't live at home just now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where then?' asked the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lodgings; up near Mr Dombey's,' returned Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Dombey&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The old woman nodded.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are they good friends, lovey?'asked the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who?' retorted Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He and she?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What, Mr and Mrs Dombey?' said Rob. 'How should I know!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not them&mdash;Master and Mrs Dombey, chick,' replied the old woman,
      coaxingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know,' said Rob, looking round him again. 'I suppose so. How
      curious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Misses Brown,' replied the Grinder, with a very bad grace.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Won't you come and see me, Robby?' cried Mrs Brown. 'Oho, won't you ever
      come and see me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!' returned the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' replied the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Soon, Robby dear?' cried Mrs Brown; 'and often?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. Yes. Yes,' replied Rob. 'I will indeed, upon my soul and body.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A shilling, dear!' she said, with her eager avaricious face, 'or
      sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I'm so poor. And my handsome gal'&mdash;looking
      over her shoulder&mdash;'she's my gal, Rob&mdash;half starves me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a
      mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder's imagination with dismal
      warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any words.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, John Carker, and what brings you here?'
    </p>
    <p>
      His brother pointed to the letters, and was again withdrawing.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wonder,' said the Manager, 'that you can come and go, without inquiring
      how our master is'.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We had word this morning in the Counting House, that Mr Dombey was doing
      well,' replied his brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are such a meek fellow,' said the Manager, with a smile,&mdash;'but
      you have grown so, in the course of years&mdash;that if any harm came to
      him, you'd be miserable, I dare swear now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should be truly sorry, James,' returned the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;as he thought, at all events,' replied
      John Carker. 'But apart from my history here&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' replied his brother, mildly, 'I have long believed that I am kept
      here for more kind and disinterested reasons.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you were going,' said the Manager, with the snarl of a tiger-cat, 'to
      recite some Christian precept, I observed.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nay, James,' returned the other, 'though the tie of brotherhood between
      us has been long broken and thrown away&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who broke it, good Sir?' said the Manager.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Manager replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, 'Oh,
      you don't charge it upon me!' and bade him go on.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You lie!' said the Manager, red with sudden anger. 'You're a hypocrite,
      John Carker, and you lie.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you,' said the Manager, 'that your hypocrisy and meekness&mdash;that
      all the hypocrisy and meekness of this place&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know I am,' said the Manager. 'I have told you so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not by me,' returned his brother. 'By your informant, if you have one. If
      not, by your own thoughts and suspicions.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;! 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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on his ride; true to the
      reality, and obvious to him?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0047" id="link2HCH0047"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 47. The Thunderbolt
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now, she, with all her might of passionate and proud resentment, bent her
      dark glance from day to day, and hour to hour&mdash;from that night in her
      own chamber, when she had sat gazing at the shadows on the wall, to the
      deeper night fast coming&mdash;upon one figure directing a crowd of
      humiliations and exasperations against her; and that figure, still her
      husband's.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;drooping
      and useless soon&mdash;to see her in her comprehensive truth!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;millions of immortal creatures have no other world
      on earth&mdash;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&mdash;but
      think a little of its having been conceived, and born and bred, in Hell!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But no such day had ever dawned on Mr Dombey, or his wife; and the course
      of each was taken.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama,' said Florence, stealing softly to her side, 'have I offended you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith answered 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As I do you,' said Edith. 'Ah, Florence, believe me never more than now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith signified assent with her dark eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are we to be estranged, Mama?' asked Florence, gazing at her like one
      frightened.
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith's silent lips formed 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words, and
      added presently:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it for me, Mama?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is enough,' said Edith, after a pause, 'to know what it is; why,
      matters little. Dear Florence, it is better&mdash;it is necessary&mdash;it
      must be&mdash;that our association should be less frequent. The confidence
      there has been between us must be broken off.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'When?' cried Florence. 'Oh, Mama, when?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now,' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'For all time to come?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;God knows&mdash;I do not see it&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I am a shadow on it, I know well&mdash;and
      let us never speak of this again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama,' sobbed Florence, 'we are not to part?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We do this that we may not part,' said Edith. 'Ask no more. Go, Florence!
      My love and my remorse go with you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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;&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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'&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the housekeeper
      that there will be some company to dinner here to-morrow.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not dine at home,' she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do not dine at home,' she repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have none,' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam,' cried Mr Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, 'hear me if
      you please. I say, if you have no respect for yourself&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And I say I have none,' she answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked at her; but the face she showed him in return would not have
      changed, if death itself had looked.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your daughter is present, Sir,' said Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My daughter will remain present,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence, who had risen, sat down again, hiding her face in her hands, and
      trembling.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My daughter, Madam'&mdash;began Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you I will speak to you alone,' she said. 'If you are not mad,
      heed what I say.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You shall!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must tell you first, that there is a threatening appearance in your
      manner, Madam,' said Mr Dombey, 'which does not become you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Carker listened, with his eyes cast down.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;unthankfully
      indulged in, I will add&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;he could not hide his real feeling here, or keep his
      eyes from glancing gloomily at Florence&mdash;'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&mdash;with some
      doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasion before our marriage&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but I can not, my soul recoils from you
      too much&mdash;submit myself wholly to your will, and be the meekest
      vassal that you have!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am not accustomed to ask, Mrs Dombey,' he observed; 'I direct.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam?' exclaimed Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Loose me. Set me free!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madam?' he repeated, 'Mrs Dombey?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;his
      wealth is nothing to me&mdash;but that it cannot be too soon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Mr Dombey!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his eyes, in
      which there was a bright unusual light.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;anybody,
      Carker&mdash;or to suffer anybody to be paraded as a stronger motive for
      obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am my self. The mention
      that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made of my
      daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatural. Whether my daughter is in
      actual concert with Mrs Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; but after
      what Mrs Dombey has said today, and my daughter has heard to-day, I beg
      you to make known to Mrs Dombey, that if she continues to make this house
      the scene of contention it has become, I shall consider my daughter
      responsible in some degree, on that lady's own avowal, and shall visit her
      with my severe displeasure. Mrs Dombey has asked "whether it is not
      enough," that she had done this and that. You will please to answer no, it
      is not enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;the light in his eyes fell
      upon her as he separated his words each from each, with the distinctness
      of so many bells&mdash;'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&mdash;I do not say it is&mdash;sacrificing
      Mrs Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent and unassailable
      position?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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'&mdash;with a motion of his hand towards
      Mrs Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all, Sir, not at all,' returned the other haughtily. 'You were
      employed&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs Dombey. I forgot.
      Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!' said Carker. 'I beg your pardon!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;she could not, remembering to whom she was
      opposed&mdash;but she wished, in one silent and affectionate embrace, to
      assure her that she felt it all, and thanked her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for at first she felt
      an insurmountable dread of moving&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      What was Florence's affright and wonder when, at sight of her, with her
      tearful face, and outstretched arms, Edith recoiled and shrieked!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't come near me!' she cried. 'Keep away! Let me go by!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't call me by that name! Don't speak to me! Don't look at me!&mdash;Florence!'
      shrinking back, as Florence moved a step towards her, 'don't touch me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0607m.jpg" alt="0607m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0607.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is Mama?' was her first question.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Gone out to dinner,' said Mrs Pipchin.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Papa?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The evening deepened into night; midnight came; no Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      All the house was gone to bed, except two servants who were waiting the
      return of their mistress, downstairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She said she had dressed her mistress early&mdash;full two hours before
      she went out&mdash;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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'But what! what was it?' Florence heard her father demand like a madman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the inner dressing-room was locked and the key gone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her father seized a candle that was flaming on the ground&mdash;someone
      had put it down there, and forgotten it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0048" id="link2HCH0048"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 48. The Flight of Florence
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though not lost as now&mdash;and went that way. To the home
      of Walter's Uncle.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Di! oh, dear, true, faithful Di, how did you come here? How could I
      ever leave you, Di, who would never leave me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It's Heart's Delight!' said the Captain, looking intently in her face.
      'It's the sweet creetur grow'd a woman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But Florence did not stir.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;so small in his, that he was struck with wonder when he touched
      it&mdash;and seeing that her eyelids quivered, and that her lips began to
      move, continued these restorative applications with a better heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Cuttle! Is it you?' exclaimed Florence, raising herself a little.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is Walter's Uncle here?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you live here?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my lady lass,' returned the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My lady lass,' said the Captain, polishing the bridge of his nose with
      his arm until it shone like burnished copper, 'don't you say a word to
      Ed'ard Cuttle, until such times as you finds yourself a riding smooth and
      easy; which won't be to-day, nor yet to-morrow. And as to giving of you
      up, or reporting where you are, yes verily, and by God's help, so I won't,
      Church catechism, make a note on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Can there be anybody there!' asked Florence, in alarm.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If there should be someone listening and watching,' whispered Florence.
      'Someone who saw me come&mdash;who followed me, perhaps.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It ain't the young woman, lady lass, is it?' said the Captain, taken with
      a bright idea.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan?' said Florence, shaking her head. 'Ah no! Susan has been gone from
      me a long time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not deserted, I hope?' said the Captain. 'Don't say that that there young
      woman's run, my pretty!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, no, no!' cried Florence. 'She is one of the truest hearts in the
      world!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So you're quiet now, are you, brother?' said the Captain to Diogenes.
      'There warn't nobody there, my lady lass, bless you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How are, you, my lad?' replied the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'if I could have the pleasure of a word
      with you, it's&mdash;it's rather particular.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If so be, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'Do it!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain was so impressed by the possession of his tremendous secret&mdash;by
      the fact of Miss Dombey being at that moment under his roof, while the
      innocent and unconscious Toots sat opposite to him&mdash;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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you don't happen to see anything
      particular in me, do you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;I'm glad of it. I&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But I was going to say, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots. 'Happening to be
      this way early this morning&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Carry on, my lad!' said the Captain, in an admonitory voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What! were you waiting there, brother?' demanded the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not at all, Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots. 'I didn't stop a moment. I
      thought you were out. But the person said&mdash;by the bye, you don't keep
      a dog, you, Captain Gills?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but excuse me.
      That's forbidden ground.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What person, my lad?' inquired the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in my
      head, in short.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain nodded his own, as a mark of assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But the person said, as we were walking away,' continued Mr Toots, 'that
      you knew what, under existing circumstances, might occur&mdash;he said
      "might," very strongly&mdash;and that if you were requested to prepare
      yourself, you would, no doubt, come prepared.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Person, my lad' the Captain repeated.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' returned Mr Toots, 'whatever you do, is satisfactory to
      me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' said Toots, kindly, 'I hope and trust there's nothing
      wrong?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee, my lad, not a bit,' said the Captain. 'Quite contrairy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have the appearance of being overcome, Captain Gills,' observed Mr
      Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my lad, I am took aback,' the Captain admitted. 'I am.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is there anything I can do, Captain Gills?' inquired Mr Toots. 'If there
      is, make use of me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0049" id="link2HCH0049"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;and far away athwart the river and its flat banks, it
      was gleaming like a path of fire&mdash;and out at sea it was irradiating
      sails of ships&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My pretty,' said the Captain, knocking at the door, 'what cheer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear friend,' cried Florence, hurrying to him, 'is it you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What cheer, bright di'mond?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have surely slept very long,' returned Florence. 'When did I come here?
      Yesterday?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This here blessed day, my lady lass,' replied the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Has there been no night? Is it still day?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Getting on for evening now, my pretty,' said the Captain, drawing back
      the curtain of the window. 'See!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in a
      moment, for she shunned it instantly, that on her breast there was the
      darkening mark of an angry hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      What to do, or where to live, Florence&mdash;poor, inexperienced girl!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! If I had him for my brother now!' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence had no words to answer with. She only said, 'Oh, dear, dear Paul!
      oh, Walter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;leastways with his modest sentiments&mdash;like a new blowed
      rose, at dinner. Well, well! If our poor Wal'r was here, my lady lass&mdash;or
      if he could be&mdash;for he's drownded, ain't he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence tearfully assented.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And he's drownded, Beauty, ain't he?' said the Captain, in a soothing
      voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence could not but assent again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He was older than you, my lady lass,' pursued the Captain, 'but you was
      like two children together, at first; wam't you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence answered 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Wal'r's drownded,' said the Captain. 'Ain't he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;only to be equalled by the fervency of his protest
      when she began to assist him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;the Captain
      having no power to object, or to prevent her&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Unlike as they were externally&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and not have looked very
      much unlike them.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;at the word
      'niece,' he bestowed a most significant look on Florence, accompanied with
      pantomime, expressive of sagacity and mystery&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I put it back in its usual place,' said Florence, 'and keep it
      there?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, dear heart,' said Captain Cuttle to her at her chamber-door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence raised her lips to his face, and kissed him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor Wal'r!' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Poor, poor Walter!' sighed Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Drownded, ain't he?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence shook her head, and sighed.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good-night, my lady lass!' said Captain Cuttle, putting out his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God bless you, dear, kind friend!'
    </p>
    <p>
      But the Captain lingered still.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is anything the matter, dear Captain Cuttle?' said Florence, easily
      alarmed in her then state of mind. 'Have you anything to tell me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' said Florence, shaking her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain looked at her wistfully, and repeated 'No,'&mdash; still
      lingering, and still showing embarrassment.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;no possibility of going back&mdash;no presentation of it as yet
      existing, or as sheltering her father&mdash;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&mdash;with such a dread as could have risen out of
      nothing but the depths of such a love, so wronged.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my lady lass,' replied the Captain, in a growling whisper. 'Are you
      all right, di'mond?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence thanked him, and said 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You never was at sea, my own?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' replied Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Were you ever in a dreadful storm?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Wal'r&mdash;he's&mdash;he's drownded. Ain't he?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence looked at him intently; her colour came and went; and she laid
      her hand upon her breast.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;ah! maybe out
      of a hundred, pretty,&mdash;has been saved by the mercy of God, and come
      home after being given over for dead, and told of all hands lost. I&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There's nothing there, my beauty,' said the Captain. 'Don't look there.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;don't
      be took aback, my lady lass, she was only out'ard bound, pretty, only
      out'ard bound!'
    </p>
    <p>
      The expression on Florence's face alarmed the Captain, who was himself
      very hot and flurried, and showed scarcely less agitation than she did.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shall I go on, Beauty?' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, yes, pray!' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain made a gulp as if to get down something that was sticking in
      his throat, and nervously proceeded:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'They were not all lost!' cried Florence. 'Some were saved!&mdash;Was
      one?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;as I've heerd tell&mdash;that had loved,
      when he was a boy, to read and talk about brave actions in shipwrecks&mdash;I've
      heerd him! I've heerd him!&mdash;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&mdash;ay, many a time!&mdash;and when I
      thought it nothing but his good looks, bless him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And was he saved!' cried Florence. 'Was he saved!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That brave lad,' said the Captain,&mdash;'look at me, pretty! Don't look
      round&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence had hardly power to repeat, 'Why not?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;lashed to a fragment of the wreck,
      and driftin' on the stormy sea.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Were they saved?' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Days and nights they drifted on them endless waters,' said the Captain,
      'until at last&mdash;No! Don't look that way, pretty!&mdash;a sail bore
      down upon 'em, and they was, by the Lord's mercy, took aboard: two living
      and one dead.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Which of them was dead?' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not the lad I speak on,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank God! oh thank God!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Amen!' returned the Captain hurriedly. 'Don't be took aback! A minute
      more, my lady lass! with a good heart!&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was spared,' repeated Florence, 'and&mdash;?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And come home in that ship,' said the Captain, still looking in the same
      direction, 'and&mdash;don't be frightened, pretty&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'At the unexpected barking of a dog?' cried Florence, quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' roared the Captain. 'Steady, darling! courage! Don't look round
      yet. See there! upon the wall!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0633m.jpg" alt="0633m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0633.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad, here is a little bit of property as I should wish to make
      over, jintly!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Going, Walter!' said Florence. 'Where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He slings his hammock for the present, lady lass,' said Captain Cuttle,
      'round at Brogley's. Within hail, Heart's Delight.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am the cause of your going away, Walter,' said Florence. 'There is a
      houseless sister in your place.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Miss Dombey,' replied Walter, hesitating&mdash;'if it is not too
      bold to call you so!&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter!' she exclaimed, surprised.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      She smiled, and called him brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are so changed,' said Walter&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      'I changed!' she interrupted.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;To me,' said Walter, softly, as if he were thinking aloud,
      'changed to me. I left you such a child, and find you&mdash;oh! something
      so different&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But your sister, Walter. You have not forgotten what we promised to each
      other, when we parted?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Forgotten!' But he said no more.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And if you had&mdash;if suffering and danger had driven it from your
      thoughts&mdash;which it has not&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I would! Heaven knows I would!' said Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Walter,' exclaimed Florence, through her sobs and tears. 'Dear
      brother! Show me some way through the world&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dombey! Florence! I would die to help you. But your friends are
      proud and rich. Your father&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Somewhere&mdash;anywhere&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, precious!' said the Captain, when she ceased; and deep attention
      the Captain had paid to her while she spoke; listening, with his glazed
      hat all awry and his mouth wide open. 'Awast, awast, my eyes! Wal'r, dear
      lad, sheer off for to-night, and leave the pretty one to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Cuttle, perplexed by no such meditations, guarded Florence to her
      room, and watched at intervals upon the charmed ground outside her door&mdash;for
      such it truly was to him&mdash;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?'&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0050" id="link2HCH0050"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 50. Mr Toots's Complaint
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;without more particularly mentioning what&mdash;and
      further, that he, the beadle, would keep his eye upon him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing at all, my lad,' replied the Captain, shaking his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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".'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,'&mdash;Walter's
      voice was indistinct and husky here, and he looked away, along the street,&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and is, I hope&mdash;I can't believe
      it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad,' inquired the Captain, wistfully eyeing him as he pondered
      and pondered, 'what do you make of it, then?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If so be as Sol Gills wrote, my lad,' replied the Captain,
      argumentatively, 'where's his dispatch?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter, with his cheerful laugh, returned the salutation, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;by
      mail packet, or ship letter, you understand&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, my lad,' said the Captain approvingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;And that you have missed the letter, anyhow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, Wal'r,' returned the Captain, with his beaming
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and if his name is not Cuttle,
      he has no name! Now, best of friends, about&mdash;Miss Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thought, before Miss Dombey stopped me when I spoke of her father last
      night,' said Walter, '&mdash;you remember how?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain well remembered, and shook his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hooroar, my lad!' exclaimed the Captain, in a burst of uncontrollable
      satisfaction. 'Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Captain Cuttle, without quite understanding this, greatly approved of it,
      and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was quite
      abaft.
    </p>
    <p>
      'She ought not to be alone here; ought she, Captain Cuttle?' said Walter,
      anxiously.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;if I
      pretended to forget that I am bound, in honour, not to do it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r, my lad,' hinted the Captain, with some revival of his
      discomfiture, 'ain't there no other character as&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' returned Walter, 'would you have me die in her esteem&mdash;in such
      esteem as hers&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter briskly waved his hand in the negative.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Captain Cuttle,' said Walter, starting a fresh point with a gayer
      air, to cheer the Captain up&mdash;but nothing could do that; he was too
      much concerned&mdash;'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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, rushing into the parlour without any
      ceremony, 'I'm in a state of mind bordering on distraction!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, Brother,' returned the Captain, taking him by the hand, 'you are the
      man as we was on the look-out for.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      All these indications of a disordered mind were verified in Mr Toots's
      appearance, which was wild and savage.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots took his hand from his forehead, and stared at Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious me!' stammered Mr Toots. 'What a complication of misery!
      How-de-do? I&mdash;I&mdash;I'm afraid you must have got very wet. Captain
      Gills, will you allow me a word in the shop?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He took the Captain by the coat, and going out with him whispered:
    </p>
    <p>
      'That then, Captain Gills, is the party you spoke of, when you said that
      he and Miss Dombey were made for one another?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, ay, my lad,' replied the disconsolate Captain; 'I was of that mind
      once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And at this time!' exclaimed Mr Toots, with his hand to his forehead
      again. 'Of all others!&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots shot back abruptly into the parlour, and said, wringing Walter by
      the hand:
    </p>
    <p>
      'How-de-do? I hope you didn't take any cold. I&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, heartily,' said Walter. 'I couldn't desire a more genuine and
      genial welcome.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;that is, upon the&mdash;I mean wherever you came
      from last, you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      All these good wishes, and better intentions, Walter responded to
      manfully.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, my lad,' returned the Captain. 'Freely, freely.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'and Lieutenant Walters&mdash;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&mdash;a marble monument, or a bird of prey,&mdash;and
      that she is not to be found, and has gone no one knows where?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I ask how you heard this?' inquired Walter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and Lieutenant Walters&mdash;I
      have been perfectly frantic, and have been lying down on the sofa all
      night, the Ruin you behold.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Toots,' said Walter, 'I am happy to be able to relieve your mind. Pray
      calm yourself. Miss Dombey is safe and well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh Di, you bad, forgetful dog! Dear Mr Toots, I am so rejoiced to see
      you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thankee,' said Mr Toots, 'I am pretty well, I'm much obliged to you, Miss
      Dombey. I hope all the family are the same.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;they're
      not of the least consequence, thank you&mdash;but I am entirely to be
      relied upon, I do assure you, Miss Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brother,' returned the Captain, 'you shall shape your own course. Wotever
      course you take, is plain and seamanlike, I'm wery sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots said no more, but slipped out quietly and shut the door upon
      himself, to cut the Captain off from any reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;her quick affection
      was too watchful not to know it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The good Captain&mdash;her untiring, tender, ever zealous friend&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I think he's down below, my lady lass,' returned the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should like to speak to him,' said Florence, rising hurriedly as if to
      go downstairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll rouse him up here, Beauty,' said the Captain, 'in a trice.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book&mdash;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&mdash;and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey,' he eagerly began on coming in&mdash;but
      stopped when he saw her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have been weeping.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter,' said Florence, gently, 'I am not quite well, and I have been
      weeping. I want to speak to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He sat down opposite to her, looking at her beautiful and innocent face;
      and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You said, upon the night when I knew that you were saved&mdash;and oh!
      dear Walter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped!&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and sat looking at
      her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You remember the last time I saw you, Walter, before you went away?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He put his hand into his breast, and took out a little purse.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you will wear it still, Walter, for my old sake?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Until I die!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No!' he answered, in a wondering tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;ought
      to have known it&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Respect,' said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully withdrew
      her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have not a brother's right,' said Walter. 'I have not a brother's
      claim. I left a child. I find a woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      They were both silent for a time; she weeping.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was weeping still.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and now!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my having wronged you so much. I
      had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;me&mdash;a right above all
      others, to protect and cherish you&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom
      swelling with its sobs.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world. Are
      you&mdash;are you very poor?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am but a wanderer,' said Walter, 'making voyages to live, across the
      sea. That is my calling now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you soon going away again, Walter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very soon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling hand
      in his.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;only thee!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay! lady lass!' cried the Captain. 'Why, you and Wal'r have had a long
      spell o' talk, my beauty.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence put her little hand round one of the great buttons of his coat,
      and said, looking down into his face:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What! Heart's Delight!' cried the Captain, suddenly elated, 'Is it that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wal'r! Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hat into
      the skylight.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing and crying together.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life,
      than when you made that there little property over, jintly!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0051" id="link2HCH0051"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 51. Mr Dombey and the World
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hat 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though I
      dread to hear something that will shock and distress me&mdash;that
      unfortunate child Florence&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly, 'silence! Not another word of this!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Though he hide the world within him from the world without&mdash;which he
      believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him eagerly
      wherever he goes&mdash;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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0654m.jpg" alt="0654m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0654.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it sees
      in him, and what it says&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'An unusually cold spring,' says Mr Dombey&mdash;to deceive the world.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;never mind that&mdash;"If there is a man in the
      service on whom I can depend for coming to the point, that man is Joe&mdash;Joe
      Bagstock."'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our friend Feenix&mdash;if
      I may presume to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Honoured, I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;as I believe&mdash;' again
      appealing to Cousin Feenix.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am sure,' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in point of fact, to the world&mdash;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&mdash;man
      of six foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably acquainted&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Dombey!&mdash;' says the Major, resuming his discourse with great
      energy.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;man with white
      teeth, in point of fact&mdash;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&mdash;a&mdash;in
      point of fact, I am not aware that I need trouble my friend Dombey with
      any further observations.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Now, Dombey,' says the Major, 'our friend Feenix having, with an amount
      of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed&mdash;no, by the
      Lord, Sir! never!'&mdash;says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping
      his cane in the middle&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know it,' rejoins Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hope not,' replies Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey!' says the Major, 'you will guess the rest. I speak out&mdash;prematurely,
      perhaps&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where is the fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping and
      looking at him, for a minute.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Any intelligence of him?' asks the Major.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,' says the Major. 'I congratulate you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will excuse&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How does he bear it, my dear creature?' asks Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well,' says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, 'he's pretty much as
      usual.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Externally,' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three
      distinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't know about noble, I'm sure,' observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
      rubbing her nose. 'But I know this&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good, Miss,' says Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,' says Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very much so indeed, Miss,' rejoins Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' says Towlinson.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done in
      chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0052" id="link2HCH0052"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">G</span>ood 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may give him up, mother. He'll not come here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Death give him up!' returned the old woman, impatiently. 'He will come
      here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We shall see,' said Alice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We shall see him,' returned her mother.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And doomsday,' said the daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Was it so angry?' asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as a
      crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I believe you are right, mother,' replied Alice, in a low voice. 'Peace!
      open the door.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's my handsome daughter,' said the old woman. 'Your worship won't
      mind her. She knows all about it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and
      if your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind paying something
      for it, will you, honourable deary?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know nothing more powerful than money?' asked the younger woman,
      without rising, or altering her attitude.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not here, I should imagine,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
      judge,' she returned. 'Do you know nothing of a woman's anger?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You have a saucy tongue, Jade,' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with astonishment.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Go on&mdash;what do you know?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,' answered the
      old woman. 'It's to be got from someone else&mdash;wormed out&mdash;screwed
      and twisted from him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean?' said Mr Dombey.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.
    </p>
    <p>
      'From whom you are to exact the intelligence that is to be useful to me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' said the old woman, nodding again.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A stranger?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How long,' he asked, 'before this person comes?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not long,' she answered. 'Would your worship sit down for a few odd
      minutes?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0665m.jpg" alt="0665m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0665.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'And here's my bonny boy,' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last!&mdash;oho, oho!
      You're like my own son, Robby!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!' cried the old woman, apostrophizing the
      ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He looked and spoke as if he would have been far from objecting to do so,
      however, on a favourable occasion.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To Master, dear?' said the old woman with a grin.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Carker's parrot, Rob?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with ready
      vehemence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tears in his
      eyes. 'Was there ever such a&mdash;! Don't I dote upon you, Misses Brown?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
      into with affection like this here. I wish she was&mdash;How have you
      been, Misses Brown?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! Not here since this night week!' said the old woman, contemplating
      him with a look of reproach.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,' said the old woman,
      filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank'ee, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder. 'Here's your health. And
      long may you&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Judge of birds, Robby,' suggested the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' said the Grinder. 'Well, I've got to take care of this parrot&mdash;certain
      things being sold, and a certain establishment broke up&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Something to come for?' screamed the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?' said Mrs Brown, quickly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sharp, Misses Brown!' repeated Rob. 'But this is not to be talked about.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Out of place now, Robby?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder, shortly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Board wages, perhaps, Rob?' said Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty Polly!' said the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob,' said the old woman, in a
      wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
      forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Robby, my child.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say I wonder Master didn't take you with him, dear.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never you mind, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are you
      doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow&mdash;Brow&mdash;!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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,
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You thankless dog!' gasped Mrs Brown. 'You impudent insulting dog!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't talk to me,' said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her circle.
      'Now let him go, now let him go!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Misses Brown,' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I didn't mean to&mdash;Oh,
      what a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this
      amicable posture, they had pledged each other.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You're not out of place, Robby?' said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, I'm not exactly out of place, nor in,' faltered Rob. 'I&mdash;I'm
      still in pay, Misses Brown.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And nothing to do, Rob?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to&mdash;keep my
      eyes open,' said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Master abroad, Rob?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a cove
      about anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Don't mind her, lad,' said the old woman, holding him closer to prevent
      his turning round. 'It's her way&mdash;her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you ever
      see the lady, deary?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
      supplication.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What lady?' she retorted. 'The lady; Mrs Dombey.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, I believe I see her once,' replied Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you dumb?' said the old woman, angrily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you say?' asked the old woman, with a grin.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah!' said the old woman, eagerly. 'Them two.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, they didn't go nowhere&mdash;not together, I mean,' answered Rob.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,' chuckled the old woman, after
      a moment's silent and keen scrutiny of his face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Or cried?' added the old woman, nodding assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Neither,' said the Grinder. 'She kept as steady when she and me&mdash;oh,
      I see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath
      now, that you'll never tell anybody.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;me
      pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe aboard&mdash;she was
      just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Rob. Not yet,' answered Mrs Brown, decisively.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What became of Master? Where did he go?' she inquired, still holding him
      tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Haven't I taken an oath,' retorted the old woman, 'and won't I keep it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rob,' she said, in her most coaxing tone.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Good gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned the
      exasperated Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you have heard it said, Robby,' she retorted firmly, 'and you know
      what it sounded like. Come!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I never heard it said, Misses Brown,' returned the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then,' retorted the old woman quickly, 'you have seen it written, and you
      can spell it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying&mdash;for he
      was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even through
      this persecution&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Rob.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well then, Misses Brown. The way&mdash;now you won't ask any more, you
      know?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy and
      stupid, upon her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not another word,' said Mrs Brown.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began to
      chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"D,"' the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Then write large, Rob,' she returned, repeating her secret signal; 'for
      my eyes are not good, even at print.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What will he do, Ally?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mischief,' said the daughter.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Murder?' asked the old woman.
    </p>
    <p>
      'He's a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we can
      say, or he either.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0053" id="link2HCH0053"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 53. More Intelligence
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here were two of the traitor's own blood&mdash;his renounced brother and
      sister&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;need I say with what success?&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear John,' said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
      silent for some few moments. 'There are bad tidings in that letter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes. But nothing unexpected,' he replied. 'I saw the writer yesterday.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The writer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He did not say so?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a moment,
      and I was prepared for what would happen&mdash;for what has happened. I am
      dismissed!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was
      distressing news, for many reasons.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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."&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the
      misdeed of another,' she replied gently, 'yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Brother, don't speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you
      say you have, and think you have&mdash;though I say, No!&mdash;to love me,
      spare me the hearing of such wild mad words!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming
      near him, to take one in her own.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him to
      be of of good cheer.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What's our friend's name, Harriet?' he answered with a sorrowful smile.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this friend live?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Neither do I know that,' she returned. 'But he knows us both, and our
      history&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here! Has he been here, Harriet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Here, in this room. Once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What kind of man?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not young. "Grey-headed," as he said, "and fast growing greyer." But
      generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And only seen once, Harriet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;which was the object of his visit&mdash;that
      we needed nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And once a week&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;the first since this terrible event&mdash;he did
      not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence can have been in any
      way connected with what has happened.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How?' inquired her brother.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet,' said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, and speaking
      in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin&mdash;the gentleman so long in Dombey's House
      with James.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'John!' she said, half-breathless. 'It is the gentleman I told you of,
      today!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'The gentleman, Miss Harriet,' said the visitor, coming in&mdash;for he
      had stopped a moment in the doorway&mdash;'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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;creatures of habit!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;that
      confirms and deepens others of us in villainy&mdash;more of us in
      indifference &mdash;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&mdash;that was its habit and mine&mdash;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&mdash;or
      if anything not much&mdash;or little or much, it was no affair of mine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that
      time than anybody in the House, Sir,' said John Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It referred, Harriet,' said her brother in a low voice, 'to the past, and
      to our relative positions in the House.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook
      me in my habit&mdash;the habit of nine-tenths of the world&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How little I have suspected this,' said John Carker, 'when I have seen
      you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;which would have
      been no matter&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;though most unfortunately and unhappily come&mdash;when I may
      help you without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has
      lasted through so many years; since you were discharged from it today by
      no act of your own. It is late; I need say no more to-night. You will
      guard the treasure you have here, without advice or reminder from me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these words he rose to go.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But go you first, John,' he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light, without
      saying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;' John Carker's heart was
      full, and he would have relieved it in speech, if he could; 'and let me
      have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in this
      room too; though it looks more natural with you here.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said in
      a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:
    </p>
    <p>
      'You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your
      misfortune to be.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I dread to ask,' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'He has not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I thank Heaven!' said Harriet. 'For the sake of John.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;a few
      disastrous changes of affairs might render them the probably&mdash;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&mdash;you follow me, Miss Harriet?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Perfectly, perfectly,' she answered, with her frightened face fixed on
      his. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,' said Harriet. 'There is no
      danger in all this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How danger?' he returned, with a little hesitation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To the credit of the House?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I cannot help answering you plainly, and trusting you completely,' said
      Mr Morfin, after a moment's survey of her face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You may. Indeed you may!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;unless,
      indeed&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But there is no apprehension of that?' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There shall be no half-confidence,' he replied, shaking her hand,
      'between us. Mr Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of mind
      is haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is disturbed
      and agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may pass. You now know
      all, both worst and best. No more to-night, and good-night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;though she knew quite
      well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!' and the hand rattled on
      the glass.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful&mdash;quiet&mdash;humble&mdash;anything
      you like. But let me speak to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I come in, or shall I speak here?' said the woman, catching at her
      hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sit there,' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and look at me. You
      remember me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If what you ask,' said Harriet, gently, 'is forgiveness&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;it's
      never done, we all know&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;came on me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to Harriet's
      face, she said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you ask me?' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in every part of it but the gains&mdash;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&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the eager
      look that rested on them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When I knew you were his sister&mdash;which was on that night&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Information!' repeated Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Remove your hand!' said Harriet, recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch is
      dreadful to me!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I fear I must. Let my arm go!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dreadful!' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'How can it be prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'All night long,' pursued the other, hurriedly, 'I had dreams of him&mdash;and
      yet I didn't sleep&mdash;in his blood. All day, I have had him near me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What can I do?' cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I know he is!&mdash;and hurrying on. Urge him to get away
      while there is time&mdash;if there is time&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0054" id="link2HCH0054"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 54. The Fugitives
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>ea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment,
      comprising some half-dozen rooms;&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;Edith.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who had bade them to do so?' she asked.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Madame had received it surely?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The men&mdash;the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
      close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped&mdash;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?
    </p>
    <p>
      'She couldn't say. It was all one.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant. Monsieur
      (who spoke French like an Angel&mdash;or a Frenchman&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!' The bald
      man with the beard observed it, and cried out.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
      night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But Madame&mdash;' the bald man hinted.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Madame,' replied Monsieur, 'had her own maid. It was enough.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How strange to come here by yourself, my love!' he said as he entered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What?' she returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I say,' he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
      most courtly smile, 'how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessarty
      caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged
      an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the
      purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you are
      the most beautiful, my love) of women.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting on
      the chair, and said not a word.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0692m.jpg" alt="0692m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0692.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      'I have never,' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you do
      to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
      probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by the
      reality.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
      lashes, but her head held up.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the knife
      up from the table, and started one pace back.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stand still!' she said, 'or I shall murder you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stand still!' she said, 'come no nearer me, upon your life!'
    </p>
    <p>
      They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in his
      face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And what is that,' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any
      other woman in her best humour?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I tell you nothing,' she returned, until you go back to that chair&mdash;except
      this, once again&mdash;Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. I tell you,
      if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you mistake me for your husband?' he retorted, with a grin.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her
      hand, said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
      endure your touch once more, I would use it on you&mdash;and you know it,
      while I speak&mdash;with less reluctance than I would on any other
      creeping thing that lives.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is that a reason why you have run away with me?' he asked her,
      tauntingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with his
      hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes; I imagined that,' he said.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes,' he said, showing all his teeth 'I know that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And calculated on it,' she rejoined once more, 'and so pursued me. From
      my marriage day, I found myself exposed to such new shame&mdash;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&mdash;forced by the two from every point of rest I had&mdash;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&mdash;driven from each to
      each, and beset by one when I escaped the other&mdash;my anger rose almost
      to distraction against both I do not know against which it rose higher&mdash;the
      master or the man!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He answered with a faint laugh, 'Ay! How then, my queen?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed
    </p>
    <p>
      'What passed?' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your memory is so distinct,' he said, 'that I have no doubt you can
      recall it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I can,' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight&mdash;not this
      flight, but the flight you thought it&mdash;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,&mdash;and having made the opportunities, you said,&mdash;and in
      the having openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but
      aversion, and no care for myself&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'All stratagems in love&mdash;-' he interrupted, smiling. 'The old adage&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'On that night,' said Edith, 'and then, the struggle that I long had had
      with something that was not respect for my good fame&mdash;that was I know
      not what&mdash;perhaps the clinging to that last retreat&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'When I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held me
      in his arms as he has done again to-night,' said Edith, pointing at him;
      'when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek&mdash;the cheek that
      Florence would have laid her guiltless face against&mdash;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&mdash;then,
      Husband, from whom I stand divorced henceforth, I will forget these last
      two years, and undo what I have done, and undeceive you!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, and she
      held some letters out in her left hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We meet and part to-night,' she said. 'You have fallen on Sicilian days
      and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned, and played
      your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. You purchase your
      voluptuous retirement dear!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Edith!' he retorted, menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have done
      with this! What devil possesses you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In every vaunt you make,' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out in
      you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant,
      that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge
      me on him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you stand
      cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as
      odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge me on
      yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We don't part so,' he said. 'Do you think I am drivelling, to let you go
      in your mad temper?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you think,' she answered, 'that I am to be stayed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'll try, my dear,' he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'God's mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!' she replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;resolved to know that it attaches
      falsely&mdash;that you know it too&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lastly, take my warning! Look to yourself!' she said, and smiled again.
      'You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known that
      you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I saw my
      husband in a carriage in the street to-night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Strumpet, it's false!' cried Carker.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hark! do you hear it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and
      knocking with their hands and feet.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The ringing and knocking still continuing&mdash;his panic too&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0055" id="link2HCH0055"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the waywardness of guilt and fear&mdash;perhaps
      some sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemes&mdash;impelled
      him to turn back too, and go to England.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who goes there! Monsieur?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered at
      the Post-house?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A thousand devils!&mdash;and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the black landscape,
      scattering the dust and dirt like spray!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;home now distant beyond hope, now instantly accessible;
      commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and confusion in his mind, and all
      around him.&mdash;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&mdash;whither?
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0703m.jpg" alt="0703m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0703.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;to be within
      his own knowledge such a miserable tool&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
      across the road.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The devil!' cried the driver, looking over his shoulder, 'what's the
      matter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hark! What's that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That noise?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!' to a horse who shook his bells
      'What noise?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what's that?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nothing.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, nothing but the day yonder.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are right, I think. I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Gathered up moodily in a corner of the carriage, and only intent on going
      fast&mdash;except when he stood up, for a mile together, and looked back;
      which he would do whenever there was a piece of open country&mdash;he went
      on, still postponing thought indefinitely, and still always tormented with
      thinking to no purpose.
    </p>
    <p>
      Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant
      apprehension of being overtaken, or met&mdash;for he was groundlessly
      afraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old
      women holding candles to their faces; idiot girls; the lame, the
      epileptic, and the palsied&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      His object was to rest, and recover the command of himself, and the
      balance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and rage&mdash;so that, as he
      walked about his room, he ground his teeth&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What day is this?' he asked of the waiter, who was making preparations
      for his dinner.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Day, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it Wednesday?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wednesday, Sir? No, Sir. Thursday, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I forgot. How goes the time? My watch is unwound.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Wants a few minutes of five o'clock, Sir. Been travelling a long time,
      Sir, perhaps?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes'
    </p>
    <p>
      'By rail, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very confusing, Sir. Not much in the habit of travelling by rail myself,
      Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do many gentlemen come here?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Pretty well, Sir, in general. Nobody here at present. Rather slack just
      now, Sir. Everything is slack, Sir.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;as if a wretch, condemned
      to such expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion,
      and no rest.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Unable to rest, and irresistibly attracted&mdash;or he thought so&mdash;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&mdash;still keeping to the
      brink of the road&mdash;past the inn garden, and a long way down; looking
      curiously at the bridges, signals, lamps, and wondering when another Devil
      would come by.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;another come
      and gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save himself!
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      Disordered with wine and want of rest&mdash;that want which nothing,
      although he was so weary, would appease&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'About a quarter after four, Sir. Express comes through at four, Sir.&mdash;It
      don't stop.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He passed his hand across his throbbing head, and looked at his watch.
      Nearly half-past three.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nobody going with you, Sir, probably,' observed the man. 'Two gentlemen
      here, Sir, but they're waiting for the train to London.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not then, sir. Two gentlemen came in the night by the short train that
      stops here, Sir. Warm water, Sir?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No; and take away the candle. There's day enough for me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;there was no cooling influence
      in it for him&mdash;hurriedly put on his clothes, paid what he owed, and
      went out.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      He needed some such touch then. Death was on him. He was marked off&mdash;the
      living world, and going down into his grave.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He heard a shout&mdash;another&mdash;saw the face change from its
      vindictive passion to a faint sickness and terror&mdash;felt the earth
      tremble&mdash;knew in a moment that the rush was come&mdash;uttered a
      shriek&mdash;looked round&mdash;saw the red eyes, bleared and dim, in the
      daylight, close upon him&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0056" id="link2HCH0056"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Susan, dear good Susan!' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who told you so?' said Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'There, there!' said the soothing voice of Florence presently. 'Now you're
      quite yourself, dear Susan!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I-I-I never did see such a creetur as that Toots,' said Susan, 'in all my
      born days never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'So kind,' suggested Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so comic!' Susan sobbed. 'The way he's been going on inside with me
      with that disrespectable Chicken on the box!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'About what, Susan?' inquired Florence, timidly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh about Lieutenant Walters, and Captain Gills, and you my dear Miss
      Floy, and the silent tomb,' said Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The silent tomb!' repeated Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Dombey,' said Mr Toots. 'To be again permitted to&mdash;to&mdash;gaze&mdash;at
      least, not to gaze, but&mdash;I don't exactly know what I was going to
      say, but it's of no consequence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;if
      I may be allowed to say so&mdash;floor me infinitely less, than by these
      undeserved expressions of kindness Their effect upon me&mdash;is&mdash;but,'
      said Mr Toots, abruptly, 'this is a digression, and of no consequence at
      all.'
    </p>
    <p>
      As there seemed to be no means of replying to this, but by thanking him
      again, Florence thanked him again.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence was sure of it.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;if it was not too strong an
      expression, I should say with the thickness of his own head&mdash;than
      myself. But, Miss Dombey, I do, notwithstanding, perceive the state of&mdash;of
      things&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence received this intimation with the prettiest expression of
      perplexity possible.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to have my boots as brightly polished, as&mdash;as&mdash;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&mdash;if&mdash;I
      could only get a start.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alow and aloft, eh, my lad?' murmured the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, ay, my lad. We're all shipmets here,&mdash;Wal'r and sweet&mdash;heart
      will be jined together in the house of bondage, as soon as the askings is
      over,' whispered Captain Cuttle, in his ear.
    </p>
    <p>
      'The askings, Captain Gills!' repeated Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In the church, down yonder,' said the Captain, pointing his thumb over
      his shoulder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh! Yes!' returned Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lord, Captain Gills!' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;being
      as smart and good a lad as ever stepped&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Cheer up!' said the Captain, laying his hand on Mr Toots's shoulder.
      'Stand by, boy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is as follers,' echoed the Captain. 'Steady!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots, 'my mind is greatly relieved. I wish to
      preserve the good opinion of all here. I&mdash;I&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With this apposite illustration, of which he seemed a little Proud, Mr
      Toots gave Captain Cuttle his blessing and departed.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Susan, I am going on a long, long voyage.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But, Susan, I am going with Walter, and I would go with Walter anywhere&mdash;everywhere!
      Walter is poor, and I am very poor, and I must learn, now, both to help
      myself, and help him.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alone, Susan?' returned Florence. 'Alone? and Walter taking me with him!'
      Ah, what a bright, amazed, enraptured smile was on her face!&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan sobbed 'Why not, Miss Floy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Limited and plain as Florence's wardrobe was&mdash;what a contrast to that
      prepared for the last marriage in which she had taken part!&mdash;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&mdash;as pink parasols, tinted silk
      stockings, blue shoes, and other articles no less necessary on shipboard&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter, dear,' said Florence, one evening, when it was almost dark. 'Do
      you know what I have been thinking to-day?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thinking how the time is flying on, and how soon we shall be upon the
      sea, sweet Florence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't mean that, Walter, though I think of that too. I have been
      thinking what a charge I am to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A precious, sacred charge, dear heart! Why, I think that sometimes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are laughing, Walter. I know that's much more in your thoughts than
      mine. But I mean a cost.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A cost, my own?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In money, dear. All these preparations that Susan and I are so busy with&mdash;I
      have been able to purchase very little for myself. You were poor before.
      But how much poorer I shall make you, Walter!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And how much richer, Florence!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence laughed, and shook her head.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Besides,' said Walter, 'long ago&mdash;before I went to sea&mdash;I had a
      little purse presented to me, dearest, which had money in it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Nor I, indeed, dear Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;nothing! Oh,
      Walter, if I could have brought you millions, I never could have been so
      happy for your sake, as I am!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you, dear Florence? are you nothing?' he returned.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, nothing, Walter. Nothing but your wife.' The light hand stole about
      his neck, and the voice came nearer&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      But before he went upon these expeditions, or indeed before he came, and
      before lights were brought, Walter said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Walter. I shall be happy anywhere. But&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, my life?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;will you take me somewhere that morning, Walter&mdash;early&mdash;before
      we go to church?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter seemed to understand her, as so true a lover so truly loved should,
      and confirmed his ready promise with a kiss&mdash;with more than one
      perhaps, or two or three, or five or six; and in the grave, peaceful
      evening, Florence was very happy.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;well-matched, truly, and full of grace and
      interest in their youth, and love, and good looks, as they sat apart&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and
      accordingly came into it&mdash;I adored Miss Dombey. The banns which
      consign her to Lieutenant Walters, and me to&mdash;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&mdash;or a leg, in
      short, to&mdash;to go upon.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan Nipper could only commiserate Mr Toots's unfortunate condition, and
      agree, under these circumstances, to accompany him; which she did next
      morning.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots, however, appearing unable to keep his thoughts from the banns,
      was evidently looking out for them during the whole preliminary portion of
      the service. As the time for reading them approached, the poor young
      gentleman manifested great anxiety and trepidation, which was not
      diminished by the unexpected apparition of the Captain in the front row of
      the gallery. When the clerk handed up a list to the clergyman, Mr Toots,
      being then seated, held on by the seat of the pew; but when the names of
      Walter Gay and Florence Dombey were read aloud as being in the third and
      last stage of that association, he was so entirley conquered by his
      feelings as to rush from the church without his hat, followed by the
      beadle and pew-opener, and two gentlemen of the medical profeesion, who
      happened to be present; of whom the first-named presently returned for
      that article, informing Miss Nipper in a whisper that she was not to make
      herself uneasy about the gentleman, as the gentleman said his
      indisposition was of no consequence.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;at least
      not exactly more comfortable, but more comfortably and completely
      miserable.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Steady, steady!' said the Captain to Diogenes, 'what's amiss with you?
      You don't seem easy in your mind to-night, my boy!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0725m.jpg" alt="0725m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0725.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'm half blind, Ned,' said the old man, 'and almost deaf and dumb with
      joy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'His wery woice,' said the Captain, looking round with an exultation to
      which even his face could hardly render justice&mdash;'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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Although,' stammered Mr Toots, 'I had not the pleasure of your
      acquaintance, Sir, before you were&mdash;you were&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lost to sight, to memory dear,' suggested the Captain, in a low voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly so, Captain Gills!' assented Mr Toots. 'Although I had not the
      pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr&mdash;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&mdash;you know, in knowing
      you. I hope,' said Mr Toots, 'that you're as well as can be expected.'
    </p>
    <p>
      With these courteous words, Mr Toots sat down blushing and chuckling.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ned Cuttle, my dear boy, although I have heard something of the changes
      of events here, from my pleasant friend there&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall make a point of doing so, Captain Gills,' said Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,'&mdash;glancing at the downcast eyes of Florence, and not attempting
      to finish the sentence&mdash;'that I&mdash;I can't say much to-night. But
      my dear Ned Cuttle, why didn't you write?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Write!' echoed the Captain. 'Write, Sol Gills?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' said the old man, 'either to Barbados, or Jamaica, or Demerara, That
      was what I asked.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What you asked, Sol Gills?' repeated the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay,' said the old man. 'Don't you know, Ned? Sure you have not forgotten?
      Every time I wrote to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You don't appear to understand me, Ned!' observed old Sol.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You know, Ned,' said Sol Gills, 'why I left here. Did you open my packet,
      Ned?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, ay, ay,' said the Captain. 'To be sure, I opened the packet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And read it?' said the old man.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Ned. Now attend a moment!' said the old man. 'When I wrote first&mdash;that
      was from Barbados&mdash;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&mdash;that was
      from Jamaica&mdash;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&mdash;that, I think, was from
      Demerara, wasn't it?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That he thinks was from Demerara, warn't it!' said the Captain, looking
      hopelessly round.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Began to think as how he was a scientific Flying Dutchman!' said the
      Captain, as before, and with great seriousness.
    </p>
    <p>
      'But when the news come one day, Ned,&mdash;that was to Barbados, after I
      got back there,&mdash;that a China trader home'ard bound had been spoke,
      that had my boy aboard, then, Ned, I took passage in the next ship and
      came home; arrived at home to-night to find it true, thank God!' said the
      old man, devoutly.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And posted by my own hand! And directed by my own hand, Number nine Brig
      Place!' exclaimed old Sol.
    </p>
    <p>
      The colour all went out of the Captain's face and all came back again in a
      glow.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What do you mean, Sol Gills, my friend, by Number nine Brig Place?'
      inquired the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I
      always was, you recollect&mdash;and very much confused. Mrs&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of course it is!' exclaimed the Instrument-maker. 'To be sure Ned. Mrs
      MacStinger!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Overhaul that there again, Sol Gills, will you be so kind?' he said at
      last.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain took his glazed hat off his hook, looked into it, put it on,
      and sat down.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, friends all,' said the Captain, staring round in the last state of
      discomfiture, 'I cut and run from there!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And no one knew where you were gone, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter
      hastily.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and make a note on!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I'd give it her!' remarked the Nipper, softly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mr Toots,' said Walter, on parting with him at the house door, 'we shall
      see each other to-morrow morning?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Lieutenant Walters,' returned Mr Toots, grasping his hand fervently, 'I
      shall certainly be present.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'This is the last night we shall meet for a long time&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walters,' replied Mr Toots, quite touched, 'I should be glad to feel that
      you had reason to be so.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence,' said Walter, 'on this last night of her bearing her own name,
      has made me promise&mdash;it was only just now, when you left us together&mdash;that
      I would tell you&mdash;with her dear love&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots laid his hand upon the doorpost, and his eyes upon his hand.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;With her dear love,' said Walter, 'that she can never have a
      friend whom she will value above you. That the recollection of your true
      consideration for her always, can never be forgotten by her. That she
      remembers you in her prayers to-night, and hopes that you will think of
      her when she is far away. Shall I say anything for you?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;even her!&mdash;and that I am glad of her
      choice.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chicken,' returned Mr Toots, 'explain yourself.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Come, Master,' said the Chicken. 'Is it to be gammon or pluck? Which?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chicken,' returned Mr Toots, 'your expressions are coarse, and your
      meaning is obscure.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, then, I tell you what, Master,' said the Chicken. 'This is where it
      is. It's mean.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'What is mean, Chicken?' asked Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chicken,' said Mr Toots, severely, 'you're a perfect Vulture! Your
      sentiments are atrocious.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chicken,' said Mr Toots, 'you disgust me.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Chicken,' returned Mr Toots, 'after the odious sentiments you have
      expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0057" id="link2HCH0057"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 57. Another Wedding
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>r 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she
      generally is; and she his always strong opinions on that subject, for it
      is associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of political
      economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; 'Baptists or
      Wesleyans, or some o' them,' she says), but she can never understand what
      business your common folks have to be married. 'Drat 'em,' says Mrs Miff
      'you read the same things over 'em and instead of sovereigns get
      sixpences!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;'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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions&mdash;for the
      yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;such a pew of a woman&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      And what are the young couple saying as they leave the church, and go out
      at the gate?
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear Walter, thank you! I can go away, now, happy.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And when we come back, Florence, we will come and see his grave again.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is very early, Walter, and the streets are almost empty yet. Let us
      walk.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you will be so tired, my love.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh no! I was very tired the first time that we ever walked together, but
      I shall not be so to-day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      And thus&mdash;not much changed&mdash;she, as innocent and earnest-hearted&mdash;he,
      as frank, as hopeful, and more proud of her&mdash;Florence and Walter, on
      their bridal morning, walk through the streets together.
    </p>
    <p>
      Not even in that childish walk of long ago, were they so far removed from
      all the world about them as to-day. The childish feet of long ago, did not
      tread such enchanted ground as theirs do now. The confidence and love of
      children may be given many times, and will spring up in many places; but
      the woman's heart of Florence, with its undivided treasure, can be yielded
      only once, and under slight or change, can only droop and die.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;but Florence does not see
      or hear them&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standing in
      the porch, and has put his hat in the font&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;gives him, in the fulness of her heart,
      her lips&mdash;kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne away by
      her young husband.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Miss Floy, my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! One
      more good-bye, my precious, one more!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We are all so&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Angry, Susan!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;your friend the Captain,
      you know&mdash;to say good-bye once more!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Hooroar, my Heart's Delight!' vociferates the Captain, with a countenance
      of strong emotion. 'Hooroar, Wal'r my lad. Hooroar! Hooroar!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sol! There's the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you
      wish to have it up to-night, my boy, and drink to Wal'r and his wife?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To Mr Dombey,' says the old man. 'From Walter. To be sent in three weeks'
      time. I'll read it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"Do not reproach her. She has never reproached you.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts back
      his pocket-book in his coat.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We won't drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned,' says the old
      man thoughtfully. 'Not yet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not yet,' assents the Captain. 'No. Not yet.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading its
      white wings to the favouring wind.
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that is
      graceful, beautiful, and harmless&mdash;something that it is good and
      pleasant to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the
      stately ship goes on serenely.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of Paul, my love. I know it does.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering to
      Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0058" id="link2HCH0058"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 58. After a Lapse
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The year was out, and the great House was down.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;but no, it
      cannot be!' and with that had struck his hand upon his forehead, and said,
      'Leave me, Perch!' Then, in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his
      position, tell all manner of lies; affecting himself to tears by those
      that were of a moving nature, and really believing that the inventions of
      yesterday had, on repetition, a sort of truth about them to-day.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was not
      a sympathetic character&mdash;his attention being wholly concentrated on
      J. B.&mdash;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&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;its
      head, of course, excepted&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In mourning,' she said.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then,' she
      answered.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a very pleasant one,' said he; 'and, if selfish, a novelty too,
      worth seeing in you. But I don't believe that.'
    </p>
    <p>
      He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the
      violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You can do nothing better.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You were not busy?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is the House at an end?' said Harriet, earnestly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Completely at an end.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will it never be resumed?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ruined.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you seen him lately?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;you know upon
      what terms&mdash;reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;John's and mine&mdash;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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face began
      to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!' he replied.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We may rely on your friendly help?' she said. 'I knew we might!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I should be a worse man than,&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Harriet,' he said, detaining it in his. 'To speak to you of the worth of
      any sacrifice that you can make now&mdash;above all, of any sacrifice of
      mere money&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you going home?' he said. 'Let me go with you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone. Will
      you come to-morrow?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;and&mdash;think of me a little in connexion with it.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is your patient, nurse, to-night?' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In what respect?' asked Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'But you have told me she recovered,' observed Harriet mildly; 'so there
      is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You should try to be more cheerful,' remarked Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure,' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I was so
      inclined, the loneliness of this situation&mdash;you'll excuse my speaking
      so free&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Alice!' said the visitor's mild voice, 'am I late to-night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'You always seem late, but are always early.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
      hand lying there.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are better?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate spectre,
      most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this position.
    </p>
    <p>
      'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better or worse
      to-day, is but a day's difference&mdash;perhaps not so much.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for she was a serious character&mdash;and withdrew to partake
      of certain funeral baked meats downstairs.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It is a year and more,' said Harriet.
    </p>
    <p>
      'A year and more,' said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face. 'Months
      upon months since you brought me here!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet answered 'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To-night, my deary?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, mother,' answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, 'to-night!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'My handsome gal&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at the
      poor form lying on the bed!
    </p>
    <p>
      'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,' said Alice, without
      looking at her. 'Don't grieve for that now.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;My daughter,' faltered the old woman, 'my gal who'll soon get
      better, and shame 'em all with her good looks.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little closer,
      but said nothing.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;she will. I say she will! she shall!'&mdash;as if she
      were in passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside,
      who contradicted her&mdash;'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&mdash;they may make it, but they can't break it&mdash;and
      my daughter's well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and I'll show you my
      Alice's first cousin.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
      face, and derived corroboration from them.
    </p>
    <p>
      'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
      vanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now,&mdash;much older by life and habit
      than years though,&mdash;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&mdash;they have long been
      dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my Ally's
      father, longest of the two.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'They were as like,' said the old woman, without looking up, as you could
      see two brothers, so near an age&mdash;there wasn't much more than a year
      between them, as I recollect&mdash;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&mdash;only my gal&mdash;that's
      to change so!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Turn!' cried the old woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my gal's! The
      mother must have changed&mdash;she looked as old as me, and full as
      wrinkled through her paint&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand she
      had never released. She said now:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained it
      for a moment.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Never, Alice!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
      words in your kind face.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Harriet complied and read&mdash;read the eternal book for all the weary,
      and the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
      earth&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I shall come,' said Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very early in the
      morning.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
      opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0059" id="link2HCH0059"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 59. Retribution
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>hanges 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson's main anxiety is that
      the failure should be a good round one&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;in
      black stockings&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Your master's in difficulties,' says Mrs Pipchin, tartly. 'You know that,
      I suppose?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Towlinson, as spokesman, admits a general knowledge of the fact.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And you're all on the look-out for yourselves, I warrant you,' says Mrs
      Pipchin, shaking her head at them.
    </p>
    <p>
      A shrill voice from the rear exclaims, 'No more than yourself!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'That's your opinion, Mrs Impudence, is it?' says the ireful Pipchin,
      looking with a fiery eye over the intermediate heads.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Mrs Pipchin, it is,' replies Cook, advancing. 'And what then, pray?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Get along with you,' says Mrs Pipchin, stamping her foot.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house stands, large and weather-proof, in the long dull street; but it
      is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, &amp;c., is on
      view.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;high above the heat, hum, and dust&mdash;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, &amp;c., is on sale.
    </p>
    <p>
      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, &amp; c., is in course of removal.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'How is my brother, Mrs Pipchin?' says Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This the acrimonious Pipchin says with a flounce.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My brother,' pursues Mrs Chick profoundly, 'is so peculiar&mdash;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&mdash;it's a comfort to me, now, to remember that I always
      said there was something extraordinary about that child: but nobody minds
      me&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Chick, after forging this powerful chain of reasoning, remains silent
      for a minute to admire it.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'In a which, Mrs Pipchin,' says Mrs Chick.
    </p>
    <p>
      'In a jiffy,' retorts Mrs Pipchin sharply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah, well! really I can't blame you, Mrs Pipchin,' says Mrs Chick, with
      frankness.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;little Pankey's folks alone
      were worth a good eighty pounds a-year to me&mdash;and I can't afford to
      throw it away. I've written to my niece, and she expects me by this time.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you spoken to my brother?' inquires Mrs Chick
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Pipchin by this time looms dark in her black bombazeen skirts, black
      bonnet, and shawl; and has her personal property packed up; and has her
      chair (late a favourite chair of Mr Dombey's and the dead bargain of the
      sale) ready near the street door; and is only waiting for a fly-van, going
      to-night to Brighton on private service, which is to call for her, by
      private contract, and convey her home.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The house is such a ruin that the rats have fled, and there is not one
      left.
    </p>
    <p>
      But Polly, though alone in the deserted mansion&mdash;for there is no
      companionship in the shut-up rooms in which its late master hides his head&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ah! not a soul,' says Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Have you seen him?' whispers Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bless you,' returns Polly, 'no; he has not been seen this many a day.
      They tell me he never leaves his room.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is he said to be ill?' inquires Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, Ma'am, not that I know of,' returns Polly, 'except in his mind. He
      must be very bad there, poor gentleman!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Miss Tox returns early in the day. It then begins to be Miss Tox's
      occupation to prepare little dainties&mdash;or what are such to her&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And the ruined man. How does he pass the hours, alone?
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0762m.jpg" alt="0762m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0762.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;which might have made the Past itself so different,
      though this he hardly thought of now&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;nor had he ever changed to her&mdash;and she
      was lost.
    </p>
    <p>
      As, one by one, they fell away before his mind&mdash;his baby&mdash;hope,
      his wife, his friend, his fortune&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      In his pride&mdash;for he was proud yet&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;knowing he must go,
      not knowing whither&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;foot treading foot out, and upward track and downward
      jostling one another&mdash;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!&mdash;and bent his head, and wept as he went up.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      When the day broke he was shut up in his rooms again. He had meant to go
      away to-day, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and only thing
      left to him. He would go to-morrow. To-morrow came. He would go to-morrow.
      Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, he came forth, and
      wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Many a morning when the
      day broke, his altered face, drooping behind the closed blind in his
      window, imperfectly transparent to the light as yet, pondered on the loss
      of his two children. It was one child no more. He reunited them in his
      thoughts, and they were never asunder. Oh, that he could have united them
      in his past love, and in death, and that one had not been so much worse
      than dead!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;his children no more. This must be thought of, well,
      to-morrow.
    </p>
    <p>
      He thought of it to-morrow; and sitting thinking in his chair, saw in the
      glass, from time to time, this picture:
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      &mdash;Hush! what?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Now it was thinking again! What was it thinking?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;a wild, loud, piercing, loving, rapturous cry&mdash;and
      he only saw his own reflection in the glass, and at his knees, his
      daughter!
    </p>
    <p>
      Yes. His daughter! Look at her! Look here! Down upon the ground, clinging
      to him, calling to him, folding her hands, praying to him.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Unchanged still. Of all the world, unchanged. Raising the same face to
      his, as on that miserable night. Asking his forgiveness!
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;oh, how deeply!&mdash;all
      that he had done.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      His head, now grey, was encircled by her arm; and he groaned to think that
      never, never, had it rested so before.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You will come home with me, Papa, and see my baby. A boy, Papa. His name
      is Paul. I think&mdash;I hope&mdash;he's like&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her tears stopped her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She clung closer to him, more endearing and more earnest.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;to
      my dearest husband&mdash;to the father of the little child who taught me
      to come back, Papa Who taught me to come back!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for their feet were on the very stones where he
      had struck her in his madness&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And a good one!' exclaimed Polly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Robin,' said Miss Tox, 'I have just observed to your mother, as you may
      have heard, that she is a good creature.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so she is, Miss,' quoth the Grinder, with some feeling.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I must get you to break yourself of that word, Robin, if you please,'
      interposed Miss Tox, politely.
    </p>
    <p>
      'If you please, Miss, as a chap's&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Thankee, Robin, no,' returned Miss Tox, 'I should prefer individual.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'As a indiwiddle's&mdash;,' said the Grinder.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Much better,' remarked Miss Tox, complacently; 'infinitely more
      expressive!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;indiwiddle&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Very good indeed,' observed Miss Tox, approvingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Indi&mdash;' suggested Miss Tox.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0060" id="link2HCH0060"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 60. Chiefly Matrimonial
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <h3>
      'MR AND MRS TOOTS!'
    </h3>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mrs Blimber,' said Mr Toots, 'allow me to present my wife.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Blimber was delighted to receive her. Mrs Blimber was a little
      condescending, but extremely kind.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear!' remonstrated Mrs Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Upon my word and honour she is,' said Mr Toots. 'I&mdash;I assure you,
      Mrs Blimber, she's a most extraordinary woman.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'&mdash;retired with Mr
      Feeder, B.A., into a window.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, old Buck!' said Mr Feeder with a laugh. 'Well! Here we are! Taken
      in and done for. Eh?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Feeder,' returned Mr Toots. 'I give you joy. If you're as&mdash;as&mdash;as
      perfectly blissful in a matrimonial life, as I am myself, you'll have
      nothing to desire.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I don't forget my old friends, you see,' said Mr Feeder. 'I ask em to my
      wedding, Toots.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Toots, my boy,' said Mr Feeder, shaking his hands, 'I was joking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And now, Feeder,' said Mr Toots, 'I should be glad to know what you think
      of my union.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Capital!' returned Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Feeder was willing to take it for granted. But Mr Toots shook his head,
      and wouldn't hear of that being possible.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You see,' said Mr Toots, 'what I wanted in a wife was&mdash;in short, was
      sense. Money, Feeder, I had. Sense I&mdash;I had not, particularly.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Feeder murmured, 'Oh, yes, you had, Toots!' But Mr Toots said:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No,' said Mr Feeder.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;Susan,
      my dear!' said Mr Toots, looking abruptly out of the windows 'pray do not
      exert yourself!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mrs Toots, 'I was only talking.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I really,' said Mr Toots, 'in this house, where whatever was done to me
      in the way of&mdash;of any mental confusion sometimes&mdash;which is of no
      consequence and I impute to nobody&mdash;I was always treated like one of
      Doctor Blimber's family, and had a desk to myself for a considerable
      period&mdash;can&mdash;not&mdash;allow&mdash;my friend Feeder to be&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Toots suggested 'married.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;allow my friend Feeder to be married&mdash;especially to&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Toots suggested 'to Miss Blimber.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To Mrs Feeder, my love!' said Mr Toots, in a subdued tone of private
      discussion: "'whom God hath joined," you know, "let no man"&mdash;don't
      you know? I cannot allow my friend Feeder to be married&mdash;especially
      to Mrs Feeder&mdash;without proposing their&mdash;their&mdash;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&mdash;the banishers
      of&mdash;of gloom!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear Susan,' said Mr Toots, 'fright is worse than exertion. Pray be
      calm!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Who is it from?' asked Mrs Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why, my love,' said Mr Toots, 'it's from Captain Gills. Do not excite
      yourself. Walters and Miss Dombey are expected home!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;I
      see it plainly in your face!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Reconciled!' cried Mrs Toots, clapping her hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Mr Toots; 'pray do not exert yourself. Do remember the
      medical man! Captain Gills says&mdash;at least he don't say, but I
      imagine, from what I can make out, he means&mdash;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&mdash;supposed to
      be dying; and that she attends upon him night and day.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mrs Toots began to cry quite bitterly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;but
      do endeavour to!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<div class="fig" style="width:65%">
      <img src="images/0777m.jpg" alt="0777m " width="100%" /><br />
    </div>
    <h5>
      <a href="images/0777.jpg"><i>Original</i></a>
    </h5>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Well, Cap'en Cuttle!' said Mrs MacStinger. 'This is indeed a meeting! I
      bear no malice now, Cap'en Cuttle&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain's concern for his friend, not unmingled, at first, with some
      concern for himself&mdash;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'&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      While the Reverend Melchisedech was offering up some extemporary orisons,
      the Captain found an opportunity of growling in the bridegroom's ear:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What cheer, my lad, what cheer?'
    </p>
    <p>
      To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness of the Reverend
      Melchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances could have
      excused:
    </p>
    <p>
      'D&mdash;&mdash;d bad,'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Jack Bunsby,' whispered the Captain, 'do you do this here, of your own
      free will?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Bunsby answered 'No.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why do you do it, then, my lad?' inquired the Captain, not unnaturally.
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby, still looking, and always looking with an immovable countenance,
      at the opposite side of the world, made no reply.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why not sheer off?' said the Captain. 'Eh?' whispered Bunsby, with a
      momentary gleam of hope.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Sheer off,' said the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Where's the good?' retorted the forlorn sage. 'She'd capter me agen.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Try!' replied the Captain. 'Cheer up! Come! Now's your time. Sheer off,
      Jack Bunsby!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting by the advice, said in a
      doleful whisper:
    </p>
    <p>
      'It all began in that there chest o' yourn. Why did I ever conwoy her into
      port that night?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby was immovable.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bunsby!' whispered the Captain, 'will you twice?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby wouldn't twice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Bunsby!' urged the Captain, 'it's for liberty; will you three times? Now
      or never!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Bunsby didn't then, and didn't ever; for Mrs MacStinger immediately
      afterwards married him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;for the watchfulness and alacrity of the ladies
      sensibly diminished when the bridegroom was safely married&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      To go back to old Sol Gills at the wooden Midshipman's, and not first go
      round to ask how Mr Dombey was&mdash;albeit the house where he lay was out
      of London, and away on the borders of a fresh heath&mdash;was quite out of
      the Captain's course. So he got a lift when he was tired, and made out the
      journey gaily.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'And is your Pa very ill, my darling dear Miss Floy?' asked Susan.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Susan burst into tears, and showered kisses on the little hand that had
      touched her so wonderingly.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;she said before we were married, and has said to
      this day&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0061" id="link2HCH0061"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 61. Relenting
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">F</span>lorence 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He rambled through the scenes of his old pursuits&mdash;through many where
      Florence lost him as she listened&mdash;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&mdash;one&mdash;two&mdash;stop, and go
      back, and begin again in the same way.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      One day he inquired if that were not Susan who had spoken a long while
      ago.
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence said 'Yes, dear Papa;' and asked him would he like to see her?
    </p>
    <p>
      He said 'very much.' And Susan, with no little trepidation, showed herself
      at his bedside.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dear,' said Walter, 'there is someone downstairs who wishes to speak
      to you.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She fancied Walter looked grave, and asked him if anything had happened.
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no, my love!' said Walter. 'I have seen the gentleman myself, and
      spoken with him. Nothing has happened. Will you come?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Florence divined, from some indefinable constraint and anxiety in this
      gentleman's manner&mdash;which was always a gentleman's, in spite of the
      harmless little eccentricities that attached to it&mdash;and from Walter's
      manner no less, that something more immediately tending to some object was
      to follow this.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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,&mdash;a man of an extremely bilious habit, with whom my
      friend Gay is probably acquainted&mdash;cannot say a syllable in
      disputation of the fact.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;who has met me in an
      exceedingly kind and open manner, for which I am very much indebted to him&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      This postponement of the point, put Florence in a flutter; and she looked
      from Cousin Feenix to Walter, in increasing agitation.
    </p>
    <p>
      'My love,' said Walter, 'there is nothing the matter.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;in point of
      fact, the ice,' said Cousin Feenix.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter thus appealed to, and appealed to no less in the look that Florence
      turned towards him, said:
    </p>
    <p>
      'My dearest, it is no more than this. That you will ride to London with
      this gentleman, whom you know.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And my friend Gay, also&mdash;I beg your pardon!' interrupted Cousin
      Feenix.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;And with me&mdash;and make a visit somewhere.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To whom?' asked Florence, looking from one to the other.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Do you know, Walter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And think it right?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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&mdash;man of very
      superior qualifications, with whose reputation my friend Gay is no doubt
      acquainted&mdash;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&mdash;in point of fact to his head&mdash;and throw him
      into a devil of a state.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Walter entered after him, and they drove away.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Are you not coming, Walter?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, I will remain here. Don't tremble there is nothing to fear, dearest
      Florence.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'I know that, Walter, with you so near. I am sure of that, but&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Great Heaven!' she said, 'what is this?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No, no!' cried Florence, shrinking back as she rose up and putting out
      her hands to keep her off. 'Mama!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith stood before her, dumb and motionless. Her eyes were fixed upon her
      face.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She answered not a word.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Walter&mdash;I am married to him, and we have a son,' said Florence,
      timidly&mdash;'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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith, breaking her silence, without moving eye or limb, answered slowly:
    </p>
    <p>
      'The stain upon your name, upon your husband's, on your child's. Will that
      ever be forgiven, Florence?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      She answered not a word.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith, as if she fell beneath her touch, sunk down on her knees, and
      caught her round the neck.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Mama!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Upon her knees upon the ground, she held up both her hands, and swore it.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Florence!' she said, 'purest and best of natures,&mdash;whom I love&mdash;who
      might have changed me long ago, and did for a time work some change even
      in the woman that I am,&mdash;believe me, I am innocent of that; and once
      more, on my desolate heart, let me lay this dear head, for the last time!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She was moved and weeping. Had she been oftener thus in older days, she
      had been happier now.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;which is remarkable for
      devilish strange arrangements, and for being decidedly the most
      unintelligible thing within a man's experience&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;and also that my aunt, though a devilish lively
      woman, had perhaps not been the very best of mothers&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;handsome man of an uncommonly frank
      disposition, who is probably known to my lovely and accomplished relative&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;but because it is wrong, and not right.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Cousin Feenix's legs consented to take him away after this; and leaving
      them alone together, he shut the door.
    </p>
    <p>
      Edith remained silent for some minutes, with Florence sitting close beside
      her. Then she took from her bosom a sealed paper.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Is it for Papa?' asked Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Again they sat silent, in the deepening darkness.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Did you tell me,' asked Edith, 'that you were very dear to him?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes!' said Florence, in a thrilling voice.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell him I am sorry that we ever met.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'No more?' said Florence after a pause.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Tell him, if he asks, that I do not repent of what I have done&mdash;not
      yet&mdash;for if it were to do again to-morrow, I should do it. But if he
      is a changed man&mdash;-'
    </p>
    <p>
      She stopped. There was something in the silent touch of Florence's hand
      that stopped her.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;But that being a changed man, he knows, now, it would never be.
      Tell him I wish it never had been.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'May I say,' said Florence, 'that you grieved to hear of the afflictions
      he has suffered?'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Her sternness seemed to yield, and there were tears in her dark eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;let him know it then&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh Mama!' said Florence. 'How it lightens my heart, even in such a
      strange meeting and parting, to hear this!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;that
      I am most forbearing in my thoughts of him! Those are the last words I
      send him! Now, goodbye, my life!'
    </p>
    <p>
      She clasped her in her arms, and seemed to pour out all her woman's soul
      of love and tenderness at once.
    </p>
    <p>
      'This kiss for your child! These kisses for a blessing on your head! My
      own dear Florence, my sweet girl, farewell!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To meet again!' cried Florence.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      And Florence left her, seeing her face no more, but accompanied by her
      embraces and caresses to the last.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;man with white teeth&mdash;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&mdash;man who
      wasn't for an age but for all time, and with whom my friend Gay is no
      doubt acquainted&mdash;that its like the shadow of a dream.'
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2HCH0062" id="link2HCH0062"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      CHAPTER 62. Final
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is the last bottle of the old Madiera.
    </p>
    <p>
      'You are quite right, Mr Gills,' says Mr Dombey. 'This is a very rare and
      most delicious wine.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain, who is of the party, beams with joy. There is a very halo of
      delight round his glowing forehead.
    </p>
    <p>
      'We always promised ourselves, Sir,' observes Mr Gills,' Ned and myself, I
      mean&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Dombey nods at the Captain, who shines more and more with speechless
      gratification.
    </p>
    <p>
      '&mdash;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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Dombey. 'Florence, my child'&mdash;and
      turns to kiss her.
    </p>
    <p>
      'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Toots.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.
    </p>
    <p>
      Other buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did in its time; and
      dust and cobwebs thicken on the bottles.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;Florence
      too&mdash;and the pleasant house resounds with profound duets arranged for
      the Piano-Forte and Violoncello, and with the labours of Harmonious
      Blacksmiths.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      'Captain Gills,' says Mr Toots, 'and Mr Sols, I am happy to inform you
      that Mrs Toots has had an increase to her family.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And it does her credit!' cries the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'I give you joy, Mr Toots!' says old Sol.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'A female stranger?' inquires the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Stand by!' says the Captain, turning to the old case-bottle with no
      throat&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots begins to smoke, accordingly, and in the openness of his heart is
      very loquacious.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      Both his auditors assent.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;in
      short, of the tender passion, you know, Captain Gills.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Ay, ay, my lad,' says the Captain, 'as makes us all slue round&mdash;for
      which you'll overhaul the book&mdash;'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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.'
    </p>
    <p>
      The Captain approves of this figure greatly; and murmurs that no flower as
      blows, is like the rose.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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."'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And so do I!' says the Captain.
    </p>
    <p>
      'So do I,' says Sol Gills.
    </p>
    <p>
      '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&mdash;which, upon my word and honour, is a feeble term
      to express my feelings in the society of my wife&mdash;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"&mdash;as you know he was, Mr
      Sols.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Quite true,' says the old Instrument-maker, rubbing his hands.
    </p>
    <p>
      '"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"&mdash;which I think is the case, Mr Sols?
      My wife is always correct.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Why yes, yes&mdash;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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Exactly so,' says Mr Toots. 'You'll never find my wife wrong. "Here he
      is," says that most remarkable woman, "so situated,&mdash;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&mdash;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"&mdash;no
      "rise;" that was Mrs Toots's word&mdash;"triumphant!"'
    </p>
    <p>
      Mr Toots, with the assistance of his pipe&mdash;which he is extremely glad
      to devote to oratorical purposes, as its proper use affects him with a
      very uncomfortable sensation&mdash;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:
    </p>
    <p>
      '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?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'It certainly was, Ned,' replied the old Instrument-maker. 'I remember
      well.'
    </p>
    <p>
      '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!'
    </p>
    <p>
      Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did, in its time; and dust and
      cobwebs thicken on the bottles.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'What, grandpa! Am I so like my poor little Uncle again?'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Yes, Paul. But he was weak, and you are very strong.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'Oh yes, I am very strong.'
    </p>
    <p>
      'And he lay on a little bed beside the sea, and you can run about.'
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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:
    </p>
    <p>
      'Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?'
    </p>
    <p>
      He only answers, 'Little Florence! little Florence!' and smooths away the
      curls that shade her earnest eyes.
    </p>
    <p>
      The voices in the waves speak low to him of Florence, day and night&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_PREF" id="link2H_PREF"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      PREFACE OF 1848
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, Twenty-Fourth March, 1848.
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_PREF2" id="link2H_PREF2"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      PREFACE OF 1867
    </h2>
<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> 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&mdash;a
      very common mistake indeed&mdash;and the not understanding that an
      obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <div style="height: 6em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>







<pre>





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