. // "// ' /'' ss ;- ' '/' . OF OA IF 'R^^RY LOS ANGELES WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. Illustrated from Designs by Darley and Gilbert. DOMBEY AND SON. vovx VOLUME it jy oim. BOSTON: HOUGHTON, OSGOOD AND COMPANY. (ZTfoe Biiersttic Jprccfg, 1880. I Mending to Act of CoognM, te QM jmr IMF, fcy IIUBD AND HOUOHTOX, i Clerk > Office of the District Court for the Southern Dittrlet * New York. VIBBOTTPID AND PSINTIB B B. 0. HOUQHTOS AN1- COMPAXT. SACK ANNEX firl DOMBEY AND SON. VOLUME. I. PREFACE 1 MAKE so bold as to believe that the faculty (or Ihe- habit) of closely and carefully observing the char- acters of men, is a rare one. I have not even found, within my experience, that the faculty (or the habit) of closely and carefully observing so much as the faces of men, is a general one by any means. The two commonest mistakes in judgment that I suppose to arise from the former default, are, the confounding of shyness with arrogance, and the not understanding that an obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself. Mr. Dornbey undergoes no violent internal change, either in this book, or in life. A sense of his injus- tice 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 the surface 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. Tears have elapsed since I dismissed Mr. Dombey. 6 PREFACE. I have not been impatient to offer this critical remark &pon him, and I offer it with some confidence. I began this book by the lake of Geneva, and wen* on with it for gome months in France. The associa- tion between the writing and the place of writing is so curiously strong in my mind, that at this day, although I know every stair in the little Midshipman's house, and could swear to every pew in the church in which Flor- ence was married, or to every young gentleman's bed- Btead in Doctor Blimber's establishment, I yet con- fusedly 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, I wander in my fancy for a whole winter night about the streets of Paris as I really did, with a heavy heart, on the night w'jen my little friend and I parted company forever. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I CHAPTER I. DOMBET AND SON , . ." " ... .9 CHAPTER II. In which timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families . . .84 CHAPTER III. In which Mr. Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home Department ........ 39 CHAPTER IV. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures ......... 56 CHAPTER V. Paul's Progress and Christening ...... 71 CHAPTER VI. Paul's Second Deprivation ..... , .98 CHAPTER Vn. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections ....... 128 CHAPTER VIII. Paul's further Progress, Growth, and Character ' . . . . 136 CHAPTER EX. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble ... 165 CHAPTER X. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster . . 185 rill CONTENTS. CHAPTER XL PAU Paul's Introduction to a new Scene ...... 202 CHAPTER Xn. Paul's Education . . 225 CHAPTER XIII. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business 249 CHAPTER XIV. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the Holidays 266 CHAPTER XV. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit for Wal- ter Gay .".'.". 801 CONTENTS OF VOLUME H CHAPTER XVI. What the Waves were always saying . f . T CHAPTKR XVII. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young People . . 15 CHAPTER XVIII. Father and Daughter . .^-,f ..... . M CHAPTER XIX. Walter goes away .59 CHAPTER XX. Mr. Dombey goes upon a Journey 78 CHAPTER XXI. New Faces . 99 CHAPTER XXII. & Trifle of Management by Mr. Carker the Manager . . . Ill CHAPTER XXIII. Florence Solitary, and the Midshipman Mysterious . . . 144 CHAPTER XXIV. The Study of a loving Heart ..... . IT* CONTENTS. . US CHAPTER XXV. r*a Strange News of Uncle Sol ... . 1M CHAPTER XXVI Shadows of the Past and Future . 808 CHAPTER XXVH. Daeper Shadows . 331 CHAPTER XXVIH. Alterations . . 26 | CHAPTER XXIX. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs. Chick ... . 873 CHAPTER yTT- The Interval before the Marriage ....... 890 CONTENTS OF VOLUME m. CHAPTER XXXL The Wedding . . f CHAPTER XXXH. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces ... . . .11 CHAPTER XXXm. Contrasts , . . RT CHAPTER XXXIV. Another Mother and Daughter ....... 71 CHAPTER XXXV. The Happy Pair ........ . M CHAPTER XXXVL House-warming . . 113 CHAPTER XXXVn. More Warnings than One ...... . 190 CHAPTER XXXVHL Hiss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance ' . 141 C . CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIX. r*a Farther Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner . . 100 CHAPTER XL. Domestic Relations 181 CHAPTER XLI. New Voices in the Waves . 208 CHAPTER XLII. Confidential and Accidental 235 CHAPTER XLIH. The Watches of the Night .' * . . . . . .248 CHAPTER XLIV. A Separation 281 CHAPTER XLV. The Trusty Agent i76 CHAPTER XLVL Recognizant and Reflective ....... 888 CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV. CHAPTER XLVII. The Thunderbolt T CHAPTER XLVUL The Flight of Florence 91 CHAPTER XLIX. The Midshipman makes a Discovery 64 CHAPTER L. Mr. Toots's Complaint 84 CHAPTER LI. Mr. Dombey and the World 108 CHAPTER LJI. Secret Intelligence ..'... Ul CONTENTS. n CHAPTER LIH. PAH More Intelligence 140 CHAPTER LIV. The Fugitives 163 CHAPTER LV. Rob the Grinder loses his Place 179 CHAPTER LVI. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted . . 197 CHAPTER LVII. Another Wedding 230 CHAPTER LVIII. After a Lapse 349 CHAPTER LIX. Retribution 264 CHAPTER LX. Chiefly Matrimonial 292 CHAPTER LXL Relenting 310 CHAPTER LUL Final Ml DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER I. DOMBEY AND SON. DOM BET 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. Uombey 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 rnan, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course), an undeniably line 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 t '." lliat was to come down in good time remorseless tiviu.s they are for striding through their human forests, uolching as they go while the countenance of Son was crossed and recrossed 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 10 DOMBEY AND SON. scythe, as a preparation of the surface for his deeper operations. Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled the heavy gold watch-chain that depended from helow his trim blue coat, whereof the button sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays of the di- lant lire. Son, with his little fists curled up and clinchtd, seemed, in his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for having come upon him so unexpectedly. " The house will once again, Mrs. Dombey," said Mr Dombey, " be not only in name but in fact Dombey and Son ; Dom-bey and Son ! " The words had such a softening influence, that he a|>- pended a term of endearment to Mrs. Dombey 's name (though not without some hesitation, as being a man but litile used to that form of address) : and said, " Mrs. Dombey, my my dear." A transient flush of faint surprise overspread the sick lady's face as she raised her eyes towards him. " He will be christened Paul, my Mrs. Dombey of course." She feebly echoed, " Of course," or rather expressed it by the motion of her lips, and closed her eyes again. " His father's name, Mrs. Dombey, and his grand- father's ! I wish his grandfather were alive this day ! r And again he said " Dom-bey and Son," in exactly the same tone as before. Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dom- bey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to linde in, and the sun and moon were made to give them Jight. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships ; rain!)ows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled DOMBEY: AXb SUN. 11 in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which Ihey 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 foi anno Dombei and Son. He had risen, as his father had before him, in th course of life and death, from Son to Dombey, and fb- nearly twenty years had been the sole representative of the firm. Of those years he had been married, ten married, as some said, to a lady with no heart to give him ; whose happiness was in the past, and who was con- tent to bind her broken spirit to the dutiful and meek en- durance of the present. Such idle talk was little likely to reach the ears of Mr. Dombey, whom it nearly con- cerned ; and probably no one in the world would havti 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 honorable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, V r 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 perpetu- ation 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. Dora- oey had always sat at the head of his table, and done the honors of his house in a remarkably lady-like and becom- 12 DOMBEY ASD SON. big manner. That Mrs. Dombey must have been happy, That she couldn't help it. Or, at all events, with one drawback. Yes. That he would have allowed. With only one ; but that one cer- tainly involving much. They had been married ten years, and until this present day on which Mr. Dombey sat jingling and jingling his heavy gold watch-chain in the great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue. To speak of ; none worth mentioning. There had been a girl some six years before, and the child, who had stolen into the chamber unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a corner whence she could see her mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son ! Ii: the capital of the House's name and dignity, such a child was merely a piece of base coin that couldn't be invested a bad boy nothing more. Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full at this moment, however, that he felt he could afford a drop or two of its contents, even to sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little daughter. So he said, " Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, if you like, I dare say. Don't touch him ! " The child glanced keenly at the blue coat and stiff white cravat, which, with a pair of creaking boots and a very loud-ticking watch, embodied her idea of a father ; but her eyes returned to her mother's face immediately, imd she neither moved nor answered. Next moment, the lady had opened her eyes and seen the child , and the child had run towards her ; and, Dtanding on tiptce, the better to hide her face in her em- brace, had clung about her with a desperate affection very much at variance with her years. DOMBEY AND SOX. 13 Oh Lord bless me ! " said Mr. Dombey, rising testily " A very ill-advised and feverish proceeding this, I ana sure. I had better ask Doctor Peps if he'll have the goodness to step up-stairs again perhaps. I'll go down. I'll go down. I needn't beg you," he added, pausing foi a moment at the settee before the fire, " to take particu- lar care of this young gentleman, Mrs. " " Biockitt, 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 sug- gestion. " Of this young gentleman, Mrs. Biockitt." u No, sir, indeed. I remember when Miss Florence vas born " " Ay, ay, ay," said Mr. Dombey, bending over the basket bedstead, and slightly bending hid brows at the same time. " Miss Florence was all very well, but this is another matter. This young gentleman has to accom- plish a destiny. A destiny, little fellow ! " As he thus apostrophized the infant he raised one of his hands to his lips, and kissed it ; then, seeming to fear that the action involved some compromise of his dignity, went, awkwardly enough, away. Doctor Parker Peps, one of the court physicians, and R man of immense reputation for assisting at tin; increase of groat families, was walking up and dowrt the drawing- room with his hands behind him, to the unspeakablo a !mir:*tion of the family surgeon, who had regularly puffed the case for the last six weeks, among all his pa- tients, friends, and acquaintances, as one to which ho was in hourly expectation day and night of being sum- tnoned, in conjunction with Doctor Parker Peps. " Well sir, '" said Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep, 14 DOMBKY AND SO\. sonorous voice, muffled for the occasion, like the knocker, * do you find that your dear lady is at all roused by your visit ? " " Stimulated, as it were ? " said the family practitioner, faintly ; bowing at the same time to the doctor, as imuh as to say, " Excuse my putting in a word, but this is a valuable connection." 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 up-stairs again. " Good ! We must not disguise from you, sir," said Doctor Parker Peps, u that there is a want of power in Her Grace the Duchess 1 beg your pardon; 1 con- found names ; 1 should say, in your amiable lady. That there is a certain degree of languor, and a general ab- sence of elasticity, which we would rather not" 44 See," interposed the family practitioner, with another inclination of the head. " Quite so," said Doctor Parker Peps, " which we would rather not see. It would appear that the system of Lady Cankaby excuse me ; I should say of Mrs. Dombey: 1 confuse the names of cases" " So very numerous," murmured the family practitioner "can't be expected, I'm sure quite wonderful if otherwise Doctor Parker Peps's west-end practice " " Thank you," said the doctor, "quite so. It would nppoar, I was observing, that the system of our patient has sustained a shock from which it can only hope tu rally by a great and strong " " And vigorous," murmured the family practitioner. u Quite so," assented the doctor " and vigorous ef- DOMJ3EY AND SON. 15 fort. Mi. i*iikins here, who from his position of mtdical ftdviecr in this family no one better qualified to nil that position, I am sure." " Oh !" murmured the family practitioner. '" Praije fiom Sir Hubert Stanley!'" " You are good enough," returned Doctor Parker Peps, " to say so. Mr. Pilkins who, from his position, is best acquainted with the patient's constitution in its normal state (an acquaintance very valuable to us in forming our opinions on 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 interest- ing friend the Countess of Dorabey I beg your par- don ! Mrs. Dombey should not be" " Able," said the family practitioner. " To make that effort successfully," said Doctor Par ker Peps, " then a crisis might arise, which we should both sincerely deplore." With that, they stood for a few seconds looking at the ground. Then, on the motion made in dumb show of Doctor Parker Pep>. they went up-stairs; the family practitioner opening the room-door for that distinguished professional, and following him out with most obsequious politeness. To record of Mr. Dombey that he was not in his way n3bcted by this intelligence, would be to do him an injus- tice. He was not a man of whom it could properly be said that he was ever startled or shocked ; but he cer- -linly had a sense within him, that if his wife should sicken and decay, he would be very sorry, and that lie 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 sin 16 DOMBEY AND SON. wre regret. Though it would be a cool, business like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no doubt. His meditations on the subject were soon interrupted, first by the rustling of garments on the staircase, and then by the sudden whisking into the room of a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise, but dressed in a very juvenile manner, particularly as to the tight- ness of her bodice, who, running up to him with a kind of screw in her face and carriage, expressive of sup- pressed emotion, flung her arms round his neck, and said in a choking voice, " My dear Paul ! He's quite a Dorabey ! " " Well, well ! " returned her brother for Mr. Dom- Ix-y was her brother "I think he is like the family. Don't agitate yourself, Louisa." " It's very foolish of me," said Louisa, sitting down, and taking out her pocket-handkerchief, " but he's he's such a perfect Dotnbey ! / never saw anything like it in my life ! " " But what is this about Fanny, herself ? " said Mr. Dombey. " How is Fanny ? " " My dear Paul," returned Louisa, " it's nothing what- ever. Take my word, it's nothing whatever. There is exhaustion, certainly, but nothing like what I underwent myself, either with George or Frederick. An effort Is necessary. That's all. If dear Fanny were a Dombey ! But I dare say 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 [uid 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, I thought I should have fallen out of the staircase win DOMBEY AND SON. 17 dow a" I came down from seeing dear Fanny, and that tiddy iekle sing." These last words originated in a sud- ilcn vivid reminiscence of the haby. They were succeeded by a gentle tap at the door. " Mrs. Chick," said a very bland female voice outside. * how are you now, my dear friend ? " ' My dear Paul," said Louisa in a low voice, as ^h rose from her seat, " it's Miss Tox. The kindest crea- ture! I never could have got here without her! Miss Tox, my brother Mr. Dombey. Paul my dear, my very particular friend Miss Tox." The lady thus specially presented, was a long lean figure, wearing such a faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-drapers call " fast colors " 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 admirably 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 an involuntary admi- ration. Her eyes were liable to a similar affection. She had the softest voice that ever was heard ; and hei nose, stupendously aquiline, had a little knob in the very centre or keystone of the bridge, whence it tended ilownwards towards her fare, as in an invincible deter- oiination never to turn up at anything. Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel and good, had a certain character of angularity and scantiness. She was accustomed to wear odd weedy little flowers in VOL. i. 2 18 DOMBEY AND SON. her bonnets and caps. Strange grasses were sometimes perceived in her hair; and it was observed by the curi- ous, of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wristbands, and other gossamer articles indeed of everything she wore which had two ends to it intended to unite that the two ends were never on good terms, and wouldn't quite meet without a struggle. She had furry articles for winter wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood up on end in a rampant manner, and were not at all sleek. She was much given to the carrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off' like little pistols when they were shut up; and when full-dressed, she wore round her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing a fishy old eye with no approach to speculation in it. These and other appearances of a similar nature, had served to propagate the opinion, that Miss Tox was a lady of what is called a limited independence, which she turned to the best account. Possibly her mincing gait encouraged the belief, and suggested that her clipping a step of ordinary compass into two or three, originated in her habit of making the most of everything. " I am sure," said Miss Tox, with a prodigious courte- sy, " that to have the honor of being presented to Mr. Dombey is a distinction which I have long sought, but very little expected at the present moment. My dear Mrs. Chick may I say Louisa ! " Mrs. Chick took Miss Tox's hand in hers, rested the ftwt of her wine-glass upon it, repressed a tear, and said in a low voice " Bless you ! " ' My dear Louisa then," said Miss Tox, " my sweet friend, how are you now ? " " Better," Mrs. Chick returned. " Take some wine. You have been almost as anxious as I have been, and (oust want it, I am sure." DOMBET AND SOTS'. 19 Mr. Doinbey of course officiated. "Miss Tox, Paul," pursued Mrs. Cliiek, still retaining her hand, " knowing liow much I have been interested in the anticipation of the event of to-day, has been working at a little gift for Fanny, which I promised to present It is only a pincushion for the toilet table, Paul, but I do say, and will say, and must say, that Miss Tox ha? T?ry prettily adapted the sentiment to the occasion J oj 11 'Welcome little Dombey ' poetry, myself!" " Is that the device ? " inquired her brother. "That is the device," returned Louisa. ''But do me the justice to remember, my dear Louisa," Baid Miss Tox in a tone of low and earnest entreaty, " that nothing but the I have some difficulty in ex- pressing myself the dubiousness of the result would have induced me to take so great a liberty: 'Welcome, Master Dombey,' would have been much more congenial to my feelings, as I am sure you know. But the uncer- tainty attendant on angelic strangers, will, I hope, ex- cuse; what must otherwise appear an unwarrantable fa- miliarity." Miss Tox made a graceful bend as she spoke, in favor of Mr. Dombey, which that gentleman graciously acknowledged. Even the sort of recognition of Dombey and Son, conveyed in the foregoing conversation, was so palatable to him, that his sister, Mrs. Chick though he affected to consider her a weak good-natured person had perhaps more influence over him than anybody t\*Q. " Well ! " said Mrs. Chick, with a sweet smile, " after this, I forgive Fanny everything!" It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs. Chick felt that it did her good. Not that she had any- thing particular to forgive in her sister-in-law, nor indeed 20 DOMBEY AND SON. anything at all, except her having married her brother in itself a species of audacity and her having, in the course of events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy : which, as Mrs. Chick had frequently observed, was not quite what she had expected of her, ami was not a pleasant return for all the attention and distinction she bad met with. Mr. Dombey being hastily summoned out of the room at this moment, the two ladies were left alone together. Miss Tox immediately became spasmodic. "I knew you would admire my brother. I told yo BO beforehand, my dear," said Louisa. Miss Tox's hands and eyes expressed how much. " And as to his property, my dear ! " " Ah ! " said Miss Tox, with deep feeling. " Im mense ! " " But his deportment, my dear Louisa ! " said Miss Tox. " His presence! His dignity! No portrait that 1 have ever seen of any one has been half so replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know : so un- compromising: 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 7 should desig- nate him." " Why, my dear Paul ! " exclaimed his sister, as he returned, " you look quite pale ! There's nothing tha matter ? " " I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fnnny" " Now, my dear Paul," returned his sister rising, " don't believe it If you have any reliance on 1117 ex- perience, Paul, you may rest assured that there is noth- ing wanting but an effort on Fanny's part. And that DOM BEY AND SON. 21 | pflfbrt," she continued, taking off her bonnet, and adjust ing lier cap and gloves, in a business-like manner, " she must be encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dear Paul, come up-stairs with me." Mr. Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his sister for the reason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an experienced and bustling matron, acquiesced; and^followed her, at once, to the sick-chamber. The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasp- ing her little daughter to her breast. The child clung close about her, with the same intensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheek from her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or shed a tear. ( Restless without the little girl," the doctor whispered Mr. Dombey. " We found it best to have her in again." There was such a solemn stillness round the bed ; and the two medical attendants seemed to look on the impas- sive form with so much compassion and so little hope, that Mrs. Chick was for the moment diverted from her pur- pose. 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 endeavors to twaken a slt-eper : " Fanny ! Fanny ! " There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr. Dombey's watch and Doctor Parker Peps's watch, whi.;h seemed in the silence to be running a race. " Fanny, my dear," said Mrs. Chick, with assumed lightness, " here's Mr. Dombey come to see you. Won't pou speak to him? They want to lay your little boy the baby, Fanny, you know ; you hav-j hardly seen him 22 DOMBET AND SON. yet, I think in bed ; but they can't till you rouse your- self a little. Don't you think it's time you moused your- self a little ? Eh?" She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same time looking round at the by-standers, and holding up her finger. " Eh ? " she repeated, " what was it you said, Fanny ? I didn't hear you." No word or sound in answer. Mr. Dombey*s watch and Dr. Parker Peps's watch seemed to be racing faster. " Now, really Fanny my dear," said the sister-in-law, altering her position, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spite of herself, " I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don't rouse yourself. It's necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make ; but this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so much depends upon us. Come ! Try ! I must really scold you if you don't!" The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches seemed to jostle, and to trip each other up. " Fanny ! " said Louisa, glancing round, with a gath- ering alarm. " Only look at me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me ; will you ? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done ! " The two medical attendants exchanged a look across the bed ; and the physician, stooping down, whispered in the child's ear. Not having understood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned her perfectly colorless face, and deep dark eyes towards him ; buf without loosening her hold in the least. DOMBET AND SON. 2o The whisper was repeated. " Mama ! " said the child. The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, avnkened some show of consciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eyelids trembled, and the nostril quiv- ered, and the faintest shadow of a smile was seen. " Mama ! " cried the child sobbing aloud. " Oh dear mama ! oh dear mama ! " The doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child, aside from the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay there; how little breath there was to stir them ! Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all the world. 24 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER II. IS WHICH TIMELY PRO VISION IS MADE KORAN EMERGENCY THAT WILL SOMETIMES ARISE IN THE BEST-REGULATED FAMILIES. "I SHALL never cease to congratulate myself," said Mrs. Chick, " on having said, when I little thought what was in store for us, really as if I was inspired by something, that I forgave poor dear Fanny every- thing. Whatever happens, that must always be a com- fort to me ! " Mrs. Chick made this impressive observation in the drawing-room, after having descended thither from the inspection of the mantua-makers up-stairs, 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 re- press at present. " Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo," said Mr. Chick, "or you'll be laid up with spasms, I see. Right tol loor nil ! Bless my soul, I forgot ! We're here one day and gone the next ! " Mrs. Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof and then proceeded with the thread of her discourse. DOMBEY AND SON. 25 " J 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 every- thing, if we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our own faults if we lose sight of this one." Mr. Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark with the singularly inappropriate air of " A cobbler there was ; " and checking himself, in some con- fusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our own faults if we didn't improve such melancholy occasions as the present. " Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr. C.," retorted his helpmate after a short pause, " than by the introduction, either of the college hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark of rump-te- iddity, bow-wow-wow ! " which Mr. Chick had indeed indulged in, under his breath, and which Mrs. Chick repeated in a tone of withering scorn. " Merely habit, my dear," pleaded Mr. Chick. " Nonsense ! Habit ! " returned his wife. " If you're a rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses. Habit ! If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of walking on the ceiling like the flies, I should hear enough of it, I dare say." 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. " How's the baby, Loo ? " asked Mr. Chick : to change the subject. " What baby do you mean ? " answered Mrs. Chick. "I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining- room down-stairs one mass of babies, no one in theii tenses would believe." 26 DOMBEY AND SON. a One mass of babies ! " repeated Mr. Chick, staring ivith an alarmed expression about him. u It would have occurred to most men," said Mrs, Chick, " that poor dear Fanny being no more, it be- comes necessary to provide a nurse." " Oh ! Ah ! " said Mr. Chick. " Toor-rul such \9 life, I mean. 1 hope you are suited, my dear." * Indeed I am not,** said Mrs. Chick ; u nor likely to be, so far as I can see. Meanwhile, of course, the child is" " Going to the very deuse," said Mr. Chick, thought- fiilly, " to be sure." Admonished, however, that he had committed him- self, by the indignation expressed in Mrs. Chick's coun- tenance at the idea of a Dombey going there ; and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright sug- gestion, he added : " Couldn't something temporary be done with a tea- pot?" 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 resig- nation, Mrs. Chick 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 sud- DOMBET AND SON. 27 denly make a start, turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs. Chick, and carry all before him. Be- ing liable himself to similar unlooked-for checks from Mrs. Chick, their little contests usually possessed a haracter of uncertainty that was very animating. Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came running into the room in a breathless con- iliiion. " My dear Louisa," said Miss Tox, " is the vacancy still unapplied ?" " You good soul, yes," said Mrs. Chick. " Then, my dear Louisa," returned Miss Tox, " I hope and believe but in one moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party." Running down-stairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got the party out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy. It then appeared that she had used the word, not in Us 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 Jier 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 vr\io walked by himself; and finally, a plump and ap- le-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 cf his brother Johnny." " My dear Louisa," said Miss Tox, " knowing youT great anxiety, and wishing *o relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte s Royal Married Females, 28 DOMBET AND SON. 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 satis* factory. The moment I heard this, and had it corrob- orated by the matron excellent references and unim- peachable character I got the address, my dear, and posted off again." " Like the dear good Tox, you are ! " said Louisa. " Not at all," returned Miss Tox. ' DonH 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 ac- count of them could be half so comfortable to you and Mr. Dombey as the sight of them all together, I brought them all away. '' This gentleman," said Miss Tox, pointing out the apple-faced man, " is the father. Will you have the goodness to come a little forward, sir?" The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stood chuckligg and grinning in a front row. " This is his wife, of course," said Mi-^s Tox, singling out the young woman with the baby. " How do you do, Polly ? " " I'm pretty well, I thank you, ma'am," said Polly. By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox ha/1 made the inquiry as in condescension to an old ac- quaintance, whom she hadn't seen for a fortnight or so. "I'm glad to hear it," said Miss Tox. "The other young woman is her unmarried sister who lives with DOMBEY AND SON. 29 them, and would take care of her children. Her name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?" " I'm pretty well, I thank you, ma'am," returned Je- mima. " 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 possible. When those duties cease to be re- quired and rendered, and the stipend ceases to be paid, there is an end of all relations between us. Do you understand me ?" Mrs. Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he had evidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad. " You have children of your own," said Mr. Donibey. tt 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 : ^""i will stay away. The child will cease to remember you ; and you will cea.se, if you please, to remember .he child." Mrs. Toodle, with a little more color in her cheeks than she had had before, said " she hoped she knew her place." " I hope you do, Richards." *id Mr. Dombey. " I have no doubt yuu knc>-" it v-v-v *!!. Indeed it is so plain and obviou* it\**; it could hnrdly be otherwise. Louisa my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and let her have it when and how she pleases.* 'Mr. what's-your-name, a word with you, if you please!" Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of the room, Toodle returned and con- fronted 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-dint hard knotty hands: and a square fore- DOMLEY AND SON. 88 head, as coaive in grain as (he bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects to Mr. Dorabey, who was one of those close-shaved close-cut moneyed gentle- men 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 shower-baths. " You have a son, I believe ? " said Mr. Dombey. " Four on 'em, sir. Four hims and a her. All alive ! " " Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them ! " said Mr. Dombey. " I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, sir." "What is that?" " To lose 'em, sir." " Can you read ? " asked Mr. Dombey. " Why, not partick'ler, sir." Write ? " " With chalk, sir." "With anything?" " I could make shift to chalk a little bil. 1 think, if I was put to it," said Toodle, after some reflec^on. " And yet," said Mr. Dombey, " you are two o. three and thirty, I suppose ? " " Thereabouts, I suppose, sir," answered Toodle, after more reflection. 'Then why don't you learn ? " asked Mr. Dombey. ' So I'm a-going to, sir. One of my little boys is a- eomg to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to kC.hool himself." " Well ! " said Mr. Dornbey, after looking at him at- tentively and with no great favor, as he stood gazing ound the room (principally round the ceiling) and atiU 84 DOMBEY AJH) SON. Drawing his hand across and across his mouth. " Ton heard what I said to your wife just now ? " " Polly heerd it," said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in the direction of the door, with an air of per- fect confidence in his better half. " It's all right.'* u As you appear to leave everything to her," said Mr Domhey, frustrated in his intention of impressing La views still more distinctly on the husband, as the stronger character, "I suppose it is of no use my saying anything to you." Not a bit," said Toodle. " Polly heerd it. SheTt awake, sir." " I won't detain you any longer then," returned Mr. Dombey disappointed. " Where have you worked all your life ? " " Mostly underground, sir, till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a-going on one of these here rail- roads when they comes into full play." As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey. He motioned his child's foster- father to the door, who departed by no means unwill- ingly : and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitary wretchedness. For all his starched -impenetrable dignity and composure, he wiped blinding tears from his eyes as he did so : and often said, with an emotion of which he would not, foi the world, have Lad a witness, " Poor little fellow ! " It may have been characteristic of Mr. Dombeys nride that he pitied himself through the child. Not pour me. Not poor widower, confiding by constraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been work- 'tu> " mostly underground " all his life, nn I yet Ht whose DOMBEY AND SON. 35 door Death has never knocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit but poor little fellow ! Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him and it is au instance of the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all his thoughts were tending to one centre that a great temptation was being placed in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, vpould it be possible for her to change them ? Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romantic and unlikely though possible, there was no denying he could not help pursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what his condition would be, if he should discover such an im- posture 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 im- postor, and endow a stranger with it? 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 re- garded the woman's station as rather an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, by placing, in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, and render- ing their separation easy and natural. Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon be- tween Mrs. Chick and Richards, with the assistance of Miss Tox ; and Richards being with much ceremony in- vested with the Doinbey 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. 36 DOMBEY AND SON. " You'll take a glass yourself, sir, won't you ? " said Miss Tox. as Toodle appeared. ** Thankee, mum," said Toodle, "since you are sup- pressing." "And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortable home, a'n't you, sir?" said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at him stealthily. " No, mum," said Toodle. " Here's wishing of her back agin." Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs. Chick, who had her matronly apprehensions that this indulgence In grief might be prejudicial to the little Dombey (- acid, indeed," she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to the rescue. "Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sis- ter Jemima, Richards," said Mrs. Chick ; " and you have only to make an effort this is a world of effort, you know, Richards to be very happy indeed. You have been already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards ? " " Ye es, ma'am," sobbed Polly. " And it'll fit beautifully, I know," said Mrs. Chick, " for the same young person has made me many dresses." The very best materials, too ! " " Lor, you'll be so smart," said Miss Tox, " that your husband won't know you ; will you, sir? " "I should know her," said Toodle, gruffly, " anyhows and anywheres." Toodle was evidently not to be bought over. "As to living, Richards, you know," pursued Mrs. Chick, " why the very best of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your little dinner every day ; anil anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be as feadily provided as if you were a lady." DOMBEY AND SON. " Yes, lo be sure ! " said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with great sympathy. "And as to porter! quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?" "Oh, certainly!" returned Mrs. Chick, in the same tone. " With a little abstinence, you know, ray dear, in xjint of vegetables." " And pickles, perhaps," suggested Miss Tox. " With such exceptions," said Louisa, " she'll consult her choice entirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love." " And then, of course, you know," said Miss Tox, u however fond she is of her own dear little child and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her for being fond of it ? " " Oh no ! " cried Mrs. Chick, benignantly. " Still," reamed Miss Tox, "she naturally must be in- terested iu her young charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherub closely connected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from day to day at one common fountain. Is it not so, Louisa?" " Most undoubtedly ! " said Mrs. Chick. " You see, my love, she's already quite contented and comfortable, and means to say good-by to her sister Jemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a light heart and a smile; don't she, my dear!" " Oh yes ! " cried Miss Tox. " To be sure she does ! " Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced tnem all round in great distress, and 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 iivining her intent, immediately began swarming up- after her if that \vord of doubtful etymology we DOMBEY AND SON ne admissible on his arras and legs ; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remem- brance of the steam-engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of the family. A quantity of oranges and halfpence, thrust indis- jriminately 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 hack- ney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. The chil- dren, 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 be- hind among the spikes, as being the mode of convey- ance to which he was best accustomed. DOMBEY AND SOX. CHAPTER III. IX WHICH MR. DOMHKY, AS A MAX AXO A FATHER, xJ SEEN AT THE HEAD OF THE HOME-DEPARTMENT. THE funtral of the deceased lady having been " pei formed " to the entire satisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighborhood 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 do- mestic 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-tem- pered lady, and the house-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have thought it, and the house-maid had said she couldn't hardly believe it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourning was wearing rusty too. On Richards, who was established up-stairs in a stato of honorable captivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and gray. 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 Bryanstcne-square. It was a corner house, with great wide aieas containing cellars frowned upon by barred 40 DOMBEY AND SON. windows, and leered at by crooked-eyed doors leading to dustbins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circu- lar 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 smoke-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 en- tertainments ; until the butlers whose families were din- ing out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, and tin: lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempt- ing to brighten up the street with gas. It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Air. Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up perhaps to preserve it for the son with whom his plans were all associated and the rooms to be ungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with great winding- sheets. Ball-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, muHled in holland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odors, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the DOMBE1 AND SON. 41 :himneys. 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 neighboring 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 neighborhood ; and these, being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let immediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence lo Mr. Durnbey's windows. The apartments which Mr. Dombey reserved for his own inLabiting, were attainable from the hall, and con- sisted 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 break fast-room beyond, com nianding 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, silting in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant from among the dark heavy furniture the house had been inhab- ited for years by his father, and in many of its appoint- ments was old-fashioned and grim she began to enter- tain ideas of him in his solitary state, as if he were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was not *o be accosted or understood. 42 DOMBEY AND SOW. Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself and had carried little Paul through it for some weeks ; and had returned up-stairs one day from a mel- ancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (she never went out without Mrs. Chick, who called on fine morning?, usually accompanied by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing or in other words, to march them gravely up and down the pavement ; like a walk- ing funeral) ; when, as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowly and quietly opened, and a dark-eyed little girl looked in. " It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt," thought Richards, who had never seen the child before. " Hope I see you well, miss." " Is that my brother ? " asked the child, pointing to the baby. " Yes, my pretty," answered Richards. " Come and kiss him." But. the child, instead of advancing, looked her ear- nestly in the face, and said : " What have you done with my Mama ? " "Lord bless the little creeter! " cried Richards, "what a sad question ! I done ? Nothing, miss." " What have they done with my Mama ? " inquired the child. " I never saw such a melting thing in all my life ! " said Richards, who naturally substituted for this child one of her own, inquiring for herself in like circumstances, " Come nearer here, my dear miss ! Don't be afraid of me." " I am not afraid of you," said the child, drawing nearer. " But I want to know what they have don* vth my Mama," DOMBEY AND SON. 43 " My darling," said Richards, " you wear that pretty black frock in remembrance of your Mama." ** I can remember my Mama," returned the child, with tears springing to her eyes, " in any frock/' " But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone." " Where gone ? " asked the child. u Come and sit down by me," said Richards, " and IT* tell you a story." With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she had asked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her hand until now, and sat down on a stool at the nurse's feet, looking up into her face. ''Once upon a time," said Richards, "there was a lady a very good lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her." "A very good lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her," repeated the child. " Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill and died." The child shuddered. " Died, never to be seen again by any one on earth, and was buried in the ground where the trees grow." " The cold ground," said the child shuddering again. " No ! The warm ground," returned Polly, seizing her advantage, " where the ugly little seeds turn into beauti ful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don't know what all besides. Where good people turn into bright Migels, and fly away to Heaven ! " The child who had drooped her head, raised it again, ind sat looking at her intently. " So ; let me see " said Polly, not a little flurried 44 OOMBET AND SON. 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, where- ever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD ! and she prayed to Him, this lady did," said Polly, affecting herself beyond measure ; being heartily in earnest, " to teach her little daughter to be sure of that in her heart : and to know that she was happy there and loved her still : and to hope and try oh all her life to meet her there one day, never, never, never to part any more." " It was my Mama ! " exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping her round the neck. " And the child's heart," said Polly, drawing her to her breast : " the little daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even when she heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was a poor mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it didn't feel so lonely sobbed and cried upon her bosom took kindly to the baby lying in her lap and there, there, there ! " said Polly smoothing the child's curls and dropping tears upon them. " There, poor dear ! " " Oh well, Miss Floy ! And won't your Pa be angry neither ! " cried a quick voice at the door, proceeding fronc. a short, brown, womanly girl of fourteen, with a little snub nose and black eyes like jet beads. "When it was 'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wet nurse." " She don't worry me," was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. " I am very fond of children." " Oh ! but begging your pardon, Mrs. Richards, that lon't matter you know," returned the black-eyed girl. DOMBEY AND SON. 45 who was so desperately sharp and biting that, she seemed to make one's eyes water. " 1 may be very fond of pennywinkles, Mrs. Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em for tea." " Well, it don't matter," said Polly. "Oh thankee, Mrs. Richards, don't k!" retimed the sharp girl. " Remembering, however, if you 11 be so good, that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's under your'n." " But still we needn't quarrel," said Polly. " Oh no, Mrs. Richards," rejoined Spitfire. " Not at all, I don't wish it, we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, Master Paul a tem- porary." Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses ; shooting out whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, if possible. ' Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she ? " a>ked Polly. " Yes, Mrs. Richards, just come home, 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 ex- pensive mourning that Mrs. Richards is a-wearing for your Ma ! " With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was Susan Nipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench as if she were a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharp exercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindnoss. ' She'll be quite happy, now she has come home gain," 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." " Lurk, Mrs. Richards ! " cried Miss Nipper, taking 46 DOMBEY AND SON. np her words with a jerk. " Don't, See her dear Papa indeed ! I should like to see her do it ! " " Won't she then ? " asked Polly. " Lork, Mrs. Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebody else, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she never was a favorite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs. Richards, / assure you." The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if she understood and felt what was said. " You surprise me ! " cried Polly. u Hasn't Mr. Dombey seen her since " " No," interrupted Susan Nipper. " Not once since, and he hadn't hardly set his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don't think he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in the streets, or would know her for his own child if he was to meet her in the streets to-morrow, Mrs. Richards, as to me" said Spitfire, with a giggle, " I doubt if he's aweer of my existence." " Pretty dear ! " said Richards ; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the little Florence. " Oh ! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now in conversation, I can tell you, Mrs. Richards, present company always excepted too," said Susan Nipper : u wish you good-morning, Mrs. Richards, now Miss Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like a naughty wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't." In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling on the part of Susan Nipper, tending tow- ards the dislocation of her right shoulder, little Florence *>roke away, and kissed Iver new friend, tflfectionately. DOMBEY AND SON. 47 "Good-by!" said the child. "God bless you! 1 shall come to see you again soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan ?" Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little tody, although a disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds that childhood, like money, mus 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 s-hook her head, and conveyed a relenting ex- pression into her very-wide-open black eyes. " It a'n'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, 1 may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chancy, Mrs. Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks." Richards assented to the proposition. " This house a'n't so exactly ringing with merry-mak ing," said Miss Nipper, " that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole set." This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one. " So I'm agreeable, I'm sure," said Susan Nipper, u 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 ME, Miss Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, you haven't, come along ! " With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made a charge at her young ward, and swept Ver out of the room. 48 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 waa lore when she was left alone again. In the simple pas- sage that had taken place between herself and tha 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 coniidence and interest between them from that moment. Notwithstanding Mr. Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps in point of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. 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 constani 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 dawn- ing knowledge home to Mr. Dombey at that early day, which would not then have struck him in the end like lightning. But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, of improving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devising some means of having little Florence beside her, lawfully, and without rebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night. She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, mid had walked about and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms when, to her great surprise and dis- may, Mr. Dombey came out suddenly, and stopnod before her. " Good-evening, Richards." DOMBEY AND SON. 49 dust the same austere, stift gentleman, as lie had ap- peared to her on that first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarily dropped her eyes and her courtesy at the same time. " How is Master Paul, Richards?" ' Quite thriving, sir, and well." " He looks so," said Mr. Dombey, glancing with grea interest at the tiny face she uncovered for his observa- tion, and yet affecting to be half careless of it. " They give you everything you want, I hope ? " " Oh yes, thank you, sir." She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr. Dombey, who had turned away, stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly. " I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, sir, as seeing oilier children play- ing about 'em," observed Polly, taking courage. ' I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here," said Mr. Dembey with a frown, "that I wished you to see as little of your family as possible. You can continue your walk if you please." With that, he disappeared into his inner room ; and Polly had the satisfaction of feeling that he had thorough- ly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement of her purpose. Next night, she found him walking about the conser- vatory 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 iu. "If you really think that sort of society is good fbi the child," lie said sharply, as if there had been no inter- nal since >he proposed it, " where's Miss Florence? " " Nothing could be better ihan Miss Florence, sir, VOL. i. 4 60 DOMBEY AND SON. Baitl Polly eagerly, "but^L understood from her little maid that they were not to " Mr. Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it wai answered. " Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Rich- ards when she chooses, and go out with her, and so forth Tell them to let the children be together, when Richards wishes it." The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly it was a good cause and she was bold in it, though instinctively afraid of Mr. Dombey requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother. She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on this errand, but she thought she saw that Mr. Dombey's color changed ; that the expression of his face quite altered ; that he turned hurriedly, as if to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was only deterred by very shame. And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, there had been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, which was at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be ab- sorbed 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 (he bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth, lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood on the bank above them, looking down a mere spectator not a sharer with them quite shut out. Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep his mind free from such imperfect shapes of \he \neaning with which they were fraught, as were able DOMBEY AND SON. 51 to make themselves visible to him through the mist of hia pride, his previous feelings of indifference towards little Florence changed into an uneasiness of an extraor- dinary kind. He almost/elt as if she watched and dis- trusted him. As if she held the clew to something se- cret in his breast, of the nature of which he was hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of one jarring and discordant string within him. and her very breath could sound it. His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He had never conceived an aversion to her; it had not been worth his while or in his humor. She had never been a positively disagreeable object to him. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. He would have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had known how. Perhaps who shall decide on such mysteries ? he was afraid that he might come to hate her. When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr. Dombey stopped in his pacing up and down, and looked towards her. Had he looked with greater interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver ; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, " Oh, father, try to love me ! there's no one else ! " the dread of a repulse ; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him ; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encour flgement ; and how her overcharged young heart was vandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sor- "ow and affection. But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irres- alutely at tbe door and look towards him ; and he saw QO more. 52 DOMBEY AND SON. u Come in," he said, " come in : what is the child afraid of ? " She came in ; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air, stood pressing her small liands hard together, close within the dooi. ' Come here, Florence," said her father, coldly. " Ik) you know who I arn ? " ' Yes, papa." " Have you nothing to say to me ? " The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and put out her trem- bling hand. Mr. Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do. " There ! lie 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 1 " Mis little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been when she looked round at the doctor that night and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away. It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at great disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child's mind, but even ii]>on the natural grace and freedom of her actions. Still Polly persevered with all the better heart for see- ing this ; and, judging of Mr. Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appeal of poor little DOM BEY AND SON. 53 Florence's mourning-dress. " It's hard indeed," thought Polly, " if lie takes only to one little motherless child when he has another, and that a girl, before his eyes." So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she rould, 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 up-stairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to say good-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back ; and when she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, as if to shut out her own unworthiness, "Oh no, no! He don't want me. He don't want me ! " The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of Mr. Dombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter was. "Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, sir, if she came in to say good-night," said Richards. " It doesn't matter," returned Mr. Dombey. " You can let her come and go without regarding me." The child shrunk as she listened and was gone, be- fore her humble friend looked round again. However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of her well-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had brought it to bear : whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she was once more safely intrenched up-stairs. Miss Nipper received that proof of her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free association for the future, rather coldly, and was any- thing but enthusiastic in her demonstrations of joy. " I thought you would have been pleased," said Polly. " Uh yes, Mrs. Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you" returned Susan, who had suddenly become so very 54 DOMBEY AND SON. upright that she seemed to have put an additional bone in her stays. " You don't show it," said Polly. " Oh ! Being only a permanency I couldn't be ex- pected to show it like a temporary," said Susan Nipper. " Temporaries carries it all before 'em here, I find, but though there's a 1 excellent party-wall between this house and the next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs. Richards, notwithstanding ! " DOMBEY AND SON. 55 CHAPTER IV. IN WHICH SOME MORE FIRST APPEARANCES ARE MADE ON THE STAGE OF THESE ADVENTURES. THOUGH the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of the city of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashing voices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were there hints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of the adjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes' walk ; the Royal Ex- change was close at hand ; the Bank of England with its vaults of gold and silver " down among the dead men " underground, was their magnificent neighbor. 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 com- plexion 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 ware- houses ready to pack off anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half an hour ; and little timber, midship- men in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed out- side the shop-doors of nautical instrument-makers in iaking observations of the hackney -coaches. 56 DOMBEY AND SON. Sole master and proprietor of one of tliese effigies of that which might be called, familiarly, tl.e woodeneat of that which thrust itself out above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the least endurable, mid had the shoe-buckles and flapped waistcoat the least T roncilable to human reason, and bore at its right eye he most offensively disproportionate piece of machinery sole master and proprietor of that midshipman, and proud of him too, an elderly gentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, and dues, for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood has numbered in his life : and midshipmen who have at- tained a pretty green old age, have not been wanting in the English navy. The stock in trade of this old gentleman comprised chronometers, barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants, and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of a ship's course, 01 the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the prosecuting of a ship's discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were ii his drawers and on his shelves, which none but the in itialed 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 an- gles, 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 nav- igation was fitted, and cushioned, and screwed into every box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some were, or DOMBEY AND SON. 57 something between a cocked-hat and a star-fish, as other? were, and those quite mild and modest boxes as com- pared with others) ; that the shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become a sni)g> pea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good s ra- room, in the event of an unexpected launch, to work ilg way securely to any desert island in the world. Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships' Instrument-maker who was proud of his litlle midshipman, assisted and bore out this fancy. His ac- quaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlers and so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit oti his table. It was familiar with dried meats ami tongues, possessing an extraordinary flavor of rope-yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, in great wholesale jar.-, 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 refer- ences to their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the walls ; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, was on the plates ; outlandish shells, seaweeds, and mosses, deco- rated the chimney-piece ; the little wainscoted back- parlor was lighted by a skylight, like a cabin. Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephew Walter : a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman, to carry out the prevailing ilca. But there it ended, for Solomon Gills himself (more generally called old Sol) was far frori 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 58 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 complet suit of coffee-color cut very square, and ornamente with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-color minus the inexpressibles, which were then of a pal^ nankeen. He wore a very precise shirt-frill, and car- ried 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 the 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 par- lor behind the little midshipman, for years upon years ; going regularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from the lodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease had little or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns. It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the reader and Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act of seeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual daily clear- ance 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 weather-glasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain already shines upon the cocked-hat of the wooden midshipman. u Where's Walter, I wonder ! " said Solomon Gills, DOMBEY AND SOX 59 after he had carefully put up the chronometer again. u Here's dinner been ready half an hour, and no Wal- ter ! " 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 cer- tainly was not the newspaper-boy in the oilskin cap who was slowly working his way along the piece of brass out- Bide, writing his name over Mr. Gills' name with his forefinger. " If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and go and enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to be lidgety," said Mr. Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses with his knuckles. " I really should. All in the Downs, eh ! Lots of moisture ! Well ! it's wanted." " I believe," said Mr. Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of a compass case, " that you don't point more direct and due to the back-parlor than the boy's incli- nation does after all. And the parlor couldn't bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of a point either way." Halloa, Uncle Sol ! " " Halloa, my boy ! " cried the Instrument-maker, turn- ing briskly round. " What ! you are here, are you ! " A cheerful-looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain ; fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly- haired. " Well, uncle, how have you got on without me all day ! Is dinner ready ? I'm so hungry." " As to getting on," said Solomon, good-naturedly, " it would be odd if I couldn't get on without a young dog 60 DOMBEY" AND SON. 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, /am ! " " Come along then, uncle ! " cried the boy. " HurraV for the admiral ! " " Confound the admiral ! " returned Solomon Gills * You mean the Lord Mayor." " No I don't ! " cried the boy. " Hurrah for the ad- miral. Hurrah for the admiral ! For ward ! " At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne without resistance into the back-par- lor, as at the head of a boarding-party of five hundred men ; and uncle Sol arid his nephew were speedily engaged on a fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow. " The Lord Mayor, Wally," said Solomon, " forever ! No more admirals. The Lord Mayor's your admiral." " Oh, is he though!" said the boy, shaking his head. "Why, the Sword Bearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes." " And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains," returned the uncle. " Listen to me Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantel-shelf." " Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail ! " exclaimed the boy. " I have," said his uncle. " No more mugs now. We must begin to drink out of glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to the city. We started in life this morning." "Well, uncle," said the boy, x ' I'll drink out of any- thing you like, so long as I can drink to you. Here's lo you, Uncle Sol, and hurrah for the" " Lord Mayor," interrupted the old man. DOMBEY AND SON. 61 ** For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, nnd Livory," said the boy. " Long life to 'em ! " The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. "And now," he said, "let's hear something about the Firm." "Oh! there's not much to be told about the Firm, ancle," 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 alma- nac, and some desks and stools, and an ink-bottle, and some books, and some boxes, and a lot of cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-up blue- bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long." " Nothing else ? " said the uncle. " No, nothing else, except an old bird-cage (I wonder how that ever came there !) and a coal-scuttle." " No bankers' books, or check 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 unc- tuous emphasis upon the words. " Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose," returned his nephew carelessly ; "but all that sort of thing's in Mr. Carker's room, or Mr. Morfin's, or Mr. Dombey's." " Has Mr. Dombey been there to-day ? " inquired the ancle. " Oh yes ! In and out all day." " He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose." " Yes he did. He walked up to my seat, I wish he wasn't so solemn and stiff, uncle and said ' Oh ! you are the son of Mr. Gills the Ships' Instrument- maker.' 'Nephew, sir,' I said. 'I said nephew, boy,' t>2 DOMBEY AND SON. said he. But I could take my oath lie said son, uncle." " You're mistaken I dare say. It's no matter." " No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so sharp, I thought. There was no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told me that you had spoken 1/j him about me, and that he had found me employment in the House accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual, and then he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much." " You mean, I suppose," observed the Instrument- maker, "that you didn't seem to like him much." " Well, uncle," returned the boy, laughing. " Per- haps so ^ I never thought of that." Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his din- ner, 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 neigh- boring eating-house), he lighted a raiulle, 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 re- turned with a very ancient-looking bottle, covered with dust and dirt. " Why, Uncle Sol ! " said the boy, " what are you nbout ! that's the wonderful Madeira! there's only one more bottle!" Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that h knew very well what he was about ; and having drawn tJ.c ork in solemn silence, filled two glasses and set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table. "You shall drink the Qther bottle, Wally," he said. ' when you come to good fortune ; when you are a DOMBET AND SON. 63 thriving, respected, happy man ; when the start in life you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I pray Heaven it may ! to a smooth part of the course you have to run, my child. My love to you ! " Some of the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into his throat ; for he spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked his glass against his nephe\v's- But having once got the wine to hjs lips, he tossed it o like a man, and smacked them after- wards. " Dear uncle," said the boy, affecting to make light of it, while the tears stood in his eyes, " for the honor you have done me, et cetera, et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr. Solomon Gills with three times three and one cheer more. Hurrah ! and you'll return thanks, uncle, when we drink the last bottle together ; won't you ? " They clinked their glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical an air as he could possibly assume. His uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyes at last met, he began at once to pur- sue the theme that had occupied his thoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the while. "You see, Walter," he said, -"in truth this business is merel) habit with me. I am so accustomed to the habit that 1 could hardly live if I relinquished it : -but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When that uni- form was worn/' pointing out towards the little mid- shipman, " then indeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition, competition new inven- tion, new invention alteration, alteration the world'f 64 DOMBEY AND SON. gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself; much less where my customers are." " Never mind 'em uncle ! " " Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, for instance and that's ten days," said Solomon, " I don't remember more than one person that has come into the shop." "Two uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask for change for a sovereign " "That's the one," said Solomon. " Why uncle ! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way to Mile-end Turnpike ? " " Oh ! its true," said Solomon, " I forgot her. Two persons." " To be sure, they didn't buy anything," cried the boy. " No. They didn't buy anything," said Solomon, quietly. " Nor want anything," cried the boy. " No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop," uttid Solomon, in the same tone. " But there were two of 'em uncle," cried the boy as if that were a great triumph. " You said only one." " Well, Wally," resumed the old man, after a short pause : " not being like the savages who came on Robiu- in 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 new, 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, busi- ness is not the same, business commodities are not the tame. Seven eighths of my stock is old-fashioned. J DOR1BEY AND SON. 65 Bm an old-fashioned man in an t)ld-fashioned shop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallen behind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise it makes a long way ahead, confuses me." Walter was going to speak, but his uncle held up his hand. "Therefore Wally therefore it is that I am anxious you should be early in the busy world, and on the world's track. I am only the ghost of this business its substance vanished long ago : and when I die, its ghost will be laid. As it- is clearly no inheritance for you then, I have thought it best to use for your ad- vantage, almost the only fragment of the old connection 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 what- ever I can give you, you in such a house as Dombey'a are in the road to use well and make the most of. Be diligent, try to like it my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy ! " " I'll do everything I can, uncle, to deserve your affec- tion. Indeed I will," said the boy, earnestly. " I know it," said Solomon. " I am sure of it," and he applied himself to a second glass of the old Madeira, with inci-eased relish. " As to the sea," he pursued, u 1 hat's well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won't do in feet : it won't do at all. It's natural enough that you should think about it, associating it with all these "amil- br things ; but it won't do, it won't do." Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as he talked of the sea, though ; and looked on the seafaring objects about him with inexpressible omplao?n?y. OL. i 6 66 DOMBEY AND SOW. " Think of this wSre for instance," said old Sol, " which has been to the East Indies and I tack, 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 : " u The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storms of all kinds," said the boy. " To be sure," said Solomon, " that this wine has passed through. Think what a straining and creaking of timbers and masts : what a whistling and howling of the gale through ropes and rigging : " *' What a clambering aloft of men, vy.'ig with eacb other who sliall lie out first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls and pitches, like mad ! " cried his nephew. " Exactly f-o" said Solomon : '* has gone on, over the old cask that held this wine. Why, when '.lie Charming Sally went down in the " " In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night ; five-and- twenty minutes past twelve when the captain's watch stopped in his pocket ; he lying dead against the main- mast on the fourteenth of February, seventeen forty- nine ! " cried Walter, with great animation. "Ay, to be sure ! " cried old Sol, " quite right ! Then, there were five hundred casks of such wine aboard ; and all hands (except the first mate, first lieutenant, two sea- men, and a lady, in a leaky boat), going to work to stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing ' Rule Bri- tannia,' when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream in chorus." " But when the George the Second drove ashore, ancle, on the coast of Cornwall, in a dismal gaie twc hours before daybreak, on the fourth of March, Seventy DOMBEY AND SON. 67 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 bust men, losing heart and head, went overboard in de- spair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale." "And when," said old Sol, " when the Polyphemus" "Private West India Trader, burden, three hundred und fifty tons, Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Own- ers, Wiggs and Co.," cried Walter. " The same," said Sol ; " when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair wind out of Jamaica Harbor, in the night " " There were two brothers on board," interposed his nephew, speaking very fast and loud, " and there not be- ing room for both of them in the only boat that wasn't swamped, neither of them would consent to go, until the elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then the younger, rising in the boat, cried out, ' Dear Edward, think of your promised wife at home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap down into my place ! ' and flung himself in the sea ! " The kindling eye and heightened color 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 aneo- dotes, as he had evidently intended but a moment be- fore, he gave a short dry cough, and said, " Well ! sup* pose we change the subject." The truth was, that the simple-minded uncle in his 68 DOMBEY AND SON. secret attraction towards the marvellous and adventurous of which he was, in some sort, a distant relation, by his trade had greatly encouraged the same attraction in the nephew ; and that everything that had ever been put before the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual unaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable. It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course. But an addition to the little party now made its ap- pearance, 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 wineglass 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 bis own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself down behind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor ; and had been a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three perhaps ; and was a very salt-looking man indeed. His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened^ as he shook hands with uncle and nephew ; but hn teemed to be of a laconic disposition, and merely said a How goes it ? " DOMBEY AXD SON. 6? u All well," said Mr. Gills, pushing the bottle towards him. He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, saia with extraordinary expression : "The?" " The" returned the Instrument-maker. Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seeraei to think they were making holiday indeed. " Wal'r ! " he said, arranging his hair (which was thin) with his hook, and then pointing it at the Instrument- maker, " Look at him ! Love ! Honor ! And Obey ! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage, and when found turn the leaf down. Success, my boy ! " He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his reference to it, that he could not help repeating the words again in a low voice, and saying he had for- gotten 'em these forty year. ' But I never wanted two or three words in my life that I didn't know where to lay my hand upon 'em- Gills," he observed. " It comes of not wasting lan- guage as some do" The reflectior, perhaps reminded him that he had bet- ter, like young NorvaPs father, '- increase his store." At any rate he became silent, and remained so, until old Sol went out into the shop to light it up, when he turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark : " I suppose he could make a clock if he tried ? " " 1 shouldn't wouder, Captain Cuttle," returned the boy. "And it would go!" said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent in the air with his hook. " Lord, how lhat clock would go ! " For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in contem 70 DOMBEY AND SON. plating the pace of this ideal timepiece, and sat looking ut the boy as if his face were the dial. " But he's chock-full of science," he observed, waving his hook towards the stock-in-trade. " Look 'ye here I Here's a collection of 'era. Earth, air, or water. It's all one. Only say where you'll have it. Up in a bal- loon ? There you are. Down in a bell ? There you are. D'ye want to put the North Star in a pair of scalss, and weigh it. He'll do it for you." It may be gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle's reverence for the stock of instruments was pro- found, and that his philosophy knew little or no distinc- tion between trading in it and inventing it. " Ah ! " he said, with a sigh, " it's a fine thing to un- derstand 'em. And yet it's a fine thing not to under- stand 'em. I hardly know which is best. It's so com- fortable to sit here and feel that you might be weighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the very devil with : and never know how." Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion (which rendered it desirable to im- prove 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 source** of the taciturn delight he had had in eating Sun- day dinners in that parlor for ten years. Becoming sadder and a wser man, he mused and held his peace." " Come ! " cried the subject of his admiration, return- ing. " Before you have your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle." Stand by ! " said Ned, filling his glass. " Give the V>y some more." DOM BEY AND SON. 71 u No more, ihank'e, uncle ! " " Yes, yes," said Scl, " a little more. We'll finish the bottle, to the House, Ned Walter's house. AVhy it may be his house one of these days, in part. Who knows ? Sir Richard Whittington married his master's (laughter." "'Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old you will never depart from it,' " 'jiterposed the Captain. " Wal'r ! Overhaul the hook, my lad." " And although Mr. Dombey hasn't a daughter," Sol began. " Yes, yes, he has, uncle," said the boy, reddening and laughing. " Has he ? " cried the old man. " Indeed I think he has too." " Oh ! I know he has," said the boy. " Some of 'ein were talking about it in the office to-day. 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 / don't know." ' He knows all about her already, you see," said the Instrument-maker. " Nonsense, uncle," cried the boy, still reddening and laughing, boy-like. " How can I help hearing what Ihey teU ine?" 72 DOMBEY AND SON. " The son's a little in our way at present, I'm afraid, Ned," said the old man, humoring the joke. " Very much," said the captain. " Nevertheless, we'll drink him," pursued Sol. " So, here's to Dombey and Son." " Olu very well, uncle," said the boy, merrily. " Since you have introduced the mention of her, and have con- nected me with her, and have said that I know all about her, I shall make bold to amend the toast So here's to Dombey and Son and Daughter 1 " DOMBET AND SON. 73 CHAPTER V. PAUL'S PROGRESS AND CHRISTENING. LITTLE Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was more and more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so far ap- preciated 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 intrusted 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 impres- sion on the lady thus distinguished. 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. A.t the little ceremonies of the bath and toilet, she 'Wsisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infan- 74 DOMBEY AND S'ON. tine 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 up-hill over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen jacket, Miss Tox wa so transported beyond the ignorant present as to be unable to refrain from crying out, ' Is he not beauti- ful, Mr. Dombey ! Is he not a Cupid, sir ! " and then almost sinking behind the closet-door with confusion and blushes. " Louisa," said Mr. Dombey, one day, to his sister, " I really think I must present your friend with some little token, on the occasion of Paul's christening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child's behalf from the first, and seems to understand her position so thoroughly (a very rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that it would really be agreeable to me to notice her." Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in Mr. Dombey's eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. Tt was not so much their merit that they knew them- selves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him " My dear Paul," returned his sister, " you do Miss Pox but justice, as a man of your penetration was sure. 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, Dora- bey and Son." DOMBEY AND SON. 75 s< Well," said Mr. Dombey, " I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit." " And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul," pursued his sister, " all I can say is that anything yen give Miss Tox will be hoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my dear Paul, of sbo v ving your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still more flattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined." " How is that ? " asked Mr. Dombey. " Godfathers, of course," continued Mrs. Chick, "are important in point of connection and influence." " I don't know why they should be, to my son," said Mr. Dombey coldly. " Very true, my dear Paul," retorted Mrs. Chick, with an extraordinary show of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; "and spoken like your- self. I might have expected nothing el.se from you. I might have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps ; " here Mrs. Chick flattered 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 some one elseu That it would be received as a great honor and distinc- tion, Paul, I need not say." " Louisa," said Mr. Dombey, after a short pause, u it is not to be supposed " " Certainly not," cried Mrs. Chick, hastening to antic!' pnte a refusal, " I never thought it was." Mr. Dombey looked at her impatiently. " Don't flurry me, my dear Paul," said his sister ' for that destroys me. I am far from strong. I 76 DOMBEY AND SOW. have not been quite myself, since poor dear Fanny departed." Mr. Douibey glanced at the pO(.ket-liandkerchief which his sister applied to her eyes and resumed: " It is not to be supposed, I say " "And I say," murmured Mrs. Chick, "that I never thought it was." " Good Heaven, Louisa ! " said Mr. Dombey. " No, my dear Paul," she remonstrated with tearful dignity, " I must really be allowed to speak. I am not to clever, or so reasoning, or so eloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much the worse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter and last words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dear Fanny I should still say I never thought it was. And what is more," added Mrs. Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld her crush- ing argument until now, " I never did think it was." Mr. Dombey walked to the window and back again. " It is not to be supposed, Louisa," he said (Mrs. Chick had nailed her colors to the mast, and repeated u I know it isn't," but he took no notice of it), " but that there are many persons who, supposing that I rec- ognized any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon me superior to Miss Tox's. But I do not. I rec- ognize no such thing. Paul and myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own the house, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain its own, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such commonplace 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 in- fancy and childhood pass away well, and I see bin? DOMBEY AND SON. 77 becoming qualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destined to enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleases in after-life, when he is actively maintaining and extending, if that is possible the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enough for him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should step in between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging con- duct 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 dare say." 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 dis- trust 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 bend- ing and binding human wills ; as sharp a jealousy of any second check or cross ; these were, at that time, the mas- ler-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 concen- trated 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 tunning clear and free, had thawed for but an instant to admit its burden, and then frozen with it into one myielding block. Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue of her insignificance, Miss Tox was from thai hour chosen and appointed to office ; and Mr. Dorabey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony, alreadj 78 DOMBEY AND SON. long delayed i?hvuld take place without further postpone- ment. His sister, vho had been far from anticipating so signal a success, withdrew- as soon as she could, to com- municate it to her best of friends ; and Mr. Dombey was left alone in his library. There was anything but solitude in the nursery ; for thare, 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 behjnd the door. Her feelings were BO much excited on the occasion, that she found it indis- pensable 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 mistresses' names in deserts and wildernesses, and other savage places where there was no probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints into stone pitchers, and contradict and call names out in the passage. The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young lady's sentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of undressing, airy exercise, sup- per 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 tow- ards the little beds, they thought of Florence. " How sound she sleeps ! " said Miss Tox. " Why, you know, my dear, she takes a good deal of exercise in the course of the day," returned Mrs. Chick, ' playing about little Paul so much." DOMBEY AND SON. 79 " She is a curious child," said Miss Tox. "My dear," i-etorted Mrs. Chick, in a low voice : *Her mama, all over ! " " In-deed ! " said Miss Tox. " Ah dear me ! " A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though she had no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her. " Florence will never, never, never, be a Dorabey," said Mrs. Chick, " not if she lives to be a thousand years old." Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration. " I quite fret and worry myself about her," said Mrs. Chick, with a sigh of modest merit " I really don't see what is to become of her when she grows older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her papa in the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlike a Dombey ? " Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument as that, at all. " And the child, you see," said Mrs. Chick, in deep confidence, " has poor Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'll venture to say. Never I She'll never wind and twine herself about her papa's heart like " " Liko the ; vy ? " suggested Miss Tox. "Like the ivy," Mrs. Chick assented. "Never! Sle'fl never glide and reptle into the bosom of her papa's a fections like the " " Startled fawn ? " suggested Miss Tox. " Like the startled fawn," said Mrs. Chick. " Never ! Poor Fanny ! Yet how I loved her ! " " You must not distress yourself my dear," said Miss 80 DOMBET AND SON. Tox, in a soothing voice. u Now, really ! You have too much feeling." " We have all our faults," said Mrs. Chick, weeping and shaking her head. " I dare say we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Far from if, Yet how I loved her ! " What a satisfaction it was to Mrs. Chick a common place piece of folly enough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel of womanly intelli gence and gentleness to patronize 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 uncom- monly 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 in- vested with the privilege of exercising it ! Mrs. Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richards made bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in her bed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes were wet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one else leant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enough to hear the flutter of her beating heart. " Oh ! dear nurse ! " said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, " let me lie by my brother ! " u Why, my pet ? " said Richards. * Oh ! I think he loves me," cried the child wildly * Let me lie by him. Pray do ! " Mrs. Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep like a dear, but Florence repeated her DOMBEY AND SON. 81 bupplication, wiih a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears. " I'll not wake him," she said, covering her face and hanging down her head. " I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother, to-night, for I believe he's fond of me ! " Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed in which the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept as near him as she could without disturbing his rest ; and stretching out one arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face on the other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, lay motionless. " Poor little thing," said Miss Tox ; " she has been dreaming, I dare say." 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 con- templation 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 waa generally a work of time, as she was systematic in the jU'eparatory arrangements. " Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson," said Bliss Tox, " first of all to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly." " Yes, miss," said Towlinson. "Then, if you please, Towlinson," said Miss Tox, % have the goodness to turn the cushion. Which," said Miss Tox apart to Mrs. Chick, " is generally damp, my dear." VOL. I. 6 82 DOMBET AND SOX. " Yes, miss," said Towlinson. " I'll trouble you also, if you please," said Miss Tox, M with this card and this shilling. He's to drive tn the card, and is to understand that he will not on any account have more than the shilling." " No, miss," said Towlinson. " And I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson," said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively. "Not at all, miss," said Towlinson. "Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson," said Miss Tox, "that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any of his impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to say that, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you know it was done to another man, who died." " Certainly, miss,"* said Towlinson. " And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, god son," said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective ; " and Louisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warm before you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!" It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black- eyed, who looked on steadfastly, contained herself at thia crisis, and, until the subsequent departure of Mrs. Chick. But the nursery being at length free of visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint. " You might keep me in a straight-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 Giiffins, Mrs. Richards?" "And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!" said Polly. "Oh you beauties!" cried Susan Nipper, affecting to DOMBEY AND SON. 88 salute tile door by vvhicli the ladies had departed. K Never be a Dombey, won't she, it's to be hoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's 'enough." " Don't wake the children, Susan dear," said Polly. " I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs. Richards," Baid Susan, who was not by any means discriminating m her wrath, " and really feel it as a honor to receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs. Richards, it' there's any other orders you am give me, pray mention 'em." " Nonsense ; orders," said Polly. " Oh ! bless your heart, Mrs. Richards," cried Susan, " temporaries always orders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was you born, Mrs. Rich- ards ? But wherever you was born, Mrs. Richards," pursued Spitfire, shaking her head resolutely ? "and whenever, and however (which is best known to your- self), 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 oif a bridge head fore- most into five-and-forty feet of water, Mrs. Richards, but a person may be very far from diving." " There no" w," said Polly, " you're angry because you're ft good little thing, and fond of Miss Florence ; &nd yet you turn round on me, because there's nobody else." " It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, Mrs. Richards," returned Susan, slightly mollified, " when their child's made as much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes its friends farther, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that never ought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is run down, the case is very different indeed. My good- 84 DOMBEY AKD SON. ness gracious rae, Miss Fley, you naughty, sinful child, if you don't shjit your eyes this minute, I'll call in them hobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive ! " Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from a conscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge the severe duty of his position. Having further composed her young charge by covering her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angry dabs at the pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, and sat looking at the fire for the rest of the evening. Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, * to take a deal of notice for his age," he took as little notice of all this as of the preparations for his christening on the next day but one ; which nevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that of his sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, on the arrival of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance ; being, on the contrary, unusually in- clined to sleep, and unusually inclined to take it ill in his attendants that they dressed him to go out. It happened to be an iron-gray autumnal day, with a shrewd east wind blowing a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr. Dombey represented in himself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He Btood in his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather ; and when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in the little garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as if he blighted them. Ugh ! They were black, cold rooms ; and seemed to be in mourning, like the inmates of the house. Th DOMBEY AND SON. 85 books precisely matched as to size, and drawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slippery uniforms, as it' 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 un- attainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A du.sty 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 por- trait at one blow, seemed fraught with melancholy medi- tations. The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationship than anything else there to Mr. Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his white cravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots. But this was before the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Chick, his lawful relatives, who soon presented themselves. " My dear Paul," Mrs. Chick murmured, as she em- braced him, " the beginning, 1 hope, of many joyful days ! " "Thank you, Louisa," said Mr. Dombey, giimly. u How do you do, Mr. John ? " " How do you do, sir ? " said Chick. He gave Mr. Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. Mr. Dombey took it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammy substance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness. " Perhaps, Louisa," said Mr. Dombey, slightly turning his head in his cravat, as if it were a socket, " you would have preferred a fire ? " " Oh, my dear Paul, no," said Mrs. Chick, who had much ado to keep her teeth from chattering ; " not for $6 DOMBEY AND SOtt. " Mr. John," said Mr. Dombey, " you are not sensible >f any chill ? " Mr. John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over the wrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus which had given Mrs. Chick HO much offence on a former occasion, protested that he was perfectly comfortable. He added in a low voice, " With my tiddle (ol toor rul " when he was providentially stopped by Towlin- eon, who announced : Miss Tox ! " And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and in- describably frosty face, referable to her being very thin- ly clad in a maze of fluttering odds and ends, to do honor to the ceremony. " How do you do, Miss Tox ? " said Mr. Dombey. Miss Tox in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogether like an opera-glass shutting up ; she courtesied so low, in acknowledgment of Mr. Dombey'a advancing a step or two to meet her. " I can never forget this occasion, sir," said Miss Tox, softly. " 'Tis impossible. My dear Louisa, I can hard- ly believe the evidence of my senses." If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was a very cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity of promoting the circu- lation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafing it with her pocket-handkerchief, lest, by its very low temper- ature, it should disagreeably astonish the laby when she came to kiss it. The baby soon appeared, carried in great giory by Richards ; while Florence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought up the rear DOMBEY AND SON. 87 Though the whole nursery party were dressed by this time in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in the appearance of the bereaved children to make the day no brighter. The baby too it might have been Miss Tox's nose began to cry. Thereby, as it hap- pened, preventing Mr. Chick from the awkward fulfil- ment of a very honest purpose he had ; which was, U make much of Florence. For this gentleman, insensible to the superior claims of a perfect Dombey (perhaps on account of having the honor to be united to n Dornbey himself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked her, and showed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short. " Now Florence child ! " said her aunt, briskly, " what are you doing, love ? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear ! " The atmosphere became, or might have become, colder and colder, when Mr. Dombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping her hands, and stand- ing on tiptoe 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 ; und when she peeped out with a merry cry to him, he sprang up and crowed lustily laughing outright when eh e ran in upon him ; and seeming to fondle her curia with his tiny hands, while she smothered him with kisses. Was Mr. Dombey pleased to see this ? He testified uo 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 -"om to light the childreii 88 DOMBEY AND SON. at their play, it never reached his face. He look&J on so fixedly and coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughing eyes of little Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his. It was a dull, gray, autumn day indeed, and in a min- ute's pause and silence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully. " Mr. John," said Mr. Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hat and gloves. " Take my sister, if you please : my arm to-day is Miss Tox's. You had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful." In Mr. Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Misa 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 intermis- sion, 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 ap- propriate pecuniary compliment for herself. Once upon the road to church, Mr. Dombey clapped his hands for the amusement of his son. At which in- stance of parental enthusiasm Miss Tox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief difference be- tween the christening party and a party in a mourning coach, consisted in the colors of the carriage and horses. Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle. Mr. Dombey dismounted first to help the ladies out, and standing near him at the church-door, looked like another beadle. A beadle less gorgeous, but more dreadful ; the beadle of private life : the beadle of our business and our bosoms. Miss Tox's hand 'trembled as she slipped it through Mr. Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted up the DOMBEY AND SON. 89 steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemn institution. * Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia ? " " Yes, I will." " Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there," whispered the beadle, holding open the innet door of the church. Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet " into my grave ? " so chill and earthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading-desk ; the dreary perspec- tive 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 tre- gels used for funerals were stowed away, along with some shovels and baskets, and a coil or two of deadly- looking rope ; the strange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the cadaverous light ; were all in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene. " There's a wedding just on, sir," said the beadle, " but it'll be over directly, if you'll walk into the westry here." Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mi'. Dombey a bow and a half smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered to have had the plea*- ure of attending on him when he buried his wife, and hoped he had enjoyed himself since. The very wedding looked dismal as they passed ir front of the altar. The bride was too old and the bride- groom too young, and a superannuated beau with on eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was giving away the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the veetry the fire was smoking ; and an over-aged 90 DOMBEY AND SON. and over-worked and under-paid attorney's clerk, " mak- ing a search," was running his forefinger down the parch ment pages of an immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes) gorged with burials. Over the fire- place was a ground-plan of the vaults underneath the church ; and Mr. Chick, skimming the literary portion of it aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the reference to Mrs. Dombey's tomb in full, before he could stop himself. After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew- opener afflicted with an asthma, appropriate to the church-yard, if not to the church, summoned them to the font. Here they waited some little time while the marriage -party enrolled themselves; and meanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener partly in consequence of her infirmity, and partly that the marriage-party might not forget her went about the building coughing like a grampus. Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he was an undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, as he poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millions of gallons boiling hot .could not have done for the occasion. Then the clergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviously afraid of the baby, appeared like the princi- pal character in a ghost-story, "a tall figure all in white;" at eight of whom Paul rent the air with his cries, and never left off again till he was taken out black in the face. Even when that event had happened, to the great re- lief 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 DOMBEY AXD SON. 91 gense of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention of the two ladies, that Mrs. Chick was constantly deploying into the centre aisle, to send out messages by the pew- opener, while Miss Tox kept her prayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally read responses from that service. During the whole of these proceedings, Mr. Dombey remained as impassive and gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, that the young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that he unbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering (very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to the future examina- tion of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest his eye on Mr. Chick ; and then Mr. Dombey might have been seen to express by a majestic look, that he would like to catch him at it. It might have been well for Mr. Dombey, if he had thought of his own dignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purpose of the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff* a part, a little more. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history. When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Misa Tox, and conducted her to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasure it would have given him to have solicited the honor 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 acci- dentally on the door-steps, looking with great interest at the weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage 9gain, and drove borne in the same bleak fellowship. J2 DOMBEY AND SON. There they found Mr. Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, set forth in a cold pomp of glass and sil- ver, 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 pro- duced a bracelet for Miss Tox ; and, on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected. u Mr. John," said Mr. Dombey, " will you take the bottom of the table, if you please. What have you got there, Mr. John ? " " I have got a cold fillet of veal here, sir," replied Mr. Chick, rubbing his numbed hands hard together. " What have you got there, sir?" " This," returned Mr. Dombey, " is some cold prepa- ration of calf's head, I think. I see cold fowls ham patties salad lobster. Miss Tox will do me the honor of taking some wine ? Champagne to Miss Tox." There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that it forced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty in turning into a u Hem ! " The veal had come from such an airy pan- try, 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 gentle- man. The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She made no effort at flattery or small-talk, and directed all her efforts to looking as warm as she could. "Well, sir," said Mr. Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a long silence, and filling a glass of sherry ; * I shall drink tins, if you'll allow me, sir, to little Paul." DOMBEY AND SON. 93 " Bless him ! " murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine. " Dear little Dombey ! " murmured Mrs. Chick. " Mr. John," said Mr. Dombey, with severe gravity u my son would feel and express himself obliged to you I have no doubt, if he could appreciate the favor yoi 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 oneroua nature of our position, in public, may impose upon him." The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing aiore, Mr. Chick relapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, having listened to Mr. Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leant across the table, and said to Mrs. Chick softly : " Louisa ! " " My dear," said Mrs. Chick. " Onerous nature of our position in public may I have forgotten the exact term." " Expose him to," said Mrs. Chick. " Pardon me-, my dear," returned Miss Tox, " I think not. It was more rounded and flowing. Obliging dis- position of relations and friends in private, or onerous nature of position in public may impose upon him ? " " Impose upon him, to be sure," said Mrs. Chick. Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph ; and added, casting up her eyes, " eloquence indeed ! " Mr. Dombey, in the mean while, had issued orders for the attendance of Richards, who now entered courtesying, but without the baby ; Paul being asleej) after the fa- J4 DOMBEY AND SON. tigues of the morning. Mr. Dombey, having deliveied a glass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the follow- ing words : Miss Tox previously settling her head on one side, and making other little arrangements for engrav ing them on her heart. " During the six months or so, Richards, which have w:en 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 1 could best effect that object, and I also advised with my sister Mrs. " " Chick," interposed the gentleman of that name. " Oh, hush if you please! " said Miss Tox. " I was about to say to you, Richards," resumed Mr. Dombey, with an appalling glance at Mr. John, " that I was further assisted in my decision, by the recollee- tion 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 igno- rance." Richards quailed under the magnificence of the re- proof. " I am far from being friendly," pursued Mr. Dom- bey, " to what is called by persons of levelling senti- ments, 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 nomi- nating a child on the foundation of an ancient establish- ment, 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 communicat- DOMBEY AND SON. 95 Ing, through Mrs. Chick, with your family) nominated your eldest sjn 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 hia sister and speaking of the child as if he were a hackney- coach, " is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tell her." " One hundred and forty-seven," said Mrs. Chick. "The dress, Richards, is a nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orange-colored binding ; red worsted stockings ; and very strong leather small- clothes. One might wear the articles one's self," said Mrs. Chick, with enthusiasm, " and be grateful." " There, Richards !" said Miss Tox. " ]\ow, indeed, you may be proud. The Charitable Grinders ! " " I am sure I am very much obliged, sir," returned Richards faintly, "and take it very kind that you should remember my little ones." At the same time a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legs encased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs. Chick, swam before Richards's eyes, and made them water. " I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards," said Miss Tox. " It makes one almost hope, it really does," said Mrs. Chick, who prided herself on taking trustful views of human nature, " that there may yet be some faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world." Richards deferred to these compliments by courtesy- ing and murmuring her thanks ; but finding it quite Impossible to recover her spirits from the disorder into tfhich they had been thrown by the image of her jon \n his precocious nether garments, she gradually np- J6 DOMBEY AND SON. preached the door and was heartily relieved to escape by it. Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with her, vanished with her; and the frost get 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 tc 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 equa- nimity, they took leave of that gentleman, and pres- ently 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 carnage, and whistled " With a hey ho chevy ! " all through ; con- veying into his face as he did so, an expression of such gloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs. Chick dared not protest, or in any way molest him. Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget her own first-born. She felt it was ungrate- ful ; but the influence of the day fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly help regard- ing his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty- seven, as, somehow, a part of its formality and sternness She spoke, too, in the nursery, of his " blessed legs," and was again troubled by his spectre in uniform. " I don't know what I wouldn't give," said Polly, " to see the poor little dear before he gets used to 'em." DOMBEY AND SON. 97 " Why, (lien, I tcil you what, Mrs. Richards," retorted Nipper, who had been admitted to her confidence, " see him and make your mind easy." " Mr. Dombey wouldn't like it," said Polly. " Oh wouldn't he, Mrs. Ricjiards ! " retorted Nip- per, " he'd like it very much, I think, when he was B.--ked." " You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all ? " said Tolly. " No, Mrs. Richards, quite contrairy," returned Susan, " and them two inspectors Tox and Chick, not intend- ing to be on duty to-morrow, as I heard 'em say, me and Miss Floy will go along with you to-morrow morn- ing, and welcome, Mrs. Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there as up and down a street, and better too." Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first ; but by little and little she began to entertain it, as she enter- tained more and more distinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At length, argu- ing that there could be no great harm in calling for u moment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper prop- osition. The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it. " What's the matter with the child ? " asked Susan. " lie's cold, I think," said Polly, walking with him t and fro, and hushing him. It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed ; and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellow closer to hii breast, the withered leaves came showering down. DOJLBEY A2JD fiOIf. CHAPTER VL PAUL'S SECOND DEPRIVATION". POLLY was beset by so many misgivings in the morn- ing, 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 gee number one hundred and forty-seven under the awful shadow of Mr. Dombey's roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favor of the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear the disappoint- ments of other people with tolerable fortitude, could not abide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the. way of this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with so many ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr. Dombey's stately back was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily road towards the city, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs's Gardens. This euphonious locality was situated in a subuib. known by the inhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the Dame of Camberling Town ; a designation which the Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with a view to {tleasant and commodious reference) on pocket-handker- nhiefs, condenses, with some show of reason, into Camdeo Town. Hither the two nurses bent their steps, accom- panied by their charges ; Richards carrying Paul? of DOMBEI 4.ND SON. 99 course, and Susan leading little Florence by the and giving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she considered it wholesome to administer. The iirst shock of a great earthquake had, just at i hat period, rent the whole neighborhood to its centre, Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down ; streets broken through and stop- ped ; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground ; enor- mous 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 forma of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of in- completeness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mould- ering 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 dilapi- dated walls ; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames jame issuing forth ; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom vf the neighborhood. JOO DOMBEY AND SON. In short, the yet unfinished and unopened railroad was in progress ; and, from the very core of all this dire dis- order, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilization and improvement. But as yet, the neighborhood was shy to own the Rail- road. One or two bold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had stopped among the inud and ashes to consider further of it. A bran-new tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothing at all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rash enterprise and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, the Excavators' House of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop ; and the old- eatablished Ham and Beef Shop had become the Rail- way Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similar immediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were favor- able 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 dust-heaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the rail- way. 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, en- croached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and oll cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of counte- nance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being BO. If the miserable waste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed it to scorn, like many of the miserable neighbors. Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It DOMBEY AXD SON. 101 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 bot- tomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into the gaps. Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowls and rabbits, erected rotten sum- mer-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 jeers from the chimney-pots. To this unhallowed spot, the very name of whicb liad hitherto been carefully concealed from Mr. Dom- hey by his sister, was little Paul now borne by Fate and Richards. " That's my house, Susan," said Polly, pointing it out. " Is it, indeed, Mrs. Richards," said Susan, condescend- ingly. " And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do de- clare ; " cried Polly, " with my own sweet precious baby u her arms ! " -02 DOMBET AND SON. 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 utter astonishment of that young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to have fallen from the clouds. "Why, Polly!" cried Jemima. "You! what a turn you have given me ! who'd have thought it ! come along in Polly! How well you do look to be sure! The children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will." That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and the way in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in the chimney corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately the centre of a bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks close to it, and all evidently the growth of the same tree. As to Polly, she was full as noisy and vehement as the children ; and it was not until she was quite out of breath, and her hair was hanging all about her flushed face, and her new christening attire was very much di- shevelled, 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 kg in Ihe air, to kiss her round the corner. " Look ! there's a pretty little lady come to see you," said Polly ; " and see how quiet she is ! what a beautiful little lady, a'n't she ? " This reference to Florence, who had been standing by A .he door not unobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the vounger branches towards her; and had POMBEY AND SOX. 103 likewise {lie happy effect of leading to the formal rccogni- lion of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from a mis- giving that she had been already slighted. "Oli do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please," said Polly. ' This is my sister Jemima, ihb is. .Jemima, I don't know what I should ever do with myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper ; I shouldn't bo here now but for her." " Oh do sit down Miss Nipper, if you please," quoth Ji-mima. Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and ceremonious aspect. " I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life ; now really, I never was, Miss Nipper," said Jemima. Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously. " Do untie your bonnet-strings and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper, please," entreated Jemima. " I am afraid it's a poorer place than you're used to ; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure." The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential be- havior, that she caught up little Miss Toodle who was running past, and took her to Banbury Cross immedi- ately. "But where's my pretty buy?" said Polly. "My poor fellow ? I came all this way to see him in his oew clothes." " Ah what a pity ! " cried Jemima. " He'll break his heart, when he hears his mother has been here. He's at school, Polly." " Gone already ! " " Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for feiu he should lose any learning. But it's half-holiday, Polly 104 DOMBEY AND SON. if you could only stop till he comes home you and Miss Nipper, leastways," said Jemima, mindful in good time of the dignity of the black-eyed. " And how does he look, Jemima, bless him ! " faltered Polly. " Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose," returned Jemima. " Ah ! " said Polly, with emotion, " I knew his legs must be too short." " His legs is short," returned Jemima; "especially be- hind ; but they'll get longer, Polly, every day." It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation ; but the cheerfulness and good nature with which it was admin- istered, gave it a value it did not intrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a more spright- ly manner: "And where's father, Jemima dear?" for by that patriarchal appellation, Mr. Toodle was generally known in the family. " There again ! " said Jemima. " What a pity ! Fa- ther took his dinner with him this morning, and isn't coming home till night. But he's always talking of you, Polly, and telling the children about you ; and is the peaceablest, patientest, best temperedest soul in the world, as he always was and will be ! " " Thankee, Jemima," cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, and disappointed by the absence. " Oh you needn't thank me, Polly," said her sister, giving her a sound kiss upon the cheek, and then dancing little Paul cheerfully. " I say the same of you some- times, and think it too." In spite of the double disappointment, it was im|>os- sible to regard in the light of a, failure a visit which DOMBEY AND SON. 105 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, tho 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 prod- igies 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 sum- mary of everything she knew concerning Mr. Dombey, his prospects, family, pursuits, and character. Also an exact inventory of her personal wardrobe, and some account of her principal relations and friends. Having relieved her mind of these disclosures, she partook of shrimps and porter, and evinced a disposition to swear eternal friendship. Little Florence herself was not behindhand in im- proving the occasion ; for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect some toadstools and other curi- osities of the Gardens, she entered w-ith 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 labor, 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 ; wid predicted that she would bring the gray hairs of her family in general, with sorrow to the grave. After some 106 , UOMBEY AND SON. delay, occasioned by a pretty long confidential interview Boove-stairs on pecuniary subjects, between Polly and Jemima, an interchange of babies was again effected for Polly had all this time retained her own child, and Jemima little Paul and the visitors took leave. Hut first the young Toodles, victims of a pious fraud, wure deluded into repairing in a body to a chandler's shop iu the neighborhood, for the ostensible purpose cf spending a penny ; and when the coast was quite clear, Polly fled: Jemima calling after her that if they could only go round towards the City Road on their way back, they would be sure to meet little Biler coming from school. " Do you think that we might make time to go a little round in that direction, Susan ? " inquired Polly, when they halted to take breath. " Why not, Mrs. Richards ? " returned Susan. " It's getting on towards our dinner-time you know," said Polly. But lunch had rendered her companion more than in- different to this grave consideration, so she allowed no weight to it, and they resolved to go " a little round." Now, it happened that. poor Biler's life had been, since yesterday morning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. The youth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could be brought to bear its contemplation for a moment, without throwing himself upon the unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His social existence had been more like that of an early Christian, than an innocent child of the nineteenth century. He had been stoned in the streets. He had been overthrown into gutters ; bespattered with laud ; violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers DOMBEY AND SON. 107 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' estab- lishment, and had been punished for it by the master: a superannuated old Grinder of savage disposition, who had been appointed school-master because he didn't know anything, and wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination. Thus it fell out that Biler. on his way home, sought unfrequented paths; and slunk along by narrow passages and hack streets, to avoid his tormentors. Being com- pelled to emerge into the main road, his ill fortune brought him at last where a small party of boys, headed by a ferocious young butcher, were lying in wait for any means of pleasurable excitement that might happen. These, finding a Charitable Grinder in the midst of them unaccountably delivered over, as it were, into their hands set up a general yell and rushed upon him. But it so fell out likewise, that, at the same time, Polly, looking hopelessly along the road before her, after a good hour's walk, had said it was no use going any farther, when suddenly she saw this sight. She no sconer saw it than, uttering a hasty exclamation, and giving Master Dombey to the black-eyed, she started to the rescue of her unhappy little son. Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone. The astonished Susan Nipper and her two young charges were rescued by the by-standers from under the very wheels of a passing carriage before they knew what had tOB DOMBET AND SON. happened ; and at that moment (it was market-day) a thundering alarm of " Mad Bull ! " was raised. With a wild confusion before her, of people running up and down, and shouting, and wheels running over them, and boys fighting, and mad bulls coming up, and the nurse in the midst of all these dangers being torn to pieces, Florence screamed and ran. She ran till sho 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 sen- sation of terror not to be described, that she was quite alone. " Susan ! Susan ! " cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasy of her alarm. "Oh, where are they! where are they ! " " Where are they ? " said an old woman, coming hob- bling across as fast as she could from the opposite side of the way. " Why did you run away from 'em ? " " I was frightened," answered Florence. " I didn't know what I did. I thought they were with me. Where are they ? " The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, " I'll ehow you." She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. She was miserably dressed, and carried some skins over her arm. She aeemed 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 ton tort ions. Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up DOMBEY AND SON 109 the street, of which she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place more a back road than a street and there was no one in it but herself and the old woman. " You needn't be frightened now," said the old woman, still holding her tight. " Come along with me." "I I don't know you. What's your name ? " asked Florence. " Mrs. Brown," said the old woman. " Good Mra Brown." " Are they near here ? " asked Florence, beginning to be led away. " Susan a'n't far off," said Good Mrs. Brown ; " and the others are close to her." " Is anybody hurt ? " cried Florence. " Not a bit of it," said Good Mrs. Brown. The child shed tears of delight on hearing this, and accompanied the old woman willingly ; though she could not help glancing at her face as they went along par- ticularly at that industrious mouth and wondering whether Bad Mrs. Brown, if there were such a person, was at all like her. They had not gone far, but had gone by some very uncomfortable places, such as brick-fields and tile-yards, when the old woman turned down a dirty lane, where the mud lay in deep black ruts in the middle of the road. She stopped before a shabby little house, as closely shut up as a house that was full of cracks and crevicea 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 colors lying on the floor : a heap of bones, uul a heap of sifted dust or cinders ; but there was no 110 POMBEY AND SON. furniture at all, and the walls and ceiling were quit-) black. The child became so terrified that she was stricken speechless, and looked as though about to swoon. " Now don't be a young mule," said Good Mrs. Brown, reviving her with a shake. " I'm not a-going to hurt you. Sit upon the rags." Florence obeyed her, holding out her folded hands, in mute supplication. " I'm not a-going to keep you, even, above an hour," said Mrs. Brown. " D'ye understand what I say ? " The child answered with great difficulty, " Yes." " Then," said Good Mrs. Brown, takjng her own seat on the bones, " don't vex me. If you don't, I tell you I won't hurt you. But if you do, I'll kill you. I could have you killed at any time even if you was in your own bed at home. Now let's know who you are, and what you are, and all about it" The old woman's threats and promises ; the dread of giving her offence ; and the habit, unusual to a child, but almost natural to Florence now, of being quiet, and repressing what she felt, and feared, and hoped ; enabled her to do this bidding, and to tell her little history, or what she knew of it. Mrs. Brown listened attentively, until she had finished. "So your name's Dombey, eh?" said Mrs. Brown. " Yes ma'am." u 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 *m off." Florence obeyed as fast as her trembling hands would ; keeping, all the while, a frightened eye on Mr* DOMBEY AND SON. Ill Brown. When she had divested herself of all the ar- ticles of apparel mentioned by that lady, Mrs. B. ex- amined them at leisure, and seemed tolerably well satis- fied with their quality and value. " Humph!" she said, running her eyes over the child's plight figure, "I don't see anything else except the shoes. I must have the shoes, Miss Dombey." Poor little Florence took them otF 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 re- mains of a bonnet that had probably been picked up from some ditch or dunghill. In this dainty raiment, fhe instructed Florence to dress herself; and as such preparation seemed a prelude to her release, the child complied with increased readiness, if possible. In hurriedly putting on the bonnet, if that may be called a bonnet which was more like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair which grew luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it. Good Mrs. Brown whipped out a large pair of scissors, and fell into an un- accountable state of excitement. " Why couldn't you let me be," said Mrs. Brown, < when I was contented. You little fool ! " " I beg your pardon. I don't know what 1 have done," punted Florence. "I couldn't help it." " Couldn't help it ! " cried Mrs. Brown. " How do you expect I can help it ? Why, Lord ! " said the old vpoman, ruffling her curls with a furious pleasure, "any Vody but. me would have had 'em off first of all." Florence was so relieved to find that it was only hei 112 DOMBEY AND SON. hair and not her head which Mrs. Brown coveted, thai phe offered no resistance or entreaty, and merely raised her mild eyes towards the face of that good soul. " If I hadn't once had a gal of my own beyond seaa now that was proud of her hair," said Mrs. Brown, * I'd have had every lock of it. She's far away, she's far away ! Oho ! Oho ! " Mrs. Brown's was not a melodious cry, but, accom- panied with a wild tossing up of her lean arms, it was full of passionate grief, and thrilled to the heart of Flor- ence, 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, (ike a new kind of butterfly, bade her hide them under the bonnet and let no trace of them escape to tempt her. Having accomplished this victory over herself, Mrs. Brown resumed her seat on the bones, and smoked a very short black pipe, mowing and mumbling all the time, as if she were eating the stem. When the pipe was smoked out, she gave the child a rabbit-skin to carry, that she might appear 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 dis- obedience, 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 f.ity ; also to wait at the street corner where she would be left, until the clock struck three. These direction.? [-_ 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 uitk- fiillv and earnestly to observe. DOMBEY AND SON. 1J3 At length Mrs. Brown, issuing forth, conducted her rhanged 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 gate-way at the end, whence the roar of a great thoroughfare made itself audible. Pointing out this gate-way, and informing Flor- ence that when the clock struck three t-he was to go to the left, Mrs. Brown, after making a parting grasp at her hair which seemed involuntary and quite beyond her own control, told her she knew what to do, and bade her go and do it : remembering that she was watched. With a lighter heart, but still sore afraid, Florence felt herself released, and tripped off to the corner. When she reached it, she looked back and saw the head of Good Mrs. Brown peeping out of the low wooden pas- sage, where she had issued her parting injunctions ; like- wise the fist of Good Mrs. Brown shaking towards her. But though she often looked back afterwards every minute, at least, in her nervous recollection of the old woman she could not see her again. Florence remained there, looking at the bustle in the street, and more and more bewildered by it ; and in the mean while the clocks appeared to have made up their j] minds never to strike three any more. At last the steeples rang out three o'clock ; there was one close by, eo she couldn't be mistaken ; and after often looking over her shoulder, and often going a little way, and as often coming back again, lest the all-powerful spies of Mrs. Brown should take offence she hurried off, as fast as she could in her slipshod shoes, holding the rabbit ^kin tight in her hand. All she knew of her father's offices was that they be- longed to Dombey and Son, and that that was a great VOL. I. 8 114 DOMBEY AND SON. power belonging to the city. So she could only ask the way to Dombey and Son's in the city ; and as she gen- erally made inquiry of children being afraid to ask grown people she got very little satisfaction indeed. But by dint of asking her way to the city after a while, and dropping the rest of her inquiry for the present, she really did advance, by slow degrees, towards the heart of that great region which is governed by the terrible Lord Mayor. Tired of walking, repulsed and pushed about, stunned by the noise and confusion, anxious for her brother and the nurses, terrified by what she had undergone, and the prospect of encountering her angry father in such an al- tered 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 com- passion, and passed on. Florence, too, called to her aid all the firmness and self-reliance of a character that her sad experience had prematurely formed and tried ; and keeping the end she had in view steadily before her, steadily pursued it. It was full two hours later in the afternoon than when she had started on this strange adventure, when, escap- ing from the clash and clangor of a narrow street full of carts and wagons, she peeped into a kind of wharf oi landing-place, upon the riverside, where there were a great many packages, casks, and boxes, strewn about ; a large pair of wooden scales ; and a little wooden house n wheels, outside of which, looking at the neighboring DOMBEY AND SON. 115 masts and boats, a stout man stood whistling, with his pen behind his ear, and his hands in his pockets, as if hia day's work were nearly done. " Now then ! " said this man, happening to turn round. " We haven't got anything for you, little girl. Be off 1" u If you please, is this the city ? " asked the trembling daughter of the Dombeys. " Ah ! it's the city. You know that weii enough, I dare say. Be off! We haven't got anything for you." " I don't want anything, thank you," was the timid answer. " Except to know the way to Dombey and Son's." The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed surprised by this reply, and looking atten- tively in her face, rejoined : " Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son's?" ' To know the way there, if you please." The man looked at her yet more curiously, and rubbed the back of his head so hard in his wonderment that he knocked his own hat off. " Joe ! " he called to another man a laborer as he picked it up and put it on again. " Joe it is ! " said Joe. " Where's that young spark of Dombey's who's been watching the shipment of them goods ? " " Just gone, by the t'other gate," said Joe. " Call him back a minute." Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very soon returned with a blithe-looking boy. " You're Dorabey's jockey, a'n't you ? " said the first man. "Tin in Dombey's House, Mr. Clark," returned tbe ooy. 116 DOM BEY AND SON. " Look 'ye here, then," said Mr. Clark. Obedient to the indication of Mr. Clark's hand, the boy approached towards Florence, wondering, as well he might, what he had to do with her. But she, who had heard what passed, and who, besides the relief of so sud- denly considering herself safe and at her journey's end, felt reassured beyond all measure by his lively youthful face and manner, ran eagerly up to him, leaving one of the slipshod shoes upon the ground, and caught his hand in both of hers. " I am lost, if you please ! " said Florence. " Lost ! " cried the boy. " Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from her and I have had my clothes taken away, since and I am not dressed in my own now and my name is Flor- ence Dombey, my little brother's only sister and, oh dear, dear, take care of me, if you please ! " sobbed Florence, giving full vent to the childish feelings she had so long suppressed, and bursting into tears. At the same time her miserable bonnet falling off, her hair came tumbling down about her face : moving to speechless ad- miration and commiseration, young Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships' Instrument-maker in general. Mr. Clark stood rapt in amazement : observing under his breath, /never saw such a start on this wharf before Walter picked up the shoe, and put it on the little fooi as the Prince in the story might have fitted Cinderella's slipper on. He hung the rabbit-skin over his left arm ; gave the right to Florence ; and felt not to say like Richard Whittington that is a tame comparison but like Saint George of England, with the dragon lying uead before him. " Don't cry, Miss Dombey," said Walter, in a trans DOMBEY AND SON. 117 port of enthusiasm. " What a wonderful thing for me that I am here. You are as safe now as if you were guarded by a whole boat's crew of picked men from a man-of-war. Oh don't cry." " I won't cry any more," said Florence. " I am onlj rrying for joy." " Crying for joy ! " thought Walter, " and I'm the cause of it. Come along, Miss Dombey. There's the other shoe off now ! Take mine, Miss Dombey." " No, no, no," said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuously pulling off his own. '' These do better These do very well." " Why, to be sure," said Walter, glancing at her foot "mine are a mile too large. What am I thinking about! You never could walk in mine ! Come along, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain who will dare molest you now." So Walter, looking immensely fierce, led off Florence, looking very happy ; and they went arm in arm along the streets, perfectly indifferent to any astonishment that their appearance might or did excite by the way. It was growing dark and foggy, and beginning to rain too; but they cared nothing for this : being both wholly absorbed in the late adventures of Florence, which she related with the innocent good faith and confidence of her years, while Walter listened as if, far from the mud and grease of Thames-street, they were rambling alone Rinong the broad leaves .and tall trees of some desert island in the tropics as he very likely fancied, for the time, they were. " Have we far to go ? " asked Florence at last, lifting her eyes to her companion's face. " Ah ! By the by," said Walter, stopping, " let me see 118 DOMBEY AND SON. where are we ? Oh ! I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss Dombey. There's nobody there. Mr. Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we must go home too ? or, stay. Suppose I take you to my uncle's, where I live it's very near here and go to your house in a coach to tell them you are safe, and hriug you back some clothes. Won't tliat be best? " "I think so," answered Florence. " Don't you? What do you think ? " As they stood deliberating in the street, a man passed them, who glanced quickly at Walter as he went by, as if he recognized him ; but seeming to correct that first impression, he passed on without stopping. " Why, I think it's Mr. Carker," said Walter. " Car- ker in our House. Not Carker, our manager, Miss Dombey the other Carker ; the junior Halloa ! Mr. Carker ! " " Is that Walter Gay ? " said the other, stopping and returning. " I couldn't believe it, with such a strange companion." As he stoou 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 (rouble ; and there were deep lines in his worn and mel- ancholy 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 char- acter of his figure, seemed to shrink and abase them- selves upon him, and to join in the sorrowful solicitation DOMBEY AND SON. 119 v-hich the whole man from head to foot expressed, to be loft unnoticed, and alone in his humility. And yet his interest in youth and hopefulness was not extinguished with the other embers of his soul, for he watched the hoy's earnest countenance as he spoke with unusual sympathy, though witli an inexplicable show cf trouble and compassion, which escaped into his look;-, however hard he strove to hold it prisoner. When Wal- ter, 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 read some fate upon his face, mourn- fully at variance with its present brightness. " What do you advise, Mr. Carker?" said Walter, Bmiling. " You always give me good advice, you know, when you do speak to me. That's not often, though." "I think your own idea is the best," he answered: looking from Florence to Walter, and back again. " Mr. Carker," said Walter, brightening with a gen- erous thought, " Come ! Here's a chance for you. Go you to Mr. Dombey's, and be the messenger of good news. It may do you some good, sir. I'll remain at home. You shall go." " I ! " returned the other. " Yes. Why not, Mr. Carker ? " said the boy. He merely shook him by the hand in answer ; he seemed in a manner ashamed and afraid even to do that; and bidding him good-night, and advising him to make haste, turned away. " Come, Miss Dombey," said Walter, looking after him ds they turned away also, " we'll go to my uncle's ts quick as we can. Did you ever hear Mr. Dombey speak of Mr. Carker, the junior, Miss Florence?" "No," returned the child, mildly, "I don't ofteu heai 120 DOMBEY AND SON. "Ah. true! more shame for him," thought Walter After a minute's pause, during which he had been look- ing down upon the gentle patient little face moving on at his side, he bestirred himself with his accustomed boyish animation and restlessness to change the subject; and one of the unfortunate shoes coming off again op- portunely, proposed to carry Florence to his uncle's iu his arms. Florence, though very tired, laughingly de- clined the proposal, lest he should let her fall ; and aa they were already near the wooden midshipman, and as Walter went on to cite various precedents, from ship- wrecks and other moving accidents, where younger boys than he had triumphantly rescued and carried off oldei girls than Florence, they were still in full conversation about it when they arrived at the Instrument-maker's door. " Halloa, Uncle Sol ! " cried Walter, bursting into the shop, and speaking incoherently and out of breath, from that time forth, for the rest of the evening. " Here's a wonderful adventure ! Here's Mr. Dombey's daughter lost in the streets, and robbed of her clothes by an old witch of a woman found by me brought home to our parlor to rest look here ! " " Good Heaven ! " said Uncle Sol, starting back against his favorite compass-case. " It can't be ! Well, I " " No, nor anybody else," said Walter, anticipating the rcMt. " Nobody would, nobody could, you know. Here 1 just help me lift the little sofa near the fire, will you, Uncle Sol take care of the plates cut t>ome dinner for her, will you uncle throw those shoes under the grate, Miss Florence put your feet on the fender to dry how damp they are here's an adventure, uncle eh ? God bless my soul, how hot I am 1 " DOMBEY AND SON. 121 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 solos of her feet with his pocket-handkerchief heated at the Ore, followed his locomotive nephew with his eyes, and ears, and had no clear perception of anything except thai he was being constantly knocked against and tumbled over by that excited young gentleman, as he darted about the room attempting to accomplish twenty things at once, and doing nothing at all. " Here, wait a minute, uncle," he continued, catching up a candle, " till I run up-stairs, and get another jacket on, and then I'll be off. I say, uncle, isn't this an ad- venture ? " "My dear boy," said Solomon, who, with his spectacles .MI 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 parlor, " it's the most extraordinary " " No, but do, uncle, please do, Miss Florence dinner, you know, uncle." " Yes, yes, yes," cried Solomon, cutting instantly into a leg of mutton, as if he were catering for a giant. " 111 take care of her, Wally ! I understand. Pretty dear! Famished, of course. You go and get ready. Lord bless me ! Sir Richard Whittington thrice Lord Mayor of London ! " Walter was not very long in mounting to his lofty garret and descending from it, but in the mean time Florence, overcome by fatigue, had sunk into a doze before the fire. The short interval of quiet, though only H few minutes in duration, enabled Solomon Gills so far to collect his wits as to make some little arrangements 122 DOMBEY AND SON. for her comfort, and to darken the room, and to screen her from the blaze. Thus, when the boy returned, she was sleeping peacefully. " That's capital ! " he whispered, giving Solomon such a hug that it squeezed a new expresfdon into his face. u Now I'm off. I'll just take a crust of bread with me, for I'm very hungry and don't wake her, Uncle Sol." " No, no," said Solomon. " Pretty child." " Pretty, indeed ! " cried Walter. " / never saw such a face, Uncle Sol. Now I'm off." " That's right," said Solomon, greatly i-elieved. "I say, Uncle Sol," cried Walter, putting his face in at the door. " Here he is again," said Solomon. '* How does she look now ? " " Quite happy," said Solomon. " That's famous ! now I'm off." '* I hope you are," said Solomon to himself. " I say, Uncle Sol," cried Walter, reappearing at the door. " Here he is again ! " said Solomon. " We met Mr. Carker the junior in the street, queerer than ever. He bade me good-by, but came behind us here there's an odd thing! for when we reached the shop-door, I looked round, and saw him going quietly away, like a servant who had seen me home, or a faith- ful dog. How does she look now, uncle ? " 44 Pretty much the same as before, Wally," replied Uncle Sol. " That's right. Now I am off ! " And thi time he really was; and Solomon Gills, with w appetite for dinner, sat on the opposite side o f . the DOMBEY AND SON 123 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 color, who held the child iu ai> enchanted sleep. In the mean time' 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 win- dow every two or three minutes, in impatient remon- strance 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, where there was a great confusion of tongues, and where Mr Dombey, his sister, and Miss Tox, Richards, and Nip- per, were all congregated together. "Oh! I beg your pardon, sir," said Walter, rushing ii]> to him, " but I'm happy to say it's all right, sir. Miss Dombey's found ! " The boy with his open face, and flowing hair, and sparkling eyes, panting with pleasure and excitement, was wonderfully opposed to Mr. Dombey, as he sat con- fronting him in his library chair. "I told you, Louisa, that she would certainly ba found," said Mr. Dombey, looking slightly over hia shoulder at that lady, who wept in company with Mii Tox. " Let the servants know that no further steps are u-cessary. This boy who brings the information, is young Gay, from the office. How was my daughter I'-*', i nd, sir? I know how she was lost." Here he looked majestically at Richards. " But how was he ibund ? who found her ? " * Why, I believe / found Miss Dombey, sir," said 124 DOMBEY AND SON. 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" li What do you mean, sir," interrupted Mr. Dombey regarding the boy's evident pride and pleasure in big share of the transaction with an instinctive dislike, "by not having exactly found my daughter, and by being a fortunate instrument? Be plain and coherent, if you please." It was quite out of Walter's power to be coherent ; but he rendered himself as explanatory as he could, in his breathless state, and stated why he had come alone. " You hear this, girl ? " said Mr. Dombey sternly to the black-eyed. " Take what is necessary, and return immediately with this young man to fetch Miss Florence home. Gay, you will he rewarded to-morrow." " Oh ! thank you sir," said Walter. " You are very kind. I'm sure I was not thinking of any reward, sir." " You are a boy," said Mr. Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely ; " and what you think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. You have done well, sir. Don t undo it. Louisa, please to give the lad some wine." Mr. Dombey's glance followed Walter Gay with sharp disfavor, as he left the room under the pilotage of Mrs. Chick ; and it may be that his mind's eye followed him with no greater relish as he rode back to his uncle's with Miss Susan Nipper. There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined, and greatly improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she was on terms of per- fect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried so much that she might now be called the red -eyed. DOMBET AND SON. 125 and who was very silent and depressed) cauglit her in her arms without a word of contradiction or reproach, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then con- verting the parlor for the nonce, into a private tiring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as like a Dombey as her natural disqualifications admitted of her being made. " Good-night ! " said Florence, running up to Solo- mon. " You have been very good to me." Old Sol was quite delighted, and kissed her like her grandfather. " Good-night, Walter ! Good-by ! " said Florence. " Good-by ! " said Walter, giving both his hands. " I'll never forget you," pursued Florence. " No ! in deed I never will. Good-by, Walter ! " In the innocence of her grateful heart, the child lifted up her face to his. Walter, bending down his own, raised it again, all red and burning ; and looked at Uncle Sol, quite sheepishly. "Where's Walter?" " Good-night, Walter!" "Good- by, Walter ! " " Shake hands, once more, Walter J " 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 doorstep gayly returned the waving of her handkerchief, while the wooden mid- shipman behind him seemed, like himself, intent upon that coach alone, excluding all the other passing coaches from his observation. In good time Mr. Dombey's mansion was gained again, and again there was a noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was ordered to wait "for Mrs. Bichards," one of Susan's fellow-servants ominously whispered, as she passed with Florence. 126 DOMBEY AND SON. The entrance of the lost child mad > a slight sensa- O tion, 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 hei lamentations on the corruption of human nature, ever when beckoned to the paths of virtue by a Charitabla 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 her- self over the little wandering head as if she really loved it. " Ah Richards ! " said Mrs. Chick, with a sigh. " It would have been much more satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellow-creatures, and much more becoming in you, if you had shown some proper fueling, in time, for the little child that is now going to be prematurely deprived of its natural nourishment." " Cut off," said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, " from one common fountain ! " " If it was my ungrateful case," said Mrs. Chick, solemnly, "and I had your reflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable Grinders' dress would blight my child, and the education choke him." For the matter of that but Mrs. Chick didn't knew it he had been pretty well blighted by the dress al- ready ; and as to the education, even its retributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobs and blows. " Louisa ! " said Mr. Dornbey. " Ii is not necessarj to prolong these observations. Th* woman is discliarged DOMBEY AND SON. 1*J7 Rnd paid. You leave this house, Richards, for taking my son my son," said Mr. Dombey, emphatically re- peating these two words, " into haunts and into society which are not to be thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befell Miss Florence this mom ing I regard that, as, in one great sense, a happy and fortu- nate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence 1 never could have known and from your own lips loo of what you had been guilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person," here Miss Nipper sobbed aloud, " being so much younger, and necessarily influenced by Paul's nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that this woman's coach is paid to " Mr. Dombey stopped and winced "to Staggs's Gar- dens." Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, and crying to her in the most pathetic man- ner not to go away. It was a dagger in the haughty lather's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the fiesh mid blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do. His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paul had better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for he had lost his second mother his first, so far as he knew by a stroke as sudden as that .natural affliction which had darkened the beginning of his life. At the same blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleep so mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But that is quite beside the question. Let us waste no words about it. 128 DOMBEY AND SOK. CHAPTER VH. A BIRD'S- ETE GLIMPSE OF MISS TOX's DWE1 LING-PI.ACK AX8O OP THE STATE OF MISS TOX'S AFFECTIONS. Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at some remote period of English History, into R fashionable neighborhood 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 pave- ment, 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 t had never come out, within the memory of man ; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there are eight- and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with a pewter- pot. There was another private house besides Miss Tox'a m Princess's-place : not to mention an immense pair of gate?, with an immense pair of lion-headed knockers on DOMBEY AND SON. 129 lliem, 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 hos- tiers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continu- ally accompanying themselves with effervescent noises ; and where the most domestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives and families, usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward walls. At this other private house in Princess's-place, t^n anted by a retired butler who had married a house-keeper, 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 recog- nized, as she herself expressed it, " something so truly military ; " and between whom and herself, an occasional interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and such Pla- tonic dalliance, was effected through the medium of a dark servant of the major's whom Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a " native," without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever. Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and stair- case, than the entry and staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from top to bottom, it was Ine most inconvenient little house in England, and the crook v.dest ; 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 Tex said, think of the situation ! So said the blue-fact d major, whose eyes were starting out of his head : who gloried in Princess's-place : and who delighted to tun? Vi>:. I. 8 130 DOMBEY AND SON. Ihe conversation at his club, whenever he could, to thing connected with some of the great people in the great street rouud the corner, that he might have the satisfaction of saying they were his neighbors. 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 parlor Gr^-place. The greater part of the furniture was of the powdered head and pigtail period : comprising a plate- warmer, always languishing and sprawling its four at- tenuated bow legs in somebody's way ; and an obsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's name with a painted garland of sweet peas. Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey down-hill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long- flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in t!ie 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 connection with little jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock, old J. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpet?.l theme : it being, as it were, the major's stronghold ar>d donjon-keep of light humor, to be on the most fam'lia-r t^rms with his own name. " Jooy B-, ir," the major woukl say, with a flourish of his wlku:g-stick, " is worth a dozen of you. If you uad a few more of the Bagstock breed among you. sir, DOMBEY AND SON. 131 pou'cl be none the worse for it. Old Joe, sir, needn't look far for a wife even now, if he was on the look- out ; but he's hard-hearted, sir, is Joe he's tough, sir, tough, and de-vilish sly ! " After such a declaration wheezing sounds would be heard ; and the major's blue would deepen into purple, while his eyes strained an started convulsively. Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of him- self, however, the major was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a more entirely selfish person at heart ; or at stomach is perhaps a better expression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latter organ than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked or slighted by anybody ; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension of being overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox. And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him gradually forgot him. She began to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. She continued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went on forgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebody had superseded him as a source of interest. " Good-morning, rna'am," said the major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess's-place, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter. " Good-morning, sir," said Miss Tox ; very coldly. " Joe Bagstock, ma'am," observed the major, with his usual gallantry, " has not had the hsippiness of bowing to you at your window, for a considerable period. Joe bas been hardly used, ma'am. His sun has been behind a cloud. Miss Tox inclined her head ; but very coldly indeed 182 DOMBET AND SON. " Joe's luminary has been out of town ma'am, per- haps," inquired the major. " I ? out of town ? oh no, I have not been out of town," said Miss Tox. " I have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to some very in- timate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Good-morning, sir ! " As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and car- riage; disappeared from Princess's-place, the major stood looking after her with a bluer face than ever : mutter- ing and growling some not at all complimentary re- marks. " Why, damme, sir," said the major, rolling his lob- ster eyes round and round Princess's-place, and apostro- phizing its fragrant air, " six months ago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What's the meaning of it ? " The major decided, after some consideration, that it meant man-traps ; that it meant plotting and snaring ; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. " But you won't catch Joe, ma'am," said the major. " He's tough, ma'am, tough, is J. B. Tough, and de-vilish sly ! " over which reflection he chuckled for the rest of the day. But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past, it seemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the major, and thought nothing at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to look out ai one of her little dark windows by accident, and blush- ingly 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 bad come to pass too. The major, standing in the shade cf his own apartment, could make out that an air cf DOMBEY AND SON. 133 greater smartness had recently come over Miss Tox'a house ; that a new cage with gilded wires had been provided for the ancient little canary bird ; that diver* ornaments, cut out of colored 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 os- tentatiously, crowned with the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in a music-book of Miss Tox's own copying. Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommon care and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the major out of his dif- ficulty ; and he determined within himself that she had come into a small legacy, and grown proud. It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arriving at this decision, that the major, sit- ting 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, rush- ing into the next room returned with a double-barrelled opera-glass, through which he surveyed it intently for some minutes. " It's a Baby, sir," said the major, shutting up the tt lass again, " for fifty thousand pounds ! " The major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle, and stare to that extent, that his eyes com- pared 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 ?iajor continued to stare and whistle. To all other in- tents and purposes he was alone in Princess's-placa. Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He migbt 134 DOMBEY AND SON. have been black as well as blue, and it would have been of no consequence to her. The perseverance with which she walked out of Prin- cess'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 perse- verance with which she nursed it herself, and fed it, and played with it, and froze its young blood with airs upon flic harpsichord ; was extraordinary. At about the 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 bracelets ; she looked no more at the major. And the major whistled, and stared, and wondered, and dodged about his room, and could make nothing of it. " You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, my dear," said Mrs. Chick, one day. Miss Tox turned pale. " He grows more like Paul every day," said Mrs. Chick. Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul in her arms, and making his cockade per- fectly flat and limp with her caresses. " His mother, my dear," said Miss Tox, " whose ac- quaintance I was to have made through you, does he at all resemble her ? " "Not at all," returned Louisa. " She was she was pretty, I believe? ' fa'terad Miss Tox. " Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting," said Mrs. Ohick, after some judicial consideration. " Certainly in- DOMBEY AND SOX. 135 leresting. She had not that air of commanding supe- riority which one would somehow expect, almost as a matter of course, to find in my brother's wife ; nor had ghe that strength and vigor of mind which such a man requires." Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh. " lUit she was pleasing;" said Mrs. Chick: "ex- tremely so. And she meant ! oh, dear, how well poor [fanny meant ! " " You angel ! " cried Miss Tox to little Paul. " You picture of your own papa ! " If the major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what a multitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head ; and could have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusion and dis- order, round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul ; he might have stared indeed. Then would he have recognized, among the crowd, some few ambitious motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox: then would he perhaps have understood the nature of that lady's faltering investment in the Dombey Firm. If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen, gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint re- flections 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 sor- rows of his sister, and the sterner visions of his father; aud innocent that any spot of earth contained a Dom- bey or a Soc 136 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER PAUL'S FURT11KR PROGRESS, GROWTH, AND CHARACTER. BENEATH the watching and attentive eyes of Time so far another Major Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light broke in upon them ; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them ; an ac- cumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest; and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey. On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nur- sery 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. Thj Commissioners were, of course, Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox : who de- voted themselves to their duties with such astonishing ardor that Major Bagstock had every day some new re- minder 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 distinct occasions, went to the play by himself, and in phort, loosened (as Mrs. Chick once told him) every social bond, and moral obligation. Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care could not make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, he pined and wasted aftei DOMBEY AND SON. 137 the dismissal ot nis 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 grill found it very rough riding, and was grievously beset ir) all the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was a breakneck fence, and every pimple in the measles stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the whooping-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 tin-oat instead of the thrush ; and the very chickens turning ferocious if they have anything to do with that infant malady to which they lend their name worried him like tiger-cats. The chill of Paul's christening had struck home, per- haps to some sensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the cold shade of his father ; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. Mrs. Wickam often said she never see a dear so put upon. Mrs. Wickam was a waiter's wife which would seem equivalent to being any other man's widow whose ap- plication for an engagement in Mr. Dombey's service had been favorably considered, on account of the apparent impossibility of her having any followers, or any one to follow ; and who, from within a day or two of Panl'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 vtafcural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterly forlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful precedents to / 138 DOMBEY AND SON. I>ear upon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the exercise of that talent. It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality ever reached the magnificent knowledge of Mr. ombey. It would have been remarkable, indeed, if any had ; when no one in the house not even Mrs. Chick or Miss Tox dared ever whisper to him e prevented by any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admit that, the better." " Surely you must know, Louisa," observed Mr. Dom- bey, " that I don't question your natural devotion to, and natural regard for, the future head of my house. Mr. Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?" said Mr. Dombey. " Yes, he did," returned his sister. " Miss Tox and myself were present. Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. Mr. Pilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believe him to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any consolation ; but he recom- mended, to-day, sea-air. Very wisely, Paul, I feel con- vinced." " Sea-air," repeated Mr. Dombey, looking at his sis- ter. " 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 up-stairs 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 pay 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 in- stance " " Who is Mrs. Pipchin, Louisa ? " asked Mr. Dombey : aghast at this familiar introduction of a name he had Clever he^rd before. 148 DOMBEY AND SON. "Mrs. Pipchin, ray dear Paul," returned bis sister, "is an elderly lady Miss Tox knows her whole history who has for some time devoted all the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the study and treat- ment of infancy, and who has been extremely well con- nected. Her husband broke his heart in how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear ? I forget the precise circumstances." " In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines," re- plied Miss Tox. " Not being a Pumper himself, of course," said Mrs. Chick, glancing at her brother ; and it really did seem neces.sary 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 pri- vate circles ever since I was dear me how high ! " Mrs. Chick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr. Pitt, which was about ten feet from the ground. " Perhaps I should say of Mrs. Pipchin, my dear sir," observed Miss Tox, with an ingenuous blush, " having been so pointedly referred to, that the encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister is well merited. Many ladies and gentlemen, now grown up to ye interesting members of society, have been indebted o her care. The humble individual who addresses you Was once under her charge. I believe juvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment." " Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps &n establishment, Miss Tox ? " inquired Mr. Dombey, condescendingly. DOMBEY AND SON. 149 " Why, I really don't know," rejoined thai lady, fc whether I am justified in calling it so. It is not & Preparatory School by any means. Should I express my meaning," said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, " if I designated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description ? " " On an exceedingly limited and particular scale," sag Bested Mrs. Chick, with a glance at her brother. Oh ! Exclusion itself! " said Miss Tox. There was something in this. Mrs. Pipchin's husband having broken his heart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, Mr. Dombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the idea of Paul remaining where he was one hour after his re- moval had been recommended by the medical practi- tioner. It was a stoppage and delay upon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before the goal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs. Pipchin had great weight with him ; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference with their charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that they might be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, as shown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of the Peruvian mines, mused Mr. Dombey. Well, a very respectable way of doing it. " Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inqui- ries, to send Paul down to Brighton to this lady, who would go with him ? " inquired Mr. Dombey, after some reflection. " I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present without Florence, my dear Paul," returned hi >i*ter. hesitating. " It's quite an infatuation with him lie's \ery young, you know, and has his fancies." 150 DOMBEY AND SON. Mr. Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, and unlocking it, brought back a book to read. " Anybody else, Louisa ? " he said, without looking up, and turning over the leaves. " Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite suffi- cient, I should ?ay," returned his sister. " Paul being iu such hands as Mrs. Pipchin's. you could hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. You would go down yourself once a week at least, of course." " Of course," said Mr. Dombey ; and sat looking at one page for an hour afterwards, without reading one word. This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill- favored, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard gray eye, that looked as if it might have been ham- mered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had v elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pipchin ; but his relict still wore black bombazine, 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 manage- ment, was, to give them everything that they didn't like, and nothing that they did which was found to sweeten their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application of the Peruvian ma- chinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry, instead of .he mines. DO3V1BEY AND SON. 151 The castle of this ogress nnd 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 email front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in (hem ; and where snails were constantly discovered hold- ing 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 (he front- parlor, which was never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, which imparted an earthy fla- vor 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, writh- ing round bits of lath, like hairy serpents ; another speci- men shooting out broad claws, like a green lobster ; sev- eral 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 Ihcm of spiders in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challenged com oetition still more proudly, in the season, in point of ear- wigs. Mrs. Pipchin's scale of charges being high, howevei 152 DOMBEY AXD SON. to all who could afford to pay, and Mrs. Pipchin very seldom sweetening. the equable acidity of her nature in favor of anybody, she was held to be an old lady of re- markable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowl- edge 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 tolerably suf- ficient living since her husband's demise. Within three days after Mrs. Chick's first allusion to her, this excel- lent old lady had the satisfaction of anticipating a hand- some addition to her current receipts, from the pocket of Mr. Dombey ; and of receiving Florence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the castle. Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night (which they all passed at an hotel), had just driven away from the door, on their journey home again ; and Mrs. Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs. Pipchin's middle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoteu 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 tniffed thrice, in the presence of visitors. _ " Well, sir," said Mrs. Pipchin to Paul, " how do you think you shall like me ? " " I don't think I shall like you at all," replied 'Paul ' I want to go away. This isn't my house." " No. It's mine," retorted Mrs. Pipchin. "It's a very nasty one," said Paul. DOMBEf AND SON. 153 " There's a worse place in it than this, though, ' said Mrs. Pipchin, " where we shut up our bad boys." " Has he ever been in it ? " asked Paul : pointing out Master Bitherstone. Mrs. Pipchin nodded assent ; and Paul had enough to do, for the rest of that day, in surveying Master Bitlier stone from head to foot, and watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interest attaching to a boj of mysterious and terrible experiences. At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the far inaceous and vegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of a child, who was shampooed 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 re- galed with rice ; and subsequently repeated the form of grace established in the castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs. Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs. Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs. Pipchin, whose constitution required warm nourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were brought in hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice. As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on the beach, and Mrs. Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, they went away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the dungeon ; an empty room looking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by a ragged fireplace without any stove u it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the best place after all ; for Berry played with them there, 1 54 DOMBEY AND SON. and seemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did ; until Mrs. Pipchin knocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock-lane ghost revived, they left off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight. For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, with a little black teapot for Mrs. Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toast unlimited for Mrs. Pip- chin, 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 gray eye knew no softening. After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilion on the lid, and fell to working bus- ily ; 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 pose for nodding too. At last it was the children's bedtime, and after prayers they went to bed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs. Pipchin always made a point of driving her up-stairs herself, like a sheep ; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long after- wards, in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs. Pipchin now and then going in to shake her. At about half-past nine o'clock the odor of a warm sweet-bread (Mrs. Pip- chin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep without sweet- bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, which Mrs. Wickam said was " a smell of building ; * and slumber fell upon the castle shortly after. The breakfast next morning was like the tea over- vight, except that Mrs. Pipchin took her roll instead of DOMBEY AND SOX. 155 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, Mis* Pankey was borne away to be shampooed ; and Mastei 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 mean time on the beach with Wickam who was constantly in tears and at about noon Mrs. Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs. Pipchin'a system not to encourage a child's mind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it by force like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of a violent and stunning character: the hero a naughty boy seldom, in the mildest catastrophe, being finished off by anything less than a lion, or a bear. Such was life at Mrs. Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr. Dombey came down ; and Florence and Paul would go to his hotel, and have tea. They passed the whole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner ; and on these occasions Mr. Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sunday evening was the most melancholy evening in the week ; for Mrs. Pipchin always made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. Miss Pankey was generally brought back from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deep distress ; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in India, and who was required to sit, between the services, In an erect position with his head against the parlor wall ueither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his i56 DOMBEY AND SON. young spints that he once asked Florence, on a Sun- day night, if she could give him any idea of the way back to Bengal. But it was generally said that Mrs. Pipchin was a woman of system with children ; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tame enough, aftei sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs. Pipchin to have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made such a sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against her troubles, when Mr. Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines. At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his little arm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to know what weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs. Pipchin. He was not fond of her ; he was not afraid of her ; but in those old old moods of his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There he would sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs. Pipchin, ogress as she was. Once she asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about. " You," said Paul, without the least reserve. " And what are you thinking about me ? " asked Mrs. Pipchin. ' I'm thinking how old you must be," said Paul. " You mustn't say such things as that, young gentle- can," returned the dame. " That'll never do." "Why not?" asked Paul. " Because it's not polite," said Mrs. Pipchin, snappishly "Not polite?" said Paul. "No-" DOMBEY AND SON. 157 "It's not polite," said Paul, innocently, " to eat all the mutton-chops and toast, Wickam says." " Wickam," retorted Mrs. Pipchin, coloring, " is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced hussy." "What's that?" inquired Paul. " Never you mind, sir," retorted Mrs. Pipchin. " Re- member the story of the little boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions." " If the bull was mad," said Paul, " how did he know that the boy had asked questions ? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. I don't believe that story." " You don't believe it, sir ? " repeated Mrs. Pipchin, amazed. "No," said Paul. " Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little infidel ? " said Mrs. Pipchin. As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had founded his conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himself to be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs. Pipchin pres- ently, that even that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he should have forgotten the subject. From that time, Mrs. Pipchin appeared to have some- thing 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 op- posite ; 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 bombazine drapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and aeering at the hard gray eye until Mrs. Pipchin wfs 158 DOMBEY AND SOJN. sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs. Pipchin had an old black cat, who generally lay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically and winking at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes were like two notes of admiration. The good old lady might have been not to record it disrespect- fully 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 c^e night, and never been heard of any more. This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs. Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark ; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying Mrs. Pipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were a book of necromancy, in three volumes. Mrs. Wiekam put her own construction on Paul's ec- centricities ; 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. Pipehin's policy to prevent her own "young hussy" that was Mrs. Pipehin's generic name for female servant from communicating with Mrs. Wickam : to which end she devoted much of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springing out on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach tow- ards Mrs. Wickam's apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she could in that quarter con- DOMBEY AND SON 159 ?istently with the discharge of the multifarious duties at which she toiled inces-antly from morning to night; and to Berry Mr.-:. \Vickam unburdened her mind. " What a pretty fellow /ie is when he's asleep ! " said Kerry, stopping to look at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs. Wickam's supper. " Ah ! " sighed Mrs. Wickarn. " lie need be." "Why, he's not ugly when he's awake," observed I Jerry. " No, sr.a'am. Oh. no. No more was my unclt's Betsey Jane," said Mrs. Wiekam. Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connec- tion of ideas between Paul Dombey and Mrs. Wickani's uncle's Betsey Jane. "My uncle's wife," Mrs. Wiekam went on to say, "died just like his mama. My uncle's child took on jus 1 . HS Master Paul do. My uncle's child made people's blood run cold, sometimes, she did ! " "How?" asked Berry. " I wouldn't have sat up all night alone with Betsey- Jane ! " said Mrs. W r ickam, " not if you'd have put Wijkain into business next morning for himself. J couldn't have done k Miss Berry." Miss Berry naturally asked, why not? But Mrs. Wiekam, agreeably to the usage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of the subject without any compunction. " Betsey Jane," said Mrs. Wiekam, " was as -sweet a child as 1 could wish to see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child could have in the way af illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The cramps w&s as common to Her," said Mrs. Wiekam, " as biles is to yourself, Miss Berry." Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose. 160 DOMBEY AND SON. " But Betsey Jane," said Mrs. Wickam, lowering hei 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 ! You may say nonsense ! I a'n't offended, miss. I hope you may be able to think in your own conscience that it is nonsense ; you'll find your spirits all the better for it in this you'll excuse my being so free in this burying-ground of a place ; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if you please." " Of course you think," said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, " that he has been nursed by his mother, too?" "Betsey Jane," returned Mrs. Wickam, in her most solemn tones, " was put up,on as that child has been pu* upon, and changed as that child has changed. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, like him. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider that child and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry." "Is your uncle's child alive ? " asked Berry. a Yes, miss, she is alive," returned Mrs. Wickam with an air of triumph, for it was evident Miss Berry ex pccted the reverse ; " and is married to a silver-cbsser Oh yes, miss, SHE is alive," said Mrs. Wickam, laying strong stress on her nominative case. It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs. Pipchin's niece inquired who it was. u I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy," returned Mra Wickam, pursuing her supper. " Don't ask me." DOMBEY AND SON. 161 This was ilie surest way of being asked again. Miag 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, i i bed, replied : " She took fancies to people ; whimsical fancies, scrao ci them ; others, affections that one might expect to see only stronger than common. They all died." This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs. Pip- chin's niece, that she sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, and surveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm. Mrs. Wickam shook her left forefinger stealthily tow- ards the bed where Florence lay ; then turned it upside down, and made several emphatic points at the floor; immediately below which was the parlor in which Mrs. Pipchin habitually consumed the toast. " Remember my words, Miss Berry," said Mrs. Wickam, " and be thankful that Master Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he's not too fond of me, I as- sure you ; though there isn't much to live for you'll excuse my being so free in this jail of a house ! " Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on the back, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, but he turned iu bis bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up ir it with his hair hot and wet from the effects of some cLild- i h dream, and asked for Florence. She was out of her own bed at the first sound of hia foice ; and bending over his pillow immediately, sung dim to sleep again. Mrs. Wickam shaking her head, ind letting fall several tears, pointed out the little group .o Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling. \..i.. i. li 162 DOMBEY AND SOX. "Good-night, miss!" said Wickani, softly. "Good- night ! Your aunt is an old lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often." This consolatory farewell, Mrs. Wickam accompanied trith a look of heartfelt anguish ; and being left alone with tl e two children again, and becoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged in mel- ancholy that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries until she was overpowered by slumber. Although the niece (Jf Mrs. PipcUn did not expect to Cud t'.at exemplary dragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went down-stairs, 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 com- fort 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 reg- ular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied her as attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the black skirts and the fender, with unwavering con- stancy. But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time than he had been on his first arrival, though DC looked much healthier in the face, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at his ease, with *n alphabet and other elementary works of reference, iJid be wheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the child set aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of this carriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather a weazen, old, crab-faced 7)an, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough and stringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smell like a weedy sea-beach when the tide is out DOMBEY AND SON. 163 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 dis- tressed as by the company of children Florence alone excepted, always. " Go away, if you please," he would say to any child who carae to bear him company. " Thank you, but I don't want you." Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps. " 1 am very well, I thank you," he would answer. u But you had better go and play, if you please." Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say to Florence, " We don't want any others, do we ? Kiss me, Floy." He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and was well pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick up shells and ac- quaintances. His favorite 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 Wore. " Floy," he said one day, " where's India, where that boy's friends live ? " " Oh, it's a long, long distance off," said Florence, rais- ing her eyes from her work. " Weak* off?" asked Paul. " Yes, dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day." " If you w^re in India, Floy," said Paul, after being t 164 DOMBEY AND SON. silent for a minute, " I should what is that mama did ? I forget." " Loved me ! " answered Florence. " No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy ? What is U ? Died. If you were in India, I should die, Floy." She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her beau down on his pillow, caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would be better soon. " Oh ! I am a great deal better now ! " he answered, 14 1 don't mean that. .. I mean that I should die of being BO sorry and so lonely, Floy ! " Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for a long time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up and sat listening. Florence asked him what he thought he heard. " I want to know what it says," he answered, looking steadily in her face. " The sea, Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying ? " She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves. " Yes, yes," be said. " But I know that they are al- ways saying something. Always the same thing. What place is over there ? " He rose up, looking eagerly at the horizon. She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said he didn't mean that ; he meant farther away farther away ! Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off, to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying ; and would rise up in his much to look towards that invisible region far away. DOMBEY AND SON 166 CHAPTER IX. IJs WHICH THE WOODEN MIDSHIPMAN GETS INTO I HOI! BLR THAT spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was a pretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which the guardianship of his uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weak- ened 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 associ- ated : until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it. The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may have been made the more captivating, per- haps, 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 these 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 guttered among many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sen- Sments, on a dead wal\ in the Commercial-road : which poetical performance set forth the courtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain " love- y Peg," the accomplished daughter of the master and ICG DOMBEY AND SON. part-owner of a Newcastle collier. In this stirring lo gend, 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-par- lor ; making an amazing shake on the word Pe e eg with which every verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of the piece. But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given to analyzing the nature of his own feel- ings, 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 en- countered Florence, and for the streets (albeit not en- chanting 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- parlor 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 memo- rable 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 de- lightful to see her bright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and coldly looked upon, and bis DOMBEY AND SON". 167 Dmibt was full of youthful interest for the slighted child in her dull, stately home. Thus it came about that, perhaps some half a dozen times in the course of the year, Walter pulled off his bat to Florence in the street, and Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs. Wickam (who with a characteristic alteration of his name invariably spoke of him as " Young Graves ") was so well used to this, knowing the story of their acquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on the other hand, rather looked out for these occasions : her sensitive young heart being secretly propitiated by Walter's good looks, and inclining to the belief that its sentiments were responded to. In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of his acquaintance with Florence, only remem- bered it better and better. As to its adventurous begin- ning, and all those little circumstances which gave it a distinctive character and relish, he took them into ac- count, more as a pleasant story very agreeable to his im- agination, 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 \here, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have tome back an admiral of all the colors of the dolphin, or at least a post-captain with epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have married Florence (then a beautiful voung 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 flight* 168 DOMBEY AND SON. of fancy seldom burnished the brass plate of Domboj 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 time position at Dombey and Son's, much better than they did. So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, in a cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguine complexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained a thousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own. to which theirs were work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchin period, when he looked a little older than of yore, but not much ; and was the same light-footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as when he charged into the parlor at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginary boarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira. "Uncle Sol," said Walter, "I don't think you're well. You haven't eaten any breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this." " He can't give me what I want, my boy," said Uncle Sol. " At least he is in good practice if he can and then he wouldn't." u What is it, uncle ? Customers ? " " Ay," returned Solomon, with a sigh. " Customers would do." u 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 aud repassing the shop every minute by scores, I feel half tempted to rusb DOMBEY AND SON. 169 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 ? " con- tinued 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 i'l and buy it ! " The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curi- osity, walked calmly away. " There he goes ! " said Walter. " That's the way with 'em all. But uncle I say, Uncle Sol " for the old man was meditating, and had not responded to hia first appeal. " Don't be cast down. Don't be out of spirits, uncle. When orders do come, they'll come in such a crowd, you won't be able to execute "em." " I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy," returned Solomon Gills. " They'll never jome to this shop again, till I am out of it." " I say, uncle ! You mustn't really, you know ! " urged Walter. "Don't!" Old Sol endeavored to assume a cheery look, and smiled across the little table at him as pleasantly as he could. " There's nothing more than usual the matter ; is there, uncle ? " said Walter, leaning his elbows on the >.ea-tray, and bending over, to speak the more confiden- tially and kindly. " Be open with me, uncle, if there ia, and tell me all about it " " No, 110, no," returned Old Sol. " More than usual No, no. What should there be the matter mor than asual ? " Walter answered with an incredulous shake of hi 170 noMBEY AND SON. head. "That's what I want to know," he aid, a 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." OKI Sol opened his eyes involuntarily. " Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I &m and always have been with you, I am quite sorry bat J live with you, when I see you with anything on your mind." " I am a little dull at such times, I know," observed Solomon, meekly rubbing his hands. " What I mean, Uncle Sol," pursued Walter, bending ever a little more to pat him on the shoulder, " is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting here and pouring out the tea, instead of me, a nice little dumpling of a wife, you know a comfortable, capital, cosey old lady, who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep you in good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure I ought to be !) but I am only a nephew, and I can't be such a companion to you when you're low and out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feel quite sorry you haven't got somebody better about you than a blundering young rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, uncle, but hasn't got the way hasn't got the way," repeated Walter, reaching ovei farther yet, to shake his uncle by the hand. " Wally, my dear boy," said Solomon, " if the cosey little old lady had taken her place in this parlor five- and-forty years ago, I never could have been fonder of her than I am of you." " / know that. Uncle Sol," returned Walter. " Lord DOMBEY AND SOX. 171 bless you, I know that. But you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secrets if she had been with you, because she would have known how to relieve you of 'em, and I don't." " Yes, yes, you do," returned the instrument-maker. " Well then, what's the* matter, Uncle Sol ? " said Walter, coaxingly. "Come! What's the matter?" Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing tho matter ; and maintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to make a very indifferent imitation of believing him. > " All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is " " But there isn't," said Solomon. " Very well," said Walter. " Then I've no more to pay ; and that's lucky, for my time's up for going to busi- ness. I shall look in by and by when I'm out, to see how you get on, uncle. And mind, uncle ! I'll never believe you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr. Carker the Junior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me ! " Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out any- thing 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 inde- pendence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with a heavier countenance than he usually carried there. There lived in those days, round the corner in Bishopsgate-street Without one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop where every description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the most un- comfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in com- binations the most completely foreign to its purpose. 172 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 bed- stead, 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 hearth-rug, severed from its natural companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east wind in its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord with the shrill com- plainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day, and faintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangled 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, acci- dentally placed at compound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye an eternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin. Mr. Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complex- ioned, crisp-haired man, of a bulky figure and an easy temper for that class of Caius Marius who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep up his spirits well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question about articles in Solo- jnon's way of business ; and Walter knew him sufficiently DOMBEY AND SON. 173 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, agree- ' O ably to his promise, to find Mr. Brogley sitting in the back-parlor with hi.-; hands in his pockets, and his hat hanging up behind the door. " Well, Uncle Sol ! " said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on the opposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for a wonder, instead of on bis forehead. " How are you now ? " Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, as introducing him. " Is there anything the matter ? " asked Walter, with a catching in his breath. " No, no. There's nothing the matter," said Mr. Brogley. " Don't let it put you out of the way." Walter looked from the broker to his uncle in mute amazement. " The fact is," said Mr. Brogley, " there's a little pay- ment on a bond debt three hundred and seventy odd, overdue : and I'm in possession." " In possession ! " cried Walter, looking round at the shop. "Ah!" said Mr. Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his head as if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortable together. " It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put you out of the way J come myself because of keeping it quiet and sociable. Vou know me. It's quite private." " Uncle Sol ! " faltered Walter. " Wally, my boy," returned his uncle. " It's the first time. Such a calamity never happened to me before. 174 DOMBEF AND SON. 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-colored waistcoat. "Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!" exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrill of terror in seeing the old man areep. " For God's sake don't do that. Mr. Brogley, what shall I do?" "/should recommend you looking up a friend or so," said Mr. Brogley, " and talking it over." " To be sure ! " cried Walter, catching at anything. ir, was not afraid of being condemned for his whim by a man like Mr. Dombey. I have the honor of address- .ng Mr. Dombey, I believe ? " " I am the present unworthy representative of that name, major," returned Mr. Dombey. 188 DOMBEY AND SON. u By G , sir," said the major, " it's a great name. It's a name, sir," said the major firmly, as if he defied Mr. Dombey to contradict him, and would feel it his painful duty to bully him if he did, " that is known and honored in the British possessions abroad. It is a name, sir, that a man is proud to recognize. 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 Jo- seph : ' but it's a great name, sir. By the Lord, it's A great name ! " said the major, solemnly. " You are good enough to rate it higher than it de- serves perhaps, major," returned Mr. Dorabey. " No, sir," said the major. ' My little friend here, sir, 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, u will live in history. That boy, sir, is not a com- mon production. Take care of him, Mr. Dombey." Mr. Dombey seemed to intimate that he would en- deavor to do so. " Here is a boy here, sir," pursued the major, con- fidentially, and giving him a thrust with his cane. " Son of Bitherstone of Bengal. Bill Bitherstone formerly of ours. That boy's father and myself, sir, were sworn friends.. Wherever you went, sir, you heard of nothing but Bill Bitherstone and Joe Bagstock. Am I blind to that boy's defects ? By no means. He's a fool, sir." Mr. Dombey glanced at the libelled Master Bither- gtone of whom he knew at least as much as the major did, and said, in quite a complacent manner, " Really?" " That is what he is, sir," said the major. " He's a DOMBEY AND SON. 189 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 pre- sume, Mr. Dombey ? " said the major when he had r* covered. " I am not quite decided," returned Mr. Dombey. " I think not. He is delicate." " If he's delicate, sir," said the major, " you are right. None but the tough fellows could live through it, sir, at Sandhurst. We put each other to the torture there, sir. We roasted the new fellows at a slow fire, and hung 'em out of a three pair of stairs window, with their heads downwards. Joseph Bagstock, sir, was held out of the window by the heels of his boots for thirteen minutes by the college clock." The major might have appealed to his countenance in corroboration of this story. It certainly looked as if he had hung out a little too long. " But it made us what we were, sir," said the major, settling his shirt-frill. " We were iron, sir, and it forged us. Are you remaining here, Mr. Dombey ? " " I generally come down once a week, major," re- turned that gentleman. "I stay at the Bedford." "I shall have the honor 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 honor of this introduction." Mr. Dombey made a very gracious reply ; and Major Bagstock, having patted Paul on the head, and said of Florence that her eyes would play the devil with the youngsters before long "and the oldsters too, sir, i/ 190 DOMBEY AND SON. you come to that," added the major, chuckling very much stirred up Master Bitherstone with his walk- ing-stick, and departed with that young gentleman, at a kind of half-trot ; rolling his head and coughing with great dignity, as he staggered away, with his legs very wide asunder. In fulfilment of his promise, the major afterwards called on Mr. Dombey ; and Mr. Dombey, having re- ferred 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. Dom- bey. In short, Mr. Dombey and the major got on un- commonly well together, and uncommonly fast : and Mr. Dombey observed of the major, to his sister, that be- sides being quite a military man he was really some- thing more, as he had a very admirable idea of the importance of things unconnected with his own pro- fession. 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 neighbor and acquaintance. Notwithstanding the palpi- tation 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 deser- tion of him and Princess's-place : and as he appeared to derive great enjoyment from making them, they all got i>n very well. DOMBEY AND SON. 191 None the worse; on account of the majoi taking charge ftf the whole conversation, and showing as great an ap- petite 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 How of spirits thus engendered, rang such an infinite number of new changes on his own name that he quite astonished him- self. 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, alter si long rubber, Mr. Dombey again complimented tiie blushing Miss Tox on her neighbor and acquaintance. But all the way home to his own hotel, the major incessantly said to himself, and of himself, " Sly, sir sly, sir de-vil-ish sly ! " And when he got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into a silent fit of laughter, with which he was sometimes seized, and which was always particularly awful. It held him so long on this occasion that the dark servant, who stood watching him at a distance, but dared not for his life approach, twice or thrice gave him over for lost. His whole form, but especially his face and head, dilated beyond all former experience ; and presented to the dark man's view, noth- ing but a heaving mass of indigo. At length he burst into a violent paroxysm of coughing, and when that waa a little better burst into such ejaculations as the follow- ing : ' Would you, ma'am, would you ? Mrs. Dombey, eh, ina'am? I think not, ma'am. Not while Joe B can Dut a spoko in your wheel, ma'am. J. B.'s even witb 192 DOMBEY AND SON. you now, ma'am. He isn't altogether bowled out, yet, eir, isn't Bagstock. She's deep, sir, deep, but Josh ia deeper. Wide awake is old Joe broad awake, and staring sir!" There was no doubt of this last assertion being true, and to a very fearful extent ; as it continued 10 lie during the greater part of that night, which the major chiefly passed in similar exclamations, diversified with fits of coughing and choking that startled the whole house. It was on the day after this occasion (being Sunday) when, as Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Chick,, and Miss Tox were sitting at breakfast, still eulogizing the major, Florence came running in : her face suffused with a bright color, and her eyes sparkling joyfully : and cried, " Papa ! Papa ! Here's Walter ! and he won't come In." "Who?" cried Mr. Dombey. "What does she mean? What is this?" "Walter, papa," said Florence timidly; sensible of having approached the presence with too much familiar- ity. " Who found me when I was lost." " Does she mean young Gay, Louisa ? " inquired Mr Dombey, knitting his brows. " Really, this child's man- ners have become very boisterous. She cannot mean young Gay, I think. See what it is, will you." Mrs. Chick hurried into the passage, and returned with the information that it was young Gay, accom- panied by a very strange-looking person ; and thai young Gay said he would not take the liberty of com- ing in, hearing Mr. Dombey was at breakfar:, but would wait until Mr. Dombey should signify that he might ap- proach. "Tell the boy to come in now," said Mr. Dombey DOMBEY AND SON. 198 "Now, Gay, what is the mailer? Who sent you down here ? Was there nobody else to come ? " " I beg your pardon, sir," returned Walter. " I have not been sent. I have been so bold as to come 6n my [iwn account, which I hope you'll pardon when I mtii- lion the cause." But Mr. Dombey, without attending to what he said, WRS looking impatiently on either side of him (as if he were a pillar in his way) at some object behind. " What's that ? " said Mr. Dombey. " Who is that ? [ think you have made some mistake in the door, Bir." " Oh, I'm very sorry to intrude with any one, sir," cried Walter, hastily ; " but this is this is Captain Cuttle, sir." " Wal'r, my lad," observed the captain in a deep voice : " stand by ! " At the same time the captain coming a little further in, brought out his wide suit of blue, his conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobby nose in full relief, and stood bowing to Mr. Dombey, and waving his hook politely to the ladies, with the hard glazed hat in his one hand, and a red equator round his head which it had newly im- printed there. Mr. Dombey regarded this phenomenon with amaze- ment and indignation, and seemed by his looks to appeal to Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox against it. Little Paul, ' ho had come in after Florence, backed towards Misa Vox as the captain waved his hook, and stood en the " Now, Gay," said Mr. Dombey. " What have you got to say to me ? " Aeain the captain observed, as a opueral opening of 13 194 DOMBEY AND SON. the conversation that could not fail to propitiate all nar- lies, " Wal'r, stand by ! " " I am afraid, sir," began Walter, trembling, and look- ing down at the ground, " that I take a very great liberty in coming indeed, I am sure I do. I should hardly have had the courage to ask to see you, sir, even after coining down, I am afraid, if I had not overtaken Misa Dombey " " Well ! " said Mr. Dombey, following his eyes as he glanced at the attentive Florence, and frowning uncon- sciously as she encouraged him with a smile. " Go on, if you please." " Ay, ay," observed the captain, considering it incum- bent on him, as a point of good breeding, to support Mr. Dombey. " Well said ! Go on, Wal'r." Captain Cuttle ought to have been withered by the look which Mr. Dombey bestowed upon him in acknowl- edgment of his patronage. But quite innocent of this, he closed one eye in reply, and gave Mr. Dombey to understand, by certain significant motions of his hook, that Walter was a little bashful at first, and might be expected to come out shortly. " It is entirely a private and personal matter that lias brought me here, sir," continued Walter, faltering, " and Captain Cuttle" " Here ! " interposed the captain, as an assurance that lie was at hand, and might be relied upon. " Who is a very old friend of my poor uncle's, and i most excellent man, sir," pursued Walter, raising Lia eyes with a look of entreaty in the captain's behalf, " was so good as to offer to come with me, which I could hardly refuse." ** No, no, no," observed the captain complacently. DOMBEY AND SON. 195 ' Of course not. No call for refusing. Go on, Wal'r." " And therefore, sir," said Walter, venturing to meet Mr. Dombey's eye, arid 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 Bay that my poor old uncle is in very great aflliction 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 diffi- culty, sir, we never could thank you enough for it." Walter's eyes filled with tears as he spoke ; and so did those of Florence. Her father saw them glistening, though he appeared to look at Walter only. " It is a very large sum, sir," said Walter. " More than three hundred pounds. My uncle is quite beaten down by his misfortune, it lies so heavy on him ; and is quite unable to do anything for his own relief. He doesn't even know yet that I have come to speak to you. You would wish me to say, sir," added Walter, after a moment's hesitation, " exactly what it is I want. I really don't know, sir. There is my uncle's sU/ck, on which I believe I may say, confidently, there are no other de- mands, and there is Captain Cuttle, who would wish to De security too. I I hardly like to mention," said Walter, " such earnings as mine ; but if you would allow -hem accumulate payment advance uncle nilgai, honorable old man." Waltci trailed off through 196 DOMBEY AND SON. these broken sentences, into silence; and stood, with downcast head, before his employer. Considering this a favorable 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 in a heap that they might look as precious as possible, delivered himself of these words : " Half a loaf's better than no bread, and the same re- mark holds good with crumbs. There's a few. Annuity of one hundred pound prannum also ready to be made over. If there is a man chock full of science in the world, it's old Sol Gills. If there is a lad of promise one flowing," added the captain, in one of his happy quotations, " with milk and honey it's his nevy ! " The captain then withdrew to his former place, where lie stood arranging his scattered locks with the air of a man who had given the finishing touch to a difficult per- formance. When Walter ceased to speak, Mr. Dombey's eyes were attracted to little Paul, who, seeing his sister hang- ing down her head and silently weeping in her commis- eration for the distress she had heard described, went ovsr 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 ad- dress, which he regarded with lofty indifference, Mr. Dombey again turned his eyes upon his son, and sat steadily regarding tlie child, for some moments, in si' lence. " What was this debt contracted for ? '' asked Mr I3ombey, at length. "Who is the creditor?" DOM BEY AND SON. 19< " He don't know," replied the captain, putting bis hand on Walter's shoulder. " I do. It came of helping a man that's dead now, and that's cost my friend Gills many a hundred pound already. More particulars in private, if agreeable." " People who have enough to do to hold their own ttay," said Mr. Dombey, unobservant of the captain's mysterious signs behind Walter, and still looking at hid son, " had better be content with their own obligationa and difficulties, and not increase them by engaging for other men. It is an act of dishonesty, and presumption too," said Mr. Dombey, sternly ; " great presumption ; for the wealthy could do no more. Paul, come here ! " The child obeyed : and Mr. Dombey took him on hia knee. " If you had money now " said Mr. Dombey. " Look at me ! " Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to Walter, looked his father in the face. " If you had money now," said Mr. Dombey; "as tnuc-h money as young Gay has talked about ; what would you do?" " Give it to his old uncle," returned Paul. " Lend it to his old uncle, eh ? " retorted Mr. Dombey. " Well ! When you are old enough, you know, you will phare my money, and we shall use it together." "Dombey and Son," interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early in the phrase. " Dombey and Son," repeated his father. " Would YOU like to begin to be Dombey and Son, now, and lend 'Jiis money to young Gay's uncle ? " " Oh ! if you please, papa ! " said Paul ; " and -w vould Florence." 198 DOMBET AND SON. " Girls," said Mr. Dombey, " have nothing to do with Dornbey and Son. Would you like it ? " " Yes, papa, yes ! " " Then you shall do it," returned his father. u And you see, Paul," he added, dropping his voice, " how pow- erful money is, and how anxious people are to get it- Young Gay comes all this way to beg for money, and you, who arc so grand and great, having got it, are going to let him have it, as a great favor and obligation." Paul turned up the old face for a moment, in which there was a sharp understanding of the reference con- veyed in these words ; but it was a young and childish face immediately afterwards, when he slipped down from his father's knee, and ran to tell Florence not to cry any more, for he was going to let young Gay have the money. Mr. Dombey then turned to a side-table, and wrote a note and sealed it. During the interval, Paul and Flor- ence whispered to Walter, and Captain Cuttle beamed on the three, with such aspiring and ineffably presump- tuous thoughts as Mr. Dombey never could have be- lieved in. The note being finished, Mr. Dombey turned round to his former place, and held it out to Walter. " Give that," he said, " the first thing to-morrow morn- ing, 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 con- sistent with your uncle's circumstances. You will con- sider that this is done for you by Master Paul." Walter, in the emotion of holding in his hand th means of releasing his good uncle from his trouble, Would have endeavored to express something of his DOMBEY AND SON. 199 gratitude and joy. But Mr. Dombey stopped him chort. " You will consider that it is done," he repeatrd, " by Ma>ter Paul. I have explained that to him, and he un* derstands it. I wish no more to be said." As he motioned towards the door, Walter cculd only bow liis head and retire. Miss Tox, seeing that the cap- tain appeared about to do the same, interposed. " My dear sir," she said, addressing Mr. Dombey, at whose munificence both she and Mrs. Chick were shed- ding tears copiously ; " I think you have overlooked something. Pardon me, Mr. Dombey, I think, in the nobility of your character, and its exalted scope, you have omitted a matter of detail." ' Indeed, Miss Tox ! " said Mr. Dombey. " The gentleman with the Instrument," pursued Miss Tox, glancing at Captain Cuttle, u has left upon the table, at your elbow " " Good Heaven ! " said Mr. Dombey, sweeping the captain's property from him, as if it were so much crumb indeed. '' Take these things away. I am obliged to you, Miss Tox ; it is like your usual discretion. Have the goodness to take these things away, sir ! " Captain Cuttle felt he had no alternative but to com- ply. 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 slo*.vly 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 d:>wn upon its palra in a transport of admi- 200 DOMHEY AND SOX. ration. At this touch of warm feeling and cold iron. Mr. Dombey shivered all over. Captain Cuttle then kissed bis hook to the ladies sev- eral time?, with great elegance and gallantry ; and hav-* ing taken a particular leave of Paul and Florence, ac- companied Walter out of the room. Florence was run- ning after them in the earnestness of her heart, to send some message to old Sol, when Mr. Dorabcy called her back, and bade her stay where she was. " Will you never be a Dombey, my dear child ! " said Mrs. Chick with pathetic reproachfulness. " Dear aunt," said Florence. " Don't be angry with me. I am so thankful to Papa ! " She would have run and thrown her arms about his neck if she had dared; but as she did not dare, she glanced with thankful eyes towards him, as he sat mus- ing ; sometimes bestowing an uneasy glance on her, but for the most part, watching Paul, who walked about the room with the new-blown dignity of having let young Gay have the money. And young Gay Walter what of him ? He was overjoyed to purge the old man's hearth from bailiffs and brokers, and to hurry back to his uncle with the good tidings. He was overjoyed to have it all ar- ranged and settled next day before noon ; and to sit down at evening in the little back parlor with old Sol Mid 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 lie confessed that Walter was humbled ni:d cast down. It is when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the DOMBEY AND SON. 201 most disposed (o picture to ourselves what flowers they might have borne, if they had flourished ; and now. when Walter felt himself cut off from that great Dorabej 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 migfa have led him on to harmless visions of aspiring to Flor ence in the remote distance of time. * The captain viewed the subject in quite a different light. He appeared to entertain a belief that the inter- view 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, it 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 conse- quent gayety, he even attempted, in favoring 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 Fie 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 MacStinger 202 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XI. PAUL'S INTRODUCTION TO A NEW SCENE. MRS. PIPCDIN'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 requir- ing to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agency of sweetbreads, that it utterly set at nought the predictions of Mrs. Wickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's rapt interest in the old lady continued unabated, Mrs. Wickam would not budge an inch from the position she had taken up. Fortifying and entrench- ing 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. Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved away as usual ; perfectly convinced that Mrs. "^ipchin 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 die credit of Mrs. Pipchin, by Mrs. Pipchin's friends and admirers ; and were made to harmonize with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased Mr. Pipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines. DOMBEY AND SON. 203 For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in the retail line of business, between whom and Mrs. Pipchiu there was a U; ' Good-by." " Good-by, papa." The limp and careless little hand that Mr. Dombey took in his, was singularly out of keeping with the wist- DOMBEY AND SON. 221 fill face. But he had no part in its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no, to Florence all to Florence. If Mr. Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hard to appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy might have received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compenea- ticn for his injury. He bent down over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed as he did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, and made it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for that short time, the clearer perhaps. " I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Satur- days and Sundays, you know." ' Yes, papa," returned Paul : looking at his sister. u On Saturdays and Sundays." " And youll txy and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man,' said Mr. Dombey ; " won't you ? " "I'll try," returned the child wearily. " And you'll soon be grown up now ! " said Mr. Dom- bey. " 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 extin- guished itself in her black dress. That excellent ogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, \vhich 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 Email hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigid- ity, and walked out of the study. 222 DOMBEY AND SON. Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stir- ring, Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber nil 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 tc throw her arms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the door-way : turned towards him with a smile of en- couragement, the brighter for the tears through which it beamed. It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone ; and sent the globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, svimming round the room. But they stopped, all of a , c udden ; and then he heard the loud clock in the hall still gravely inquiring " how, is, my, lit, tie, friend, how, is, my, Jit, tie, friend," as it had done before. He sat, with folded hands upon his pedestal, silently listening. But he might have answered " weary, weary ' very lonely, very sad ! " And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and Btrange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished at*) the upholsterer were never coming. /-, CHAPTER XII. PAUL'S EDUCATION. I^ the lapse of some minutes, which appeared ail immense time to little Paul Dombeyon the table, Dcrlor Blimber came back. The doctor's walk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind with solemn feel- ing:-. It was a sort of march ; but when the doctor put out his right toot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semicircular sweep towards the left; and when lie put out his left foot, he turned in the same manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride lie took, to look about him as though he were saying, " Can anybody have the goodness to indicate any subject, in any direc- tion, on which I am uninformed ? I rather think not." Mrs. Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the doctor's company ; and the doctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to Miss Blimber. " Cornelia," said the doctor, " Dombey will be your charge at first. Bring him on, Cornelia, bring him on." Miss Blimber received her young ward from the doo- lor's hands ; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes. " How old are you, Dombey?" said Miss Blimber. ** Six," answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young lady, why her hair didn't grow long like Florence's, and why she was like a boy. 224 DOMBEY AND SON. " How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dora bey ? " said Miss Blimber. " None of it." answered Paul. Feeling that the an- wer was a shock to Miss Blimber's sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were looking down at him, and said : *' I haven't been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn't learn a Latin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you'd tell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please." " What a dreadfully low name ! " said Mrs. Blimber. K Unclassical to a degree ! Who is the monster, child ? " " What monster ? " inquired Paul. " Glubb," said Mrs. Blimber, with a great disrelish. " He's no more a monster than you are," returned Paul. " What ! " cried the doctor, in a terrible voice. " Ay, ay, ay ? Ah ! What's that ? " Paul was dreadfully frightened ; but still he made a stand for the absent Glubb, though he did it trembling. " He's a very nice old man, ma'am," he said. " Ho 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 :he water again when they're startled, blowing and splashing 90, 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 DOM BEY AND SON. 225 runs away, and then, as they tarn 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 rny mama that's dead, or what it is that it is always .-ay ing always saying ! he knows a great deal hbont it. And I wish," the child concluded, with a sud- den falling of his countenance, and failing in his anima- tion, as he Icoked like one forlorn, upon the three strange faces, " that you'd let old Glubb come here to see me for I know him very well, and he knows me." " Ha ! " said the doctor, shaking his head ; " this is bad, but study will do much." Mrs. Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was an unaccountable child ; and, allowing for the difference of visage, looked at him pretty much as Mrs. Pipchin had been used to do. " Take him round the house, Cornelia," said the doctor, " and familiarize him with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey." Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse Cornelia, and looking at her sideways, with timid curi- osity, as they went away together. For her spectacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made her so mysterious, that he didn't know where she was looking, and was not indeed quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them. Cornelia took him first to the school-room, which was ituated at the back of the hall, and was approached through two baize doors, which deadened and muflled <5 ' the young gentlemen's voices. Here, there were eight Voung gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, sll very hard at work, and very grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a desk to himself in one corner : and VOL i. 15 226 DOMBEY AND SON. a magnificent man, of immense age, he looked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it. Mr. Feeder, B. A., who sat at another little desk, had his Virgil stop on, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of the remaining four, t\\c, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in 6< ilring mathematical problems ; one with his face like a dirty window, from much crying, was endeavoring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines before din- ner ; and one sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despair which it seemed had been his condition ever since breakfast time. The appearance of a new boy did not create the sen- sation that might have been expected. Mr. Feeder, B. A. (who was in the habit of shaving his head for coolness, arid had nothing but little bristles on it), gave him a bony hand, and told him he was glad to see him which Paul would have been very glad to have told him, if he could have done so with the least sincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands with the four young gentlemen at Mr. Feeder's desk ; then with the two young gentlemen at work on the problems, who were very feverish : then with the young gentleman at work against time, who was very inky ; and lastly with the young gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who wa? flabby and quite cold. Paul having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil merely chuckled and breathed hard, as his custom yes," all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a low groan. It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, *hieh 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 cross- wise on the top of it. Doctor Blimber was already in his place in the dining-room, at the top of the table, with Miss Blimber and Mrs. Blimber on either side of him. Mr. Feeder in a black coat was at the bottom. Paul's chair was next to Miss Blimber ; but it being found, when he sat in it, that his eyebrows were not much above the level of the table-cloth, some books were brought in from the doctor's study, on which he was elevated, and on which he always sat from that time carrying them in and out himself on after occasions, like a little elephant and castle. Grace having been said by the doctor, dinner began, There was some nice soup ; also roast meat, boileJ 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 particti- AT, there was a butler in a blue coat and bright but- tons, who gave quite a winey flavor to the table beer: be poured it out so superbly. DOMBEY AND SON. 231 Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blira- ber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Bliinber, 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 Bliinber, and modestly rested there. Toots appeared to be the only exception to this "rule. He sat next Mr. Feeder on Paul's side of the table, and frequently looked behind and before the intervening boys to catch a glimpse of Paul. Only once during dinner was there any conversation that included the young gentlemen. It happened at the epoch of the cheese, when the doctor, having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice or thrice, said : " It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder, that the Romans " At the mention of this terrible people, their implac- able enemies, every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the doctor, with an assumption of the deepest in- terest. One of the number who happened to be drink- ing, and who caught the doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of his tumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for some moments, and in the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber's point. " It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder," said the doctor, beginning again slowly, "that the Romans, in those gorgeous and profuse entertainments of which we read in the days of the Emperors, when luxury had attained A height unknown before or since, and when whole prov- inces were ravaged to supply the splendid means of one imperial banquet" Here the offender, who had been swelling and strain- 232 DOMBEY AND SON. ing, and waiting in vain for a full stop, broke out violently " Johnson," said Mr. Feeder, in a low reproachful voice, " take some water." The doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the svater was brought, and then resumed : " And when, Mr. Feeder " But Mr. Feeder, who saw that- Johnson must break out again, and who knew that the doctor would never come to a period before the young gentlemen until he had finished all he meant to say, couldn't keep his eye off Johnson ; and thus was caught in the fact of not looking at the doctor, who consequently stopped. u I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Feeder, redden- ing. " I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber." " And when," said the doctor, raising his voice, u when, sir, as we read, and have no reason to doubt incredible as it may appear to the vulgar of our time the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand dishes " " Take some water, Johnson dishes, sir," said Mr Feoder. " Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes." " Or try a crust of bread," said Mr. Feeder. "-And one dish," pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice still higher as he looked all round the table, M called, from its enormous dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly ingredients, of the brains of pheasants " ' Ow, ow, ow ! " (from Johnson.) " Woodcocks," " Ow, ow, ow ! " "The sounds of the fish called scan," DOMBEY AND SON. 283 'You'll burst some vessel in your head," said Mr Feeder. " You had better let it come." " And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpathian Sea," pursued the doctor in his severest voice ; " when we read of costly entertainments such as these, and still remember, that we have a Titus," ** What would be your mother's feelings if you died of apoplexy ! " said Mr. Feeder. " A Domitian," " And you're blue, you know," said Mr. Feeder. " A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more," pursued the doctor ; " it is, Mr. Feeder if you are doing me the honor to attend remarkable ; VERY remarkable, sir " But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that moment into such an overwhelming fit of coughing, that, although both his immediate neighbors thumped him on the back, and Mr. Feeder himself held a glass of water to his lips, and the butler walked l.im up and down several times between his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was full five minutes before he was moderately composed, and then there^waa a profound silence. "Gentlemen," said Doctor Blimber, "rise for Grace I Cornelia, lift Dorabey down " nothing of whom but his scalp was accordingly seen above the table-cloth. u Johnson will repeat to me to-morrow 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, rn half an hour." The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr. Feeder did likewise. During the half-hour, the younp 234 POMBEY AND SON. gentlemen, broken into pairs, loitered ai n-in-arm up p.nd down a small piece of ground behind the house* or endeavored to kindle a spark of animation in the breast of Briggs. But nothing happened so vulgar i\$ play. Punctually at the appointed time, the gong was Bounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices of Doctor Blimber and Mr. Feeder were resumed. As the Olympic game of lounging up and down had been cut shorter than usual that day, on Johnson's ac- count, 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 honor of being taken in tow by the doctor himself: a distinguished state of things, in which he looked very little and feeble. Tea was served in a style no less polite than the dinner ; and after tea, the young gentlemen rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch up the unfinished tasks of that day, or to get up the already looming tasks of to-morrow. In the mean time Mr. Feeder withdrew to his own room ; and Paul sat in a corner wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, and what they were all about at Mrs. Pipchin's. Mr. Toots, who had been detained by an important letter from the Duke of Wellington, found Paul out after a time ; and having looked at him for a long while, ;-is before, inquired if he was fond of waistcoats. Paul said " Yes, sir." ' So am I," said Toots. No word more spake Toots that night ; but he stood ooking at Paul as if he liked him ; and as there was DOMBEY AND SON. 235 company in that, and Paul was not inclined to talk, it answered his purpose better than conversation. At eight o'clock or so, the gong sounded again for prayers in the dining-room, where the butler afterwards presided over a side-table, on which bread and cheese and beer were spread for such young gentlemen a- desired to partake of those refreshments. The cere- monies 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'a eye, and saw that it was upon him. When the doctor had said these words, " Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven to-morrow," the pupils bowed again, and went to bed. In the confidence of their own room up-stairs, Brigga 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 pro- phetic 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 pleas ant 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 after- wards, fo-md that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightman ; and that Tozer, whose mind was affected In his sleep by similar causes, in a minor degree, talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek and Latin it ;vas all one to Paul which, in the silence of night, had an inexpressibly wicked and gailty effect. 236 DOMBEY AND SON. Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that be was walking hand in hand with Florence through beautiful gardens, when they came to a large sunflower which suddenly expanded itself into a gong, and began to sound. Opening his eyes, he found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a drizzling rain ; and that the real gong was giving dreadful note of preparation, down in the hall. So he got up directly, and found Briggs with hardly any eyes, for nightmare and grief had made his face puffy, putting his boots on : while Tozer stood shiver- ing and rubbing his shoulders in a very bad humor. Poor Paul couldn't dress himself easily, not being used to it, and asked them if they wbuld have the goodness to tie some strings for him ; but as Briggs merely said " Bother ! " and Tozer, " Oh yes ! " he went down when ie was otherwise ready, to the next story, where he saw a pretty young woman in leather gloves, cleaning K stove. The young woman seemed surprised at his appearance, and asked him where his mother was. When Paul told her she was dead, she took her gloves off, and did what he wanted ; and furthermore rubbed his hands to warm them ; and gave him a kiss ; and told him whenever he wanted anything of that sort meaning in the dressing way to ask for 'Melia ; which Paul, thanking her very much, said he certainly would, He then proceeded softly on his journey down-stairs, towards the room in which the young gentlemen re- gumed their studies, when, passing by a door that stood njar, 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 UOMBEY AND SON. 237 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 sh. had already her spectacles on, which made Paul wonder whether she went to bed in them. She had a cool lit- tle sitting-room of her own up there, with some books in it, and no fire. But Miss Blimber was never cold, and never sleepy. " Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber, " I'm going out for a constitutional." Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't Fend the footman out to get it in such unfavorable 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 recentl} engaged. " These are yours, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. " All of 'em, ma'am ? " said Paul. " Yes," returned Miss Blimber ; " and Mr. Feeder will look you out some more very soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey." " Thank you, ma'am," said Paul. " I am going out for a constitutional," resumed Miss Blimber ; " and while I am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and breakfast, Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, and to tell me if you quite understand what you havo got to learn. Don't lose time, Dombey, for you have lone to spare, but take them down-stairs, and begin directly." " Yes, ma'am," answered Paul. There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under the bottom book and his other hnnd 238 DOMBEY AND SON. and his chin on the top book, and hugged ti.em 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 be- fore 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 school-room, he set off up-stairs 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 inter- ruption 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 up-stairs. " Now, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. " How have you got on with those books ? " They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin names of things, declensions of articles and substan- tives, exercises thereon, and preliminary rules a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink OJ 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 ob- truded themr-elves into number three, which slided into number four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that whether twenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hie haec hoc was troy weight, or a verb always agreed DOMBEY AND SON. 23j with an ancient Briton, or three times four was Taurus B bull, were open questions with him. " Oh, Doinbey, Dombey ! " said Miss Blimber, " this is very shocking." " If you please," said Paul, " I think if I might some- times talk a little to old Glubb, I should be able to do better." " Nonsense, Dombey," said Miss Blimber. " I couldn't hear of it. This is not the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, 1 suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day's instalment of subject A, before you turn at all to sub- ject B. And now take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when you are master of the theme.'' Miss lilirnber 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 labored away at it, down below : sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting it all, and every- thing else besides : until at last he ventured up-stairs 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 sayirig, "Goon, Dombey !" a proceeding so suggestive of the knowledge inside of Tier, that Paul looked upon the young lady with con- sternation, as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw. lie acquitted himself very well, neveitheless ; and Miss Blimber, commending him as giving promise of gett ng on fast, immediately provided him with subject 240 DOMBET AND SON. B ; from which he passed to C, and even D before din- ner. 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 similai- 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 neighborhood. The studies went round like a mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were always stretched upon it. After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next day by candle-light. And in due course there was bed ; where, but for that resumption of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest and sweet forge t- fulness. 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 Sab- baths for at least two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbath work of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love. Not even Sunday nights the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkened the first waking burst of ligLt on Sunday mornings could mar those precious Satur- days. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where tiny sat, and strolled together ; or whether it was only Mrs. Pipchin's dull back room, in which she sung to him - ) softly, with his drowsy head upon her arm ; Paul never eared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. Ro, on Sunday nights, when the doctor's dark door stood DOMBEY AND SON. 241 agape to swallow him up for another week, the time wao come for taking leave of Florence ; no one else. Mrs. Wickam had been drafted home to the house io town, and Miss Nipper, now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat with Mrs. Pip* chin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself; and if ever Mrs. Pipchin in all her life had found her match, tiis 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 boun- cing in upon her from the passage, even in unguarded moments of chops, and carried desolation to her very toast. Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walking back with Paul to the doctor's, when Florence took from her bosom a little piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words. " See here, Susan," she said. " These are the names of the little books that Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is so tired. I copied them last night while he was writing." " Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please," returned Nipper, " I'd as soon see Mrs. Pipchin." " I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, to-morrow morning. I have money enough," said Florence. " Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy," returned Miss Nipper, " how can you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, and masierses and missessej B-teaching of you everything continual, though my belief VOL. t. 16 242 DOMBEY AND SON. is that your pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt you nothing, never would have thought of it, unless you'd asked him when he couldn't well refuse ; but giving consent when asked, and offering when unasked, miss, is quite two things ; I may not have my objections to a. young man's keeping company with me, and when he puts the question, may say ' yes,' but that's not saying ' would you be so kind as like me.' " " But you can buy me the books, Susan ; and you will, when you know I want them." " Well, miss, and why do you want 'em ? " replied Nipper ; adding, in a lower voice, " if it was to fling at Mrs. Pipchin's head, I'd buy a cart-load." - " I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had these books," said Florence, " and make the coming week a little easier to him. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will never forget how kind it was of you to do it ! " It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper's that could have rejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or the gentle look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan put the purse in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon her errand. The books were not easy to procure ; and the answer at sevcial 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 b DOMBEY AND SON. 243 exerted himself to the utmost, if it were only to get lid of her; and finally enabled her to return home in triumph. With these treasures then, after her own daily les- sons were over, Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps through the thorny ways of learning; Bnd being possessed of a naturally quick and sound capacity, and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was not long before she gained upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him. Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs. Pipchin : but many a night when they were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers and herself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious by her side ; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and gray ; and when the candles were burnt down and guttering out ; Florence tried so hard to be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her forti- tude and perseverance might have almost won her a free right to bear the name herself. And high was her reward, when^one Saturday even ing, 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 BO dark, made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a startled look in Paul's wan face a flush a smile and then a close embrace but God knows how her heart leaped up at this rich payment for her trouble. " Oh, Floy ! ' cried her brother, " how I lore you ! How I love you, Floy ! " " And I you, dear ! " Oh ! I am sure of that, Floy." 244 DOMBEY AND SON. He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, very quiet ; and in the night lie called out from his little room within hers, three or four times, that he loved her. Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul on Saturday night, and patiently as- sist him through so much as they could anticipate to- gether, of his next week's work. The cheering thought that he was laboring 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, conse- quent on this assistance, it saved him, possibly from sink- ing underneath the burden which the fair Cornelia Blim- ber piled upon his back. It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or that Doctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen in general. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred ; and the doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, re- garded the young 'gentlemen as if they were all doc- tors, and were born grown up. Comforted by the ap- plause 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 dis- covered his mistake, or trimmed his swelling sails to any other tack. Thus in the case of Paul. "When Doctor Blimbtjr fcaid 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 ss yet, and was not natarally clever, Briggs se DOMBEY AND SON. 243 nior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however high and false the temperature at which the doctor kept his hot-house, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helping-hand at the bellows^ Bnd to stir the fire. Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But he retained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character: and under cir- cumstances so favorable to the development of those tendencies, became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, than before. The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grew more thoughtful and reserved, every day ; and had no such curiosity in any living mem- ber of the doctor's household, as he had had in Mrs. Pipchin. He loved to be alone ; and in those short in- tervals 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 paper-hanging in the house ; saw things that no one else saw in the patternr. ; found out miniature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squinting faces leering ic the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth. The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this ara- besque work of his musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs. Blimber thought him " odd," and sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey '' moped;" but that was all. Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to ihe expression of which he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the common notion of ghosts), tiiist be spoken to a little before they will txplain 216 DOMBEY AND SON. themselves ; and Toots had long left off a>kmg any questions of his own mind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his cranium, ehich, if it could have taken shape and form, would have become a genie ; but it could not ; and it only BO far followed the example of the smoke in the Ara- bian story, as to roll out in a thick cloud, and there hang and hover. But it left a little figure visible upon a lonely shore, and Toots was always staring at it. "How are you?" he would say to Paul fifty times a day. " Quite well, sir, thank you," Paul would an- swer. u Shake hands, " would be Toots's next advance. Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr. Toots generally said again, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing, " How are you ? " To ivhich Paul again replied, " Quite well, sir, thank you." One evening Mr. Toots was sitting at his desk, op- pressed by correspondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laid down his pen, and went off* to seek Paul, whom he found at last, after a long search, looking through the window of his little bedroom. " I say ! " cried Toots, speaking the inoment he en- tered the room, lest he should forget it ; '" what do you think about ? " " Oh ! I think about a great many things," replied Paul. " Do you, though ? " said Toots, appearing to consider that fact in itself surprising. M If you had to die," said Paul, looking up into his face Mr. Toots started, and seemed much disturl>ed. " Don't you think you would rather die on a moon light night when the sky was quite clear, and the blowing, as it did last night ? " DOMBEY AND SON. 247 Mr. Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shak- ing his head, that he didn't know about that. "Not blowing, at least, ' said Paul, "but sounding it the air like the sea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listened to the water lor A long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boat over there, in the full light of the moon ; a boat with a sail." The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, that Mr. Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said, " Smugglers." But with an impartial remembrance of there being two sides to every question, he added, " or Prevenlive." " A boat with a sail," repeated Paul, " in the full light of the moon. The sail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and what do you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves ? " "Pitch," said Mr. Toots. " It seemed to beckon," said the child, " to beckon me to come ! There she is ! There she is ! " Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried "Who?" " My sister Florence ! " cried Paul, " looking up here, and waving her hand. She sees me she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night." His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as lie stood at his window, kissing and clapping his bands: 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 remark- able wholly to escape even Toots's notice. Their in- terview being interrupted al this moment by a visit 248 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 occa gion ; 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 ini en tion of the weak-eyed young man down-stairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaint with Doctor Blimber that very night ; who mentioned to the young man that if he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with him. The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every evening to look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a certain time, until she saw him ; and their mutual recognition was a gleam of sunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark, or.e other figure walked alone before the doctor's house. lie rarely joined them on the Saturday now. He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecog- nized, and look up at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man ; and wait, and watch, and plan, and hope. Oh ! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, (he slight spare boy above, watching the waves and clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and breasting tne window of his solitary cage when birds flew by. ns if he would have emulated them, and soared away. DOMBEY AND SON. 249 CHAPTER XIII. BH1TP1NG INTELLIGENCE AND OFFICE BUSINESS. MR. DOMBEY'S offices were in a court where there was an old-established stall of choice fruit at the comer: where perambulating merchants, of both sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten and five, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap ; and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting. The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats) is much in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the general public ; but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr. Dom- bey. "When he appeared, the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. The principal slipper and dogs' collar man who considered himself a public character, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door in Cheapside threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr. Dombey went by. The ticket-porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ran officiously before, to open Mr. Dombey's office-door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered. The clerks within were not a whit behindhand in their demonstrations of respect. A solemn hush pre- vailed, as Mr. Dombey passed through the outer office. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as 250 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 appear- ance, from the world without, as if they were assembled at the bottom of the sea ; while a mouldy little strong room in the obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, might have represented the cavern of some ocean-monster, looking on with a red eye at these mysteries of the deep. When Perch, the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like a timepiece, saw Mr. Dombey come in or rather, when he felt that he was coming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach he hurried into Mr. Dombey's room, stirred the fire, quar- ried 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. Dorabey's elbow. And so little objection had Perch to loing deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laid himself at Mr. Dombey's feet, or might have railed him by some such title as used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would have been all the better pleased. As this honor would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perch was fain to content himself by 3X pressing as well as he could, in his manner, You DOMBEY AND SON. 251 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 forever. Between Mr. Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible through the medium of the outer office - to which Mr. Dombey's presence in his own- room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air there were two degrees of descent. Mr. Carker in his own office was the first step ; Mr. Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the pas- sage outside Mr. Dombey's door. Mr. Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was nearest to the Sul- tan. Mr. Morfin, as an officer of inferior state, inhab- ited the room that was nearest to the clerks. The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking hazel-eyed elderly bachelor: gravely attired, as to hia upper man, in black ; and as to his legs, in pepper and salt color. 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 Uat stately 252 DOMBEY AND SON. presence, he was disquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr. Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge, which rarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was a great musical amateur in his way after busi- ness ; and had a paternal affection for his violoncello which was once in every week transported from Isling- ton, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by the Bank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating nature were executed every Wednesday evening by a private party. Mr. Carker was a gentle- man thirty-eight or forty years old, of a florid com- plexion, 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. Dornbey, 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 teli you, sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I could not satisfy my own mind; and Heaven knows, Mr. Dom- bey, you can afford to dispense with the endeavor." If he had carried these words about with him, printed on a placard, and had constantly offered it to Mr. Dombey's DOMBEY AND SON. 258 perusal on the breast of his coat, he could not have been more explicit than he was. This was Carker the manager. Mr. Carker the junior Walter's friend, was his brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed in station. The younger brother's post was on the top of the official ladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother, never gained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed above his head, and rose and rose ; but he was always at the bottom. He was .quite resigned to occupy that low condition : never complained of it : and certainly never hoped to escape from it. " How do you do this morning ? " said Mr. Carker the manager, entering Mr. Dombey's room soon after his arrival one day : with a bundle of papers in his hand. " How do you do, Carker ? " said Mr. Dombey rising from his chair, and standing with his back to the fire. " Have you anything there for me ? " " T don't know that I need trouble you," returned Carker, turning over the papers in his hand. " You have a committee to-day at three, you know." u And one at three, three quarters," added Mr. Dom- bey. " 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." u You have an accurate memory of your own," said Mr. Dombey. " Oh ! /" returned the manager. " It's the only capital of a man like me" Mr. Dombey did not look less pompous or at all dis- pleased, as he stood leaning against the chimney-pieoe, 254 DOMBEY AND SON. Burve\ ing his (of course unconscious) clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr. Carker's dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitated from a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to his humility. He seemed a man who would contend against the power that vanquished him., if he could, but who was utterly borne down by the greatness and superiority of Mr. Dombey. ** Is Morfin here ? " asked Mr. Dombey after a short pause, during which Mr. Carker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts of their contents to himself. " Morfin's here," he answered, looking up with his widest and most sudden smile ; " humming musical rec- ollections of his last night's quartette party, I suppose through the walls between us, and driving me half mad. I wish he'd mak . a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn his music-books ir. it." " You respect nobody, Carker, I think," said Mr. Dombey. " No ? " inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of his teeth. " Well ! Not many people I believe. I wouldn't answer, perhaps,'' he murmured, as if he were only thinking it, " for more than one." A dangerous quality, if real ; and a not less danger- ous one, if feigned. But Mr. Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his back to the fii^, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his hcod- clerk with a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a stronger latent sense of power than usi al. " Talking of Morfin," resumed Mr. Carker, taking oul one paper from the rest, " he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbadoes and proposes to reserve a pas- DOMBEY AND SON- 255 Rage in the Son nd Heir she'll sail in a month or so for the successor. You don't care who goes, I sup- pose ? We have nobody of that sort here." Mr. Dorubey shook his head with supreme imlifler- ence. "It's no very precious appointment," observid M'. Carker, taking up a pen, with which to indorse a mem- orandum on the back of the paper. " I hope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It may perhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that ? Come in ! " " I beg your pardon, Mr. Carker. I didn't know you were here, sir," answered Walter, appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, and newly arrived. * Mr. Carker the junior, sir " At the mention of this name, Mr. Carker {he man- ager 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 with- out speaking/ " I thought, sir," he said suddenly and angrily, turn- ing on Walter, " that you had been before requested not to drag Mr. Carker the junior into your conversation." "I beg your pardon," returned Walter. "I was only going to say that Mr. Carker the junior had told me he believed you \vere gone out, or I should not have knocked nt the door when you were engaged with Mr. Dombey These are letters for Mr. Dombey, sir." " Very well, sir," returned Mr. Carker the manager, plucking them sharply from his hand. " Go about your business." But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr. Car 256 DOMBET AND SON. ker dropped one on the floor, and did not ^ee what ho had done ; neither did Mr. Dombey observe the letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinking that one or other of (hem 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 etters were post-letters ; and it happened that the one in question was Mrs. Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual for Mrs. Pipchin was but an indifferent pen- woman by Florence, Mr. Dombey having his atten- tion silently called to this letter by Walter, started, and looked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selected it from all the rest. " You can leave the room, sir ! " said Mr. Dombey. haughtily. He crushed the letter in his hand ; and having watched Walter out at the door, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal. " You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying," observed Mr. Dombey, hurriedly. ' Yes," replied Carker. " Send young Gay." " Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier," said Mr. Carker, without any show of surprise, and taking up the pen to reindorse the letter, as coolly as he had done be* fere. "' Send young Gay.'" u Call him back," said Mr. Dombey. Mr. Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was qiick to return. a Gay," said Mr. Dombey, turning a little to look at him over his shoulder. " Here is a " " An opening," said Mr. Carker, with his mouth rtretched to the utmost. DOMBEY AND SON. 257 " In the West Indies. Al Barbadoes. 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 Barbadoes. Let your uncle know from me, that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies." Walter's breath was so completely taken away b} hia astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for th repetition of the word* " West Indies." " Somebody must go," said Mr. Doinbey, " and you are young and healthy, and your uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your uncle that you are appointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month or two perhaps." "Shall I remain there, sir?" inquired Walter. " Will you remain there, sir ! " repeated Mr. Dombey, turning a little more round towards him. " What do you mean ? What does he mean, Carker ? " ' Live there, sir," faltered Walter. '" Certainly," returned Mr. Dombey. Walter bowed. u That's all," said Mr. Dombey, resuming his letters. " You will explain to him in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn't wait, Carker." " You needn't wait, Gay," observed Mr. Carker: bare to the gums. " Unless," said Mr. Dombey, stopping in his reading /ithout looking off the letter, and seeming to listen. 'Unless he has anything to say." " No, sir," returned Waller, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as nn infinite variety of pictures pre- sented themselves to his mind ; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed with astonishment V M. I. 17 258 DOMBEY AND SON. at Mrs. MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his Uws in the little back-parlor, held prominent places. u I hardly know I I am much obliged, sir."' " He needn't wait, Carker," said Mr. Dombey. And as Mr. Carker again echoed the words, and al;o collected his papers as if he were going awjiy too Walter felt that his lingering any longer would be an unpardonable intrusion especially as he had nothing to say and therefore walked out quite confounded. Going along the passage, with the mingled conscious- ness and helplessness of a dream, he heard Mr. Dom- bey's door shut again, as Mr. Carker came out : and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him. " Bring your friend Mr. Carker the junior to my room, sir, if you please." Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr. Carker the junior of his errand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he sat alone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr. Car- ker the manager. That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his hands under his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly as Mr. Dombey him nelf 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 the door. "John Carker," said the manager, when this was done turning suddenly upon his brother, with his two rows of iftclh bristling as if he would have bitten him, "what \n the league between you and this young man, in vir- tue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention f your name ? Is it not enough for you, John Carker. DOMBET AND SON. 259 tha. I am your near relation and can't detach myself from that " " Say disgrace, James," interposed the other in a low voice, finding that he stammered for a word. " You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace." " From that disgrace," assented his brother, with kcan emphasis, " but is the fact to be blurted out and trump- eted, and proclaimed continually in the presence of tho very House ! In moments of confidence too ? Do you think your name is calculated to harmonize in this place with trust and confidence, John Carker ? " "No," returned the other. "No, James. God knows I have no such thought." " What is your thought, then ? " said his brother, " and why do you thrust yourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?" " I have never injured you, James, wilfully." " You are my brother," said the manager. " That's injury enough." *' I wish I could undo it, James." "I wish you could and would." During this conversation, Walter had looked from onft 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 man- ner, as if he would have said " Spare me ! " So, had they been blows, and he a brave man, under strong 260 DOMBEY AND SON. constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might have stood before the executioner. Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as the innocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all the earnestness he felt. " Mr. Carker," he said, addressing himself to the man- ager. " 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 express wish. But it has been my own mistake, sir. "We have never exchanged one word upon the subject very few, indeed, on any sub- ject. And it has not been," added Walter, after a mo- ment's pause, " all heedlessness on my part, sir ; for I have felt an interest in Mr. Carker ever since I have been here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much ! " Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honor. For he looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, u I have felt it ; and why should I not avow it in behalf of this unfriended, broken man ! " " In truth 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 disappointmenf and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, I am sure I have tried to be as much your friend as oue of my age couid presume to be ; but it has been of no use." " And observe," said the manager, taking him up quickly, " it will be of stiU less use, Gay, if you persist DOMBEY AND SON. 261 in forcing Mr. John Carker's name on people's attention That is not the way to befriend Mr. John Carker. Ask him if he thinks it is." " It is no service to me," said the brother. " It only leads to such a conversation as the present, which I need not say I could have well spared. No one can be a bet- ter 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 un- noticed." u Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others," said Mr. Carker the manager, warm- ing himself with great and increa>ed satisfaction, " I thought it well that you should be told this from the best authorit}'," nodding towards his brother. " You are not likely to forget it now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go." Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him, when hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention of his own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, and the door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this po.-ition he could not help overhearing what followed. " Think of me more leniently, if you can, James," Baid John Carker, " when I tell you I have had how could I help having, with my history, written here" striking himself upon the breast, " my whole heart awakened by my observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first came here, almost my other MJlf." " Your other self! " repeated the manager, disdain- hilly. " Not as I a u, but as I was when I first came here 262 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 cf leading on to good or evil." * I hope not," said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaning in his tone. ** You strike me sharply ; and your hand is steady, find your thrust is very deep," returned the other, speak- ing (or so Walter thought) as if some cruel weajxm 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 un- seen gulf where so many others walk with equal gayety, and from which " " The old excuse," interrupted his brother as he stirred the fire. " So many. Go on. Say, so many fall." " From which ONE traveller fell," returned the other, " who set forward, on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, and slipped a little and a lit- tle lower, and went on stumbling still, until he fell head- long, and found himself below a shattered man. Think what I suffered when I watched that boy." " You have only yourself to thank for it," returned the brother. " Only myself," he assented with a sigh. " I don"t seek to divide the blame or shame." "You have divided the shame," James Carker mut- tered through his teeth. And through so many and such close teeth, he could mutter well. 44 Ah James," returned his brother, speaking for the first time in an accent of reproach, and seeming, by tht! Sound of his voice, to have covered h ; s face with his DOMBET AND SON. 26S 'iand-. ' I Iiavc been, since then, a useful foil to you Tou have trodden on me freely, in your climbing U[x Don't spurn me with your heel ! " A silence ensued. After a time, Mr. Carker the mrm- ngiT was heard rustling among his papers, as if he had resolved to bring the interview to a conclusion. At the Kime time his brother withdrew nearer to the door. u That's all," he said. " I watched him with such trembling and such fear, as was some little punishment lo 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 1 had seen direct cause 1 , I would have shown him my example. I was afraid to be seen speaking with him, lest it should b! 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 his- tory, in connection with young Walter Gay, and what he has made me feel ; and think of me more leniently, James, if you can." With these words he came out to where Walter waa standing. He turned a little paler when he saw him there, and paler yet when Walter caught him by the hand, and said in a whisper : " Mr. Carker, pray let me thank you ! Let me soy 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 rery, very much, I feel obliged to you and pity you ! ' said Walter, squeezing both his hands, and hardly know- ing, in his agitation, what he did or said. Mr. Morfin's room being close at hand and empty, and 264 DOMBEY AND SOW. the door wide open, they moved thither by one accord the passage being seldom free from some one passing to or fro. When they were there, and Walter saw in Mr. Carker's face some traces of the emotion within, he al- most felt as if he had never seen the face before ; it was so greatly changed. " Walter," he said, laying his hand on his shoulder. " I am far removed from you, and may I ever be. Do rou know what I am ? " u What you are ! " appeared to hang on Walter's lips, RS he regarded him attentively. " It was begun," said Carker, " before my twenty-first birthday led up to, long before, but not begun till \ near that time. I had robbed them when I came of age. I robbed them afterwards. Before my twenty-second birthday, it was all found out ; and then, Walter, from all men's society, I died." Again his last few words hung trembling upon Wal- ter's lips, but he could neither utter them, nor any of his own. " The House was very good to me. May Heaven re- ward the old man for his forbearance ! This one, too, his son, who was then newly in the firm, where I had held great trust ! I was called into that room which is now his I have never entered it since and came out - what you know me. For many years I sat in my pres- ent seat, alone as now, but then a known and recognized example to the rest. They were all merciful to me, and I lived. Time has altered that part of my poor expi- ation ; and I think, except the three heads of the House, .. there is no one here who knows my story rightly. Be- fore the little boy grows up, and lias it told to him, my corner may be vacant. I would rather that it might be DOMBEY AND SON. 265 go! This is the only change to me since that day, when I left all youth, and hope, and good men's company, be- hind me in that room. God bless you, Walter ! Keep you, and all dear to you, in honesty, or strike them dead ! " Some recollection of his trembling from head to font as if with excessive cold, and of his bursting into tears t was all that Walter could add to this, when he tried to* recall exactly what had passed between them. When Walter saw him next, he was bending over his desk, in his old silent, drooping, humbled way. Then, observing him at his work, and feeling how resolved he evidently was that no further intercourse should arise between them, and thinking again and again on all he had seen and heard that morning in so short a time, in connection with the history of both the Carkers, Walter could hardly believe that he was under orders for the West Indies, and would soon be lost to Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and to glimpses few and far between of Florence Dombey no, he meant Paul and to all he loved, and liked, and looked for, in his daily life. But it was true, and the news had already penetrated to the outer office ; for while he sat with a heavy heart, pondering on these things, and resting his head upon his arm, Perch, the messenger, descending from his ma- hogany bracket, and jogging his elbow, begged hi.s par- don, 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 (he course af her recovery from her next confinement ? 266 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XIV. FAIL GROWS MORE AND MORE OLD-FASHIONED, AND GOES HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS. KN the Midsummer vacation approached, no inde- cent 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 establishmrnt The young gentlemen oozed away, semiannually, to their own homes ; but they never broke up. They would have scorned the action. Tozer, who was constantly galled and tormented by a starched white cambric neckerchief, which he wore at the express desire of Mrs. Tozer, his parent, who, de- signing him for the Church, was of opinion that he couldn't be in that forward state of preparation too soon Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought he would rather stay where he was than go home. However inconsistent this declaration might ap- pear 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 Capi DOMBEY AND SON. 267 tol, presupposed, for the purposes of the simile, to be the dwelling-place of Mrs. Tozer, still it was very sincerely made. For jt 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 simi lar pretence of kindness, carried him to see a giant, or a dwarf, or a conjurer, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some classical allusion to the subject beforehand, ftn " " I think I do, ma'arn," said Paul. " This analysis, you see, Dombey," Miss Blimber continued, " is going to be sent home to your respected parent. It will naturally be very painful to him to find that you are singular in your character and conduct. I( 272 DOMBEY AND SON. is naturally painful to us; for we can't like you, you know, Dorabey, as well as we could wish." She touched the child upon a tender point. He had secretly become more and more solicitous from day w day, as the time of his departure drew more near, that all the house should like him. For some hidden rea- son, very imperfectly understood by himself if under stood at all he felt a gradually increasing impulse of affection, towards almost everything and everybody in the place. He could not boar to think that they would be quite indifferent to him when he was gone. He wanted them to remember him kindly ; and he had made it his business even to conciliate a great hoarse shaggy dog, chained up at the back of the house, who had previously been the terror of his life : that even he might miss him when he was no longer there. Little thinking that in this, he only showed again the difference between himself and his compeers, poor tiny Paul set it forth to Miss Blimber as well as he could, and begged her, in despite of the official analysis, to have the goodness to try and like him. To Mrs. Blim- ber, who had joined them, he preferred the same peti- tion: 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 tl ;it he was sure she was quite right ; that he thought it must* be his bones, but he didn't know ; and that 1 a hoped she would overlook it, for he was fond of thorn all. " Not so fond," said Paul, with a mixture of timid- ity and perfect frankness, which was one of the most peculiar and most engaging qualities of the child, ' not so fond as I am of Floren;e, of course ; that DOMBEY AND SON. 2/3 nevei be You couldn't expect that, could you ma'arn? " " Oh ! the old-fashioned little scul !" cried Mrs. Blim- ber, in a whisper. " But I like everybody here very much," pursued Paul, " and I should grieve to go away, and think th any one was glad that I was gone, or didn't care." Mrs. Blimber was now quite sure that Paul was the widest 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, Cor- nelia ! Bring him on ! " Cornelia had always brought him on as vigorously as she could ; and Paul had had a hard life of it. Bui 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, use- ful, 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 watch- ing 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 Bliraber, 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. Bui be could not change his nature or rewrite the analysis , and so they all agreed that Dombey was old-fashioned. There were some immunities, however, attaching to VOL. i. 18 274 DOMBFY AND SON. the character enjoyed by no one else. They could have hetter 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 punish* ment, 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 rumored that the butler, regarding him with fa- vor such as that stern man had never shown before to mortal boy, had sometimes mingled porter with his table- L-eer to make him strong. Over and above these extensive privileges, Paul had freo. 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 lute, 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 second-hand key-bugle, a chess board and men, a Spanish Grammar, a set of sketching OOMBEY AND SON. 27* materials, ai.d 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 fe- male in distress. But Mr. Feeder's great possession was a large greet jar of snuff, which Mr. Toots had brought down as a present, at the close of the last vacation ; and for which be had paid a high price, as 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. Neverthe- less it was their great delight to moisten a box-full wiih cold tea, stir it up on a piece of parchment with a pa- per-knife, and devote themselves to its consumption tiieu and there. In the course of which cramming of their noses, they endured surprising torments with the con- stancy of martyrs : and drinking table-beer at intervals, felt all the glories of dissipation. To little Paul sitting silent in their company, and by the side of his chief patron, Mr. Toots, there was a dread charm in these reckless occasions ; and when Mr. Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, and told Mr. Toots that he was going to observe it himself closely in all its ramifications in the approaching holi- days, 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 look of travels or wild adventure, and was almost afraid of such a slashing person. Going into this room one evening, when the holidays were very near, Paul found Mr. Feeder filling up the DOMBEY AND SON. blanks in some printed letters, while some others, already filled up and strewn before him, were being folded and sealed by Mr. Toots. Mr. Feeder said, " Aha, Dombey, there you are, are you ? " for they were always kind to him, and glad to see him and then said, tossing one jf the letters towards him, " And there you are, loo Dombey. That's yours." " Mine, sir ? " said Paul. " Your invitation," returned Mr. Feeder. Paul, looking at it, found, in copperplate 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'a company, and of Mr. Tozer's company, and of every young gentleman's company, was requested by Doctor and Mrs. Blimber on the same genteel occasion. Mr. Feeder then told him, to his great joy, that his sister was invited, and that it was a half-yearly event, and that, as the holidays began that day, he could go away with his sister after the party, if he liked, which Paul interrupted him to say he would like, very much. Mr. Feeder then gave him to understand that he would ?A expected to inform Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, in so DOMBEY AND SON. 277 perfine small-hand, that Mr. P. Dombey would be happy to have the honor of waiting on them, in accordance with their polite invitation. Lastly, Mr. Feeder said, be had better not refer to the festive occasion, in the hearing of Doctor and Mrs. Blimber ; as these prelimi- naries, and the whole of the arrangements, were con- ducted on principles of classicality and high breeding ; and that Doctor and Mrs. Blimber on the one hand, and the young gentlemen on the other, were supposed, in their scholastic capacities, not to have the least idea of what was in the wind. Paul thanked Mr. Feeder for these hints, and pocket- ing 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 drooped so, that by little and little it sunk on Mr. Toots's knee, and rested there, as if it had no care to be ever lifted up again. That was no reason why he should be deaf; but he must have been, he thought, for, by and by, he heard Mr. Feeder calling in his ear, and gently shaking him to rouse his attention. And when he raised his head, quite scared, and looked about him, he found that Doctor Blimber had come into the room ; and that the window was open, and that his forehead was wet with sprinkled water ; though how all this had been done without his knowledge, was very curious indeed. " Ah ! Come, come ! That's well ! How is my li - lie friend now ? " said Doctor Blimber, encouragingly. " Oh, quite well, thank you, sir," said Paul. But there seemed to be something the matter with tV 278 DOMBEY AND floor, for he couldn't stand upon it steadily ; and with th* 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 up-stairs, 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 chim- ney. 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 kird too in Mr. Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether it was best to lau^h or cry at him, did both f\t once. How Mr. Toots melted away, and Mr. Feeder changed into Mrs. Pipchin, Paul never thought of asking ; neither was he at all curious to know ; but when he saw Mrs. Pipchin standing at the bottom of the bed in- sle&d of Mr. Feeder, he cried out, " Mrs. Pipchin, don't tell Florence ! " " Don't tell Florence what, my little Paul ? " said Mrs DOMBEY AND SON 27S Pip<:liin, coming round to the bedside, and sitting down in the chair. "About me," said Paul. " No, no," said Mrs. Pipchin. " What do you think I mean to do when I grow up Mrs. Pipchin ?" inquired Paul, turning his face town id* her on his pillow, and resting his chin wistfully on his folded hands. Mrs. Pipchin couldn't guess. " 1 mean," said Paul, " to put my money all together in one Bank, never try to get any more, go away into the country with my darling Florence, have a beautiful garden, fields, and woods, and live there with_ her all my life ! " " Indeed ! " cried Mrs. Pipchin. " Yes," said Paul. " That's what I mean to do, when I " . He stopped, and pondered for a moment. Mrs. Pipchin's gray eye scanned his thoughtful face. " If I grow up," said Paul. Then he went on imme- iliatcly 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 hio being so fond of them, and about his being so glad of it. Then he told Mrs. Pipchin about the analysis, nd about his being certainly old-fashioned, and took Alls. Pipchin's opinion on that point, and whether she know why it was, and what it meant. Mrs. Pipchin denied the fact altogether, as the shortest way of gelling out of the difficulty ; but Paul was far from satisfied with that reply, and looked so search! ugly at Mi's. Pip- chin for a truer answer, that she was obliged to get up and lot.k out of the window to avoid his eyes. 280 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 nt the bedside, witL Mrs. Blimber. How they came here, 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 chat- ty with the apothecary, and they parted excellent friends. Lying down again with his eyes shut, he heard the apothecary say, out of the room and quite a long way off or he dreamed it that there was a want of vital power (what was that, Paul wondered !) and great con- stitutional weakness. That as the little fellow had set his heart on parting with his schoolmates on the seven- teenth, 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. Bom- bey, when he should have gained a better knowledge of I he case, and before that day. That there was no im- mediate cause for what? Paul lost that word. And that the little fellow had a fine mind, but was an old- fashioned boy. What old fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so visibly expressed in him ; BC plainly seen by so many people ! He could neither make it out, nor trouble himself long with the effort. Mrs. Pipchin was again beside him, if she had ever been away (he thought she had gone out with the doctor, but it was all a dream perhaps), and DOMBEY AND SON. 281 presently a bottle and glass got info her hands magically, mid 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 teriiblj about his own analysis, which could hardly have discom- posed 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 analyzed a murderei worse, and how would Doctor Blimber like it if his pocket-money depended on it ? It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley-slave of a boy all the half-year, and then score him up idle ; and to crib two dinners a- week out of his board, and then score him up greedy ; but that wasn't going to be submitted to, he believed, was it ? Oh ! Ah ! Before the weak-eyed young man performed on the gong next morning, he came up-stairs 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, com- 'ng back with Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, said : " Yes, I think. Doctor Blimber, we may release thil 282 DOMBEY AND SON. foung gentleman from his books just now ; the vacation being so very near at hand." " By all means," said Doctor Blimber. " My love, you will inform Cornelia, if you please." " Assuredly," said Mi's. Blimber. The apothecary bending down, looked closely into Paul's eyes, and felt his head, and his pulse, and his heart, with so much interest and care, that Paul said, ''Thank you, sir." " Our little friend," observed Doctor Blimber, " has never complained." " Oh no ! " replied the apothecary. " He was not likely to complain." " You find him greatly better ? " said Doctor Blimber. " Oh ! He is greatly better, sir," returned the apoth- ecary. Paul had begun to speculate, in his own odd way, on he 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 hap- pening to meet his little patient's eyes, as the latter set oiF on that mental expedition, and coming instantly out of his abstraction with a cheerful smile, Paul smiled in return and abandoned it. He lay in bed all that day, dozing and dreaming, and looking at Mr. Toots ; but got up on the next, and went down-stairs. Lo and behold, there was something the x matter with the great clock ; and a workman on a pair of steps had taken its face oif, and was poking instru ruents into the works by the light of a candle ! Thi* was a great event for Paul, who sat down on the bottom stair, and watched the operation attentively : now and Uien glancing at the clock face, leaning all askew, againsl DOMBEY AND SON. 283 the wall hard by, and feeling a little confuted by a sus picion that it was ogling him. Tlie 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 in- formed on the subject of the curfew bell of ancient days, Paul gave him an account of that institution ; and also asked him as a practical man, what he thought about King Alfred's idea of measuring time by the burning of candles ; to which the workman replied, that he thought it would be the ruin of the clock trade if it was to come up again. In fine, Paul looked on, until the clock had quite recovered its familiar aspect, and resumed its sedate inquiry ; when the workman, putting away his tools in a long basket, bade him good-day, and went away. Though not before he had whispered something, on the door-mat, to the footman, in which there was the phrase " old-fashioned " for Paul heard it. What could that old fashion be. that seemed to moke the people sorry ! What could it be ! Having nothing to learn now, he thought of this fre- quently ; though not so often as he might have done, if he had had fewer things to think of. But he had a great many ; and was always thinking, all day long. First, there was Florence coming to the party Flor 284 DOMBEY AOT) SON. ence 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 ho had become a little favorite among them, and then she would always think of the time he had passed there, without being very sorry. Florence might be all the happier too for that, perhaj>a, when he came back. When he came back ! Fifty times a-day, his noisele?a little feet went up the stairs to his own room, as he col- lected every book, and scrap, and trifle that belonged to him, and put them all together there, down to the minut- est 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 connection with his sister. On the contrary, he had to think of everything familiar to him, in his contemplative moods and in his wanderings about the house, as being to be parted with ; and hence the many things he had to think of, all day long. He had to peep into those rooms up-stairs, and think how solitary they would be when he was gone, and won- der through how many silent days, weeks, months, and years, they would continue just as grave and undisturbed. Us had to think would any other child (old-fashioned, like himself) stray there at any time, to whom the same grot jsque distortions of pattern and furniture would manifest themselves ; and would anybody tell that boy of little Dombey, who had been there once. He had to think of a portrait on the stairs, which ilways looked earnestly after him as he went away, tying it over his shoulder ; and which, when he passed DOMBEY AND SON. 285 it in the company of any one, still seemed to gaze at him, and not at his companion. He had much to think of, in association with a print that hung up in another place, where, in the centre of a wondering group, one figure that he knew, a figure with a light about its head benignant, mild, and merciful stood pointing up- ward. At his own bedroom window, there were crowds of thoughts that mixed with these, and came on, one UJ.OD another, one upon another, like the rolling waves. Where those wild birds lived, that were always hover- ing out at sea in troubled weather ; where the clouds rose, and first began ; whence the wind issued on ita rushing flight, and where it stopped ; whether the spot where he and Florence had so often sat, and watched, and talked about these things, could ever be exactly as it used to be without them ; whether it could ever be the same to Florence, if he were in some distant place, and she were sitting there alone. He had to think, too, of Mr. Toots, and Mr. Feeder, B. A. ; of all the boys ; and of Doctor Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, and Miss Blimber ; of home, and of his aunt and Miss Tox ; of his father, Dombey and Son, Walter with the poor old uncle who had got the money he wanted, and that gruff-voiced captain with the iron hand. Besides all this, he had a number of little visits to pay, in the course of the day ; to the school-room, to Doctor Blimbcr'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 ; 286 DOMBEY ANT) SON. sometimes be looked up words in dictionaries for othei 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, nnd go round the world, or take a flight among the far-off Btars. In those days immediately before the holidays, io short, when the other young gentlemen were laboring for dear life through a general resumption of the studies of the whole half-year, Paul was such a privi- leged 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 Dom- bey was caressed by every one. Doctor Blimber was so particular about him, that he requested Johnson to retire from the dinner-table one day, for having thought- lessly spoken to him as " poor little Dombey;" which Paul thought rather hard and severe, though he had flushed at the moment, and wondered why Johnsou 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 Ke down auy where and rest ; for he couldn't help feeling thet Ihese were more and more his habits every day. At last the party-day arrived ; and Doctor Blimber said at breakfast, " Gentlemen, we will resume our DOMBEY \XT) SON. 287 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 net 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 eru.hed hist. No,* th? least allusion was made to the ceremonio ol 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 ir.rt a harp in a green great-coat standing on the landing outside the. drawing-room door. There was something queer, too, about Mrs. Blimber's head at dinner-time, n< 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 playbill too ; for Paul read "Theatre Royal" over one of her sparkling spec- tacles, and " Brighton " over the other. There was a grand array of white waistcoats and cravats in the young gentlemen's bedrooms as evening approached ; and such a smell of singed hair, that Doc- tor Blimber sent up the footman with his compliments, and wished to know if the house was on fire. But it was only the hair-dresser curling the young gentle- men, and overheating his tongs in the ardor of business. When Paul was dressed which was very soon done, for he felt unwell and drowsy, and was not able to stand about it very long he went down into the draw- ing-room; where he found Doctor Blimber pacing up 888 DOMBEY AND SOS. ind down the room full dressed, but with a dignified and unconcerned demeanor, as if he thought it barely possible that one or two people might drop in by and by. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Blimber appeared, look- ing lovely, Paul thought ; and attired in such a number of skirts that it was quite an excursion to walk round hor. Miss Blimber came down soon after her mamma ; a little squeezed in appearance but very charming. Mr. Toots and Mr. Feeder were the next arrivals. Each of these gentlemen brought his hat in his hand as if he lived somewhere else ; and when they were announced by the butler, Doctor Bliraber said, "Ay, ay, ay ! God bless my soul ! " and seemed extremely glad to see them. Mr. Toots was one blaze of jewel- ry and buttons ; and he felt the circumstance so strongly, that when he had shaken hands with the doctor, and had bowed to Mrs. Bliraber and Miss Blimber, he took Paul aside, and said, " What do you think of this, Dom- bey!" 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 wa? best to wear his wristbands turned up or turned down Observing that Mr. Feeder's were turned ifp, Mr Toots turned his un ; but the wristbands of the next an iva) jeing turned down, Mr. Toots turned his down. The differences in point of waistcoat-buttoning, not ca.ly 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 289 to find the incessant execution it demanded, quite be- wildering. 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 Airs. Baps, to whom Mrs. Blimber was extremely kind and condescending. Mr. Baps was a very grave gen- tleman, 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 com- paring pumps with him) about what you were to do with your raw materials when they came into your ports in return for your drain of gold. Mr. Toots, to whom the question seemed perplexing, suggested 'Cook 'em." But Mr. Baps did not appear to think that would do. Paul now slipped away from the cushioned cor- ner of a sofa, which had been his post of observation, and went down-stairs into the tea-room to be ready for Florence, whom he had not seen for nearly a fort- night, 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 fhcre but his friend and another young woman wait- ing to serve out the tea), he could hardly make up bis mind to let her go again, or take away her bright and loving eyes from his face. " But what is the matter, Floy ? " asked Paul, almost sure that he saw a tear there. VOL. I. 19 &90 DOMBEY AND SON. * Nothing, darling, nothing," returned Florence. Paul touched her cheek gently with his finger aiul It was a tear ! " Why, Floy ! " said he. " We'll go home together, and I'll nurse you, >v>ve," aid Florence. " Nurse me ! " echoed Paul. Paul couldn't understand what that had to do witl it, nor why the two young women looked on so seriously, nor why Florence turned away her face for a moment, end then turned it back, lighted up again with smiles. " Floy," said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark hair in his hand. " Tell me, dear. Do you think I have grown old-fashioned ? " His sister laughed, and fondled him, and told him " No." '* Because 1 know they say so," returned Paul, " and I want to know what they mean, Floy." But a loud double knock coming at the door, and Florence hurrying to the table, there was no more said between them. Paul wondered again when he saw his friend whisper to Florence, as if she were com- forting her ; but a new arrival put that out of his head speedily. It was Sir Barnet Skettles, Lady Skettles, and Mas- ter 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 Com aions, and of whom Mr. Feeder had said that when lie did catch the Speaker's eye (which he had been ex- pected to do for three or four years), it was anticipated that he would rather touch up the Radicals. " And what room is this now, for instance ? * said Lady Skettles to Paul's friend, 'Melia. DOMBEY AND SON. 291 * Doctor Blimber's study, ma'am," was the reply. Lady Skettles took a panoramic survey of it through her glass, and said to Sir Barnet Skettles, with a nod of approval, " Very good." Sir Barnet assented, but Master Skettles looked suspicious and doubtful. " And this little creature, now," said Lady Skettles turning to Paul. " Is he one of the " " Yourg gentlemen, ma'am ; yes, ma'am," said Paul's friend. " And what is your name, my pale child ? " said Lady Skettles. " Dombey," answered Paul. Sir Barnet Skettles immediately interposed, and said that he had had the honor of meeting Paul's father at a public dinner, and that he hoped he was very well. Then Paul heard him say to Lady Skettles, " City very rich most respectable doctor mentioned it." And then he said to Paul, " Will you tell your good papa that Sir Barnet Skettles rejoiced to hear that he was very well, and sent him his best compliments?" " Yes, sir," answered Paul. " That is my brave boy," said Sir Barnet Skettles. " Barnet," to Master Skettles, who was revenging him- nelf for the studies to come, on the plum-cake, " this is a young gentleman you ought to know. This is a young gentleman you may know, Barnet," said Sir Barnet Skettles, with an emphasis on the permission "What eyes! What hair! What a lovely face!" exclaimed Lady Skettles softly, as she looked at Flor- pnce through her glass. " My sister," said Paul, presenting her. The satisfaction of the Skettleses was now complete. 4iwl as Lady Skettles had conceived, at first sight, a 292 DOMBET AND SON. liking for Paul, they all went up-stairs together Sii Barnet Skettles taking care of Florence, and young Barnet following." Young Barnet did not remain long in the background after they had reached the drawing-room, for Doctor Blimber had him out in no time, dancing with Florer.ee. 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 Sket- tles junior was in a sta*te of bliss without showing it. Little Paul thought it a singular coincidence that nobody had occupied his place among the pillows ; and that when he came into the room again, they should all make way for him to go back to it, remembering it was his. Nobody stood before him either, when they ob- served that he liked to see Florence dancing, but they left the space in front quite clear, so that he might fol- low 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 sit- ting by his side as soon as every dance was ended, he looked on very happily indeed. Florence would have sat by him all night, and would not have danced at all of her own accord, but Paul made her, by telling her how much it pleased him. And b? DOMBEY AND SON. 293 told her the truth, too; for his small In art swelled, and his face glowed, when he saw how much they all admired her, and how she was the beautiful little rosebud of the room. From his nest among the pillows, Paul could see and hear almost everything that passed, as if the whole were being cbne for his amusement. Among other little in- cidents that he observed, he observed Mr. Baps the dancing-master get into conversation with Sir Barnet Skettles, and very soon ask him, as he had asked Mr. Toots, what you were to do with your raw materials, when they came into your ports in return for your drain of gold which was such a mystery to Paul that he was quite desirous to know what ought to be done with them. Sir Barnet Skettles had much to say upon the question, and said it ; but it did not appear to solve the question, for Mr. Baps retorted, Yes, but supposing Russia stepped in with her tallows, which struck Sir Bar- net almost dumb, for he could only shake his head after that, and say, why then you must fall back upon your cottons, he supposed. Sir Barnet Skettles looked after Mr. Baps when he went to cheer up Mrs. Baps (who, being quite deserted, was pretending to look over the music-book of the gen tleman 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 Blim ber answered no, he believed not ; and that in lact he was a , professor of "Of something connected with statistics, I'll swear? observed Sir Barnet Skettles. SS94 DOMBEY AND SOX " Why no, Sir Barnet," replied Doctor Blimber, rub- bing his chin. " No, not exactly." " Figures of some sort I would venture a bet," said Sir Barnet Skettles. " Why, yes," said Doctor Blimber, " yes, but not of that sort. Mr. Baps is a very worthy sort of man Sir Barnet, and in fact he's our professor of dan- cing." *" Paul was amazed to see that this piece of information quite altered Sir Barnet Skettles's opinion of Mr. Baps, und that Sir Barnet flew into a perfect rage, and glow- ered at Mr. Baps over on the other side of the room. He even went so far as to D Mr. Baps to Lady Skettles, in telling her what had happened, and to say that it was like his most con-sura-mate and con-foun-ded im- pudence. There was another tiling that Paul observed. Mr. Feeder, after imbibing several custard-cups of negus, began to enjoy himself. The dancing in general was ceremonious, and the music rather solemn a little like church-music in fact : but after the custard-cups, Mr. Feeder told Mr. Toots that he was going to throw a little spirit into the thing. After that, Mr. Feeder not only began to dance as if he meant dancing and noth- ing else, but secretly to stimulate the music to perform wild tunes. Further, he became particular in his at- tentions to the ladies; and dancing with Miss Blimber whispered to her whispered to her ! though not 10 softly but that Paul heard him say this remarkable poetry, " Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure Yoc! " This Paul heard him repeat to four young ladies in DOMBEY AND SON. 295 on. Well might Mr. Feeder say to Mr. Tiwts tbrU he was afraid he should be the worse for it to- morrow ! Mrs. Blimber was a little alarmed by this conipar ntively speaking profligate behavior; and especially by the alteration in the character of the music, which, beginning to comprehend low melodies that were popu- lar 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 o f erson for his situation, and that she particularly likeu Jie unassuming style of his hair which (as already hinted) was about a quar- ter of an inch long. Once, when there was a pause in the dancing, Lady Skettles told Paul that he seemed very fond of music Paul replied, that he was ; and if she was, too, she ought to hear his sister Florence sing. Lady Skettles pres- ently 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 1 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 alone, so young, and good, and beautiful, and kind to him ; and heard her thrilling voice, so natural and sweet, and such % golden link between him and all his life's love and lappiness, rising out of the silence ; he turned his fac* 296 DOMBEY AND SON. away, and hid his tears. Not, as he told them wheu they spoke to him, not that the music was too plaintive or too sorrowful, but it was so dear to him. They all loved Florence ! How could they help it ! Paul had known beforehand that they must and would ; and sitting in his cushioned corner, with calmly folded hands, and one leg loosely doubled under him, few would have thought what triumph and delight expanded his childish bosom while he watched her, or what a sweet tranquillity he felt. Lavish encomiums on " Dombty'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 accomplish- ments floated past him, constantly ; and, as if borne in upon the air of the summer night, there was a half-intel- ligible sentiment diffused around, referring to Florence and himself, and breathing sympathy for both, that soothed and touched him. He did not know why. For all that the child ob- served, and felt, and thought, that night the present and the absent ; what was then and what had been were blended like the colors 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 ever more 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 oroken waves. The same mysterious murmur he had wondered at, when lying on his couch upon the beach, DOMBEY AND SON. 297 he thought he still heard sounding through his sister I 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 fre- quently came up to shake him by the hand. Through the universal kindness he still thought he heard if, speaking tc him ; and even his old-fashioned reputatic* seemed to be allied to it, he knew not how. Thus little Paul sat musing, listening, looking on, and dreaming; and was very happy. Until the time arrived for taking leave . and then, indeed, there was a sensation in the party. Sir Barnet Skettles brought up Skettles Junior to shake hands with him, and asked him if he would remember to tell his good Papa, with his best compliments, that he, Sir Bar- net Skettles. had said he hoped the two young gentle- men would become intimately acquainted. Lady Skettlea kissed him, and parted his hair upon his brow, and held him in her arms ; and even Mrs. Baps poor Mrs. Baps ! Paul was glad of that came over from beside the music-book of the gentleman who played the harp, and took leave of him quite as heartily as anybody in the room. " Good-by, Doctor Blimber," said Paul, stretching out his hand. " Good-by, my little friend," returned the doctor. " I'm very much obliged to you, sir," said Paul, look- ing innocently up into his awful face. " Ask them to lake care of Diogenes, if you please." Diogenes was th& dog : who had never in his liffl received a friend into his confidence, before Paul. The ioctor promised that every attention should be paid to Diogenes in Paul's absence, and Paul having again 298 DOMBET AND S IT. thanked him, arid shaken hands with him, bade adieu to Mrs. Blimber and Cornelia with such heartfelt earnest- ness that Mrs. Blimber forgot from that moment to men- tion Cicero to Lady Skettles, though she had fully in- tended it, all the evening. Cornelia taking both Paul's hands in hers, said, "Dombey, Dombey, you have always been my favorite pupil. God bless you ! " And it showed, Paul thought, how easily one might do injustice to a person ; for Miss Blimber meant it though she was a Forcer and felt it. A buzz then went round among the young gentlemen, of " Dombey 's going ! " " Little Dombey 's going ! " and there was a general move after Paul and Florence down the staircase and into the hall, in which the whole Blim- ber 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 dillicult 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 ftnd trunks to the coach that was to carry him and Flor- ence to Mrs. Pipchin's for the night, melted visibly. Not even the influence of the softer passion on the young gentlemen and they all, to a boy, doted on Florence could restrain them from taking quite a noisy leave of Paul ; waving hats after him, pressing down-stairs to shake hands with him, crying individually 4 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 ? she ever forget it ? Was she glad to know it ? DOMBEY AND SON. 299 A.nd a lively delight was in his eyes as he spoke to her. Once, for a last look, he turned and gazed upo: 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 name back as he had seen it in this last view ; and it never seemed to be a real place again, but always a dream, full of eyes. This was not quite the last of Doctor Blimber's, however. There was something else. There was Mr. Toots. Who, unexpectedly letting down one of the coach-windows, and looking in, said, with a most egre- gious 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 sim- ilar chuckle, said in a precisely similar tone of voice, " la Dombey there ? " and disappeared precisely as before. How Florence laughed ! Paul often remembered it, and laughed himself whenever he did so. But there was much, soon afterwards next day, and after that which Paul could only recollect confusedly. Aa, why they stayed at Mrs. Pipchin's days and nights, instead of going home ; why he lay in bed, with Flor- ence sitting by his side ; whether that had been his father \n the room, or only a tall shadow on the wall ; whether he had heard his doctor say, of some one, that if they 800 DOMBEY AND SON. had removed him before the occasion on which he had built up fancies, strong in proportion to his own weak- ness, it was very possible he might have pined away. He could not even remember whether he had often said to Florence, " Oh Floy, take me home, and never leave me ! " but he thought he had. He fancied some- times he had heard himself repeating, " Take me home, Floy ! take me home ! " But he could remember, when he got home, and was carried up the well-remembered stairs, that there had been the rumbling of a coach for many hours together, while he lay upon the seat, with Florence still beside him, and old Mrs. Pipchin sitting opposite. He remem- bered his old bed too, when they laid him down in it : his aunt, Miss Tox, and Susan : but there was something else, and recent too, that still perplexed him. " I want to speak to Florence, if you please," he said. M To Florence by herself, for a moment ! " She bent down over him, and the others stood away. " Floy, my pet, wasn't that papa in the hall, when they brought me from the coach ? " Yes, dear." " He didn't cry, and go into his room, Floy, did he, when he saw me coming in ? " Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips against bis cheek. I'm very glad he didn't cry," said little Paul " I 'bought he did. Don't tell them that I asked." DOMBEY AND SON. 801 CHAPTER XV. AMAZING ARTFULNESS OF CAPTAIN CUTTLE, AND A NEvV PURSUIT FOR WALTER GAY. . WALTER could not, for several days, decide what to do in the Barbadoes 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 lime was slipping by, and he had none to lose, he felt that he must act, without nesitating any longer. Walter's chief difficulty was, how to break the change in his affairs to Uncle Sol, to whom he was sensible it would be a terrible blow. He had the greater difficulty in dashing Uncle Sol's spirits with such an astounding piece of intelligence, because they had lately recovered very much, and the old man had become so cheerful, that the little back parlor 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 dis- tressing necessity. Yet it would never do to run away from him. He must know of it beforehand ; and how to tell him was 802 DOMBEY ANP SON. 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. Dorabey hs-d truly tofd 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 cho>e, but not in his counting-house. His uncle and he hiy 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 favor, and might have thought that he was now and then dis- posed to put a slight upon him, which was hardly just But what would have been doly without that, was still duty with it or Walter thought so and duty must be done. When Mr. Dombey had looked N *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 anx- ious 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, DOMBEY AND SON 303 whether it were right or wrong. But it may have been it may have been that the great man thought him- self defied in I his new exposition of an honest spirit, and purposed to bring it down. " Well ! at last and at least, Uncle Sol must be told," thought Walter with a sigh. And as Walter was appre- hensive that his voice might perhaps quaver a little, and thnt 1 is 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 mere to beat up Captain Cuttle's quarters. It was not unpleasant to remember, on the way thither, that Mrs. MacStinger resorted to a great distance every Sunday morning, to attend the ministry of the Reverend Melehisedech Howler, who, having been one day dis- charged 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 parlor for the reception of ladies and gentlemen of the Ranting persuasion, upon whom, on the first occa- sion of their assemblage, the admonitions of the Rever- end Melehisedech had produced so powerful an effect, that, in their rapturous performance of a sacred jig, which closed the service, the whole flock broke through Vito a kitchen below, and disabled a mangle belonging to $>ne of the fold. This the captain, in a moment of uncommon convivi- ality, had confided to Walter and his uncle, between the 804 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 neighborhood, which hoisted the union-jack every Sunday morning; and where he was good enough the lawful beadle being infirm to keep an eye upon the boys, over whom be 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 antici- pate his going out ; and he made such good speed, that he had the pleasure, on turning into Brig Place, to be- hold the broad blue coat and waistcoat hanging out of the captain's open window, to air in the sun. It appeared incredible that the coat and waistcoat could be seen by mortal eyes without the captain ; but he certainly was not in them, otherwise his legs the houses in Brig Place not being lofty would have ob- structed the street-door, which was perfectly clear. Quite wondering at this discovery, Walter gave a sin- gle knock. " Stinger," he distinctly heard the captain say, up in his room, as if that were no business of his. Therefore Walter gave two knocks. " Cuttle," he heard the captain say upon that ; and im- mediately afterwards the captain, in his clean shirt am! braces, with his neckerchief hanging loosely round h'n throat like a coil of rope, and his glazed hat on, ap- peared at the window, leaning out over the broad Him coat and waistcoat. " Wal'r ! " cried the captain, looking down upon him in amazement. "Ay, ay, Captain Cuttle," returned Walter, onl) me." DOMBEY AND SON. 305 " What's the matter, my lad ? " inquired tLb captain, with great concern, " Gills a'n't been and sprung nothing again ? " "No, no," ?aid Walter. "My uncle's all right, Cap- tain Cuttle." The captain expressed his gratification, and said he would come down below and open the door, which he did. " Though you're early, Wal'r," said the captain, ey- ing him still doubtfully, when they got up-.stairs. " Why, the fact is, Captain Cuttle," said Walter, sit- ting down, " I was afraid you would have gone out, and I want to benefit by your friendly counsel." " So you shall," said the captain ; " what'll you take ? " " I want to take your opinion, Captain Cuttle," re- turned Walter, smiling. " That's the only thing for me." " Come on then," said the captain. " With a will, my lad ! " Walter related to him what had happened ; and the difficulty in which he felt respecting his uncle, and the relief it would be to him if Captain Cuttle, in his kind- ness, would help him to smooth it away ; Captain Cut- tle's infinite consternation and astonishment at the pros- pect unfolded to him, gradually swallowing that gentle- man up, until it left his face quite vacant, and the suit of blue, the glazed hat, and the hook, apparently without u owner. " You see, Captain Cuttle," pursued Walter, " for my- self, I am young, as Mr. Dombey said, and not to be .'onsidered. I am to fight my way through the world, I know ; but there are two points I was thinking, as I same along, that I should be very particular about, ir vot. i at) 806 DOMBEY AND SON. respect to my uncle. I don't mean to say that I deserve to be the pride and delight of his life you believe me, I know but I am. Now, don't you think I am ? " The captain seemed to make an endeavor 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. u If I live and have my health," said Walter, " and I am not afraid of that, still, when I leave England, I can hardly hope to see my uncle again. He is old, Captain Cuttle ; and besides, his life is a life of custom " " Steady, Wal'r ! Of a want of custom ? " said the captain, suddenly reappearing. u Too true," returned Walter, shaking his head ; " but I meant a life of habit, Captain Cuttle that sort of custom. And if (as you very truly said, I am sure) he would have died the sooner for the loss of 'the stock, and all those objects to which he has been accustomed for so many years, don't you think he might die a little sooner for the loss of" " Of his nevy," interposed the captain. " Right ! " " Well then," said Walter, trying to speak gayly, " we must do our best to make him believe that the separa- tion 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 affec- tion, and duty, and honor, I am afraid I should make but a very poor hand at that, if I tried to persuade hire of it. That's my great reason for wishing you to break it out to him ; and that's the first point." "Keep her off a point or so!" observed the captain, in a contemplative voice. '* What did you say, Captain Cuttle ? " inquired Wal- ter DOMBET AND SON. 307 <* Stand by ! " returned the captain, thoughtfully. Walter paused to ascertain if the captain had any paf ticular information to add to this, but as he said no more, went on. " Now, the second point, Captain Cuttle. I am sorry to say, I am not a favorite with Mr. Dombey. I have always triec 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 disdains to rep- resent it as being better than it is ; and I doubt very much if it will ever lead me to advancement in the House whether it does not, on the contrary, dispose of me forever, 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 favorable 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 lend- ing me a hand, so far off, I may have one friend at home who knows my real situation." " Wal'r, my boy," replied the captain, " in the Prov- erbs of Solomon you will find the following words, May we never want a friend in need, nor a bottle to give him!' When found, make a note of." Here the captain stretched out his hand to Walter, with an air of downright good faith that spoke volumes ; at the same time repeating (for he felt proud of the ac- curacy and pointed application of his quotation), " When found, make a note of." " Captain Cuttle," said Walter, taking the immense fist extended to him by the captain in both his hands, which it completely filled, " next to my Uncle Sol, I love 808 DOMBEY AND SON. you. There is no one on earth in whom I can more safely trust, I am sure. As to the mere going away, Captain Cuttle, I don't care for that ; why should I care for that ! If I were free to seek my own fortune if I were free to go as a common sailor if I were free to venture on my own account to the farthest end of the vrorld 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 w-as an end of that. But what I feel, Captain Cuttle, is that we have been a little mistaken all along, and that, so far us any improvement in my prospects is concerned, I am no better off now than I was when I first entered Dombey's House perhaps a little worse, for the House may have been kindly inclined towards me then, and it certainly is not now." " Turn again, Whittington," muttered the disconsolate captain, after looking at Walter for some time. "Ay ! " replied Walter, laughing, "and turn a great many times, too, Captain Cuttle, I'm afraid, before such fortune as his ever turns up again. Not that I com- plain," 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. 1 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 jncle that I should be sent away ; for Mr. Dombey is a raluabla friend to him, as he proved himself, you know when, Captain Cuttle ; and I am persuaded be won't be DOMBEY AND SON. 309 less valuable when he hasn't me there, every day, U. awaken his dislike. So hurrah for the West Indies, Captain Cuttle ! How does that tune go that the sailors Ping? " For the Port of Barbadoes, boys ! Cheerily ! Leaving old England behind us, boys! Cheerily!" Here the captain roared in chorus " Oh cheerily, cheerily ! " Oh cheer i ly! " The last line reaching the quick ears of an ardent skipper not quite sober, who lodged opposite, and who instantly sprung out of bed, threw up his window, and joined in across the street, at the top of his voice, pro- duced 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 ail breathed. That done, he shut down his window, and went to bed again. "And now, Captain Cuttle," said Walter, handing him the blue coat and waistcoat, and bustling very much, " if you'll come and break the news to Uncle Sol (which he ought to have known, days upon days ago, by rights) I'll leave you at the door, you know, and walk about until the afternoon." The captain, however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or to be by any means confident of his powers of executing it. He had arranged the future life and adventures of Walter so very differently, and so rntirely to his own satisfaction ; he had felicitated him- self so often on the sagacity and foresigl t displayed in 810 DOMBEY AND BON. that arrangement, and had found it so complete and per- fect 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 put- ting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like the impetuosity that could alone have kept pace with Wal- ter's rnood, he declined to invest himself with those gar- ments f>.t all at present ; and informed Walter that on such a serious matter, he must be allowed to " bite his naUs a bit." " It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r," said the captain, " any time these fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you may know that Ned Cut- tJ.'s aground." Thereupon the captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if it were a hand ; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the very concentration and sub- limation of all philosophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in \ta various branches. " There's a friend of mine," murmured the captain, in an absent manner, " but he's at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver such an opinion on this sub- ject, or any other that could be named, as would give Parliament six and beat 'em. Beon 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 ringbclt. And yet clearer- minded man don't walk." DOMBEY AND SON". 811 In spite of bis 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 &3ttled. " 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 opin- ion that was no more like that buoy than your uncle's buitons are. There a'u't a man that walks certainly not on two legs that can come near him. Not near him ! " "What's his name, Captain Cuttle?" inquired Wal- ter, determined to be interested in the captain's friend. " His name's Bunsby," said the captain. " But Lord, it might be anything for the matter of that, with such a mind as his ! " The exact idea which the captain attached to this concluding piece of praise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw it forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to himself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he soon discovered that the captain had relapsed into his former profound state of mind ; and that while he eyed him steadfastly from beneath his bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remained im- mersed in cogitation. In fact, Captain Cuttle was laboring with such great designs, that far from being aground, he soon got off into the deepest of wafer, 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 812 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 be- tween 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 al- ready enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dombey, from having spent a very agreeable half hour in his com- pany at Brighton (on the morning when they borrowed the money) ; and that, as a couple of men of the world, who understood each other, and were mutually disposed to make things comfortable, could easily arrange any little difficulty of this sort, and come at the real facts ; the friendly thing for him to do would be, without saying anything about it to Walter, at present just to step up to Mr. Dombey's house say to the servant " Would ye be so good, my lad, as report Cap'en Cuttle here ? " meet Mr. Dombey in a confidential spirit hook him by the button-hole talk it over make it all right and come away triumphant. As these reflections presented themselves to the cap tain's mind, and by slow degrees assumed this shape and form, his visage cleared like a doubtful morning when it gives place to a bright noon. His eyebrows, which had been in the highest degree portentous, smoothed their rugged bristling aspect, and became serene ; his eyes, which had been nearly closed in the severity of his mental exercise, opened freely ; a smile which had been at first but three specks one at the right-hand cornel DOMBLY AND SON. 313 of his mouth, and one at the corner of each eye - gradually overspread his whole face, and rippling up into his forehead, lifted the glazed hat : as if that too bad been aground with Captain Cuttle, and were now, like him, happily afloat again. Finally the captain left off biting his nail?, and said, " Now, Wal'r, my boy, you may help me on with them slops." By which the captain meant his coat and waist- coat. Walter little imagined why the captain was so par- ticular in the arrangement of his cravat, as to twist the pendant 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 de- ceased 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 com- plete 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 waa ready. The captain's walk was more complacent than usuaJ when they got out into the street ; but this, Walter sup- posed to be the effect of the ankle-jacks, and took little lu-ed of. Before they had gone very far, they encoun- tered a woman selling flowers ; when the captain stopping short, as if struck by a happy idea, made a purchaso of the largest bundle in her basket ; a most glorioui- uosegay, fan-shaped, some two feet and a half round 314 DOMBEY AND SON. and composed of all the jolliest-looking flowers thai blow. Armed with this little token which he designed for Mr. Dombey, Captain Cuttle walked on with Walter until they reached the Instrument-maker's door, before whi.'Ji they both paused. " You're going in ? " said Walter. " Yes ; " returned the captain, who felt that Walter must be got rid of before he proceeded any farther, and that he had better time his projected visit somewhat later m the day. " And you won't forget anything ? " said Walter. " No," returned the captain. . " I'll go upon my walk at once," said Walter, " and then I shall be out of the way, Capjain Cuttle." " Take a good long 'un, my lad ! " replied the captain, calling after him. Walter waved his hand in assent, and went his way. His way was nowhere in particular ; but he thought he would go out into the fields, where he C3iild 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 moans of getting at them than by passing Mr. Dombey's house. It was as stately and as dark as ever, when he went by and glanced up at its frowning front. The blinds were all pulled down, but the upper windows stood wide open, and the pleasant air stirring those curtains and waving them to and fro, was the only sign of aiii- mation in the whole exterior. Walter walked softly as he passed, and was glad when he had left the house a door or two behind. He looked back then ; with the interest he had always DOMBEY AND SON". 315 felt for the place since the adventure of the lost child years ago ; and looked especially at those upper win dows. 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 afterwanls 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 list- lessly of other things. Though still, of what the house had suggested to him ; for Walter pleased himself with thinking that perhaps the time might come, when the beautiful child who was his old friend and had always been so grateful to him and so glad to see him since, might interest her brother in his behalf and influence his fortunes for the better. He liked to imagine this more, at that moment, for the pleasure of imagining her continued remembrance of him, than for any worldly profit he might gain : but another and more sober fancy whispered to him that if he were alive then, he would be beyond the sea and forgotten ; she married, rich, proud, happy. There was no more reason why she should remember him with any interest in such an altered state of things, than any play- thing she ever had. No, not so much. Yet Walter so idealized 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 c or 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 : t DAUGHTER. TUERU is a hush through Mr. Dombcy's house. Ser- vants 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, wifn 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 soci- able. 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 cor- ner house. It seems to all of them as having happened a long time ago ; though yet the child lies, calm ard beautiful, upon his little bed. After dark there come some visitors noiseless visit- ors, with shoes of felt who have been there before ; and with them comes that bed of rest which is so strange B one for infant sleepers. All this time, the bereaved lather has not been seen even by his attendant ; for he sits in a corner of his own dark room when any one is there, and never seems to move at other times, except to DOMBEY AND SON. 38 pace it to and fro. But in the morning it is whispered among the household that he was heard to go up-stairs in the dead night, and that he stayed there in the room until the sun was shining. At the offices in the city, the ground-glass windows re 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-extingui.-hed 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. Pereh, the messenger, stavs 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 ; lut alone in his own room he shows his teeth all day ; and it would seem that there is something gone from Mr. Carker's path some obstacle removed which clears his way before him. Now the rosy children living opposite to Mr. Dom- bey's house, peep from their nursery windows down intc the street ; for there are four black horses at h.s door, with feathers on their heads ; and feathers tremble on the carriage that they draw ; and these, and an array of men with scarfs and staves, attract a crowd. The jug- gler who was going to twirl the basin, puts his loose coat ui 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 ihe presses her baby, when the burden that is so easilj VOL. II. 3 84 DOMBEY AND SON. carried is borne forth ; and the youngest of the rosy children at the high window opposite, needs no re- straining hand to check her in her glee, when, point- ing with her dimpled finger, she looks into her nurse's face, and asks " What's that ! " And now, among the knot of servants dressed ?n 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 aa 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 per- haps 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-colored worsted drawers, and tum- ble in the mud. The feathers wind their gloomy way along the streets. and come within the sound of a church-bell. In this same church, the pretty boy received all that will soon he left of him on earth a name. All of him that is dead, they lay there, near the perishable substance of hia mother. It is well. Their ashes lie where Florence in her walks oh lonely, lonely walks ! may pass them any day. DOMBEY AND SON. 35 The service over, and the clergyman withdrawn, Mr Dombey looks round, demanding in a low voice, wheth- er the person who has been requested to attend to re- ceive instructions for the tablet, is there ? ! Some one comes forward, and says " Yes." Mr. Dombey intimates where he would have it placed; and shows him, with his hand upon the wall, the shape and size ; and how it is to follow the memorial to the mother. Then, with his pencil, he writes out the in- scription, and gives it to him : adding, " I wish to have it done at once." " It shall be done immediately, sir." " There is really nothing to inscribe but name and age, you see." The man bows, glancing at the paper, but appears to hesitate. Mr. Dombey, not observing his hesitation, turns away, and leads towards the porch. " I beg your pardon, sir ; " a touch falls gently on his mourning cloak; "but as you wish it done imme- diately, and it may be put in hand when I get back " Well ? " ' Will you be so good as read it over again ? I think there's a mistake." " Where ? " The statuary gives him back the paper, and pointa rut, with his pocket-rule, the words, " beloved and only child." " It should be, ' son,' I think, sir ? " " You are i-Hit. Of course. Make the correction." O The father, with a hastier step, pursues his way to ibe coach. When the other three, who follow closely, take their seats, his face is hidden for the first time shaded by his cloak. Nor do they see it any mow 56 DOMBEY AND SON. that day. He alights first, and passes immediately int his own room. The other mourners (who are only Mr Chick, and two of the medical attendants) proceed up- stairs to the drawing-room, to be received by Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. And what the face is, in the shut-up chamber underneath : or what the thoughts are : what the heart is, what the contest or the suffering no one knows. The chief thing that they know, below-stairs, in the kitchen, is that " it seems like Sunday." They can hardly persuade themselves but that there is something unbecoming, if not wicked, in the conduct of the people out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations, and wear their every-day 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 moralize. 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 house-maid, who has net yet tried her mourning bonnet. They are very tender to each other at dusky street-corners, and Towlinson has visions of leading an uttered and blameless existence as a serious green-grocer in Oxford Market. There is sounder sleep and deeper rest in Mr. Dom- bc-y's house to-night, than there has been for many aights. The morning sun awakens the old household, settled down once more in their old ways. The rosy children DOMBKY AND SON. 37 opposite, run past with hoops. There is a splendid wed- ding in the church. The juggler's wife is active with the money-box in another quarter of the town. The mason sings and whistles as he chips out P-A-U-L in the marble slab before him. And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loos 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 com- panion of my slighted childhood ! Could any less idea shed the light already dawning on your early grave, or give birth to the softened sorrow that is springing into life beneath this rain of tears ! " " My dear child," said Mrs. Chick, who held it as a duty incumbent on her, to improve the occasion, " when you are as old as I am " " Which will be the prime of life," observed Miss Tox. " You will then," pursued Mrs. Chick, gently squeez- ing Miss Tox's hand in acknowledgment of her friendly remark, " you will then know that all grief is unavailing, and that it is our duty to submit." " I will try, dear aunt. I do try," answered Florence, sobbing. "I am glad to hear it," said Mrs. Chick, "because, m.y love, as our dear Miss Tox of whose sound sense and excellent judgment, there cannot possibly be twc ^pinions " "My dear Louisa, I shall really be proud, soon," said Miss Tox. " will tell you, and confirm by her experience/' pur 88 DOMBEY AND SON. sued Mrs. Chick, "we are called upon on all occasions to make an effort. It is required of us. If any my dear," turning to Miss Tox, " I want a word. Mis Mis" " Demeanor ? " suggested Miss Tox. " No, no, no," said Mrs. Chick. " How can you Goodness me, it's on the end of my tongue. Mis " u Placed affection ? " suggested Miss Tox, timidly. u Good gracious, Lucretia ! " returned Mrs. Chick. "How very monstrous! Misanthrope, is the word I want. The idea ! Misplaced affection ! I say, if any misanthrope were to put, in my presence, the question ' Why were we born ? ' I should reply, ' to make an effort.' " " Very good indeed," said Miss Tox, much impressed by the originality of the sentiment. " Very good." " Unhappily," pursued Mrs. Chick, " we have a warn- ing under our own eyes. We have but too much reason to suppose, my dear child, that if an effort had been made in time, in this family, a train of the most trying and distressing circumstances might have been avoided. Nothing shall ever persuade me," observed the good matron, with a resolute air, " but that if that effort had been made by poor dear Fanny, the poor dear darling child would at least have had a stronger constitution." Mrs. Chick abandoned herself to her feelings for half a moment ; but, as a practical illustration of her doc- trine, brought herself up short, in the middle of a sob, juid went on again. " Therefore, Florence, pray let us see that you have some strength of mind, and do not selfishly aggravate the distress in which your poor papa is plunged." " Dear aunt ! " said Florence, kneeling quickly down DOMBEY AND SON. 8S 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 heart-broken ? " Miss Tox was of a tender nature, and there was some-' Ihing in this appeal that moved her very much. Whether she saw in it a succession, on the part of the neglected child, to the affectionate concern so often expressed by her dead brother or a love that sought to twine itself about the heart that had loved him, and that could not bear to be shut out from sympathy with such a sorrow, in such sad community of love and grief or whether she only recognized the earnest and devoted spirit which, although discarded and repulsed, was wrung with tenderness long unreturned, and in the waste and soli- tude of this bereavement cried to him to seek a comfort in it, and to give some, by some small response whatever may have been her understanding of it, it moved Miss Tox. For the moment she forgot the majesty of Mrs. Chick, and patting Florence hastily on the cheek, turned aside and suffered the tears to gush from her eyes, with- out waiting for a lead from that wise matron. Mrs. Chick herself lost, for a moment, the presence of mind on which she so much prided herself; and re- mained mute, looking on the beautiful young face that had so long, so steadily, and patiently, been turned towards the little bed. But recovering her voice which was synonymous with her presence of mind, in- deed they were one and the same thing she replied with dignity : " Florence, my dear child, your poor papa is peculiar at times ; and to question me about him, is to question me upon a subject which I really do not pretend to un- ierstand. 1 believe I have as much influence with yniir 40 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 dave said to your papa 'Paul!' that is the exact expression I used ' Paul ! why do you not take some- thing stimulating?' Your papa's reply has always been, ' Louisa, have the goodness to leave me. I want noth- ing. I am better by myself.' If I was to be put upon my oath to-morrow, Lucretia, before a magistrate," said Mrs. Chick, " I have no doubt I could venture to swear to those identical words." Miss Tox expressed her admiration by saying, "My Louisa is ever methodical ! " " In short, Florence," resumed her aunt, " literally nothing has passed between your poor papa and myself, until to-day ; when I mentioned to your papa that Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles had written exceedingly kind notes our sweet boy! Lady Skettles loved him liki a where's my pocket handkerchief! " Miss Tox produced one. " Exceedingly kind notes, proposing that you should visit them for change of scene. Mentioning to your papa that I thought Miss Tox and myself might now go home (in which he quite agreed), I inquired if he had any objection to your accepting this invitation. He said, No, Louisa, not the least ! ' * Florence raised her tearful eyes. "At the same time, if you would prefer staying here, Florence, to paying this visit at present, or to gcing home with me " "I should much prefer it, aunt," was the faint re Vrinder. DOM13EY AND SOX. 41 " Why, then, child," said Mrs. Chick, "yon can. [ff ii strange clioice, I must say. But you always wert strange. Anybody else at your time of life, and after what has passed my dear Miss Tox, I have lo>t icy pocket handkerchief again would be glad to leave here, one would suppose." " I should not like to feel," said Florence, "as if the house was avoided. I should not like to think that the his the rooms up-stairs were quite empty and dreary, aunt. I would rather stay here, for the present. Oh my brother ! oh ray brother ! " It was a natural emotion, not to be suppressed ; and it would make way even between the fingers of the hands with which she covered up her face. The over- charged and heavy-laden breast must sometimes have that vent, or the poor wounded solitary heart within it would have fluttered like a bird with broken wings, and sunk down in the dust. " Well, child ! " said Mrs. Chick, after a pause. " I wouldn't on any account say anything unkind to you, and that I'm sure you know. You will remain here, then, and do exactly as you like. No one will interfere with you, Florence, or wi^h to interfere with you, I'm sure." Florence shook her head in sad assent. " I had no sooner begun to advise your poor papa that he really ought to seek some distraction and restoration in a temporary change," said Mrs. Chick, " than he told me he had already formed the intention of going into the country for a short time. I'm sure I hope he'll go very soon. He can't go too soon. But I suppose there are eome arrangements connected with his private papers and so forth, consequent en the affliction that has tried 42 DOMBEY AND SON. DS all so much I can't think what's become of mine Lucretia, lend me yours, my dear that may occupy him for one or two evenings in his own room. Ycui papa's a Dombey, child, if ever there was one," said Mrs. Chick, drying both her eyes at once with great caie on opposite corners of Miss Tox's handkerchief. " He'll make an effort. There's no fear of him." " Is there nothing, aunt," asked Florence, trembling, "1 might do to" '' Lord, my dear child," interposed Mrs. Chick, has- tily, " what are you talking about ? If your papa said to me I have given you his exact words, ' Louisa, I want nothing; I am better by myself what do you think he'd say to you ? You mustn't show yourself to him, child. Don't dream of such a thing." " Aunt," said Florence, " I will go and lie down in my bed." Mrs. Chick approved of this resolution, and dismissed her with a kiss. But Miss Tox, on a faint pretence of looking for the mislaid handkerchief, went up-stairs after her ; and tried in a few stolen minutes to comfort her, in spite of great discouragement from Susan Nipper. For Miss Nipper, in her burning zeal, disparaged Miss Tox as a crocodile ; yet her sympathy seemed genuine, and had at least the vantage-ground of disinterestedness there was little favor to be won by it. And was there no one nearer and dearer than Susan, to uphold the striving heart in its anguish ? Was there uo other neck to clasp ; no other face to turn to ? no uc, at least, in tLe then position of domestic affairs. Walter eyed him kind- ly many a time in passing in and out ; and poor old Sol, when Walter was not there, would come and lean against he door-post, resting his weary wig as near the shoe- buckl-:s of the guardian genius of his trade and shof 60 DOMBEY AND as he could. But no fierce idol with a mouth from eai to ear, and a murderous visage made of parrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of its savage votaries, than was the midshipman to these marks of attachment. Walter's heart felt heavy as he looked round his old bedroom, up among the parapets and chimney-pots, and thought that one more night already darkening would r.lose his acquaintance with it, perhaps forever. Dis- mantled of his little stock of books and pictures, it looked ooldly 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 school- boy will be so little mine as this old room. The dream may come back in my sleep, and 1 may return waking to this place, it may be: but the dream at least will serve no other master, and the room may have a score, and every one of them may change, neglect, misuse it." But his uncle was not to be left alone in the little back -parlor where he was then sitting by himself; for Captain Cattle considerate in his roughness, stayed away against his will, purposely that they should have ~ome talk together unobserved : so Walter, newly returned home from his last day's bustle, descended briskly to bear him company. " Uncle," he said gayly, laying his "hand upon the old man's shoulders, " what shall I send you home from Bar- badocs ? " " Hope, my dear Wally. Hope that we shall meet again, on this side of the grave. Send me as much of that as you can.* " So I will, uncle : I have enough and to spare, and DOMBEY AND SON. 61 111 not be chary of it ! And as to lively turtles, and limes for Captain Cuttle's punch, and preserves for you un Sundays? and all that sort of thing, why I'll send you ship-loads, uncle : when 1 m rich enough." Old Sol wiped his spectacles, and faintly smiled. " That's right, uncle ! " cried Walter, merrily, and clapping him half a dozen times uore 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 I As to my anticipations, tiiey are singing out of sight now." " Wally, my dear boy," returned the old man, " I'll do my best, I'll do my best." " And your best, uncle," said Walter, with his pleas- ant laugh, " is the best best that I know. You'll not forget what you're to send me, uncle ? " " No, Wally, no," replied the old man ; " everything I hear about Miss Dombey, now that she is left alone, poor lamb, I'll write. I fear it won't be much though, Wally ." " Why, I'll tell you what, uncle," said Walter, after a moment's hesitation, " I have just been up there." " Ay, ay, ay ? " murmured the old man, raising his eyebrows, and his spectacles with them. " Not to see her" said Walter, " though I could have aeen her, I dare say, if I had asked, Mr. Dombey being out of town- but to say a parting word to Susan. I thought I might venture to do that, you know, under the circumstances, and remembering when I saw Miss Dombey last." ' Yes, my boy, yes," replied his uncle, rousing him- self from a temporary abstraction. " So I saw her," pursued Walter. " Susan, I mean : and I I old her I was off and away to-morrow. And I said, uncle, that you had always had an interest in 62 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 leasft I thought I might say that, you know, under the circumstances. Don't you think so ? " "Yes, my boy, yes," replied his uncle, in the tone as before. u And I added," .pursued Walter, " that if she Su- san, I mean could ever let you know, either through herself or Mrs Richards, or anybody else who might be coming thi& wuy, 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 scarce- ly slept all last night through thinking of doing this; and could not make up my mind when I was out, whether to do it or not ; and yet I am sure it is the true feeling of my heart, and I should have been quite miserable afterwards if I had not relieved it." His honest voice and manner corroborated what he said, and quite established its ingenuousness. " So, if you ever see her, uncle," said Walter, " I mean Miss Dombey now and perhaps you may, who knows ! tell her how much I felt for her ; how much I used to think of her when I was here ; how I spoke of her, with the tears in my eyes, uncle, on this last night before I went away. Tell her that I said I never could forget her gentle manner, or her beautiful face,_ or her sweet kind disposition that was better than all. And as I didn't take them -from a woman's feet, or a Y oung lady's : onJy a little innocent child's," said Walter : * tell her if you don't mind, uncle, that I kept those shoes she'll remember how often they fell off, that DOMBET AND SON. 63 night and took them away with me as a remem- brance ! " 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 . Mid wheeled them away under the very eye of the insensible Midshipman before their owner had well fin- ished speaking. But that ancient mariner might have been excused his insensibility to the treasure as it rolled away. For, under his eye at the same moment, accurately within his range of observation, coming full into the sphere of his startled and intensely wide-awake look-out, were Florence and Susan Nipper : Florence looking up into his face half timidly, and receiving the whole shock of his wooden ogling ! More than this, they passed into the shop, and passed in at the parlor-door before they were observed by anybody but the Midshipman. And Walter, having his back to the door, would have known nothing of their apparition even then, but for seeing his uncle spring out of his own chair, and nearly tumble over another. " Why uncle ! " exclaimed Walter. " What's the mat- tw?" Old Solomon replied, " Miss Dombey ! " " Is it possible ! " cried Walter, looking round and Sorting up in his turn. " Here ! " Why it was so possible and so actual, that, while the words were on his lips, Florence hurried past him ; took Uncb Sol's snuff-colored lappels, one in each hand ; kissed him on the cheek ; an' turning, gave her hand to Walter with a simple truth and ear- 64 DOMBEY AND SON. nestness thai was her own, and no one else's hi the. world ! " Going away, Walter!" said Florence. " Yes, Miss Dombey," he replied, but not so hopefully as he endeavored : " I have a voyage before me. " " And your uncle," said Florence, looking back at Solomon. " He is sorry you are going, I am sure. Ah ! I see he is ! Dear Walter, I am very sorry too." " Goodness knows," exclaimed Miss Nipper, " there's a many we could spare instead, if numbers is a object, Mrs. Pipchin as a overseer would come cheap at her weight in gold, and if a knowledge of black slavery should be required, them Blimbers is the very people for the sitiwation." With that Miss Nipper untied her bonnet-strings, and after looking vacantly for some moments into a little black tea-pot that was set forth with the usual homely service, on the table, shook her head and a tin canister, and began unasked to make the tea. In the mean time Florence had turned again to the Instrument-maker, who was as full of admiration as sur- prise. " So grown ! " said old Sol. " So improved ! And yet not altered ! Just the same ! " " Indeed ! " said Florence. '' Ye yes," returned old Sol, rubbing his hands slowly, and considering the matter half aloud, as fcoine- thing pensive in the bright eyes looking at him arrested his attention. " Yes, that expression was in the younger fiace, too ! " " You remember me," said Florence with a smile, " and what a little creature I was then ? " "My dear young lady," returned the Instrument maker, " how could I forget you, often as I have though! DOMBEY AND SON. 65 of you and heard of you since ! At the very moment, indeed, when you came in, Wally was talking about you to me, and leaving messages for you, and " ,"Was he?" said Florence. "Thank you, Walter! Oh thank you, Walter ! I was afraid you might be going away and hardly thinking of me ; " and again she gave him her little hand so freely arid so faithfully that Walter held it for some moments in his own, and could not bear to let it go. Yet Walter did not hold it as he might have held it once, nor did its touch awaken those old day-dreams of his boyhood that had floated past him sometimes even lately, and confused him with their indistinct and broken shapes. The purity and innocence of her endearing manner, and its perfect trustfulness, and the undisguised regard for him that lay so deeply seated in her constant eyes, and glowed upon her fair face through the smile that shaded for alas! it was a smile too sad to brighten it, were not of their romantic race. They brought back to his thoughts the early death-bed he had seen her tending, and the love the child had borne her ; and on the wings of such remembrances she seemed to rise up, far above his idle fancies, into clearer and screner air. "I I am afraid I must call you Walter's uncle, sir," said Florence to the old man, " if you'll let me." " My dear young lady," cried old Sol. " Let you ! Good gracious ! " " We always knew you by that name, and talked of you," said Florence, glancing round and sighing gently. "The nice old parlor! Just the same! How well I recollect it ! " Old Sol looked first at her, then at his nephew, and 66 DOMBEY AXD SON. then rubbed his hands, and rubbed his spectacles, and Bald below his breath, " Ah ! time, time, time ! " There was a short silence ; during which Susan Nip- per skilfully impounded two extra cups and saucers from the cupboard, and awaited the drawing of the tea with a thoughtful air. U I want to tell Walter's uncle," said Florence, laying her hand timidly upon the old man's as it rested on the table, to bespeak his attention, " something that I am anxious about. He is going to be left alone, and if he will allow me not to take Walter's place, for that [ couldn't do, but to be his true friend and help him if I ever can while Walter is away, I shall be very much obliged to him indeed. Will you? May I, Walter's uncle ? " The Instrument-maker, without speaking, put her hand to his lips, and Susan Nipper, leaning back with her arms crossed, in the chair of presidency into which she had voted herself, bit one end of her bonnet-strings, and heaved a gentle sigh as she looked up at the skylight. " You will let me come to see you," said Florence, u when I can ; and you will tell me everything about yourself and Walter ; and you will have no secrets from Susan when she comes and I do not, but will confide in us, and trust us, and rely upon us. And you'll try to let us be a comfort to you ? Will you, Walter's uncle ? * The sweet face looking into his, the gently pleading eyes, the soft voice, and the light touch on his arm, made _ the more winning by a child's respect and honor for his age, that gave to all an air of graceful doubt and modest hesitation these, and her natural earnestness, so over- came the poor old Instrument-maker, that he only an- swered DOMBEY AND SON. 67 * Wally ! say a word for me, my dear. I'm very p-ateful." "No, Walter,'" returned Florence with her quiet smile * Say nothing for him, if you please. I understand him t ery well, and we must learn to talk together without *QU, dear Walter." The regretful tone in which she said these latter words, touched Walter more than all the rest " Miss Florence," he replied, with an effort to recover the cheerful manner he had preserved while talking with his uncle, " I know no more than my uncle, what to say in acknowledgment of such kindness, 1 am sure. But what could I say, after all, if I had the power of talking for an hour, except that it is like you ? " Susan Nipper began upon a n,w part of her bonnet- string, and nodded at the skylight, in approval of the sentiment expressed. "Oh! but Walter," said Florence, "there is some- thing that I wish to say to you before you go away, and you must call me Florence if you please, and not speak "like a stranger." " Like a stranger ! " returned Walter. " No. I could- n't speak so. I am sure, at least, I couldn't feel like one." " Ay, but that is not enough, and is not what I mean. For Walter," added Florence, bursting into tears, " he liked you very much, and said before he died that he was fond of you, and said ' Remember Walter ! ' and if you'll be a brother to me Walter, now that he is' gone and 1 liave none on earth, I'll be your sister all my life, and iliink of you like one wherever we may be ! Thif is what I wished to say, dear Walter but I cannot say it as { would, because my heart is full." 58 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 mo- icent, 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 him- self to cherish and protect her very image, in his banish- ment, 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 owu breast when she gave it to him. Susan Nipper, who had bitten both her bonnet-strings at once, and imparted a great deal of private emotion to the skylight, during this transaction, now changed the subject by inquiring who took milk and who took sugar ; and being enlightened on these points, poured out the tea. They all four gathered socially about the little tablp, and took tea under that young lady's active super- intendence ; and the presence of Florence in the back- parlor, brightened the Tartar frigate on the wall. Half an hour ago, Walter, for his life, would have hardly called her by her name. But he could do so now when she entreated him. He could think of' her being there, without a lurking misgiving that it would have been better if she had not come. He could calmly think how beautiful she was, how full of promise, what a home some happy man would find in such a heart one day. He could reflect upon his own place in that heart, with pride ; and with a brave determination, if not to deserve >t he still thought that far above him never to de- serve it less DOMBEY AND SON. 69 Some fairy influence must surely have hovered round the hands o/ Susan Nipper when she made (he tea, engendering the tranquil air that reigned in the back- parlor during its discussion. Some counter-influence must surely have hovered round the hands cf Uncle Sol's chronometer, and moved them faster than the Tarlar 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 in- cidentally 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 unim- peachable authority. If Uncle Sol had been going to be hanged by his own time, he never would have allowed that the chronometer was too fast, by the least fraction of a second. Florence at parting recapitulated to the old man all that she had said before, and bound him to their compact. Uncle Sol attended her lovingly to the legs of the wooden Midshipman, and there resigned her to Walter, who was ready to escort her and Susan Nipper to the coach. " Walter," said Florence by the way, " I have been afraid to ask before your uncle. Do you think you will be absent very long ? " "Indeed," said Walter, "I don't know. I fear so. Mr. Dombey signified as much, I thought, when he ap- pointed me." "Is it a favor, Walter?" inquired Florence, after a moment's hesitation, and looking anxiously in his face. " The appointment ? " returned Walter. " Yes." Walter would have given anything to have answered !Q the affirmative, but his face answered before his lip* 70 DOMBEY AND SON. could, and Florence was too attentive to it not to under- stand its reply. " I am afraid you have scarcely been a favorite with papa," she said, timidly. " There is no reason," replied Walter, smiling, " H hy I should be." " No reason, Walter ! " " There was no reason," said Walter, understanding what she meant. " There are many people employed in the house. Between Mr. Dorabey and a young man like me, there's a wide space of separation. If I do my duty, I do what I ought, and do no more than all the rest," Had Florence any misgiving of which she was hardly conscious : any misgiving that had sprung into an indis- tinct and undefined existence since that recent night when she had gone down to her father's room : that WalterV accidental interest in her, and early knowledge of her, might have involved him in that powerful dis- pleasure and dislike ? Had Walter any such idea, or any sudden thought that it was in her mind at that mo- ment? 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 cer- tainly Miss Nipper's thoughts travelled in that direction, and very confidently too. "You may come back very soon," said Florence, " perhaps, Walter." u I may come back," said Walter, " an old man, and find you an old lady. But I hope for better things." " Papa," said Florence, after a moment, " will will recover from his grief, and speak more freely to me one day, perhaps ; and if he should, I will tell him how DOMBEY AND SON. 71 much I wish to see you back again, and ask him to recall you for my sake." There was a touching modulation in these words about her father that Walter understood too well. The coach being close at hand, he would have left bet without speaking, for now he felt what parting was ; but Florence held his hand when she was seated, and then he found there was a little packet in her own. " Walter," she said, looking full upon him with her affectionate eyes, " like you, I hope for better things. I will pray for them, and believe that they will arrive. I made this little gift for Paul. Pray take it with my love, and do not look at it until you are gone away. And now, God bless you, Walter ! never forget me. You are my brother, dear ! " He was glad that Susan Nipper came between them, or he might have left her with a sorrowful remembrance of him. He was glad too that she did not look out of the coach again, but waved the little hand to him instead. as long as he could see it. In spite of her request, he could not help opening tha packet that night when he went to bed. It was a little purse : and there was money in it. Bright rose the sun next morning, from his absence in strange countries, and up rose Walter with it to receive tht captain, who was already at the door : having turned out earlier than was necessary, in order to get under weigh while Mrs. MacStinger was yet slumbering. The captain pretended to be in tip-top spirits, and brought a very smoky tongue in one of the pockets of the broad blue coat for breakfast. " And Wal'r," said the captain, when they took their eats at table, " if your uncle's the man I think him, he'll 72 DOMBEY AND SON. bring out the last bottle of the Madeira on the present occasion." " No, no, Ned," returned the old man. u No ! That shall be opened when Walter comes home again." " Well said ! " cried the captain. " Hear him ! " "There it lies," said Sol Gills, "down in the little cellar, covered with dirt and cobwebs. There may be dirt and cobwebs over you and me perhaps, Ned, before it sees the light." " Hear him ! " cried the captain. " Good morality I Wal'r my lad. Train up a fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade on it. Overhaul the Well," said the captain on second thoughts, " I a'n't quite certain where that's to be found ; but when found, make a note of. Sol Gills, heave ahead again ! " " But there, or somewhere, it shall lie, Ned, until Wally comes back to claim it," said the old man. u That's all I meant to say." " And well said too," returned the captain ; " and if we three don't crack that bottle in company, I'll give you two leave to drink my allowance ! " 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 terri- bly 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 their heing 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 DOMBEY AXD SOX. 73 hackney -coach pass: and darting out into tin; road when Walter went up-stairs to take leave of (he lodgers, on a feint of smelling fire in a neighboring chimney. These firtifices Captain Cuttle deemed inscrutable by any unin- spired observer. Walter was coming down from his parting expedition up-stairs, and was crossing the shop to go back to the little parlor, when he saw a faded face he knew, looking in at the door, and darted towards it. " Mr. Carker ! " cried Walter, pressing the hand of John Carker the Junior. " Pray come in ! This is kind of you, to be here so early to say good-by to me. You knew how glad it would make me to shake hands with you, once, before going away. I cannot say how glad I am to have this opportunity. Pray come in." " It is not likely that we may ever meet again Walter," returned the other, gently resisting his invita tion, " 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 youi frank approaches, Walter, any more." There was a melancholy in his smile as he said it> that showed he had found some company and friendship for his thoughts even in that. " Ah, Mr. Carker ! " returned Walter. " Why did you resist them ? You could have done me nothing but good, I am very sure." He shook his head. " If there were any good," he jaid, " 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." 74 DOMbEY ANJ SON. " Come in, Mr. Carker, and make acquaintance with Biy 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' K I have not told him anything about our last conver- sation, Mr. Carker ; not even him, believe me." The gray Junior pressed his hand, and tears rcse in his eyes. " If I ever make acquaintance with him, Walter," he returned, '" it will be that I may hear tidings of you. Rely on my not wronging your forbearance and consid- eration. It would be to wrong it, not to tell him all the truth, before I sought a word of confidence from him. But I have no friend or acquaintance except you : and even for your sake, am little likely to make any." " I wish," said Walter, " you had suffered me to be your friend indeed. I always wished it, Mr. Carker, as you know ; but never half so much as now, when we are going to part." w 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 mo.-t towards you, and was fullest of you. Walter, good-by ! " " Good-by, Mr. Carker. Heaven be with you, sir ! * cried Walter, with emotion. "If," said the other, retaining his hand while he spoke ; " if when you come back, you miss me from my - >>ld corner, and should hear from any one 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 my time is coning on, that some one like my former self may stand there, for a DOMBEY AND SON. 75 moment, and remember me with pity and forgiveness ! Walter, good-by ! " His figure crept like a shadow down the bright, sun- lighted street, so cheerful yet so solemn in the early summer morning ; and slowly passed away. The relentless chronometer at last announced tha Walter must turn his back upon the Wooden Midshij- man : and away they went, himseltj his uncle, and the captain, in a hackney-coach to a wharf, where they were to take steamboat for some Reach down the river, the name of which, as the captain gave it out, was a hope- less 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 cap- tain out some mile and a half off, and had been ex- changing unintelligible roars with him ever since. Be- coming the lawful prize of this personage, who was frightfully hoarse and constitutionally in want of shav- ing, they were all three put aboard the Son and Heir. And the Son and Heir was in a pretty state of confu- sion, with sails lying all bedraggled on the wet decks, loose ropes tripping people up, men in red shirts run- ning barefoot to and fro, casks blockading every foot of apace, and, in the thickest of the fray, a black cook in a black caboose up to his eyes in vegetables and blinded with smoke. The captain immediately drew Walter into a corner, and with a great effort, that made his face very red. pulled up the silver watch which was so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it came out like a bung. " Wal'r, r said the captain, handing it over, and shak- 76 UUMBEY AND SON. Ing him heartily by the hand, " a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the arternoon, and it's a watch that'll do you credit." " Captain Cuttle ! I couldn't think of it ! " cried Wai- tcr, detaining him, for he was running away. u Pray take it back. I have one already." " Then Wal'r," said the captain, suddenly diving irlo o.ne of his pockets and bringing up the two teaspoons and the sugar-tongs, with which he had armed himself to meet such an objection, " Take this here trifle of plate, instead." " No, no, I couldn't indeed ! " cried Walter, " a thou- sand 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 that I should like- to have it. There ! Good-by, Captain Cuttle ! Take care of my uncle ! Uncle Sol, God bless you ! " They were over the side in the confusion, before Walter caught another glimpse of either ; and when he ran up to the stern, and looked after them, he saw his uncle hanging down his head in the boat, and Captain Cuttle rapping him on the back with the great silver watch (it must have been very painful), and gesticu- lating hopefully with the teaspoons and sugar-tongs. Catching sight of Walter, Captain Cuttle dropped the property into the bottom of the boat with perfect uncon- cern, being evidently oblivious of its existence, and pul- ling off the glazed hat hailed him lustily. The glazed fiat made quite a show in the sun with its glistening, and the captain continued to wave it until he could be seen tto longer. Then the confusion on board, which had DOMBEY AND SON. 77 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 favorable breeze; the water flew in sparkles from the prow ; and off upon her voyage wont the Son and Heir, as hopefully and trippingly as many another son and heir, gone down, had started on his way befbre her. Day after day, Old Sol and Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in the little back parlor and worked out her course with the chart spread before them on the round table. At night, when old Sol climbed up-stairs, 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 mean while, undisturbed. DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XX. MR. DOMBEY GOES UPON A JOURNEY. K MR. DOMBEY, sir," said Major Bagstock, " Joey R is not in general a man of sentiment, for Joseph ia tough. But Joe has his feelings, sir, and when they are awakened Damme, Mr. Dombey," cried the major with sudden ferocity, " this is weakness, and I won't sub- mit to it ! " Major Bagstock delivered himself of these expressions on receiving Mr. Dombey as his guest at the head of his own staircase in Princess's-place. Mr. Dombey had come to breakfast with the major, previous to their set- ting forth on their trip ; and the ill-starred native had already undergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while, in connection with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a burden to him. " It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed;" observed the major, relapsing into a mild state, " to de- liver himself up, a prey to his own emotions ; but damme, sir," cried the major, in another spasm of feroc- ity, " I condole with you ! " The major's purple visage deepened in its hue, and the major's lobster eyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr. Dombey by the hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it had been the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr. Dorabey for DCMBEY AND SON. 79 A thousand pounds a side and the championship of Eng- land. With a rotatory motion of his head, and a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the major then conducted his visitor to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him (having now composed his feelings) with the freedom and frankness of a travelling companion. " Dombey," said the major, " I'm glad to see you. I'm proud to see you. There are not many men in Europe to whom J. Bag.stoek would say that for Josh is blunt, sir : it's his nature but Joey B. is proud to see you, Dombey." " Major," returned Mr. Dombey, " you are very oblig- ing." " 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 Jot yet, I find. But this occasion, being special, is a source ol pride to me. By the Lord, sir," said the major, reso- lutely, " it's an honor to me ! " Mr. Dombey, in his estimation of himself and hia 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 agreeable. It was a confirmation to Mr. Dombey, if he had required any, of his not being mis- taken 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 Vess becoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange. And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the 80 DOMBEY AND SON. like of this, it was consolatory then, wlien 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 a.*ked him. Sometimes, thinking of the baby question, he could hardly forbear inquiring, himself, what could it do indeed : what had it done ? But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullen despondency and gloom of his retirement, and pride easily found its reassurance in many testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable and precious as the major's. Mr. Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined to the major. It cannot be said that he' warmed towards him, but he thawed a little. The major had had some part and not too much in the days by the seaside. He was a man of the world, and knew some great people. He talked much, and told stories ; and Mr. Dombey was dis- posed 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. Alto- gether the major was a creditable companion, well accus- tomed 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 ruthlrss 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, un- examined. DOMBEY AND SON. 81 " Where is my scoundrel ! " said the -najor, looking Hrrathfully round the room. The native, who had no particular name, but answered to any vituperative epithet, presented himself instantly at the door, and ventured to come no nearer. " You villain ! " said the choleric major, " where's the breakfast ? " The dark servant disappeared in search of it, and was quickly heard reascending the stairs in such a tremulous c-tato, that the plates and dishes on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetically as he came, rattled again all the way up. " Dombey," said the major, glancing at the native aa 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 savory pie, a dish of kidneys, and so forth. Pray sit down. Old Joe can give you nothing hut camp fare, you see." " Very excellent fare, major," replied his guest ; and not in mere politeness either ; for the major always took the best po.-sible 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 (acuity to that circumstance. " You have been looking over the way, sir," observed the major. " Have you seen our friend ? " " You mean Miss Tox," retorted Mr. Dombey. " Na" '" Charming woman, sir," said the major, with a fat laugh rising in his short throat, and nearly suffocating aim. " Miss Tox is a very good sort of person, I believe," replied Mr. Dombey. The haughty coldness of the reply seemed to afford 82 DOMBEY AND SON. Major Bagstock infinite delight He swelled and swelled, exceedingly ; and even laid down his knife and fork for a moment, to rub his hands. " Old Joe, sir," said the major, " was a bit of a favor- ite in that quarter once. But Joe has had his day J, Bagstock is extinguished outrivalled floored, sir. [ tell you what, Dombey." The major paused in his eating, and looked mysteriously indignant. " That's a de-vilish ambitious woman, sir." Mr. Dombey said " Indeed ! " with frigid indifference : mingled perhaps with some contemptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the presumption to harbor such a superior quality. " That woman, sir," said the major, " is, in her way, a Lucifer. Joey B. has had his day, sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York observed of Joey, at a levee, that he saw." The major accompanied this with such a look, and, be- tween eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogether so swollen and inflamed about the head, that even Mr. Dombey showed some anxiety for him. " That ridiculous old spectacle, sir," pursued the major, "aspires. She aspires sky-high, sir. Matrimonially, Dombey." a I am sorry for her," said Mr. Dombey. " Don't say that, Dombey," returned the major, hi a. warning voice. " Why should I not, major ? " said Mr. Dorabey. The major gave no answer but the horse's cough, and went on eating vigorously. * She has taken an interest in your household," saiJ DOMBEY AND SON. 83 'he major, stopping short again, " and been a frequent visitor at your house for some time now." " Yes," replied Mr. Dombey with great stateliness, ** Miss Tox was originally received there, at the time of Mrs. Dombey's death, as a friend of my sister's ; and being a well-behaved person, and showing a liking for the poor infant, she was permitted I may say encour nged to repeat her visits, with my sister, and grad- ually to occupy a kind of footing of familiarity in the family. I have," said Mr. Dombey, in the tone of a man who was making a great and valuable concession, " I have a respect for Miss Tox. She has been so obliging as to render many little services in my house : trifling and insignificant services perhaps, major, but not to be disparaged on that account : and I hope I have had the good fortune to be enabled to acknowledge them by such attention and notice as it has been in my power to bestow. I hold myself indebted to Miss Tox, major," added Mr. Dombey, with a slight wave of his hand, " for the pleasure of your acquaintance." " Dombey," said the major warmly ; '* no ! No, sir ! Joseph Bagstock can never permit that assertion to pass uncontradicted. Your knowledge of old Joe, sir, such as he is, and old Joe's knowledge of you, sir, had its origin in a noble fellow, sir in a great creature, sir. Dombey ! " said the major, with a struggle which it was not very difficult to parade, his whole life being a strug' gle against all kinds of apoplectic symptoms, " we knew each other through your boy." Mr. Dombey seemed touched, as it is not improbable ihe major designed he should be, by this allusion. H good as to make a Charitable Grinder on." " Well, man," said Mr. Dombey, in his severest man- ner. " What about him ? " '' Why, sir," returned Toodle, shaking his head with a fnce of great anxiety and distress. " I'm forced to say, sir, that he's gone wrong." " He has gone wrong, has he ? " said Mr. Dombey, with a hard kind of satisfaction. " He has fell into bad company, you see, gentlemen," pursued the father, looking wistfully at both, and evi- dently 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 address- ing Mr. Dombey individually ; " and it's better I should out and say my boy's gone rather wrong. Polly's dread- ful down about it, gentelmen," said Toodle with the same dejected lock, and another appeal to the major. ' ; A son of this man's whom I caused to be educated,, major," said Mr. Dombey, giving him his arm. " The usual return ! " " Take adfice from plain old Joe, and never educate (liflt sort of people, sir," returned the major. " Damme, sir, it never does ! It always fails ! " The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, the quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, tnd flogged and badged, and ta )ght, as parrots are, by a 90 DOMBEY AND SON. brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with as mucb 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 in to 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 lie hanged. Mr. Dombey assented bitterly ; but there was some- thing more in his bitterness, and in his moody way of falling back in the carriage, and looking with knitted brows at the changing objects without, than the failure of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders' Company. He had seen upon the man's rough cap a piece of new crape, and he had assured himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore it for his son. So ! from high to low, at home or abroad, from Flor- ence in his great house to the coarse churl who was feed- ing the fire then smoking before them, every one set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy, and was a bidder against him ! Could he ever forget how that woman had wept over his pillow, and called him her own" child ! or how he, waking from his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed and brightened when she came in \ To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and DOMBEY AND SOX. 91 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 Ins projects, and his power, and allied with whom he was to have shut out all the world as with a double door of gold, should have let in such a herd to insult him with their knowledge of his defeated hopes, and their boasts of claiming community of feeling with himself, so far removed : if not of having crept into the place wherein he would have lorded it alone ! He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tor- tured 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 th^ young life that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to its fore-doomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way its own defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster Death ! Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowing among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, boom- ing 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 92 DOMBEY AND SOJT. chalk, tb rough the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him : like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death ! Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by ihe 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 vapor: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death I Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sun- shine, away, and still away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great work^and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of shadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and Btill away, onward and onward ever : glimpses of cot- tage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich estates, of hus- bandry and handicraft, of people, of old roads and palhg that look desertel, small, and insignificant as they are left behind ; and so they do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in the track of the indomitable monster Death! Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging flown into the earth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance, that amidst the dark ness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, and to tend furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the DOMBEY AND SON. 93 wet wall shows its surface flying past like a fiercw stream. Away once more into the day, and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are. that in a minute more are not: sometimes lapping water greedily, and before the spout at which it drinks has ceased to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance ! Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on resistless to the goal ; and now its way, still like the way of Death, is strewn with ashes thickly. "Everything around is blackened. There are dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations faf below. There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through the battered roofs and broken win- dows, wretched rooms are seen, where want and fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and defor- mity 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 ruin- ous and dreary. So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had (lie 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 every- where. There was a remorseless tiiumph going on about him, and it galled and stung him in his pride and 94 DOMBET AND SON. jealousy, whatever form it took: though most of all when it divided with him the love and memory of his lost boy. There was a face he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears, and hidden soon behind two quivering hands that often had attended him in fancy on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last night, timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was something of doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he once more saw that fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike, was like reproach. It was a trouble to him to*" think of this face of Florence. Because he felt any new compunction towards it ? No. Because the feeling it awakened in him of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older times was full-formed now, and spoke out pRfiuly, 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 colors of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful caange, and promise of better things, that life had quite as, much to do with his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of his hope removed instead of her ? The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved DOMBEY AND SON. 95 him to no reflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first ; she was an aggravation of his bit- terness 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 be- lieved it, without a pang), and had not. Her loving and innocent face rising before him, had no softening or win- ning influence. He rejected the angel, and took up with the tormenting spirit crouching in his bosom. Her pa- tience, goodness, youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms in the ashes upon which he set his heel. He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than once upon this journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this journey's end, tracing figures in the dust with his stick, the thought came into his mind, what was there he could interpose between himself and it ? The major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, like another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to leer at the prospect, as if there were a great 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 friend by informing him that the pcet-horses were harnessed and the carriage ready. " Dombey," said the major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, " don't be thoughtful. It's a bad habit. Old Joe, sir, wouldn't be as tough as you see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man, Dom- bey, to be thoughtful. In your position, sir, you're far above that kind of thing." The major, even in his friendly remonstrances, thtw 96 DOMBEY AND SON. consulting the dignity and honor of Mr. Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their importance, Mr. Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to a gentleman pos- sessing 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 for his entertainment. In this flow of spirits and conversation, only inter- rupted by his usual plethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by some violent assault upon the native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in his dark- brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with an outlandish impossibility of adjustment being, of their own accord, and without any reference to the tai- lor's art, long where they ought to be short, short where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to be loose, and loose where they ought to be tight and to which he imparted a new grace, whenever the major attacked him, by shrinking into them like a shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey in this flow of spirits and con- versation, 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 clicking, appeared to be in the box under, the rumble, or in some neighboring haystack. Nor did the major improve it at the Royal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been or- dered, and where he so oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when he retired to bed he bad no voice at all, except to cough with, and could only DOMBEY AND SON. 97 nake himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him. He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but conducted himself, at breakfast, like a giant refreshing. At this meal they arranged their daily habits. The major was to take the responsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink ; and they were lo 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 partexl until dinner-time. Mr. Dombey retired to nurse his wholesome thoughts in his own way. Tlie major, attended by the native carrying a camp-stool, a great- i-oat, 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 Dornbey wherever he went. There never was a man who stood by a friend more slanchly than the major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself. It was surprising how much new conversation the major had to let off at dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr. Dombey to admire his social qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the latest newspapers received ; and mentioned several sub- jects in connection 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 him 98 DOMBET AND SON. elf, 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 improve- ment on his solitary life ; and in place of excusing him- self for another day, as he had thought of doing when alone, walked out with the major arin-iu-arm. DOMBEY AND SON. 99 CHAPTER XXI. NEW FACES. THE majur, more blue-faced and staring more over- ripe, as it were, than ever and giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse's coughs, not so much of necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of importance, walked arm-in-arm with Mr. Dombey up the sunny side of the way, with his cheeks swelling over his tight stock, his legs majestically wide apart, and his great head wag- ging 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, l>ut he merely shook his fingers at them as he passed, and led Mr. Dom- bey on : pointing out the localities as they went, and enlivening the walk with any current scandal suggested by them. In this manner the major and Mr. Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to their own satisfaction, ivlien they beheld advancing towards them a wheeled ,hair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her Carriage by a kind of rudder in front, while it was pro- pelled by some unseen power in the rear. Although the lady was not young, she was very blooming in the face quite '-osj -and her dress and attitude weie per- 100 DOMBEY AND SON. fectly juvenile. Walking by the side of the chair, and carrying her gossamer parasol with a proud and weary nir, as if so great an effort must be soon abandoned, and the parasol dropped, sauntered a much younger lady, very handsome, very haughty, very wilful, who tossed her head and drooped her eyelids, as though, if there were anything in all the world worth looking into, save a mirror, it certainly was not the earth or sky. "Why, what the devil have we here, sir!" cried the major, stopping as this little cavalcade drew near. " My dearest Edith ! " drawled the lady in the chair u Major Bagstock ! " The major no sooner heard the voice, than he relin- quished 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 oilier lady. And now, the chair having stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a flushed page pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and in part out- pushed his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, and wan, and thin, and his plight appeared the more forlorn from his having injured the shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward, as is sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries. " Joe Bagstock," said the major to both ladies, " is a proud and happy man for the rest of his life." " You false creature," said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. " Where do you come from ? I can't beai you." " Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, ma'am," said die major, promptly, "as a reason for being tolerated. DOMBEY AND SON. 101 Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Skewton." The lady in the chair was gracious. " Mr. Dombey, Mrs. Granger." The lady witli the parasol was faintly conscious of Mr. Dora- bey's taking off his hat, and bowing low. " I am de- lighted, sir," said the major, "to have this opportunity." The major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three and leered in his ugliest manner. " Mrs. Skewton, Dombey," said the major, " makes havoc in the heart of old Josh." Mr. Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it. " You perfidious goblin," said the lady in the chair, M have done ! How long have you been here, bad man ? " " One day," replied the major. "And can you be a day, or even a minute," returned the lady, slightly settling her false curls and false eye- brows with her fan, and showing her false teeth, set off by her false complexion, " in the garden of what's-its- name " " Eden, I suppose, mama," interrupted the younger lady, scornfully. " My dear Edith," said the other, " I cannot help it I never can remember those frightful names without having your whole soul and being inspired by the sight of nature ; by the perfume," said Mrs. Skewton, rustling a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, w of her artless breath, you creature ! " The discrepancy between Mrs. Skewton's fresh enthu- siasm of words, and forlornly faded manner, was hardly 'ess 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 shair (which he never varied) was one in which she 102 DOMBEY AND SON. had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before, by a then fashionable artist, who had appended to hia 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 re- clined on board her galley. Mrs. Skevvton was a beauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honor. 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 what- ever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking. " Mr. Dombey is devoted to nature, I trust ? " said Mrs. Skewton, settling her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of some diamonds, and her family connections. " My friend Dombey, ma'am," returned the major, M may be devoted to her in secret, but a man who is par- amount in the greatest city in the universe " " No one can be a stranger," said Mrs. Skewton, " to Mr. Dombey's immense influence." As Mr. Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes " You reside here, madam ? " said Mr. Dombey, ad- dressing her. " No, we have been to a great many places. To Ilar- rogate, and Scarborough, and into Devonshire. We- have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama likes change." "Edith of course does not," said Mrs. Skewton, with & ghastly archness. " I have not found that there is any change in sucb DOMBEY AND SON. 108 places," was the answer, delivered with supreme indiffer- ence. " They libel me. There is only one change, Mr. Dombey," observed Mrs. Skewton, with a mincing sigh, u for which I really care, and that I fear I shall never b? permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But seclusion and contemplation are my what's-his-name" > " If you mean Paradise, mama, you had better say so, to render yourself intelligible," said the younger lady. " My dearest Edith," returned Mrs. Skewton, " you know that I am wholly dependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr. Dombey, Nature in- tended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows and china." This curious association of objects, suggesting a re- membrance of the celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received with perfect gravity by Mr. Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Nature was, no doubt, a very respectable institution. " What I want," drawled Mrs. Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, "is heart." It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in which she used the phrase * What I want is frankness, confidence, less convention- ality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully artificial." We were, indeed. " In short," said Mrs. Skewton, " I want nature every- where. It world be so extremely charming." " Nature is inviting us away now, mama, if you are ready," said the younger lady, curling her handsome lip. A.t this hint, the wan page, who had been surveying the 104 DOMBEY AND SON. party over the top of the chair, vanished behind it, as if the ground had swallowed him up. " Stop a moment, Withers ! " said Mrs. Skewton, as the chair began to move ; calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk stockings. " Where are you staying, abomination ? " The major was staying at the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey. " You may come and see us any evening when you are good," lisped Mrs. Skewton. " If Mr. Dombey will honor us, we shall be happy. Withers, go on ! " The major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful carelessness ; after the Cleopatra model : and Mr. Dombey bowed. The elder lady hon- ored them both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave of her hand ; the younger lady with the very slightest inclination of her head that common courtesy allowed. The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched color on it which the sun made infin- itely more haggard and dismal than any want of color could have been, and of the proud beauty of the daugh- ter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engen- dered 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, up-hill, 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 ele- DOMBEY AND SON. 105 gant fonn, from head (o foot, the same supreme disregard of everything and everybody. " I tell you what, sir," said the major, as they resumed their walk again. " If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there's not a woman in the world whom he'd preftf for Mrs. Bag-took to that woman. By George, sir!" said the major. ' she's superb ! " " Do you mean the daughter ? " inquired Mr. Dombey, " Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey," said the major, " that he should mean the mother ! " " You were eomplimentary to the mother," returned Mr. Dombey. " An ancient flame, sir," chuckled Major Bagstock. " De-vilish ancient. I humor her." " She impresses me as being perfectly genteel," said Mr. Dombey. " Genteel, sir," said the major, stopping short, and staring in his companion's face. " The Honorable Mrs. Skewton, sir, is sister to the late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present lord. The family are not wealthy they're poor, indeed and she lives upon a small jointure ; but if you come to blood, sir ! " The major gave a flourish with his stick and walked on again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, if you came to that. " You addressed the daughter, I observed," said Mr. Dombey, after a short pause, " as Mrs. Granger " " Edith Skewton,- sir," returned the major, stopping (short again, and punching a mark in the ground with his cane, to represent her, " married (at eighteen) Granger rf 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 106 DOMBEY AND SON. of Ours; . de-vilish handsome fellow, sir, of forty-one. He died, air, in the second year of his marriage." The major ran the representative of the deceased Granger through and through the body with his walking-stick, and went on again, carrying his stick over his shoulder. " How long is this ago ? " asked Mr. Dombey, making another halt. " Edith Granger, sir," replied the major, shutting one eye, putting his head on one side, passing his cane into his left hand, and smoothing his shirt-frill with his right, u is, at this present time, not quite thirty. And, damme, sir," said the major, shouldering his stick once more, and walking on again, " she's a peerless woman ! " " Was there any family ? " asked Mr. Dombey, pres- ently. " Yes, air," said the major. " There was a boy." Mr. Pombey's eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face. " Who was drowned, sir," pursued the major, " when a child of four or five years old." " Indeed ? " said Mr. Dombey, raising his head. " By the upsetting of a boat in which his nurse had no business to have put him," said the major. " That's hit history. Edith Granger is Edith Granger still ; but if tough old Joey B., sir, were a little younger and a little richer, the name of that immortal paragon should be Bagstock." The major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more like an overfed Mephistopheles than ever, }s he said the words. " Provided the lady made no objection, I suppose ? " said Mr. Dombey coldly. " By Gad, sir," said the major, " the Bagstock breed DOMBEY AND SON. 107 are not accustomed to that sort of obstacle. Though it's true enough that Edith might have married twen-ty times, but for being proud, sir, proud." Mr. Dombey seemed, by his face, to think 'no worse of her for that. " It's a great quality after all," said the major. " By the Lord, it's a high quality ! Dombey ! You are proud yourself, and your friend, old Joe, respects you for it, sir." With this tribute to the character of his ally, which seemed to be wrung from him by the force of circum- stances and the irresistible tendency of their conversa- tion, ihe major closed the subject, and glided into a general exposition of the extent to which he had been beloved and doted on by splendid women and brilliant creatures. On the next day but one, Mr. Dombey and the major encountered the Honorable Mrs. Skewton and her daugh- ter 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. Dom- bey 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 hia and Mr. Dombey's compliments, that they would have the honor 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 Honorable Mrs. Skewton to Major Bagstock, and briefly saying, " You 108 DOMBET AND SON. lire a shocking bear and I have a great mind not to for- give you, but if you are very good indeed," which was underlined, " you may come. Compliments (in which Edith unites) to Mr. Dombey." The Honorable Mrs. Skewton and her daughter, Mrs. Granger, resided while at Leamington, in lodgings thai were fashionable enough and dear enough, but ralher limited in point of space and conveniences ; so that the Honorable Mrs. Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her head in the fire-place, while (he Honorable 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 beau- tiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighboring milk- shop ; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the night in a shed belong- ing to the same dairy, where new-laid eggs were pro- duced by the poultry connected with the establishment, who roosted on a broken donkey-cart, persuaded, to all appearance, that it grew there, and was a species of tree. Mr. Dombey and the major found Mrs. Skewton ar- ranged, as Cleopatra, among the cushions of a sofa ; very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling Shakspeare'e Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On their way up- stairs 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 109 as impossible that it could be otherwise : but she seemed with her own pride to defy her very self. Whether she held cheap, attractions that could only call forth admiration that was worthless to her, or whether she designed to render them more precious to admirers by this usage of them, those to whom they were precious seldom paused to consider. " I hope, Mrs. Granger," said Mr. Dombey, advancing a step towards her, " we are not the cause of your ceas- ing to play ? " " You? oh no!" ' Why do you not go on, then, my dearest Edith?" said Cleopatra. " I left off as I began of my own fancy." The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an indifference quite removed from dulness or in- sensibility, for it was pointed with proud purpose : was well set off by the carelessness with which she drew her hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room. " Do you know, Mr. Dombey," said her languishing mother, playing with a hand-screen, " that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually almost differ" " Not quite, sometimes, mama ? " said Edith. " Oh never quite, my darling ! Fie, fie, it would break my heart," returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen, which Edith made no move- ment to meet, "about these cold conventionalities of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural ! Dear me ! With all those yearnings, and gushing?, and impulsive throbbings that we have im- planted in our souls, and which are so very charming why are we not more natural?" 110 DOMBEY AND SON. Mr. Dombey said it was very true, very true. " We could be more natural I suppose if we tried ? " laid Mrs. Skewton. Mr. Dombey thought it possible. " Devil a bit, ma'am," said the major. u We couldn't afford it. Unless the world was peopled with J. B.'s tough and blunt old Joes, ma'am, plain red herrings with hard roes, sir we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do." u You naughty infidel," said Mrs. Skewton, " be mute." " Cleopatra commands," returned the major, kissing his hand, " and Antony Bagstock obeys." " The man has no sensitiveness," said Mrs. Skewton, cruelly holding up the hand-screen so as to shut the major out. " No sympathy. And what do we live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming' Without that gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth," said Mrs. Skewton, arranging her lace tucker, and com- placently observing the effect of her bare lean arm, looking upward from the wrist, " how could we poss-bly bear it ? In short, obdurate man ! " glancing at the major, round the screen, " I would have my world all heart ; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won't allow you to disturb it, do you hear ? " The major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world ; which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more, she would positively send him home. Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round th< tea, Mr. Dombey again addressed himself to Edith. M There is not much company here, it would seem ? " DOMBEY AND SON. Ill said Mr. Dombey, in his own portentous gentlemanly way. " I believe not. "We see none.". " Why really," observed Mrs. Skewton from her couch, " there are no people here just now with whom we care to associate." " They have not enough heart," said Edith, with a smile. The very twilight of a smile : so singularly were its light and darkness blended. " My dearest Edith rallies me, you see ! " said her mother, shaking her head : which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy twinkled now and then in op- position to the diamonds. " Wicked one ! " " You have been here before, if I am not mistaken ? "* said Mr. Dombey. Still to Edith. " Oh, several times. I think we have been every- where." " A beautiful country ! " " I suppose it is. Everybody says so." " Your cousin Feenix raves about it Edith," interposed her mother from her couch. The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her eyebrows by a hair's-breadth as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal world the least to be re- garded, turned her eyes again towards Mr. Dombey. " I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the neighborhood," she said. " You have almost reason to be, madam," he replied, glancing at a variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognized several as representing neighbor- ing points of view, and which were strewn abundantly ubout the room, '" if these beautiful productions are from your hand. ' 112 DOMUEY AND SON. She gave him uo reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing. " Have they that interest ? " said Mr. Dombey. " Are Ihey yours ? " Yes." " And you play, I already know." Yes." " And sing." Yes." She answered all these questions with a strange reluc- tance ; and with that remarkable air of opposition to her- self, already noticed as belonging to her beauty. Yet phe was not embarrassed, but wholly self-possessed. Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed her face, and so far as she could her manner also, to him ; and continued to do so, when he was silent. " You have many resources against weariness at least," said Mr. Dombey. " Whatever their efficiency may be," she returned, " you know them all now. I have no more." " May I hope to prove them all ? " said Mr. Dombey, with solemn gallantry, laying down a drawing he had held, and motioning towards the harp. " Oh certainly ! If you desire it ! " Sho 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 any one had seen it) of a multitude of expressions, among which that of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, overshadowed all the rest, went out of the room. The major, who was quite forgiven by this time, had wheeled a little table up to Cleopatra, and was sitting DOMBEY AND SON. 118 down to play piquet with her. Mr. Dombey, not know- ing the ffame, sat down to watch them for his edification until Edith should return. " We are going to have some music, Mr. Dombey, 1 bopo?" said Cleopatra. " Mrs. Granger has been kind enough to promise so," said Mr. Dombey. " Ah ! That's very nice. Do you propose, major ? " " No, ma'am," said the mnjor. " Couldn't do it." ** You're a barbarous being," replied the lady, " and my hand's destroyed. You are fond of music, Mr. Dombey ? " " Eminently so," was Mr. Dombey's answer. " Yes. It's very nice," said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. " So much heart in it undeveloped recollec- tions of a previous state of existence and all that which is so truly charming. Do you know," simpered Cleopatra, r .. /ersing the knave of clubs, who had come into her game with his heels uppermost, " that if any- thing could tempt me to put a period to my life, it would be curiosity to find out what it's all about, and what it means ; there are so many provoking mysteries, really, that are hidden from us. Major, you to play ! " The major played ; and Mr. Dombey looking on for his instruction, would soon have been in a state of dire confusion, but that he gave no attention to the game whatever, and sat wondering instead when Edith would tome back. She came at last, and sat down to her harp, and Mr. Dombey rose and stood beside her, listening. He had little taste for music, and no knowledge of the strain she played, but he saw her bending over it, and perhaps he aeard among the sounding strings some distant music of VOL. TI. 8 U4 DOMBEY AND SON. his own, that tamed the monster of the iron road, and made it less inexorable- Cleopatra had a sharp eye, verily, at piquet. It glis- tened like a bird's, and did not fix itself upon the game, but pierced the room from end to end, and gleamed on harp, performer, listener, everything. When the haughty beauty had concluded, she arose, and receiving Mr. Dombey's thanks and compliments in exactly the same manner as before, went with scarcely any pause, to the piano, and began there. Edith Granger, any song but that ! Edith Granger, you are very handsome, and your touch upon the keys is brilliant, and your voice is deep and rich ; but not the air that his neglected daughter sang to his dead son ! Alas, he knows it not ; and if he did, what air of hers would stir him, rigid man ! Sleep, lonely Florence, sleep ! Peace in thy dreams, although the night has turned dark, and the clouds are gathering, and threaten to discharge themselves in hail ! DOMBEY AND SON. 115 CHAPTER XXII. A FR1XI.E OF MANAGEMENT BY MK. CARKER THE MAN- AGER. MR. CARKER the manager sat at his desk, smooth ami 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 re- quired, and parcelling them out into little heaps for dis- tribution through the several departments of the house. The post had come in heavy that morning, and Mr. Car- ker the manager had a good deal to do. The general action of a man so engaged pausing to look over a bundle of papers in his hand, dealing them round in various portions, taking up another bundle and examining its contents with knitted brows and pursed- out lips dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turna would easily suggest some whimsical resemblance to n 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 him- self 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 hia own hand. The letters were in various languages, but Mr. Carkei 116 DOMBSY AND SON. the manager read them all. If there had been anything in the offices of Dombey and Son that he could not 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 jiew matter to the heaps much as a man would know the cards at sight, and work out their combinations in his mind after they were turned. Some- thing 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 sky- light, playing his game alone. And although it is not among the instincts wild or domestic of the cat tribe to play at cards, feline from sole to crown was Mr. Carker the manager, as he basked in the strip of summer-light and warmth that shone upon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked dial- plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient in color 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 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 behavior to me. I'll ask a question or two of his parents as I ride home this after- noon respectable people to confirm some particu- lars in his own account of himself; and that done, Mr. Gills, I'll send him round to yon to-morrow morning. Good- by 1" His smile at parting was so full of teeth, that it con- fused 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 matter. " Now, boy ! " said Mr. Carker, putting his hind en young Toodle's shoulder, and bringing him out into the middle of the room. " You have heard me ? " Rob said, " Yes, sir." DOMBEY AND SON. 129 " Perhaps you understand," pursued his patron, " (hat if you ever deceive or play tricks with me, you bad better have drowned yourself, indeed, once for all be- fore you came here ? " There was nothing in any branch of mental acqui- sition that Rob seemed to understand better than that " If you have lied to me," said Mr. Carker, " in any- thing, never come in my way again. If not, you may let me find you waiting for me somewhere near your mother's house this afternoon. I shall leave this at five o'clock, and ride there on horseback. Now, give me the address." Rob repeated it slowly, as Mr. Carker wrote it down. Rob even spelt it over a second time, letter by letter, as if he thought that the omission of a dot or scratch would lead to his destruction. Mr. Carker then handed him uut of the room : and Rob, keeping his round eyes fixed upon his patron to the last, vanished for the time be- iiijr. 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 Clieapside. 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 yarriages, avoiding whenever he could the wetter and more dirty places in the over-watered road, and taking infinite pains to keep himself and bis steed clean. - VOL. H. 9 180 DOMBEY AND SON. Glancing at the passers-by while he was thus ambling on his way, he suddenly encountered the round eyes of the sleek-headed Rob intently fixed upon hi> 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 g- This attention however flattering, being one of an un- usual kind, and attracting some notice from the other passengers, Mr. Carker took advantage of a clearer thoroughfare and a cleaner road, and broke into a trot. Rob immediately did the same. Mr. Carker presently tried a canter; Rob was still in attendance. Then a short gallop ; it was all one to the boy. Whenever Mr. Carker turned his eyes to that side of the road, he still saw Toodle junior holding his course, apparently without distress, and working himself along by the elbows after the most approved manner of professional gentlemen who get over the ground for wagers. Ridiculous as this attendance was, it was a sign of an influence established over the boy, and therefore Mr. Carker, affecting not to notice it, rode away into the neighborhood 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 neighboring gateway to hoU his horse, pending his visit to the Build- ings that had succeeded Staggs's Gardens, Rob dutifully held the stirrup, while the manager dismounted. " Now, sir," said Mr. Carker, taking him by the shoul- der, " oome along ! " The prodigal son was evidently nervous of visiting the DOMBEY AND SON. 131 parental abode : but Mr. Carker pushing him on before, he had nothing for it but to open the right door, and suf- fer himself to be walked info the midst of his brothers and sisters, mustered in overwhelming force round the family tea-table. At sight of the prodigal in the grasp of a stranger, these tender relations united in a general howl, which smote upon the prodigal's breast so sharply when he saw his mother stand up among them, pale and trembling with the baby in her arms, that he lent his own voice to the chorus. Nothing doubting now that the stranger, if not Mr. Ketch in person, was one of that company, the whole of the young family wailed the louder, while its more in- fantine members, unable to control the transports of emotion appertaining to their time of life, threw them- selves 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, "O Rob, my poor boy, what have you done at last ! " " Nothing, mother," cried Rob, in a piteous voice, l ask the gentleman ! '- " Don't be alarmed," said Mr. Carker, " I want to do him good." At this announcement, Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. The elder Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclinched their fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother's sown, and peeped from under their own chubby arms at thhort distance, that his devoted henchman, girt as be- fore, was yielding him the same attendance, to the greal imusemcnt of sundry spectators, he reined up, and or 136 DOMBEY AND SON. dered him off. To insure his obedience, he turned in the saddle and watched him as he retired. It was curi- ous to see that even then Rob could not keep his eyea wholly averted from his patron's face, but, constantly turning and turning again to look after him, involved himself in a tempest of buffetings and jostlings from the other passengers in the street: of which, in the pursuit of the one paramount idea, he was perfectly heedless. Mr. Carker the manager rode on 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 com- fortably off his mind. Complacent and affable as man could be, Mr. Carker picked his way along the streets and hummed a soft tune as he went He seemed to purr: he was so glad. And in some sort, Mr. Carker, in his fancy, basked upon a hearth too. Coiled up snugly at certain feet, he was ready for a spring, or for a tear, or for a scratch, or for a velvet touch, as the humor took him and occa- sion served. Was there any bird in a cage, that came in for a share of his regards ? " A very young lady ! " thought Mr. Carker the man- ager, 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 Jare eay sht's pretty." More affable and pleasant yet, and humming his song-_ tratil his many teeth vibrated to it, Mr. Carker picked Uis way along, and turned at last into the shady street where Mr. Dombey's house stood. He had been eo busy, winding webs round good faces, and obscuring them with meshes, that he hardly thought of being DOMBEY AND SON. 137 Rl this point of his ride, until, glancing down the cold perspective of tall houses, he reined in his horse quickly within a few yards of the door. But to explain why Mr. Carker reined in his horse quickly, and what he looked at in no small surprise, a few digressive words are necessary. Mr. Toots, emancipated from the Blimber thraldom and coming into the possession of a certain portion of his worldly wealth, " which," as he had been wont, during his last half-year's probation, to communicate to Mr. Feeder every evening as a new discovery, " the execu- tors 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 apart- ments ; 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 humanize existence, his chief in- structor 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 con- sideration of ten and six per visit. The Game Chicken, who was quite the Apollo of Mr. Toots's Pantheon, had introduced to him a marker who 'aught billiards, a Life Guard who taught fencing, a job- master who taught riding, a Cornish gentleman who was p to anything in the athletic line, and two or three other friends connected no less intimately with the fine * 38 DOMBEY AND SON. arts. Under whose auspices Mr. Toots could hardly fail to improve apace, and under whose tuition he went to work. But, however it came about, it came to pass, even while these gentlemen had the gloss of novelty upon tlum, that Mr. Toots felt, he didn't know how, unsettled nd uneasy. There were husks in his corn, that oven Game Chickens couldn't peck up ; gloomy giants in hia leisure, that even Game Chickens couldn't knock down. Nothing seemed to do Mr. Toots so much good as in- cessantly leaving cards at Mr. Dombey's door. No tax-gatherer in the British dominions that wide-spread territory on which the sun never sets, and where the tax-gatherer never goes to bed was more regular and persevering in his calls than Mr. Toots. Mr. Toots never went up-stairs ; and always per- formed the same ceremonies, richly dressed for the pur- pose, at the hall-door. ' Oh ! Good-morning ! " would be Mr. Toots's first remark to the servant. " For Mr. Dombey," would be Mr. Toots's next remark, as he handed in a card. " For Miss Dombey," would be his next, as he handed in another. Mr. Toots would then turn round as if to go away ; but the man knew him by this time, and knew he wouldn't. " Oh, I beg your pardon," Mr. Toots would say, as if a thought had suddenly descended on him. u Is the~ young woman at home ? " The man would rather think she was, but wouldn't quite know. Then he would ring a bell that rang up- tair, and would look up the staircase, and would say, ves she was at home, and was coming down. Then DOMBEY AND SON. 139 Miss Nipper would appear, and the man would re- tire. " Oh ! How de do ? " Mr. Toots would say, with a chuckle and a blush. Susan would thank him, and say she was very well " How's Diogenes going on ? " would be Mr. Toote's second interrogation. Very well indeed. Miss Florence was fonder and fonder of him every day. Mr. Toots was sure to hail this with a burst of chuckles, like the opening of a bottle of some effervescent beverage. " Miss Florence is quite well, sir," Susan would add " Oh, it's of no consequence, thank'ee," was the in- variable reply of Mr. Toots ; and when he had said so, he always went away very fast. Now it is certain that Mr. Toots had a filmy some- thing 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 round- about road, had got to that point, and that there he made a stand. His heart was wounded ; he waa touched ; he was in love. He had made a desperate attempt, one night, and had sat up all night for the purpose, to write an acrostic on Florence, which affected him to tears in the conception. But he never proceeded in the execution further than the words, " For when I gaze " the flow of imagination in which ho had pie* viously written down the initial letters cf the othe* seven lines, deserting him at that point. Beyond devising that very artful and politic measure >f leaving a card for Mr. Dombey daily, the brain of Mr. Toots had rot workfd much in reference to the 140 DOMBEY AND SON. subject that held his feelings prisoner. But deep con- sideration at length assured Mr. Toots that an important step to gain, was the conciliation of Miss Susan Nipper preparatory to giving her some inkling of his state of mind. A little light and playful gallantry towards this lady teemed the means to employ in that early chapter of the history, for winning her to his interests. Not being able quite to make up his mind about it, he consulted the Chicken without taking that gentleman into his con- fidence ; merely informing him that a friend in York- shire 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, u When your man's before you and your work cut out, go in and do it," Mr. Toots considered this a figurative way of sup- poriing his own view of the case, and heroically resolved to kiss Miss Nipper next day. Upon the next day, therefore, Mr. Toots, putting into requisition some of the greatest marvels that Burgess and Co. had ever turned out, went off to Mr. Dombey's upon this design. But his heart failed him so much as he approached the scene of action, that, although he arrived on the ground at three o'clock in the afternoon, it was six before he knocked at the door. Everything happened as usual, down to the point when Susan said her young mistress was well, and Mr. Toots said it was of no consequence. To her amaze- ment, Mr. Toots, instead of going off like a rocket, after that observation, lingered and chuckled. "Perhaps you'd like to walk up-stairs, sir?" said Susan. "Well I think I will come in!" said Mr. Toot*. DOMBEY AND SON. 141 But instead of walking up-stairs, the bold Toots made tui awkward plunge at Susan when the door was shut, and embracing that fair creature, kissed her on the cheek. " Go along with you ! " cried Susan, " or I'll tear yonr eyes out." " Just another ! " said Mr. Toots. " Go along with you ! " exclaimed Susan, gh ing him a push. " Innocents like you, too ! Who'll begin next? Go along, sir ! " Susan was not in any serious strait, for she could hardly speak for laughing ; but Diogenes, on the stair- case, 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 {muse, formed a different opinion, dashed down to the rescue, and in the twinkling of an eye had Mr. Toots by the leg. Susan screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran down-stairs; the bold Toots tumbled staggering out into the slreet, 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 en- tertainment ; Diogenes shaken off, rolled over and over in the dust, got up again, whirled round the giddy Toota and snapped at him : and all this turmoil, Mr. Carker, reining up his horse and sitting a little at a distance, saw, to his amazement, issue from the stately house of Mr. Dombry. Mr. Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, tvhen Diogenes was called in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge in a door-way near it hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with a 142 DOMBEY AND SON. costly silk handkerchief that had formed j.art of his ex- pensive outfit for the adventure. " I beg your pardon, sir," said Mr. Carker, riding up, with his most propitiatory smile. " I hope you are not hurt ? " " Oh no, thank you," replied Mr. Toots, raising his flushed face, " it's of no consequence." Mr. Toots wculd have signified, if he could, that he liked it very much. " If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, sir " be- gan Carker, with a display of his own. * No, thank you," said Mr. Toots, " it's all quite right. It's very comfortable, thank you." " I have the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dombey,'* ob- served Carker. " Have you though ? " rejoined the blushing Toots. " And you will allow me, perhaps, to apologize, in his absence," said Mr. Carker, taking off his hat, "for such a misadventure, and to wonder how it can possibly have happened." Mr. Toots is so much gratified by this politeness, and the lucky chance of making friends with a friend of Mr. Dombey, that he pulls out his card-case, which he never loses an opportunity of using, and hands his name and address to Mr. Carker: who responds to that courtesy by giving him his own, and with that they part. As Mr. Carker picks his way so softly past the house, glancing 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, barka and growls, and makes at him from that height, as if he would spring down and tear him limb ihm limb. DOMBEY AND SON. 143 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 Di, cats, boy, cats ! 144 DOMBEY AND SOU. CHAPTER XXiIL FLORENCE SOLITARY, AND THE MIDSHIPMAN MYSTERIOUS- FLORENCE lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone ; and the blank walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth and beauty into stone. No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thick wood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was her father's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on the street : al- ways by night, when lights were shining from neighbor- ing windows, a blot upon its scanty brightness ; always by day, a frown upon its never-smiling face- There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of this abode, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wronged innocence im- prisoned ; 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 petri- faction of an arbor over the 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 talis- manic characters engraven on the portal, but the house DOMBEY AND SON. 145 was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railings and the pavement particularly round the corner where the side wall was and drew ghosts on the stable-door ; and being sometimes driven off by Mr. Towlinson, made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growing out horizontally from under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within the shadow of the roof. The brass baud that came into the street once a week, in the morn- ing, 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 narty of automaton dancers, waltzing in and out at folding-doors, fell off from it with one accord, and shunned it as a hopeless place. The spell upon it was more wasting than the spell that used to set enchanted houses sleeping once upon a time, but left their waking freshness unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse was everywhere silently manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. Hecatombs of furniture, still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned and for- gotten 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 un- wonted 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 ; spi- ders, moths, and grubs were heard of every day. An exploratory black-beetle now and then was found im VOL. II. JO 146 DOMBEY AND SON. movable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as won- dering how he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuflle in the night-time, through dark galleries they mined behind the panelling. The dreary magnificence of the state rooms, seen im perfectly by the doubtful light admitted through closed shutters, would have answered well enough for an en- chanted 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 stair- cases and passages where no one went for weeks to- gether ; there were two closed rooms associated with dead members of the family, and with whispered recol- lections of them ; and to all the house but Florence, there was a gentle figure moving through the solitude and gloom, that gave to every lifeless thing a touch of present human interest and wonder. For Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her with a vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youti; vid beauty into stone. DOMBEY AND SON. 147 The grass began to grow upon Ihe 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 with ered 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 dam gap in the long mo- notonous street. But Florence bloomed there, like the king's fair daughter in the story. Her books, her music, and her daily teachers, were hec 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 ; dometimes pricking up his head to look with great sig- nificance after some noisy dog in a cart, who was bark- ing his way along, and sometimes, with an exasperated and unaccountable recollection of his supposed enemy iu the neighborhood, 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 f a dog who had done a public service. So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, withic the circle of her innocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could go down to her father'* rooms now, ard think of him, and suffer her loving heart 148 DOMBEY AND SON. humbly to approach him, without fear of repulse. She sould 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 his table, chang- ing 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 ; to-morrow she would be afraid to leave it, and would substitute some other trifle of her making not so likely to attract his eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she would tremble at the thought of his coming home and angrily rejecting it, and would hurry down with slippered feet and quickly beating heart, and bring it away. At another time, she would only lay her face upon his desk, and leave a kiss there, and a tear. Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found it out when she was not there and they all held Mr. Dombey's rooms in awe it was as deep a secret in her breast as what had gone before it. Florence stole into those rooms at twilight, early in the morning, and at times when meals were served down-stairs. 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, excepting that she left her light behind. Shadowy company attended Florence up and down the echoing house, and sat with her in the dismantled rooms. As if her life were an enchanted vision, there arose out of her solitude ministering thoughts, that made DOMBEY AND SON. 149 il 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 favorite 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 confi- dence of all her soul ! And oh the desolation of the solitary house again, with evening coming on, and no one there ! But there was one thoughr, 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 rec- ognition 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 knowl- edge of her as she went her way upon the earth. It was a soothing consolation to Florence to give shelter to these thoughts, until one day it was soon after she had last seen her father in his own room, late at night the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for his alien- ated heart, she might stir the spirits of the dead against 150 DOMBET AND SON. him. Wild, weak, childish, as it may have been to thini so, and to tremble at the half-formed thought, it was the impulse of her loving nature ; and from that hour Flor- ence strove against the cruel wound in her breast, and tried to think of him whose hand had made it only with hope. Her father did not know she held to it from that time how much she loved him. She was very young, nnd had no mother, and had never learned, by some fault or misfortune, how to express to him -that she loved him. She would be patient, and would try to gain that art in time, and win him to a better knowledge of his only child. This became the purpose of her life. The morning sun shone down upon the faded house, and found the resolution bright and fresh within the bosom of its sol- itary 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 any- thing to surprise him when they should become com- panions. Sometimes she tried to think if there were any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readily than another. Always : at her books, her music, and her work : in her morning walks, and in her nightly prayers : she had her engrossing aim in view. Strange study for a child, to learn the road to a hard parent's heart ! There were many careless loungers through the street, ^ the summer evening deepened into aight, who glanced across the road at the sombre house, and saw the youth DOMBEY AND SON. 151 ful 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 ehe mused so steadfastly. The reputation of the man- sion 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 understand- ing that she loved him, and made no appeal against him in any wandering thought. Thus Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the monotonous walls looked down upon her with a stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like intent to stare her youth and beauty into stone. Susan Nipper stood opposite to her young mistress one morning, as she folded and sealed a note she had been writing : and showed in her looks an approving knowl edge of its contents. " Better late than never, dear Miss Floy," said Susan " and I do say, that even a visit to them old Skettleses will be a Godsend." " It is very good of Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, Susan," returned Florence, with a mild correction of that young lady's familiar mention of the family in ques- tion, " to repeat their invitation so kindly." Miss Nipper, who was perhaps the most thorougi- going partisan on the face of the earth, and who carried her partisanship into all matters great or small, and per- petually waged war with it against society, screwed up 152 DOMBEY AND SON. her lips and shook her head, as a protest against any recognition of disinterestedness in the Skettleses, and a plea in bar that they would have valuable consideration for their kindness in the company of Florence. " They know what they're about, if ever people did," murmured Miss Nipper, drawing in her breath, " oh ! trust them Skettleses for that ! " " I am not very anxious to go to Fulham, Susan, I confess," said Florence thoughtfully ; " but it will be right to go. J think it will be better." " Much better," interposed Susan, with another em- phatic shake of her head. " And so," said Florence, " though I would prefer to have gone when there was no one there, instead of in this vacation time, when it seems there are some young people staying in the house, I have thankfully said yes." " For which / say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful ! " re- turned Susan. "Ah! h h!" This last ejaculation, with which Miss Nipper fre- quently 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 favor 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. u How long it is before we have any news of Walter Susan ! " observed Florence, after a moment's silence. " Long indeed, Miss Floy ! " replied her maid. " And Perch said, when he came just now to see for letters but what signifies what he says ! " exclaimed Susan, reddening and breaking off. " Much he knows about it!" DOMBEY AND SON. 153 Florence raised her eyes quickly, and a flush over- ipread her face. " If I hadn't," said Susan Nipper, evidently struggling with some latent anxiety and alarm, and looking full at her young mistress, while endeavoring to work herself into a state of resentment with the unoffending Mr O Perch's image, "if I hadn't more manliness than that insipidest of his sex, I'd never take pride in my hair ngain, 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 disfigure- ment, but anyways I'm not a giver up, I hope." " Give up! What?" cried Florence, with a face of terror. " Why, nothing, miss," stvid Susan. " Good gracious, nothing! It's only that wet curl-paper of a man Perch, that any one might almost make away with, with a touch, and really it would be a blessed event for all parties if some one would take pity on him, and would have the goodness!" " Does he give up the ship, Susan ? " inquired Flor- ence, very pale. "No, miss," returned Susan, "I should like to see him make so bold as do it to my face ! No, miss, but he goes on about some bothering ginger that Mr, Walter was to send tc 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, vith aggravated scorn, ' puts me out of patience with the man, for though 1 can bear a great deal, I am lot a camol, neither am I," added Susan, after a mo- !54 DOM BEY AND SON. merit's consideration, "if I know myself, a dromedary neither." " What else does he say, Susan ? " inquired Florence, earnestly. " Won't you tell me ? " " As if I wouldn't tell you anything, Miss Floy, and everything!" said Susan. "Why 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 any one could say that, we knew nearly that before." u I must visit Walter's uncle," said Florence, hur- riedly, " before I leave home. I will go and see him this morning/ Let us walk there directly, Susan." Miss Nipper having nothing to urge against the pro- posal, but being perfectly acquiescent, they were soon equipped, and in the streets, and on their way towards the little Midshipman. The state of mind in which poor Walter had gone to Captain Cuttle's, on the day when Brogley the broker came into possession, and when there seemed to him to be an execution in the very steeples, was pretty much the same as that in which Florence now took her way to Uncle Sol's; with this difference, that Florence suf- fered the added pain of thinking that she had been, per- hapr., 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 dani- on his island, looked round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting for some friendly bark to come that way, and take him off. But when the captain, directing his forlorn visage tow- ards the door, saw Florence appear with her maid, no words can describe his astonishment. Mrs. MacStinger's eloquence having rendered all other sounds but imper- fectly distinguishable, he had looked for no rarer visitor than the potboy or the milkman ; wherefore, when Flor- ence appeared, and coming to the confines of the island, put her band in his, the captain stood up, aghast, as if lie supposed her, for the moment, to be some young mem- ber of the Flying Dutchman's family. Instantly recovering his self-possession, however, the VOL. n. 11 162 DOMBEY AXD SON. captain's first care was to place her on clrv land, which be 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 admi- ration, raided the hand of Florence to his lips, and stand- ing off a little (for the island was not large enough for three), beamed on her from the soap and water like a new description of Triton. " You are amazed to see us, I am sure," said Florence, with a smile. The inexpressibly gratified captain kissed his hook in reply, and growled, as if a choice and delicate compli- ment were included in the words, " Stand by ! Stand by!" " But I couldn't rest," said Florence, " without coming to ask you what you think about dear Walter who is my brother, now and whether there is anything to fear, and whether you will not go and console his poor uncle every day, until we have some intelligence of him?" At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, ami looked discomfited. " Have you any fears for Walter's safety ? " inquired Florence, from whose face the captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his eyes : while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of the sin- cerity of his reply. " No, Heart's-delight," said Captain Cuttle, " I am not afeard. Wal'r is a lad as '11 go through a deal o' hard weather Wal'r is a lad as '11 bring as much success to that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r," said ttva DOMBEY AND SON. 16S raptaia his eyes glistening with the praise of his young friend, and his hook raised to announce a heautiful quo tation, " is what you may call a out'ard and visible sign of a in'ard and spirited grasp, and when found make a oteof." Florence, who did not quite understand this, thoub Ilie captain evidently thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildly looked to him for something more. " I am not afeard, my Heart's-delight," resumed the captain." " There's been most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there's no denyin', and they have drove and drove and been beat off, maybe t'other side the world. But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a good lad ; and it a'n't easy, thank the Lord," the cap- tain made a liule bow, "to break up hearts of oak, whether they're in brigs or buzzums. Here we have 'ern both ways, which is bringing it up with a round turn, and so I a'n't a bit afeard as yet." "As yet?" repeated Florence. " Not a bit," returned the captain, kissing his iron hand; "and afore I begin to be, my Heart's-delight, W;il'r will have wrote home from the island, or from ome 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, 3o blow, do blow overhaul the Catechism," said the captain parenthetically, " and there you'll find them expressions if it would console Sol Gills to have the /pinion of a seafaring man as has got a mind equal to my undertaking that he puts it alongside of, and as WRU Ul but ?m.shed in his 'prenticeship, and of which the L64 DOMBEY AND SON. name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall ^ive him such an opinion in his own parlor as'll stun him. Ah ! " said Captain Cuttle, vauntingly, " as much as if he'd -:c* and knocked his head again a door ! " " Let us take this gentleman to see him and iat as hear what he says," cried Florence. " Will you go with us now ? We have a coach here." Again the captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and looked discom- fited. But at this instant a most remarkable phenome- non occurred. The door opening without any'note of preparation, and apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in question skimmed into the room like a bird, and alighted heavily at the captain's feet The door then shut as violently as it had opened, and nothing ensued in explanation of the prodigy. Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a look of interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve. While doing so, the captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice : * You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yes- terday, and this morning, but she she took it away and kept it. That's the long and short of the subject.'' " Who did, for goodness' sake ?" asked Susan Nipper. " The lady of the house, my dear," returned the cap- tain, in a gruff whisper, and making signals of secrecy. * We had some words about the swabbing of these here planks, and she in short," said the captain, eying the door, and relieving himself with a long breath, " she stopped my liberty." " Oh ! I wish she had me to deal with ! " said Susan, reddening with thfr energy of the wish. " T 1 stop her ! " " Would you, (*o you think, my dear ? " rejoined the DOMBEV AND SON. 165 captain, shaking his head doubtfully, but regarding the desperate courage of the fair aspirant with obvious admi- ration. " 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 is a tartar," said the captain, with the perspiration breaking out upon his forehead There was nothing but a whistle em- phatic enough for the conclusion of the sentence, so the captain whistled tremulously. After which he again shook his head, and recurring to his admiration of Miss Nipper's devoted bravery, timidly repeated, " Would you, do you think, my dear ? " Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so very full of defiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might have stood entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had not again proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thus reminded of his duty, Captain Cuttle put on the glazed hat firmly, took up another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of that one given to "Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, pre- pared to cut his way through the enemy. It turned out, however, that Mrs. MacStinger had already changed her course, and that she headed, as the captain had remarked she often did, in quite a new direction. For when they got down-stairs, they found that exemplary woman beating the mats on the door- steps, 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 wheu Captain Cuttle and his visitors passed, she beat the Harder, and neither by word nor gesture showed pny 166 DOMBEY AND SON. consciousness of their vicinity. The captain was so well pleased with this easy escape although the effect of the door-mats on him was like a copious administration of snuff, and made him sneeze until the tears ran down his face that he could hardly believe his good foi- Line ; but more than once, between the door and the hackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with an obvi- ous apprehension of Mrs. MacStinger*s giving chase yet However, they got to the corner of Brig Place with- out any molestation from that terrible fire-ship ; and the captain mounting the coach-box for his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with the ladies, though be- sought to do so piloted the driver on his course for Captain Bunsby's vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and was lying hard by Ratcliffe. Arrived at the wharf off which this great command- er's ship was jammed in among some five hundred com- panion-!, whose tangled rigging looked like monstrous cobwebs half swept do~vn, Captain Cuttle appeared at the coach-window, and in\ited Florence and Miss Nip- per to accompany him on board ; observing that Buns- by was to the last degree soft-hearted in respect of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring his expansive intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to the Cautious Clara. Florence readily consented ; and the captain taking her little hand in his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage, paternity, pride, am) rerf-mony, that was pleasant to see, over several wry dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautious craft (which lay outside the tier) with her gang- way removed, and half a dozen feet of rivsr interposed between !>erself and her nearest neighbor. It appeared DOMBEY AND SON. 167 from Captain Cuttle's explanation, that the great Buns- 6y, like himself, was cruelly treated by his landlady, and that when her usage of him for the time being was no hard that he could bear it no longer, he set this gulf between them as a last resource. " Clara a-hoy ! " cried the captain, putting a hand tn each side of his mouth. " A-hoy ! " cried a boy, like the captain's echo, tum- bling up from below. " Bunsby aboard ? " cried the captain, hailing the boy in a stentorian voice, as if he were half a mile otf instead of two yards. " Ay, ay ! " cried the boy, in the same tone. The boy then shoved out a plank to Captain Cuttle, who adjusted it carefully, and led Florence across: re- turning presently for Miss Nipper. So they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara, in whose standing rig- ging, divers fluttering articles of dress were curing, in company with a few tongues and some mackerel. Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulkhead of the cabin, another bulkhead human and very large with one stationary eye in the mahog- any face, and one revolving one, on the principal of some light-houses. 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 orna* mented uear the wearer's breast-bone with some massive 168 DOMBEY AND SON. wooden buttons, like backgammon men. As the lower portions of these pantaloons became revealed, Bunsb'y stood confessed ; his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size ; and his gaze directed, not to Captain Cut tie or the ladies, but the mast-head. The profound appearance of this philosopher, who was bulky and strong, and on whose extremely red face an expression of taciturnity sat enthroned, not incon- sistent with his character, in which that quality was proudly conspicuous, almost daunted Captain Cuttle, though on familiar terras with him. Whispering to Florence that Bunsby had never in his life expressed surprise, and was considered not to know what it meant, the captain watched him as he eyed his mast-head, and afterwards swept the horizon ; and when the revolving eye seemed to be coming round in his direction, said : *' Bunsby, my lad. how fares it ? " A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed to have no connection with Bunsby, and certainly had not the least effect upon his face, replied, " Ay, ay, shipmet, how goes it ! " At the same time Bunsby's right hand and arm, emerging from a pocket, shook the captain's, and went back again. '* Bunsby," said the captain, striking home at once, u 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 c pinion in regard of my friend Wal'r, likewise my t'other friend, Sol Gills, which is a character for you to come within hail of, being a man of science, which is the mother of inwention, and knows no law. Buns- by will you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?" The great commander, who seemed by the expression DOMBEY AND SON". ICti of his visage :o re always on the look-out for something in the extremest distance, and to have no ocular knowl- edge of anything within ten miles, made no reply what- ever. " 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 Seaman'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 got his opinions in that way, it's my belief, for there a'n't nothing like 'em afloat or ashore." The stolid commander appeared, by a very slight vi- bration in his elbows, to express some satisfaction in this encomium; but if his face had been as distant as hia gaze was, it could hardly have enlightened the beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in hia thoughts. " Shipraet," said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look out under some interposing spar, " what'll the ladies drink ? " Captain Cuttle, whose delicacy was shocked by such an inquiry in connection with Florence, drew the sagf 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 clown the open skylight, saw the sage, with dif- ficulty finding room for himself between his berth and a trery little brass fireplace, serve out for self and friend. They soon reappeared on deck, and Captain Cuttle, tri- amphing in the success of his enterprise, conducted 170 DOMBEF AND SON. - Florence back to the coach, while Bunsby followed, es- corting Miss Nipper, whom he hugged upon the way (much to that young lady's indignation) with his pilot- coated arm, like a blue bear. The captain put his oracle inside, and gloried so much in having secured him, and having got that mind into a hackney-coach, that he could not refrain from often peep- ing in at Florence through the little window behind the driver, and testifying his delight in smiles, and also in taps upon his forehead, to hiut to her that the brain of Bunsby was hard at it. In the mean time, Bunsby, still hugging Miss Nipper (for his friend, the captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his heart), uniformly pre- served his gravity of deportment, and showed no other consciousness of her or anything. Uncle Sol, who had come home, received them at the door, and ushered them immediately into the little back- parlor : 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 bis hand, he had been measuring, a minute before, how far she must have driven, to have driven here or there : and trying to demonstrate that a long time must elapse before hope was exhausted. " Whether she can have run," said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over the chart; "but no, that's almost impos- sible. Or whether she can have been forced by stress of weather, but that's not reasonably likely. Or whether there is any hope she so far changed her course us but even I can hardly hope that!" With such broken suggestions, poor old Uncle Sol roamed over the DOMBEY AND SON. 171 great sheet before h : m, and could not find a speck of hopeful probability in it large enough to set one small point of the compasses upon. Florence saw immediately it would have been diffi- cult to help seeing that there was a singular indescrib- able change in the old man, and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettled than usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at random ; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she had been there before that morning, he at first replied that he had been to see her, and directly afterwards seemed to wish to recall that answer. " You have been to see me ? " said Florence. " To- day ? " " Yes, my dear young lady," returned Uncle Sol, look- ing at her and away from her in a confused manner, "I wish to see you with my own eyes, and to hear you with my own ears, once more before " There he stopped. " Before when ? Before what ? " said Florence, put- ting her hand upon his arm. " Did I say, ' before ' ? " replied old Sol. If I did, I must have meant before we should have news of my dear boy." " You are not well," said Florence, tenderly. " You uave been so very anxious. I am sure you are not well." " I am as well," returned the old man, shutting up his right hand, and holding it out to show her : " as well %nd firm as any man at my time of life can hope to be See ! It's steady. Is its master not as capable of resc- 172 DOMBEY AND SON. lution and fortitude as many a younger man? I think o. We shall see." There was that in his manner more than in his words, though they remained with her too, which impressed Florence so much, that she would have confided her un- easiness to Captain Cuttle at that moment, if the captain tad not seized that moment for expounding the state of circumstances on which the opinion of the sagacious Bunsby was requested, and entreating that profound au- thority to deliver the same. Bunsby, whose eye continued to be addressed to some- where 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 Cau- tious Clara met with no response to its impulses. After sundry failures in this wise, the commander, addressing himself lo nobody, thus spake ; or rather the voice within him said of its own accord, and quite independent of him- self, as if he were possessed by a gruff spirit : " My name's Jack Bunsby ! " " He was christened John," cried the delighted Cap- tain Cuttle. " Hear him ! " 44 And what I says," pursued the voice, after some de- liberation, " I stands to." The captain, with Florence on his arm, nodded at the auditory, and seemed to say, " Now he's coming out. This is what I meant when I brought him." " Whereby," proceeded the voice, " why not ? If so, irhat odds ? Can any man say otherwise ? No. Awas ten! " DOMBEY AND SON. 173 When it had pursued its train of argument to this point, the voice stopped and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus : " Do I believe that this here Son and Heir's gone down, my lads ? Mayhap. Do I say so ? Which ? If a skipper stands out by Sen' George's Channel, mak- ing 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 a'n't no part of my duty. A wast then, keep a bright look-out for'ard, and good luck to you ! " The voice here went out of the back-parlor and into the street, taking the commander of the Cautious Clara with it, and accompanying him on board again with all convenient expedition, where he immediately turned in, and refreshed his mind with a nap. The students of the sage's precepts, left to their own application of his wisdom upon a principle which was the main leg of the Bunsby tripod, as it is perchance of some other oracular stools looked at 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 |>ossible, 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 ^iven, coming from such a mind as his, was Hope's own inchor, and with good roads to cast it in. Florence en- 174 DOMBEY AND SON. deavored to believe that the captain was tight ; but the Nipper, with her arms tight folded, shook her head in resolute denial, and had no more trust in Bunsby than in Mr. Perch himself. The philosopher seemed to have left Uncle Sol pretty much where he had found him, for he still went roaming about the watery world, compasses in hand, and discov- ering no rest for them. It was in pursuance of a whis- per in his ear from Florence, while the old man was absorbed in this pursuit, that Captain Cuttle laid his heavy band upon his shoulder. " What cheer, Sol Gills ? " cried the captain, heartily. " But so-so, Ned," returned the Instrument-maker - "I have been remembering, all this afternoon, that on the very day when my boy entered Dombey's house, and came home late to dinner, sitting just there where you stand, we talked of storm and shipwreck, and I could hardly turn him from the subject." But meeting the eyes of Florence, which were fixed with earnest scrutiny upon his face, the old man stopped and smiled. " Stand by, old friend ! " cried the captain. " Look alive ! I tell you what, Sol Gills ; arter I've convoyed Heart's-delijjht safe home," here the captain kissed his hook to Florence, " T'll come back and take you in tow for the rest of this blessed day. You'll come and eat your dinner along ^ith me, Sol, somewheres or other." " Not to-day, Ned ! " said the old man quickly, and appearing to be unaccountably startled by the pioposi- tion. " Not to-day. I couldn't do it ! " " Why not ? " returned the captain, gazing at him in astonishment. "I I have so much to do. I I mean to think o DOMBEY AND SON. 175 ind arrange. I couldn't do it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and be alone, and turn my mind to many things to-day." The captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and looked at Florence, and again at the Instrument-maker. " To-morrow, then," he suggested at last. 44 Yes, ye?. To-morrow," said the old man. " Think of me to-morrow. Say to-morrow." " I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills," stipulated the captain. " Yes, yes. The first thing to-morrow morning," said old Sol ; " and now good-by, Ned Cuttle, and God blesa you ! " Squeezing both the captain's hands, with uncommon fervor, 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 precipi- tation. 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 in- quired of Susan Nipper, unable to forget her gallant Vords in reference to Mrs. MacStinger, " Would you, ilo you think, iny dear, though ! " When the desolate house had closed upon the two, the captain's thoughts reverted to the old Instrument-maker, 176 OOMlil'T AND SON. and he felt uncomfortable. Therefore, insteaJ 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 parlor 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 parlor-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. DOMPEY AND SON. 177 CHAPTER XXIV. TIIE STUDY OF A LOVING HEART. SIR BARNET and Lady Skettles, very good people^ resided in a pretty villa at Fulham, on the banks of the Thames ; which was one of the most desirable residences in the world when a rowing-match happened to be going past, but had its little inconveniences at other times, iimong which may be enumerated the occasional appear- ance of the river in the drawing-room, and the contem- poraneous disappearance of the lawn and shrubbery. Sir Barnet Skettles expressed his personal conse- quence chiefly through an antique gold snuff-box, and a ponderous silk pocket-handkerchief, which he had an im- posing manner of drawing out of his pocket like a ban- ner, and using with both hands at once. Sir Barnet's object in life was constantly to extend the range of his acquaintance. Like a heavy body dropped into water not to disparage so worthy a gentleman by the comparison it was in the nature of things that Sir Barnet must spread an ever-widening circle about him, until there was no room left. Or, like a sound in air, the vibration of which, according to the speculation of an ingenious modern philosopher, may go on travelling forever 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 ocial system. VOL. II. 12 178 DOMBEY AND SON. Sir Barnet was proud of making people acqiainted with people. He liked the thing for its own sake, and it advanced his favorite object too. For example, if Sir Barnet had the good fortune to get hold of a raw reciuit, or a country gentleman, and ensnared him to his hospi- table villa, Sir Barnet would say to him, on the morning after bis 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 an- swered yes, and mentioned somebody, of whom Sir Bar- net had no more personal knowledge than of Ptolemy the Great. Sir Barnet replied, that nothing on earth was easier, as he knew him very well : immediately called on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote a short note, " My dear Sir penalty of your eminent position friend of my house naturally desirous Lady Skettles and myself participate trust that genius being superior to ceremonies, you will do us the distinguished favor of giving us the pleasure," &c. &c. and so killed a brace of birds with one stone, dead as door-nails. With the snuff-box and banner in full force, Sir Bar- net Skettles propounded his usual inquiry to Florence on the first morning of her visit. When Florence thanked him, and said there was no one in particular whom she desired to see, it was natural she should think with a pang of poor lost Walter. When Sir Barnet Skettles, urging his kind offer, said, " My dear Miss Dombey, are you sure you can remember no one whom your good papa to whom I beg you to present the best compliment'; of myself and Lady Skettles when you write might wish you to know?" it was natural, DOMBEY AND SON 179 perhaps, that the poor head should droop a little, and l hat her voice should tremble as it softly answered in the negative. Skettlcs junior, much stiffened as to his cravat, and sobered down as to his spirits, was at home for the holi- days, and appeared to feel himself aggrieved by the solicitude of his excellent mother that he should be at- tentive to Florence. Another and a deeper injury under which the soul of young Barnet chafed, was the com- pany of Dr. and Mrs. Blimber, who had been invited on a visit tc the parental roof tree, and of whom the young gentleman often said he would have preferred their passing the vacation at Jericho. " Is there anybody you can suggest, now, Doctor Blimber ? " said Sir Barnet Skettles, turning to that gentleman. " You are very kind, Sir Barnet," returned Doctor Blimber. " Really I am not aware that there is, in particular. I like to know my fellow-men in general, Sir Barnet. What does Terence say ? Any one who is the parent of a son is interesting to me" " Has Mrs. Blimber any wish to see any remarkable person ? " asked Sir Barnet courteously. Mrs. Blimber replied, with a sweet smile and a shake of her sky-blue cap, that if Sir Barnet could have made her known to Cicero, she would have troubled him : but such an introduction not being feasible, and she already enjoying the friendship of himself and his amiable lady, and possessing with the Doctor her husband theii joint sonfidence in regard to their dear son here young Barnet was observed to curl his nose she asked no more. Sir Barnet was fain, under these circumstances, to 180 DOMBEY AND SON. content himself for the time with the company a's bled. Florence was glad of that ; for she had a study to pursue among them, and it lay too near her heart, and was too precious and momentous, to yield to any other interest. There were some children staying in the house. Children who were as frank and happy with fathers and with mothers, as those rosy faces opposite home. Children who had no restraint upon their love, and freely showed it. Florence sought to learn their secret ; sought to find out what it was she had missed ; what simple art they knew, and she knew not ; how she could be taught by them to show her father that she loved him, and to win his love again. Many a day did Florence thoughtfully observe these children. On many a bright morning did she leave her bed when the glorious sun rose, and walking up and down upon the river's bank, before any one 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 waa greater peace in hiding herself than in mingling with others of her age, and finding how unlike them all she was. But attentive to her study, though it touched her to the quick at every little leaf she turned in the hard book, Florence remained among them, and tried, with patient hope, to gain the knowledge that she wearied for. Ah ! how to gain it ! how to know the charm in its beginning ! There were daughters here, who rose up in the morr.ing, and lay down to rest at night, possessed of fathers' hearts already. They had no repulse tfc DOMBEY AND SON. 181 overcome, no coldness to dread, no frown to smooth away. As the morning advanced, and the windows openod one by one, and the dew began to dry upon the flowers and grass, and youthful feet began to move upon the lawn, Florence glancing round at the bright faces, thought what was there she could learn from these children ? It was too late to learn from them ; each could approach her father fearlessly, and put up her lips to meet the ready kiss, and wind her arm about the neck that bent down to caress her. She could not begin by being so bold. Oh ! could it be that there was less and less hope as she studied more and more ! She remembered well, that even the old woman who had robbed her when a little child whose image and whose house and all she had said and done, were stamp- ed upon her recollection, with the enduring sharpness of a fearful impression made at that early period of life had spoken fondly of her daughter, and how terribly even she had cried out in the pain of hopeless separation from her child. But her own mother, she would think again, when she recalled this, had loved her well. Then, sometimes, when her thoughts reverted swiftly to the void between herself and her father, Florence would tremble, and the tears would start upon her face, as she pictured to herself her mother living on, and coming also to dislike her, because of her wanting the unknown grace that should conciliate that father naturally, and had never done so from her cradle. She knew that this imagination did wrong to her mother's memory, and had no truth in it, or base to rest upon ; and yet she tried so hard to justify him, and to find the whole blame in herself, that she could not resist its passing, like a wild eloucl. through the distance of her mind. 182 DOMBEY AND SO5T. There came among the other visitors, soon after Flor- ence, one beautiful girl, three or four years younger than she, who was an orphan child, and who was accom- panied by her aunt, a gray-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 arbor in the garden one warm morning, musingly observant of a youthful group upon the turf, through some intervening boughs, and wreathing flow- ers for the head of one little creature among them who was the pet and plaything of the rest, heard this same lady and her niece, in pacing up and down a sheltered nook close by, speak of herself. " Is Florence an orphan like me, aunt ? " said the child. "No, my love. She has no mother, but her father is living." " Is she in mourning for her poor mama now ? " in- quired the child, quickly. " No ; for her only brother." " Has she no other brother ? " None." "No sister?" "None." " I am very, very sorry ! " said the little girl. As they stopped soon afterwards to watch some boats, and had been silent in the mean time, 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 cc nversation recom- menced next moment. DOMBEY AND SON. 183 " Florence is a favorite with every one here, and deserves to be, I am sure," said the child, earnestly. " Where is her papa ? " The aunt replied, after a moment's pause, that she did not know. Her tone of voice arrested Florence, who had started from her seat again ; and held her fastened to the spot, with her work hastily caught up to her bosom, and her two hands saving it from being scattered on the ground. " He is in England, I hope, aunt ? " said the child. " I believe so. Yes ; I know he is, indeed." "Has he ever been here?" " I believe not. No." "Is he coming here to see her?" "I believe not." " Is he lame, or blind, or ill, aunt ? " asked the child. The flowers that Florence held to her breast began to fall when she heard those words, so wonderingly spoken. She held them closer ; and her face hung down upon them. " Kate," said the lady, after another moment of silence, " I will tell you the whole truth about Florence as I have heard it, and believe it to be. Tell no one else, my dear, because it may be little known here, and your doing so would give her pain." "I never will!" exclaimed the child. "I know you never will," returned the lady. "I can trust you as myself. I fear then, Kate, that Florence's either cares little for her, very seldom sees her, never was kind to her in her life, and now quite shuns her and avoids her. She would love him dearly if he would suffer her, but he will not though for no fault of hers ; ami she is greatly to be loved and pitied by all gentle hearts." 184 DOMBEY AND SON. More of the llowers that Florence held, fell scattering ya the ground ; those that remained were wet, but not with dew ; and her face dropped upon her laden hands. " Poor Florence ! Dear, good Florence ! " cried the child. " Do you know why I have told you this, Kate ? " said the lady. u That I may be very kind to her, and take great care to try to please her. Is that the reason, aunt ? " " Partly," said the lady, " but not all. Though we see her so cheerful ; with a pleasant smile for every one ; ready to oblige us all, and bearing her part in every amusement here : she can hardly be quite happy, do you think she can, Kate ? " " I am afraid not," said the little girl. " And you can understand," pursued the lady, " why her observation of children who have parents who are fond of them, and proud of them like many here, just now should make her sorrowful in secret ? " " Yes, dear aunt," said the child, " I understand that very welL Poor Florence ! " More flowers strayed upon the ground, and those she yet held to her breast trembled as if a wintry wind were rustling them. " My Kate," said the lady, whose voice was serious, but very calm and sweet, and had so impressed Florence from the first moment of her hearing it, " Of all the youthful people here, you are her natural and harmless friend ; you have not the innocent means, that happier ihildren have" " There are none happier, aunt ! " exclaimed the child, who seemed to cling about her. u As other children have, dear Kate, of reminding DOMBEY AND SOX. 185 her of her misfortune. Therefore I would have you., when you try to be her little friend, try all the more for that, and feel that the bereavement you sustained thank Heaven ! before you knew its weight gives you claim and hold upon poor Florence." " But I am not withdtit a parent's love, aunt, and 1 never have been," said the child, " with you." " However, that may be, my dear," returned the lady, " your misfortune is a lighter one than Florence's; for not an orphan in the wide world can be so deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love." The flowers were scattered on the ground like dust; the empty hands were spread upon the face ; and or- phaned Florence, shrinking down upon the ground, wept loner and bitterly. But true of heart and resolute in her good purpose, Florence held to it as her dying mother held by her upon the day that gave Paul life. He did not know how much she loved him. However long the time in coming, and however slow the interval, she must try to bring that knowledge to her father's heart one day or other. Meantime she must be careful in no thoughtless word, or look, or burst of feeling awakened by any chance circumstance, to complain against him, or to give occasion for these whispers to his prejudice. Even in the response she made the orphan child, to whom she was attracted strongly, and whom she had such occasion to remember, Florence was mindful cf him. If she singled her out too plainly (Florence thought) from among the rest, she would confirm in one mind certainly ; perhaps in more the belief that he was cruel and unnatural. Her own delight was no set-off f> this. What she had overheard was a reason. 186 DOMBEY AND SON. aot for soothing herself, but for saving him ; and Flor- ence did it, in pursuance of the study of her heart. She did so always. If a book were read aloud, and there were anything in the story that pointed at an un- kind father, she was in pain for their application of it to him ; not for herself. So witkany trifle of an interlude that was acted, or picture that was shown, or game tbat was played, among them. The occasions for such ten- derness towards him were so many, that her mind mis- gave her often, it would indeed be better to go back tc the old house, and live again within the shadow of its dull walls, undisturbed. How few who saw sweel Florence, in her spring of womanhood, the modest little queen of those small revels, imagined what a load of sacred care lay heavy in her breast ! How few of those who stiffened in her father's freezing atmosphere,, suspected what a heap of fiery coals was piled upon his head ! Florence pursued her study patiently, and, failing fo 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 with- out, as she did, with a bar across the door. There was one man whom she several times observed at work very early, and often with a girl of about her D\vn age seated near him. He was a very poor man, who seemed to have no regular employment, but now- wcnt roaming about the banks of the river when the tide was low, looking out for bits and scraps in the mud ; and uow worked at the unpromising little patch of garden* ground before his cottage; and now tinkered up n DOMDEY AND SON. 187 miserable old boat that belonged to him ; or did som job of that kind for a neighbor, as chan:e occurred. Whatever the man's labor, the girl was never employed but sat, when she was with him, in a listless, moping state, and idle. Florence had often wished to speak to this man ; yet she had never taken courage to do so, as he made 110 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 hia dwelling and the water, where he was bending over a fire he had made to calk the old boat which was lying bottom upwards, close by, he raised his head at the sound of her footstep, and gave her Good-morning. " Good-morning," said Florence, approaching nearer "you are at work early." " I'd be glad to be often at work, earlier, miss, if I had work to do." " Is it so hard to get ? " asked Florence. " /find it so," replied the man. Florence glanced to where the girl was sitting, drawn together, with her elbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands, and said : " Is that your daughter ? " He raised his head quickly, and looking towards Ih9 girl with a brightened face, nodded to her and said ' Ye?." Florence looked towards her too, and gave her a kind salutation ; the girl muttered something in return, ungraciously and sullenly. "Is she in want of employment also?" said Florence. The man shook his head. "No, miss," he said. "I vork for both." 188 DOMBEY AND SON. ' Are theie only you two, then ?" inquired Florence. " Only us two," said the man. " Her mothei has been dead these ten year. Martha ! " (He lifted up his head again, and whistled to her.) "Won't you say a word to the pretty young lady ? " T!ie girl made an impatient gesture with her cowering shoulders, and turned her head another way. Ugly, misshapen, peevish, ill-conditioned, ragged, dirty but beloved ! Oh, yes, Florence had seen her father's look towards her, and she knew whose look it had no like- ness to. " I'm afraid she's worse this morning, my poor girl ! " said the man, suspending his work, and contemplating his ill-favored child, with a compassion that was the more tender for being rough. " She is ill, then ! " said Florence. The man drew a deep sigh. " I don't believe my Martha's had five short days' good health," he answered, looking at her still, " in as many long years." "Ay! and more than that, John," said a neighboi, who had come down to help him with the boat. "More than that, you say, do you ?" cried the other, pushing back his battered hat, and drawing his hand across his forehead. " Very like. It seems a long, long time." " And the more the time," pursued the neighbor, " the more you've favored and humored her, John, 'till she' got to be a burden to herself, and everybody else." "Not to me," said her father, falling to his work again. ' Not to me." Florence could feel who better ? how truly he spoke. She drew a little closer to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, and thank him for DOMBEY AND SON. 189 his goodness to the miserable object that he looked upon with eyes so different from any other man's. * Who would favor my poor girl to call it favoring if / didn't ? " said the father. "Ay, ay," cried the neighbor. "In reason, John. But you ! You rob yourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand and foot on her account. You make your life miserable along of her. And what does she care ! You don't believe she knows it ? " The father lifted up his head again, and whistled to her. Martha made the same impatient gesture with her crouching shoulders, in reply ; and he was glad and happy. " Only for that, miss," said the neighbor with a smile, in which there was more of secret sympathy than he ex- pressed ; " only to get that, he never lets her out of hia sight ! " " Because the day'll come, and has been coming a long while," observed the other, bending low over his work, " when to get half as much from that unfort'nate child of mine to get the trembling of a finger, or the waving of a hair would be to raise the dead." Florence softly put some money near his hand on the old boat, and left him. And now Florence began to think, if she were to fall '.11. if she were to fade like her dear brother, would he hen 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 !ier, in that changed condition, for not having been able to lay open her childish heart to him, as to make it easy v .o relate with what emotions she hsd gone out of hi 190 DOMBET AND SON. room that night ; what she had meant to say if she had had the courage ; and how she had endeavored, after- wards, to learn the way she never knew in infancy ? Yes, she thought if she were dying, he would relent She thought, that if she lay, serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that was curtained round with recollections of their darling boy, he would be touched home, and would say, " Dear Florence, live for me, and we will love each other as we might have done, and be as happy as we might have been these many years ! " She thought that if she heard such words from him, and had her arms clasped round him, she could answer with a smile, " It is too late for anything but this : I never could be happier, dear father ! " and so leave him, with a blessing on her lips. The golden water she remembered on the wall, ap- peared 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 rip- pling at her feet, she thought with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river which her brother had so often said was bearing him away. The father and his sick daughter were yet fresh in Florence's mind, and, indeed, that incident was not a week old, when Sir Barnet and his lady going out walk- ing 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 be- holding her eldest son with Florence on his arm. Barnet, to say the truth, appeared to entertain an op- posite sentiment on the subject, and on such occasions DOMBEY AJSTD SON. 191 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 com- placency and high gratification. This. was the order of procedure on the afternoon in question : and Florence had almost succeeded in over- ruling the present objections of Skettles junior to his" destiny, when a gentleman on horseback came riding by, looked at them earnestly as he passed, drew in his rein, wheeled round, and came riding back again, hat in hand. The gentleman had looked particularly at Florence; and when the little party stopped, on his riding back, he bowed to her before saluting Sir Barnet and his lady. Florence had no remembrance of having ever seen him, but she started involuntarily when he came near her, and drew back. " My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you," said the gentleman. It was not that, but something in the gentleman him- self Florence could not have said what that made her recoil as if she had been stung. " I have the honor to address Miss Dombey, I be- lieve ? " said the gentleman, with a most persuasive smile. On Florence inclining her head, he added, " My name is Carker. I can hardly hope to be remembered by Miss Dombey, except by name. Carker." Florence, sensible of a strange inclination to shiver, though the day was hot, presented him to her host and hostess ; by whom he was very graciously received. 192 DOMBEY AND SON u I beg pardon," said Mr. Carker, "a thousand times! But I am going down to-morrow morning to Mr. Dom- bey, at Leamingvon, and if Miss Dombey can intrust me with any commission, need I say how very happy I shall be?" Sir Barnet immediately divining that Florence would desire to write a letter to her father, proposed to return, and besought Mr. Carker to come home and dine in his riding gear. Mr. Carker had the misfortune to be ""engaged for dinner, but if Miss Dorabey wished to write, nothing would delight him more than to accompany them back, and to be her faithful slave in waiting as long as she pleased. As he said this with his widest smile, and bent down close to her to pat his horse's neck, Florence, meeting his eyes, saw, rather than heard him say, " There is no news of the ship ! " Confused, frightened, shrinking from him, and not even sure that he had said those words, for he seemed to have shown them to her in some extraordinary manner through his smile, instead of uttering them, Florence faintly said that she was obliged to him, but she would not write ; she had nothing to say. " Nothing to send, Miss Dombey ? " said the man of teeth. " Nothing," said Florence, " but my but my dear love if you please." Disturbed as Florence was, she raised her eyes to his face with an imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if he knew which he as plainly did that any message between her and her father was an un- common 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 DOMBElf AND SON. 193 Lady Skettles, took his leave, and rode away : leaving a favorable impression on that worthy couple. Florence was seized with such a shudder as he went, that Sir Barnet, adopting the popular superstition, supposed some- body was passing over her grave. Mr. Carker, turning a corner, on the instant, looked back, and bowed, and dis .appeared, as if he rode off to the church-yard, straight, to do it. 194 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXV. STRANGE NEWS OF UNCLE SOL. CAPTAIN CUTTLE, though no sluggard, did not BO early on the morning after he had seen Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing in the parlor, 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 e.Uiow, and took a survey of his little chamber. The ca^.m's eyes must Dave 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 door- way of Captain Cuttle's bedroom 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 color and expression. " Holloa ! " roared the captain. " What's the mat- er?" Before Rob could stammer a word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out, all in a he*, -..a covered the boy's mouth with his hand. " Steady my lad," said the captain, " don't ye speak a word to me as yet ! " The captain, looking at his visitor in great consterna^ DOMBEY AND SON. 195 lion, gently shouldered him into the next rcom, after laying this injunction upon him ; and disappearing foi a few moment?, forthwith returned in-the blue suit. Hold- ing up his hand in token of the injunction not yet beirp 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 him- self up in a corner, against the wall, as if to forestall the possibility of being knocked backward by the communica- tion 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-a-head." " Do you mean, tell you, captain ? " asked Rob, who had been greatly impressed by these precautions. " Ay ! " said the captain. " Well, sir," said Rob, " I a'n't got much to tell. But look here ! " Rob produced a bundle of keys. The captain sur- veyed them, remained in his corner, and surveyed the messenger. " And look here ! " pursued Rob. The boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain Cuttle stared at as he had stared at the keys. " When I woke this morning, captain," said Rob, M which was about a quarter after five, I found these on fly pillow. The shop-door was unbolted and unlocked, 8 d Mr. Gills gone." " Gone ! " roared the captain. " Flowed, sir," returned Rob. The captain's voice was so tremendous, and he came out of his corner with such way on him, that Rob re- created before him into another corner : holding out the 196 DOMBEY AND SON. keys and packet, to prevent himself from being run down. " ' For Captain Cuttle,' sir," cried Rob, " is on the keys, and on the packet too. Upon my word and honor. 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 Grin- der, screwing his cuff into his face : " his master bolted with his place, and him blamed for it ! " These lamentations had reference to Captain Cuttle's gaze, or rather glare, which was full of vague suspicions, threateniugs, and denunciations. Taking the proffered packet from his hand, the captain opened it and read as follows : " ' My dear Ned Cuttle. Enclosed is my will ! ' " The captain turned it over, with a doubtful look " ' and testament.' Where's the testament ? " said the captain, instantly impeaching the ill-fated Grinder. " What have you done with that, my lad ? " " / never see it," whimpered Rob. " Don't keep on suspecting an innocent lad, captain. 1 never touched the testament" Captain Cuttle shook his head, implying that some- body must be made answerable for it; and gravely proceeded : " ' Which don't break open for a year, or until ycu 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 rees- tablishment 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, re- member an old friend as he will remember you to the DOMBEY AND SON. 197 last kindly ; and at least until the period I nave mentioned lias expired, keep a home in the old place for Walter. There are no dehts, 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 recom- mended, as I told you, from Dombey's house. If all else should come to the hammer, take care, Ned, of the little Midshipman.'" To convey to posterity any idea of the manner in which the captain, after turning this letter over and over, and reading it a score of times, sat down in his chair, and held a court-martial on the subject in his own mind, would require the united genius of all the great men, who, discarding their own untoward days, have de- termined 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; anu even when his thoughts began to glance upon the \tirious 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 BO clearly expressed in his visage, that Rob remon- Itrated. " Oh. don't, captain ! " cried the Grinder. " I wouder how you can ! what have I done to be looked at, like diat ? " "My lad," said Captain Cuttle, "don't you sing on! 198 DOMBEY AND SON. afore you're hurt. And don't you commit .yourself whatever you do." " I haven't been and committed nothing, captain," answered Rob. " Keep her free, then," said the captain, impressively " and ride easy." With a deep senae 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 ex- amine 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 ex- pedient to handcuff him, or tie his ankles together, or attach a weight to his legs, but not being clear as to the legality of such formalities, the captain decided merely to hold him by the shoulder all the way, and knock him down if he made any objection. However, he made none, and consequently got to the Instrument-maker's house without being placed under any more stringent restraint. As the shutters were not yet taken down, the captain's first care was to have the shop opened; and when the daylight was freely ad- mitted, he proceeded, with its aid, to further investi- gation. The captain's first care was to establish himself in a chair in the shop, as president of the solemn tribunaJ 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 ff to Brig-place cautiously preventing the latter imi- tation from being carried farther than the threshold DOMBEY AND SON. 199 and so on to the end of the chapter. When all this had been done several times, the captain shook his head and seemed to think the matter had a bad look. Next, the captain, with some indistinct idea of finding a body, instituted a strict search over the whole house ; groping in the cellars with a lighted candle, thrusting his hook behind doors, bringing his head into violent contact with beams, and covering himself with cob- webs. Mounting up to the old man's bedroom, they found that he had not been in bed on the previous night, but had merely lain down on the coverlet, as was evi- dent from the impression yet remaining there. " And I think, captain," said Rob, looking round the room, *' that when Mr. Gills was going in and out so often, these last few days, he was taking little things away, piecemeal, not to attract attention." u Ay ! " said the captain, mysteriously. " Why so, my lad ? " " Why," returned Rob, looking about, " I don't see his shaving tackle. Nor his brushes, captain. Nor no shirts. Nor yet his shoes." As each of these articles was mentioned, Captain Cuttle took particular notice of the corresponding de- partment of the Grinder, lest he should appear to have been in recent use, or should prove to be in present pos- session thereof. But Rob had no occasion to shave, cer- tainly was not brushed, and wore the clothes he had worn for a long time past, beyond all possibility of mistake. " And what should you say," said the captain "not committing yourself about his time of sheering off? Hey?" " Why, I think, captain," returned Rob, " that ho must have gone pretty soon after I began to snore." 200 DOMBEY AND SON. " What o'clock was that ? " said the captain, prepared to be very particular about the exact time. " How can I tell, captain ! " answered Rob. " I only know that I'm a heavy sleeper at first, and a light one towards morning ; and if Mr. Gills had come through the shop near daybreak, though ever so much to tiptoe, I'm pretty sure I should have heard him shut the door at all events." On mature consideration of this evidence, Captain Cuttle began to think that the Instrument-maker must have vanished of his own accord ; to which logical con- clusion he was assisted by the letter addressed to him- self, which, as being unquestionably in the old man's handwriting, would seem, with no great forcing, to bear the construction, that he arranged of his own will, to go, and so went. The captain had next to consider where and why ? and as there was no way whatsoever that he saw to the solution of the first difficulty, he confined his meditations to the second. Remembering the old man's curious manner, and the farewell he had taken of him : unaccountably fervent at the time, but quite intelligible now : a terrible appre- hension 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 vio- lently strained misgiving, but only too probable. Free from debt, and with no fear for his personal liberty, or the seizure of his goods, what else but such a state of madness could have hurried him away alone and secretly ? A? to his carrying some apparel with DOMBEY AND SON. 201 him, if he had really done so and they were not even sure of that he might have done so, the captain argued, to prevent inquiry, to distract attention from his probable fate, or to ease the very mind that was now revolving all these possibilities. Such, reduced into plain lan- guage, and condensed within a small compass, was the final result and substance of Captain Cuttle's delibera- tions ; which took a long time to arrive at this pass, and were, like some more public deliberations, very discur- sive and disorderly. Dejected and despondent in the extreme, Captain Cuttle felt it just to release Rob from the arrest in which he had placed him, and to enlarge him, subject to a kind of honorable 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 cap- tain, taking Rob with him, issued forth upon a disraaJ quest after the mortal remains of Solomon Gills. Not a station-house or bone-house, or work -house in the metropolis escaped a visitation from the hard glazed hat. Along the wharves, among the shipping, on the bank side, up the river, down the river, here, there, everywhere, it went gleaming where men were thickest, like the hero's helmet in an epic battle. For a whole week the captain read of all the found and missing peo- ple in all the newspapers and handbills, and went fortb on expeditions at all hourS of the day to identify Solo- mon Gills, in poor little ship-boys who had fallen over- board, and in tall foreigners with dark beards who had taken poison " to make sure," Captain Cuttle said, that it warn't him." 'It is a sure thing that it never Iras, and that the good captain had no other satisfaction. Captain Cuttle at last abandoned these attempts as 202 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 u a home in the old place for Walter " was the primary duty imposed upon him. Therefore, the captain's deci- sion was, that he would keep house on the premises of Solomon Gills himself, and would go into the instrument business, and see what came of it. But as this step involved the relinquishment of hia apartments at Mrs. MacStinger's, and he knew that resolute woman would never hear of hi& deserting them, the captain took the desperate determination of running away. " Now, look ye here, my lad," said the captain to Rob, when he had matured this notable scheme, " to-morrow, I shan't be found in this here roadstead till night not till arter midnight p'raps. But you keep watch till you hear me knock, and the moment you do, turn-to, and open the door." " Very good, captain," said Rob. " You'll continue to be rated on these here books," pursued the captain condescendingly, " and I don't say but what you may get promotion, if you and me should pull together with a will. But the moment you hoar me knock to-morrow night, whatever time it is, turn-to and ghow yourself smart with the door." " I'll be sure to do it, captain," replied Rob. " Because you understand," resumed the captain, com :ng back again to enforce this charge upon his mind, u there may be, for anything I can say, a chase ; and 1 might be took while I was waiting, if you didn't show yourself smart with the door." Rob asjain assured the captain that he would be DOMBEY AND SON. 203 prompt ami wakeful ; and the captain having made thia prudent arrangement, went home to Mrs. MacStinger*8 for the hist time. The sense the captain had of its being the last time, and of the awful purpose hidden beneath his blue waist- coal, inspired him with such a mortal dread of Mrs. MacStinger, that the sound of that lady's foot down- stairs at any time of the day, was sufficient to throw him into a fit of trembling. It fell out, too, that Mrs. MacStinger was in a charming temper mild and placid as a house-lamb ; and Captain Cuttle's conscience Buffered terrible twinges, when she came up to inquire if she could cook him nothing for his dinner. " A nice small kidney -pudding now, Cap'en Cuttle," said his landlady : " or a sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble." " No thank'ee, ma'am," returned the captain. " Have a roast fowl," said Mrs. MacStinger, " with a bit of weal stuffing and some egg sauce. Come, Cap'en Cuttle ! Give yourself a little treat ! " " No thank'ee, ma'am," returned the captain very humbly. " I'm sure you're out of sorts, and want to be stimu- lated," said Mrs. MacStinger. " Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry-wine ? " " Well, ma'am," rejoined the captain, " if you'd be so good as take a glass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favor, ma'am," said the captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, " to accept a quarter's rent ahead ? " " And why so, Cap'en Cuttle ? " retorted Mrs. Mao- Stinger sharply as the captain thought. Tlie captain was frightened to death. " If you would. 204 DOMBEY AND SON ma'am," he said with submission, " it would oblige me, I can't keep my money very well. It pays itself out. I should take it kind if you'd comply." "Well, Cap'en Cuttle," said the unconscious Mao- Stinger, rubbing her hands, " you can do as you please. It's not for me, with my family, to refuse, no more than it is to ask." " And would you, ma'am," said the captain, taking down the tin canister, in which he kept his cash, from the top-shelf of the cupboard, " be so good as offer eighteen-pence apiece to the little family all round ? If you could make it convenient, ma'am, to pass the word presently for them children to come for'ard^in a body, I should be glad to see 'em." These innocent MacStingers were so many daggers to the captain's breast, when they appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confiding trustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, who had been his favorite, was insupportable to the captain ; the voice of Juliana MacStinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward of him. Captain Cuttle kept up appearances, nevertheless, tol- erably 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 execu- tion. In the silence of night, the captain packed up his heavier property in a chest, which he locked, intending DOMBET AND SON. 205 to leave it there, in all probability forever, but on the forlorn chance of one day finding a man sufficiently bold and desperate to come and ask for it. Of his lighter necessaries, the captain made a bundle ; and disposed his plate about his person, ready for flight. At the hour of midnight, when Brig-place was buried in slumber, and Mrs. MacStinger was lulled in sweet oblivion, with her infants around her, the guilty captain stealing down on tiptoe, in the dark, opened the door, closed it softly after him, and took to his heels. Pursued by the image of Mrs. MacStinger springing viit 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, be- tween Brig-place and the Instrument-maker's door. It opened when he knocked for Rob was on the watch and when it was bolted and locked behind him, Cap- tain Cuttle felt comparatively safe. " Whew ! " cried the captain, looking round him. ' ; It's a breather ! " " Nothing the matter, is there, captain ? " cried the gaping Rob. " No, no ! " said Captain Cuttle, after changing color, 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 kno'vn, nor never heard of here ; observe them orders, will you ? " " I'll take care, captain," returned Rob. " You might say if you liked," hesitated the cap- tain, " that you'd read in the paper that a cap'en of 206 DOMBET AND SOtf. that name was gone tc Australia, emigrating along with A whole ship's complement of people as had all swore never to come back no more." Rob nodded his understanding of these instructions ; and Captain Cattle 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 f the public. DOMBET AND SON. 207 After effecting these improvements, Captain Cuttle, surrounded by the instruments, began to feel scientific arid looked up at the stars at night, through the skylight, when he was smoking his pipe in the little back-parlor before going to bed, as if he had established a kind of properly in them. As a tradesman in the city, too, ho began to have an interest in the Lord Mayor, and thu 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 dis- pensed with the fractions. Florence, the raptain 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. Mac- Stinger herself, as among the things that had been. 08 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXVI. SHADOWS OF THE PAST AND FUTURE. u YOUR most obedient, sir," said the major. " Damme, sir, a friend of my friend Dombey's is a friend of mine, and I'm glad to see you ! " " I am infinitely obliged, Carker," explained Mr. Dom- bey, " to Major Bagstock for his company and conversa- tion. Major Bagstock has rendered me great service, Carker." Mr. Carker the Manager, hat in hand, just arrived at Leamington, and just introduced to the major, showed the major his whole double range of teeth, and trusted he might take the liberty of thanking him with all hia heart for having effected so great an improvement in Mr. Dombey's looks and spirits. "By Gad, sir," said the major, in reply, "there are no thanks due to me, for it's a give and take affair. A great creature like our friend Dombey, sir," said the major, lowering his voice, but not lowering it so much as to render it inaudible to that gentleman, "cannot help improving and exalting his friends. He strengthens and invigorates a man, sir, does Dombey, in his moral na- ture." Mr. Carker snapped at the expression. In his moral nature. Exactly. The very words he had been on the ooint of suggesting. " But when my friend Dombey, sir," added the major, DOMBEY AND SON. 206 " talks to you of Major Bagstock, I mus* crave leave to set him and you right. He means plain Joe, sir Joey B. Josh. Bagstock Joseph rough and tough Old J.. sir. At your service." Mr. Carker's excessively friendly inclinations towards the major, and Mr. Carker's admiration of his roughness, toughness, and plainness, gleamed out of every tooth in Mr. Carker's head. " And now, sir," said the major, " you and Dombey have the devil's own amount of business to talk over/ 1 " By no means, major," observed Mr. Dombey. " Dombey," said the major defiantly, " I know better ; a man of your mark the Colossus of commerce is not to be interrupted. Your moments are precious. We shall meet at dinner-time. In the interval old Joseph will be scarce. The dinner-hour is a sharp seven, Mr. Carker." With that, the major, greatly swollen as to his face. withdrew ; but immediately putting in his head at the door again, said: " I beg your pardon. Dombey, have you any mes- sage to 'em?" Mr. Dombey in some embarrassment, and not without a glance at the courteous keeper of his business confi dence, intrusted the major with his compliments. " By the Lord, sir," said the major, "you must make it something warmer than that, or old Joe will be far from welcome." " Regards then, if you will, major," returned Mr. Dombey. " Damme, sir," said the major, shaking his shoulders and his great cheeks jocularly : " make it something warmer than that." VOL. II. 14 5510 DOMBEY AND SON. " What you please, then, major," observed Mr, Dom bey. ' Our friend is sly sir, sly sir, de-vilish sly," said the major, staring round the door at Carker. " So is Bag- stock." But stopping in the midst of a chuckle, and drawing himself up to his full height, the major sol- emnly exclaimed, as he struck himself on the chest, " Dombey ! I envy your feelings. God bless you ! " and withdrew. " You must have found the gentleman a great re- source," said Carker, following him with his teeth. " Very great indeed," said Mr. Dombey. " He has friends here, no doubt," pursued Carker. "I perceive, from what he has said, that you go into society here. Do you know," smiling horribly, a I am so very glad that you go into society ! ** Mr. Dombey acknowledged this display of interest on the part of his^second in command, by twirling his watch- chain, and slightly moving his head. " You were formed for society," said Carker. u 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'? length so long ! " " I have had my reasons, Carker. I have been alone, and indifferent to it. But you have great social qualifi- cations yourself, and are the more likely to have ben surprised." "Oh! 77" returned the other, with ready self-dis- paragement. u It's quite another matter in the case of a man like me. I don't come into comparison with you." Mr. Dombey put his hand to his neckcloth, settled his DOMBEY AND SON. 21 J cliin in it, coughed, and stood looking at his faithful friend and servant for a few moments in silence. " I shall have the pleasure, Carker," said Mr. Dombey at length : making as if he swallowed something a little too large for his throat : " to present you to my to the major's friends. Highly agreeable people." " Ladies among them, I presume ? " insinuated tL smooth Manager. " They are all that is to say, they are both ladies," replied Mr. Dombey. "Only two?" smiled Carker. " There are only two. I have confined my visits to their residence, and have made no other acquaintance here." " Sisters, perhaps ? " quoth Carker. " Mother and daughter," replied Mr. Dombey. As Mr. Dombey dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, the smiling face of Mr. Carker the Manager became in a moment, and without any stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowning face, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. Ad Mr. Dombey raised his eyes, it changed back, no lesa quickly, to its old expression, and showed him every gum of which it stood possessed. " You are very kind," said Carker. " I shall be de- lighted to know them. Speaking of daughters, I hate Been Miss Dombey." There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr. Dombey'a face. ** I took the liberty of waiting on her," said Carker. "to inquire if she could charge me with any little com- mission. I am not so fortunate as to be the bearer of any but her but her dear love." 212 DOMBEY AND SON. Wolf's face that it was then, with even the hot tongue revealing itself through the stretched mouth, as the eyes encountered Mr. Dombey's ! " What business intelligence is there ? ** inquired the latter gentleman, after a silence, during which Mr. Carker had produced some memoranda and other pa- pers. " There is very little," returned Carker. u 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 in- sured from her keel to her masthead." " Carker," said Mr. Dombey, taking a chair near him, " I cannot say that young man, Gay, ever impressed me favorably " " Nor me," interposed the Manager. " But I wish," said Mr. Dombey, without heeding the interruption, " he had never gone on board that ship. I wish he had never been sent out." " It is a pity you didn't say so, in good time, is it not ? " retorted Carker, coolly. " However. I think it's all for the best. I really think it's all for the best. Did I mention that there was something like a little confi- dence between Miss Dombey and myself." " No," said Mr. Dombey, sternly. M I have no doubt," returned Mr. Carker, after an im- pressive pause, " that wherever Gay is, he is much better where he is, than at home here. If I were, or could be, in your place, I should be satisfied of that. I am quite satisfied of it myself. Miss Dombey is confiding and young perhaps hardly proud enough, for your daugh- ter if she have a fault. Not that that is much though, I am sure. Will you check these balances with me ? " DOMBEY AND SON. 213 Mr. Dombey leaned back in his chair, instead of bend- ing 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 in- tended consideration, and felt that but for it, this confi- dential Carker would have said a great deal more, which lie, Mr. Dombey, was too proud to ask for. It was hia 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 im- pressed it on his great chief more and more. While they were thus engaged ; and under the skilful culture of the Manager, angry thoughts in reference to poor Florence brooded and bred in Mr. Dombey's breast, usurping the place of the cold dislike that generally reigned there ; Major Bagstock, much admired by the old ladies of Leamington, and followed by the native, carrying the usual amount of light baggage, straddled along the shady side of the way, to make a morning-call on Mrs. Skewton. It being mid-day when the major reached the bower of Cleopatra, he had the good fortune to find his princess on her usual sofa, languishing over a eup of coffee, with the room so darkened and shaded for her more luxurious repose, that Withers, who was in at- endance on her, loomed like a phantom page, " What insupportable creature is this, coming in ! " 214 DOMBEY AND SON. said Mrs. Skewton. " I cannot bear it. Go away, whoever you are ! " " You have not the heart to banish J. B., ma'am ! " ?aid the major, halting midway, to remonstrate, with hia cane over his shoulder. " Oh it's you, is it ? On second thoughts you may enter," observed Cleopatra. The major entered accordingly, and advancing to the sofa pressed her charming hand to his lips. " Sit down," said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, u a long way off. Don't come too near me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive this morning, and you smell of the sun. You are absolutely tropical." " By George, ma'am," said the major, " the time has been when Joseph Bagstock has been grilled and blis- tered by the sun ; the time was, when he was forced, ma'am, into such full blow, by high hot-house heat in the West Indies, that he was known as the flower. A man never heard of Bagstock, ma'am, in those days ; he heard of the flower the flower of Our's. The flower may have faded, more or less, ma'am," observed the major, dropping into a much nearer chair than had been indi- cated by his cruel divinity, " but it is a tough plant yet, and constant as the evergreen." Here the major, under cover of the dark room, shut up one eye, rolled his head like a harlequin, and, in hia great self-satisfaction, perhaps went nearer to the con- fines of apoplexy than he had ever gone before. "Where is Mrs. Granger?" inquired Cleopatra of her page. Withers believed she was in her own room. "Very well," said Mrs. Skewton. "Go away, and >, 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 gray ; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous and loose ; and old, worn, yellow nodding woman, with red eyes, alone remained in Cleopatra 3 DOMDKV AND SON. 253 place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a greasy flannel gown. The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone again. " Why don't you tell me," it said, sharply, " that be k- coming here to-morrow by appointment?" " Because you know it," returned Edith, " mother." The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word ! " You know he has bought me," she resumed. " Or that he will, to-morrow. He has considered of his bar- gain ; he has shown it to his friend ; he is even rather proud of it ; he thinks that it will suit him, and may be had sufficiently cheap ; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have lived for this, and that I feel it! " Compress into one handsome face the conscious self- abas,ement, and the burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride ;' and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms. " What do you mean ? " returned the angry mother. " Haven't you from a child " " A child ! " said Edith, looking at her, " when was I a child ! What childhood did you ever leave to me ? I was a woman artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men before I knew myself, or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new dis- play I learnt. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon lier. She is in her pride to-night." And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as though she would have beaten down herself. " Look at me," she said, " who have never known what it is to have an honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when children play, and 254 DOMBEY AND SON. married in my youth an old age of design to one for whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a widow, dying before his inheritance descended to him a judgment on you ! well deserved I and tell me what has been my life for ten years since." u We have been making every effort to endeavor to secure to you a good establishment," rejoined her mother. * That has been your life. And now you have got it." " There is no slave in a market, there is no horse in a fair, so shown and offered and examined and paraded, mother, as I have been, for ten shameful years," cried Edith, with a burning brow, and the same bitter empha- sis on the one word. " Is it not so ? Have I been made the by -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 al- most come to be notorious ? The license of look and touch," she said, with flashing eyes, " have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map of Eng- land ? 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 this been my late childhood? I Lad none before. Do not tell me that I had, to-night, of all nights in my life ! " " You might have been well married/' said her mother, '* twenty times at least, Edith, if you had given encour- . agement enough." " No ! "Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be," she answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, DOMBEY AND SON. 255 " shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him ! When he came to view me perhaps to bid he required to see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have me show one of them, to justify his pur- chase to his men, I require of him to say which he de- mands, 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. / have not vaunted and pressed the bargain : neither have you, so far as I have been able to prevent you." " You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own mother." " It eeems 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, " So, as we are gen- teel and poor, I am content that we should be made rich by these means ; all I say is, I have kept the only pur- pose I have had the strength to form I had almost Baid the power, with you at my side, mother and have not tempted this man on." " This man ! You speak," said her mother, " as if you hated him." "And you thought I loved him, did you not?" she answered, stopping on' her way across the room, and 256 DOMBEY AND SON. looking round. "Shall I tell you," she Rcntinued, with her eyes fixed on her mother, " who already knows ua 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 knowl- edge of me ? " " This is an attack, I suppose," returned her mother, coldly, "on poor, unfortunate what's-his-name Mr. Carker ! Your want of self-respect and confidence, my dear, in reference to that person (who is very agreeable, it strikes me), is not likely to have much effect on your establishment. Why do you look at me so hard ? Are you ill?" Edith suddenly let fall her face, as if it had been stung, and while she pressed her hands upon it, a ter- rible tremble crept over her whole frame. It was quickly gone ; and with her usual step she passed out of the room. The maid, who should have been a skeleton, then re- appeared, and giving one arm to her mistress, who ap- peared to have taken off her manner with her charms, and to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown, col- lected the ashes of Cleopatra, and carried them away, ready for to-morrow's revivification. DOMBEY AND SON. 257 CHAPTER XXVIIL ALTERATIONS. "So the day has come at length, Susan," said Florence to the excellent Nipper, "when we are going back to our quiet home ! " Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expres- sion not easily described, and further relieving her feel- ings with a smart cough, answered, " Very quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so." " When I was a child," said Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing for some moments, " did you ever see that gentleman who has taken the trouble to ride down oere to speak to me, now three times three times I think, Susan ? " " Three times, miss," returned the Nipper. " Once when you was out a-walking with them Sket" Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself. u With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, miss, and the young gentleman. And two evenings since then." "When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit papa, did you ever see that gentleman at home, Susan ? " asked Florence. " Well, miss," returned her maid, after considering, * I really couldn't say I ever did. When your poor VOL ii. 17 258 DOMBEY AND SON. dear ma died, Miss Floy, 1 was very new in the family, you see, and my element : " the Nipper bridled, as opin- ing that her merits had been always designedly ex tinguished by Mr. Dombey : " was the floor below the attics." " To be sure," said Florence, still thoughtfully ; " you are not likely to have known who came to the house I quite forgot." " Not, miss, but what we talked about the family and visitors," said Susan, " and but what I heard much said, although the nurse before Mrs. Richards did make un pleasant remarks when I was in company, and hint at little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor thing," observed Susan with composed forbearance, " to habits of intoxication, for which she was required to leave, and did." Florence, who was seated at her chamber-window, with her face resting on her hand, sat looking out and hardly seemed to hear what Susan said, she was so lost in thought. " At all events, miss," said Susan, " I remember very well that this same gentleman, Mr. Carker, was almost. if not quite, as great a gentleman with your papa then, as he is now. It used to be said in the house then, miss, that he was at the head of all your pa's affairs in the city, and managed the whole, and that your pa minded him more than anybody, which, begging your l^ardon, Miss Floy, he might easy do, for he never minded anybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might have been." Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before Mrs. Richards, emphasized "Pitcher' strongly. DOMBEY AND SON. 259 u And that Mr. Carker has not fallen off, miss," she pursued, " bul, 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, Hiss Floy, and no one can have a moment's patience with the man, he knows what goes on in the Ci4y toler- able well, and says that your pa does nothing without Mr. Carker, and leaves all to Mr. Carker, and acts ac- cording to Mr. Carker, and has Mr. Carker always at bis elbow, and I do believe that he believes (that wash- iest of Perches) that after your pa, the Emperor of India is the child unborn to Mr. Carker." Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an awakened interest in Susan's speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the prospect without, but looked at her, and listened with attention. " Yes, Susan," she said, when that young lady had concluded. " He is in papa's confidence, and is hia friend, I am sure." Florence's mind ran high on this theme, and had done for some days. Mr. Carker, in the two visits with which he had followed up his first one, had assumed a confi- dence between himself and her a right on his part to be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was still unheard of a kind of mildly restrained power, and authority over her that made her wonder, "Jid 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 k'o such address as his ; and Florence had none. True, he had said no more to her than that there was n 260 DOMBEY AND SON. news of the ship, and that he feared the worst; but how he came to know that she was interested in the ship, and why he had the right to signify his knowledge to her, so insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence very much. This conduct on the part of Mr. Carker, and litt habit of often considering it with wonder and uneasi- ness, began to invest him with an uncomfortable fasci- nation in Florence's thoughts. A more distinct remem- brance of his features, voice, and manner : which she sometimes courted, as a means of reducing him to the level of a real personage, capable of exerting no greater charm over her than another : did not remove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or looked upon her with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling and serene. Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference to her father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herself unwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, would recall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, and would think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling ten- dency to dislike and fear him be a part of that misfor- une in her, which had turned her father's love adrift, ind 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 honored and encouraged by the notice of her father's friend ! and hoped that patient observation of him and trust in him would lead her bleeding feet along that stony road which ended in her father's heart. Thus, with no one to advise her for she could ad- DOMBEY AND SON. 261 vise with no one without seeming to complain against him gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of doubl and hope ; and Mr. Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her. Florence had a new reason in all this for wishing to "be at home again. Her lonely life was better suited to her course of timid hope and doubt : and she feared sometimes, that in her absence she might miss some hopeful chance of testifying her affection for her father. Heaven knows, she might have set her mind at rest, poor child ! on this last point ; but her slighted love was fluttering within her, and, even in her sleep, it flew away in dreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird come home, upon her father's neck. Of Walter she thought often. Ah ! how often, when the night was gloomy, and the wind was blowing round the house ! But hope was strong in her breast. It is BO difficult for the young and ardent, even with such experience as hers, to imagine youth and ardor quenched like a weak flame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that hope was strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter's sufferings, but rarely for his supposed death, and never long. She had written to the old Instrument-maker, but had received no answer to her note : which indeed required none. Thus matters stood with Florence on I he morn- ing when she was going home, gladly, to her old secluded life. Doctor and Mrs. Blimber, accompanied (much against nis will) by theii valued charge, Master Barnet, wew already gone back to Brighton, where that young gen- tleman and his fellow pilgrims to Parnassus were then 262 DOMBET OD SON. DO doubt, in the continual resumption cf their studies. The holiday time was past and over ; most of the juve- nile guests at the villa had taken their departure ; and Florence's long visit was come to an end. There was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, who had been, very constant in his attention to the family, and who still remained devoted to them. This was Mr. Toots, who after renewing, some weeks ago, the acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming with Skettles Junior, on the night when he burst the Blimberian bonds and soared into freedom with his ring on, called regularly every other day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-door ; so many indeed, that the ceremony was quite a deal on the part of Mr. Toots, and a hand at whist on the part of the servant. Mr. Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing the family from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose that this expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), had established a six- oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of the Chicken's and steered by that illustrious character in person, who wore a bright red fireman's coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetual black eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previous to the insti- tution of this equipage, Mr. Toots sounded the Chicken on a hypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamored 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 exer DOMBEY AND SON. 2G3 tise of much invention, resolved to call his boat The Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no man knowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation. Stretched on a crimsoned 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 Bar- net'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 Delight as had filled all the neighboring part of the water-side with as- tonishment. But whenever he saw any one in Sir Bar- net's garden on the brink of the river, Mr. Toots alwayp feigned to be passing there, by a combination of coinci* dences of the most singular and unlikely description. " How are you, Toots ! " Sir Barnet would say, wav- ing his hand from the lawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore. " How de do, Sir Barnet ! " Mr. Toots would answer. u What a surprising thing that I should see you here ? " Mr. Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as i, instead of that being Sir Barnet's house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks of the Nile, or Ganges. "I never was so surprised!" Mr. Toots would ex- claim. " Is Miss Dombey there ? " Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps. "Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey," Mr. Toots would cry. "I called to ask this morning." " Thank you very much ! " the pleasant voice of Flor- ence would reply. " Won't you come ashore, Toots ?" Sir Barnet would 264 DOMJBEY AND SON. say then. " Come ! you're in no hurry. Come and see us." u Oh it's of no consequence, thank you ! " Mr. Toota would blurihingly rejoin. "I thought Miss Dombey might like to know, that's all. Good-by ! " And poor Mr. Toots, who was dying to accept the invitation, birt hadn't the courage to do it, signed to the Chicken, with an aching heart, and away went the Delight, cleaving the water like an arrow. The Delight was lying in a state of extraordinary splendor, at the garden-steps, on the morning of Flor- ence's departure. When she went down-stairs to take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr. Toots awaiting her in the drawing-room. " Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey ? " said the stricken Toots, always dreadfully disconcerted when the desire of his heart was gained, and he was speaking to her ; "thank you, I'm very well indeed, I hope you're the same, so was Diogenes yesterday." " You are very kind," said Florence. " Thank you, it's of no consequence," retorted Mr. Toots. " I thought perhaps you wouldn't mind, in this fine weather, coming home by water, Miss Dombey. There's plenty of room in the boat for your maid." " I am very much obliged to you," said Florence, hesi- tating. " I really am but I would rather not." " Oh, it's of no consequence," retorted Mr. Toots. M Good-morning ! " " Won't you wait and see Lady Skettles ? " asked Florence, kindly. u Oh no, thank you," returned Mr. Toots, " it's of no consequence at all." So shy was Mr. Toots on such occasions, and so flur- DOMBEY AND SON. 265 ried ! 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 im- mediately clung with the tenacity of desperation. , " We are losing, to-day, Toots," said Sir Barnet, turn- ing towards Florence, " the light of our house, I assure you." " Oh, it's of no conseq I mean yes, to be sure," fal- tered the embarrassed Toots. " GOOD -morning ! " Notwithstanding the emphatic nature of this farewell, Mr. Toots, instead of going away, stood leering about him, vacantly. Florence, to relieve him, bade adieu, with many thanks, to Lady Skettles, and gave her arm to Sir Barnet. " May I beg of you, my dear Miss Dombey," said her host, as he conducted her to the carriage, " to present my best compliments to your dear papa ? " It was distressing to Florence to receive the commis- sion, 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 ex- plain, however, she bowed her head and thanked him ; und again she thought that the dull home, free from such embarrassments, and such reminders of her sorrow, was her natural and best retreat. Such of her late friends and companions as were yet re- maining at the villa, came running from within, and from the garden, to say good-by. They were all attached to her, and very earnest in taking leave of her. Even the household were sorry for her going, and the ser- vants cnme nodding and courtesying round the carriage- 266 DOMBET AND SON. door. As Florence looked round on the kind faces, and saw among them those of Sir Bainet and his lady, and of Mr. Toots, who was chuckling and staring at her from a distance, she was reminded of the night when Paul and she had come from Doctor Blimber's : and when the carriage drove away, her face was wet with tears. Sorrowful tears, but tears of consolation, too ; for nil 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 fare- well 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 tender- ness for those he left behind, with courage and high spirit. His little history was associated with the old house too, and gave it a new claim and hold upon her heart. Even Susan Nipper softened towards the home of so many years, as they were on their way towards it. Gloomy as it was, and rigid justice as she rendered to its gloom, she forgave it a great deal. " I shall be glad to see it again, I don't deny, miss," said the Nipper " There a'n't much in it to boast of, but I wouldn't have it burnt or pulled down, neither ! " u You'll be glad to go through the old rooms, won't you, Susan ? " said Florence, smiling. "Well, miss," returned the Nipper, softening more and more towards the house, as they approached it DOMBEY AND SON. 267 nearer, " 1 won't deny but what I shall, ihough I shall hate 'em again, to-morrow, very likely." Florence felt that, for her, there was greater peace within it than elsewhere. It was better and easier to keep her secret shut up there, among the tall dark walls, than to carry it abroad into the light, and try to hide it from a crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue the study of her loving heart, alone, and find no new discouragements in loving hearts about her. It was easier to hope, and pray, and love on, all uncared for, yet with constancy and patience, in the tranquil sanc- tuary of such remembrances : although it mouldered, rusted, and decayed about her : than in a new scene, let its gayety be what it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted dream of life, and longed for the old dark door to close upon her, once again. Full of such thoughts, they turned into the long and sombre street. Florence was not on that side of the carriage which was nearest to her home, and as the dis- tance lessened between them and it, she looked out of her window for the children over the way. She was thus engaged, when an exclamation from Susan caused her to'turn quickly round. " Why gracious me ! " cried Susan, breathless, " where's our house ! " " Our house ! " said Florence. Susan, drawing in her head from the window, thrust it out again, drew it in again as the carriage stopped, and Btared at her mistress in amazement. There was a labyrinth of scaffolding raised all round Ihe 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 bro&d 268 DOMBEY AND SCX. street at the side. Ladders were raised against tLe walls : laborers 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 wagon 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 : brick- layers, painters, carpenters, masons : hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, and trowel : all at work together, in full chorus ! Florence descended from the coach, half doubting if it were, or could be the right house, until she recognized Towlinson, with a sun-burnt face, standing at the door to receive her. " There is nothing the matter?" inquired Florence. " Oh, no, miss." " There are great alterations going on." " Yes, miss, great alterations," said Towlinson. Florence passed him as if she were in a dream, and hurried up-stairs. The garish light was in the long- darkened drawing-room, and there were steps and plat- forms, and men in paper caps, in the high places. Her mother's picture was gone with the rest of the mov- ables, and on the mark where it had been, was scrawled 5n 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 bearaa and boards raised against it with DOMBEY ANL SON. 269 out, balking the daylight. She went up swiftly to that other bedroom, where the little bed was; and a dark giant of a man with a pipe in his mouth, and his head tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, was staring in at the window. It was here that Susan Nipper, who had been in ques jf Florence, found her, and said, would she go down i stairs to her papa, who wished to speak to her. " At home ! and wishing to speak to me ! " cried Flor- ence, trembling. Susan, who was infinitely more distraught than Flor- ence herself, repeated her errand; and Florence, pale and agitated, hurried down again, without a moment's hesitation. She thought upon the way down, would she dare to kiss him ? The longing of her heart resolved her, and she thought she would. Her father might have heard that heart beat, when it came into his presence. One instant, and it would have beat against his breast But he was not alone. There were two ladies there ; and Florence stopped. Striving so hard with her emo- tion, that if her brute friend Di had not burst in and overwhelmed her with his caresses as a welcome home at which one of the ladies gave a little scream, and that diverted her attention from herself she would have swooned upon the floor. " Florence," said her father, putting out his hand : BO itiffly that it held her off: " how do you do ? " Florence took the hand between her own, and putting it timidly to her lips, yielded to its withdrawal. It touched the door in shutting it, with quite as much endearment as it had touched her. " What dog is that ? " said Mr. Dombey, displeased. 270 DOMBEY AND SON. u It is a dog, papa from Brighton." " Well ! " said Mr. Dombey ; and a cloud passed over his face, for he understood her. " He is very good-tempered," said Florence, address- ing herself with her natural grace and sweetness to the two lady strangers. " He is only glad to see me. Pray forgive him." She saw in the glance they interchanged, that the lady who had screamed, and who was seated, was old and that the other lady, who stood near her papa, was very beautiful, and of an elegant figure. " Mrs. Skewton," said her father, turning to the first, and holding out his hand, " this is my daughter Flor- ence." " Charming, I am sure," observed the lady, putting up her glass. " So natural ! My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if you please." Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady, by whom her father stood waiting. " Edith," said Mr. Dombey, " this is my daughter Florence. Florence, this lady will soon be your mama." Florence started, and looked up at the beautiful face in a conflict of emotions, among which the tears that name awakened, struggled for a moment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort of fear. Then she cried out, " Oh, papa, may you be happy I may you be very, very happy all your life ! " and then fell weeping on the lady's bosom. There was a short silence. The beautiful lady, who at first had seemed to hesitate whether or no she should advance to Florence, held her to her breast, and pressed the hand with which she clasped her, close about her waist, as if to reassure her and comfort her. Not one DOMBEY /LND SON. 271 Word passed the lady's lips. She bent her head down over Florence, and she kissed her on the cheek, but she said no word. " Shall we go on through the rooms," said Mr. Dom- bey, " and see how our workmen are doing ? Pray al- low me, my dear madam." He said this in offering his arm to Mrs. Skewton, who had been looking at Florence through her glass, as though picturing to herself what she might be made, by the infusion from her own copious storehouse, no doubt of a little more Heart and Nature. Florence was still sobbing on the lady's breast, and holding to her, when Mr. Dombey was heard to say from the conser- vatory : " Let us ask Edith. Dear me, where is she ? " " Edith, my dear ! " cried Mrs. Skewton, " where are you ? Looking for Mr. Dombey somewhere, I know. We are here, my love." The beautiful lady released her hold of Florence, and pressing her lips once more upon her face, withdrew hurriedly, and joined them. Florence remained stand- ing in the same place : happy, sorry, joyful, and in tears, she knew not how or how long, but all at once : when her new mama came back, and took her in her arms again. " Florence," said the lady hurriedly, and looking into her face with great earnestness. " You will not begin by hating me ? " " By hating you, mama ! " cried Florence, winding her arm round her neck, and returning the look. " Hush ! Begin by thinking well of me," said the beau- tiful lady. " Begin by believing that I will try to make vou happy, and that I am prepared to love you, Flor- 272 DOMBEY AND SON. Mice. Good-by. We shall meet again, soon. Good-} y ! Don't stay here, now." Again she pressed her to her breast she had spoken in a rapid manner, but firmly and Florence saw her rejoin them in the other room. And now Florence began to hope that she would learn ' from her new and beautiful mama, how to gain her father's love ; and in her sleep that night, in her losi old home, her own mama smiled radiantly upon the hope, and blessed it. Dreaming Florence! DOMBEY AND SON. 273 CHAPTER XXIX. THE OPENIXG OF THE EYES OF MRS. CHICK. Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare appear* arices in connection with Mr. Dombey's house, as scaf- foldings and ladders, and men with their heads tied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glaring in at the windows like flying genii or strange birds, having breakfasted one morning at about this eventful period of time, on her customary viands : to wit, one French roll rasped, one egg new laid (or warranted to be), and one little pot of tea, wherein was infused one little silver scoop-full of that herb on behalf of Miss Tox, and one little silver scoop-full on behalf of the teapot a flight of fancy in which good house-keepers delight ; went up-stairs to set forth the bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water and ar- range the plants, to dust the knick-knacks, and accord- ing to her daily custom, to make her little drawing-room the garland of Princess's-place. Miss Tox endued herself with the pair of ancient gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was accustomed to perform these avocations hidden from human sight at other times in a table-drawer and went methodically to work ; beginning with the bird waltz ; passing, by a natural association of ideas, to her bird a very high- shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's-place well knew VOL. n. 18 274 DOMBEY AND SON. taking, next in order, the little china ornaments, paper fly-cages, and so forth ; and coming round, in good time, to the plants, which generally required to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for some botanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox. Miss Tox was slow in coming to the plants, this morn- ing. 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 flowing pattern, all over Princess's-place, and it gave the weedy ground a fresh scent quite a growing scent, Miss Tox said. There was a tiny blink of sun peeping in from the great street round the corner, and the smoky spar- rows hopped over it and back again, brightening as they passed : or bathed in it like a stream, and became glori- fied 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 fra- grance had a long way to come, and many counter fra- grances 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 an- cestors, and who do their little best to keep those dwell- ings miserable !), yet it was wafted faintly into Prin- cess's-place, whispering of nature and her wholesome air, as such things will, even unto prisoners and cap- tives, and those who are desolate and oppressed. Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought DOMBEY AND SON. 275 of her good papa deceased Mr. Tox, of the Customs Department of the public service ; and of her childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable quantity of cold tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a softened remembrance of meadows in old time, gleaming with buttercups, like so many inverted firmaments of golden stars ; and how she had made chains of dandelion-stalks for youthful vowers of eternal constancy, dressed chiefly in nankeen ; and how soon those fetters had withered and broken. Sitting on the window-seat, and looking out upon the sparrows and the blink of sun, Miss Tox thought like- wise of her good mama deceased sister to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail of her virtues, and her rheumatism. And when a man with bulgy legs, and a rough voice, and a heavy basket on his head that crushed his hat into a mere black muffin, came crying flowers down Princess's-place, making his timid little roots of daisies shudder in the vibration of every yell he gave, as though he had been an ogre hawking little children, summer recollections were so strong upon Miss Tox, that she shook her head, and murmured she would be comparatively old before she knew it which seemed likely. In her pensive mood, Miss Tox's thoughts went wan- dering 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 ; nd if yes, whom ? What sort of person now ! 276 DOMBEY AND SON. A flush it was warm weather overspread Miss Tox's face, as, while entertaining these meditations, she turned her head, and was surprised by the reflection of her thoughtful image in the chimney-glass. Another flush succeeded when she saw a little carriage drive into Princess's-place, and make straight for her own door. Miss Tox arose, took up her scissors hastily, an SON. 287 " Thei 3 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 en me when I came into this house this day, I don't know ; but I had a presentiment a dark presentiment," said Mrs. Chick, with a shiver, " that something was going to happen. Well may I have had that foreboding, Lucre- tia, 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 colors. Lucretia, I have been mistaken in you. It is better for us both that this subject should end here. I wish you well, and I shall ever wish you well. But, as an individual who desires to be true to herself in her own poor position, whatever that position may be, or may not be and as the sister of my brother and as the sister-in-law of my brother's wife and as a connection by marriage of my brother's wife's mother may I be permitted to add, as a Dombey ? I can wish you nothing else but good-morning." These words, delivered with cutting suavity, tempered and chastened by a lofty air of moral rectitude, carried the speaker to the door. There she inclined her head in a ghostly and statue-like manner, and so withdrew to her carriage, to seek comfort and consolation in the arms of Mr. Chick her lord. Figuratively speaking, that is to say ; for the arms of Mr. Chick were full of his newspaper. Neither did that gentleman address his eyes towards his wife other- wise than by stealth. Neither did he offer any consola- tion whatever. In short, he sat reading, and humming 288 DOMBEY Am> SON. fag ends, of tunes, and sometimes glancing furtively at her without delivering himself of word, good, bad, or indifferent. In the mean time Mrs. Chick set swelling and bri- dling, and tossing her head, as if she were still repeat- ing that solemn formula of farewell to Lucretia Tox. At length, she said aloud, " Oh the extent to which her eyes had been opened that day ! " " To which your eyes have been opened, my dear ! " repeated Mr. Chick. " Oh, don't talk to me ! " said Mrs. Chick. " If you can bear to see me in this state, and not ask me what the matter is, you had better hold your tongue forever." " What is the matter, my dear ? " asked Mr. Chick. " To think," said Mrs. Chick, in a state of soliloquy, " that she should ever have conceived the base idea of connecting herself with, our family by a marriage with Paul ! To think that when she was playing at horses with that dear child who is now in his grave I never liked it at the time she should have been hiding such a double-faced design ! I wonder she was never afraid that something would happen to her. She is fortunate if nothing does." " I really thought, my dear," said Mr. Chick slowly, after rubbing the bridge of his nose for some time with his newspaper, " that you had gone on the same tark yourself, all along, until this morning ; and had thought it would be a convenient thing enough, if it could have been brought about." Mrs. Chick instantly burst into tears, and told Mr. Chick that if he wished to trample upon her with his boots, he had better do it. " But with Lucretia Tox I have done," said Mro. UOliiJKY AND SON. 28S 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 favor 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 i.* 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 my- self 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 to-day, but, upon the whole, I don't regret it." In which Christian spirit, Mrs. Chick dried her eyes, and smoothed her lap, and sat as became a person calm under a great wrong. Mr. Chick, feeling his unworthi- ness no doubt, took an early opportunity of being set down at a street-corner and walking away, whistling, with his shoulders very much raised, and his hands in his pockets. While poor excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner and toad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one, and had ever borne a faithful friend- ship towards her impeacher, and had been truly absorbed And swallowed up in devotion to the magnificence of Mr. Dombey while poor excommunicated Miss Tox watered her plants with her tears, and felt that it was winter in Frincess's-place. you ii. 19 29C DOMBKY AND SOS- CHAPTER XXX. THE INTERVAL BEFORE THE MARR1AOX. ALTHOUGH the enchanted house was no more, and the working world had broken into it, and was hammering and crashing and tramping up and down stairs all day long, keeping Diogenes in an incessant paroxysm of barking from sunrise to sunset evidently convinced that his enemy had got the better of him at last, and was then sacking the premises in triumphant defiance there was, at first, no other great change in the method of Florence's life. At night, when the work-people went away, the house was dreary and deserted again ; and Florence listening to their voices echoing through the hall and staircase as they departed, pictured to herself the cheerful homes to which they were returning, and the children who were waiting for them, and was glad to think that they were merry and well pleased to go- She welcomed back the evening silence as an eld friend, but it came now with an altered face, and looked more kindly on her. Fresh hope was in it. The beau- tiful lady who had soothed and caressed 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 29! 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. Peep- ing at the rosy children her neighbors, it was a new and precious sensation to think that they might soon speak together and know each other: when she would not fear aa of old, to show herself before them, lest they should be grieved to see her in her black dress sitting there alone ! In her thoughts of her new mother, and in the love and trust overflowing her pure heart towards her, Flor- ence 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-cher- ished root, she knew. Every gentle word that had fall- en from the lips of the beautiful lady, sounded to Flor- ence like an echo of the voice long hushed and silent How could she love that memory less for living tender- ness, when it was her memory of all parental tenderness and love ! Florence was, one day, sitting reading in her room, and thinking of the lady and her promised visit soon for her book turned on a kindred subject when, mis- ing her eyes, she saw her standing in the door-way. " Mama ! " cried Florence, joyfully meeting her " Come again ! " " Not mama yet," returned the lady, with a serious imile, as she encircled Florence's neck with her arm. " But very soon to be," cried Florence. u Very soon now, Florence : very soon." Edith bent her head a little so as to press the bloom- ing cheek of Florence against her own, and for some r ew moments remained thus silent There was some- 292 DOMBET AND SON. thing so very tender in her manner, that Florence was even more sensible of it than on the first occasion of their meeting. She led Florence to a chair beside her, and sat down : Florence looking in her face, quite wondering at its beauty, and willingly leaving her hand in hers. " Have you been alone, Florence, since I was here lost ? " " Oh yes ! " smiled Florence, hastily. She hesitated and cast down her eyes; for her new mama was" very earnest in her look, and the look was intently and thoughtfully fixed upon her face. "I I am used to be alone," said Florence. " I don't mind it at all. Di and I pass whole days together, sometimes." Florence might have said whole weeks, and months. " Is Di your maid, love ? " " My dog, mama," said Florence, laughing. " Susan is my maid." " And these are your rooms," said Edith, looking round. " I was not shown these rooms the other day. We must have them improved, Florence. They shall be made the prettiest in the house." "If I might change them, mama," returned Florence; " there is one up-stairs I should like much better." ** Is this not high enough, dear girl ? " asked Edith, smiling. "The other was my brother's room," said Florence, " and I am very fond of it. I would have spoken to papa about it when I came home, and found the work- men here, and everything changing ; but " Florence dropped her eyes, lest the same look should make her falter again. DOMBEY AND SON. 293 "but I was afraid it might distress him; and as you said you would be here again soon, mama, and are the mistress of everything, I determined to take courage and ask you." Edith sat looking at her, with her brilliant eyes intent upon her face, until Florence raising her" own, she, in her turn, withdrew her gaze, and turned it on the ground. It was then that Florence thought how different this lady's beauty was, from what she had supposed. She had though* lt of a proud and lofty kind ; yet her man- ner was so suOdued and gentle, that if she had been of Florence's own age and character, it scarcely could have invited confidence more. Except when a constrained and singular reserve crept over her ; and then she seemed (but Florence hardly understood this, though she could not choose but notice it, and think about it) as if she were humbled before Florence, and ill at ease. When she had said that she was not her mama yet, and when Florence had called her the mistress of everything there, this change in her was quick and startling ; and now, while the eyes of Florence rested on her face, she sat as though s\\f would have shrunk and hidden from her, rathei than as one about to love and cherish her, in right of such a r connection. She gave Florence her ready promise about her new room, and said she would give directions about it her- lelf. 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 ow- bome. " We have come to London now, my mother and I," laid Edith, " and you shall etay with us until I am mar- 294 DOMBEY AND SON. tied. I wish that we should know and trust each other Florence." " You are very kind to me," said Florence, u dear mama. How much I thank you ! " " Let me say now, fur 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, 1 ehall be easier at heart if you will come home here. No matter who invites you to stay elsewhere, come home here. It is better to be alone than what I would say is," she added, checking herself, " that I know well you are best at home, dear Florence." " I will come home on the very day, mama." " Do so. I rely on that promise. Now, prepare to come with me, dear girl. You will find me down-staira when you are ready." Slowly and thoughtfully did Edith wander alone through the mansion of which she was so soon to be the lady : and little heed took she of all the elegance and splendor it began to display. The same indomita- ble 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 rug^d 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 fuU length, a woman with a noble quality yet dwelling in her nature, who was too false to her b<;t'er self, and DOMBEY AND SOX. 295 too debased and lost, to save herself. She believed thai nil 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 de- fied it. Was this the woman whom Florence an innocent girl, strong only in her earnestness and simple truth could so impress and quell, that by her side she was another creature, with her tempest of fashion hushed, and her very pride itself subdued ? Was this the woman who now sat beside her in a carriage, with her arms entwined, and who, while she courted and entreated her to love and trust her, drew her fair head to nestle on her breast, and would have laid down life to shield it from wrong or harm ? Oh, Edith ! it were' well to die, indeed, at such a time! Better and happier far, perhaps, to die so, Edith, than to live on to the end ! The Honorable Mrs. Skewton, who was thinking of anything rather than of such sentiments for, like many genteel persons who have existed at various times, she set her face against death altogether, and objected to the mention of any such low and levelling upstart had borrowed a house in Brook-street, Grosvenor-square, from a stately relative (one of the Feenix brood), who was out of town, and who did not object to lending it, in the handsomest manner, for nuptial purposes, as thf loan implied his final release and acquittance from all further loans and gifts to Mrs. Skewton and her daughter. [t being necessary for the credit of the family to make a handsome appearance at such a time, Mrs. Skewton vith the assistance of an accommodating tradesman resi- 296 DOMBEY AND SON. , dent in the parish of Mary-le-bone, who lent out all sorts of articles to the nobility and gentry, from a eer vice of plate to an army of footmen, clapped into tbh 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, ami a select staff of kitchen-servants ; so that a legend arose, down-stairs, 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 over- slept 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 estab- lishment from the same convenient source, with several miscellaneous articles, including a heat chariot and a pair of bays, Mrs. Skewton cushioned herself on the princi- pal sofa, in the Cleopatra attitude, and held her court in fair state. " And how," said Mrs. Skewton, on the entrance of her daughter and her charge, " is my charming Flor- ence ? You must come and kiss me, Florence, if you please, my love." Florence was timidly stooping to pick out a place in tU3 white part of Mrs. Skewton's face, when that lady presented her ear, and relieved her of her difficulty. " Edith, my dear," said Mrs. Skewton, " positively, I stand a little more in the light, my sweetest Florence, for a moment." Florence blushingly complied. " You don't remember, dearest Edith," said her mother, what you were when you were about the same age as DOMBEY AND SOX. 297 our exceedingly precious Florence, or a few years y ounger ? " " I have long forgotten, mother." " For positively, my dear," said Mra. 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 un- finished state, " what cultivation will do." " It does, indeed," was Edith's stern reply. Her mother eyed her sharply for a moment, and feel- ing herself on unsafe ground, said, as a diversion : " My charming Florence, you must come and kiss me once more, if you please, my love." Florence complied, of course, and aMin imprinted her lips on Mrs. Skewton's ear. " And you have heard, no doubt, my darling pet," said Mrs. Skewton, detaining her hand, " that your papa, whom we all perfectly adore and dote upon, is to be married to my dearest Edith this day week." " I knew it would be very soon," returned Florence, " but not exactly when." " M} darling Edith," urged her mother gayly, " is it possible you have not told Florence ? " " Why should I tell Florence ? " she returned, so sud- denly and harshly, that Florence could scarcely believe it was the same voice. Mrs. Skewton then told Florence, as another and safer diversion, that her father was coming to dinner, wid 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 ex- ecution of which, according to Mrs. Skewton's expecta E98 DOMBEY AND SON. tion, 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 re- turn home, without involving her father in her expla- nation, she would have hurried back on foot, bareheaded, breathless, and alone, rather than incur the risk of meet- ing his displeasure. As the time drew nearer, she could hardly breathe. She dared not approach a window, lest he should see her from the street. She dared not go up-stairs 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 her fears, she .was sitting by Cleopatra's couch, endeavoring to un- derstand and to reply to the bald discourse of that lady, when she heard his foot upon the stair. " I hear him now ! " cried Florence, starting. " He is coming ! " Cleopatra, who in her juvenility was always playfully disposed, and who in her self-engrossment did not trouble, herself about the nature of this agitation, pushed Flor- ence behind her couch, and dropped a shawl over her, preparatory to giving Mr. Dombey a rapture of surprise. It was so quickly done that in a moment Florence heard his awful step in the room. He saluted his intended mother-in-law, and his in- tended bride. The strange sound of his voice thrilled through the whole frame of his child. " My dear Dombey," said Cleopatra, " come here and tell me how your pretty Florence is." " Florence is very well," said Mr. Dombey, advancing towards the couch. DOMBEY AND SON. 29 At home ? " " At home," said Mr. Dombey. " My dear Dorabey," returned Cleopatra, vnth be- witching vivacity ; " now are you sure you are not de- ceiving me ? I don't know what my dearest Edith wiD say to me when I make such a declaration, but upon my honor I am afraid you are the falsest of men, my dea* Dombey." Though he had been ; and had been detected on the spot, in the most enormous falsehood that was ever said or done ; he could hardly have been more disconcerted than he was, when Mrs. Skewton plucked the shawl away, and Florence, pale and trembling, rose before him like a ghost. He had not yet recovered his pres- ence 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 Flor- ence, instantly. " Now confess, my dear Dombey," said Mrs. Skewton, giving him her hand, " that you never were more sur- prised and pleased in your life." " I never was more surprised," said Mr. Dombey. " Nor pleased, my dearest Dombey ? " returned Mrs. Skewton, holding up her fan. "I yes, I am exceedingly glad to meet Florence here," said Mr. Dombey. He appeared to consider gravely about it for a moment, and then said, more de- cidedly, " Yes, I really am very glad indeed to meet Florence here." " You wonder how she comes here ? " said Mrs. Skew- .on, " don't you ? " " Edith, perhaps". suggested Mr. Dombey. 300 DOMBET AND S(). " Ah ! wicked guesser ! " replied Cleopatra, shaking her head. "Ah! cunning, cunning man! One shouldn't tell these things ; your sex, ray dear Dombey, are so vain, and so apt to abuse our weaknesses ; but, you know my open soul very well ; immediately." This was addressed to one of the very tall young men who announced dinner. " But Edith, my dear Dombey," she continued in a whisper, " when she cannot have you near" her and as I tell her, she cannot expect that always will at least have near her something or somebody belonging to you. Well, how extremely natural that is ! And in this spirit, nothing would keep her from riding off to-day to fetch our darling Florence. Well, how excessively charming that is.!" As she waited for an answer, Mr. Dombey answered, " Eminently so." " Bless you, my dear Dombey, for that proof of heart ! " cried Cleopatra, squeezing his hand. " But I am growing too serious ! Take me down-stairs, like an angel, and let us see what these people intend tc give us for dinner. Bless you, dear Dombey ! " Cleopatra skipping off her couch with tolerable brisk- ness, after the last benediction, Mr. Dombey took her arm in his and led her ceremoniously down-stairs ; 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 3ther very tall young man on hire, as the couple turned into the dining-room. Florence and Edith were already ther^, and sitting *ide by side. Florence would have risen when her father entered, to resign her chair to him; but Edith DOMBEY AND SON. 301 openly put her hand upon her arm, and Mr. Dombey took an opposite place at "the round table. The conversation was almost entirely sustained by Mrs. Skewton. Florence hardly dared to raise her eyes, lest they should reveal the traces of tears ; far less dared to speak ; and Edith never uttered one word, unless in answer to a question. Verily, Cleopatra worked hard, for the establishment that was so nearly clutched ; and verily it should have been a rich one to reward her ! "And so your preparations are nearly finished at last, my dear Dombey ? " said Cleopatra, whea the dessert was put upon the table, and the silver-headed butler had withdrawn. " Even the lawyer's preparations ! " " Yes, madam," replied Mr. Dombey ; " the deed of srtt lenient, the professional gentlemen inform me, is now ready, and as I was mentioning to you, Edith has only to do us the favor to suggest her own time for its exe- cution." Edith sat like a handsome statue ; as cold, as silent, and as still. " My dearest love," said Cleopatra, " do you hear what Mr. Dombey says ? Ah, my dear Dombey ! " aside to that gentleman, "How her absence, as the time ap- proaches, reminds me of the days, when that most agreeable of creatures, her papa, was in your situa* tion ! " " I have nothing to suggest. It shall be when you please," said Edith, scarcely koking over the table at Mr. Dombey. " To-morrow ? " suggested Mr. Dombey. " If you please." " Or would next day," said Mr. Dombey, " suit yout ttigagements better ? " 302 DOMBEY AND SOW. "I hare no engagements. I am always at jour dis- posal. Let it be when you like." " No engagements, my dear Edith ! " remonstrated her mother, " when you are in a most terrible state of flurry all day long, and have a thousand and one ap- pointments with all sorts of tradespeople ! " " They are of your making," returned Edith, turning on her, with a slight contraction of her brow. u You and Mr. Dombey can arrange between you." " Very true indeed, my love, and most considerate of you ! " said Cleopatra. u My darling Florence, you must really come and kiss me once more, if you please, my dear ! " Singular coincidence, that these gushes of interest in Florence hurried Cleopatra away from almost every dialogue in which Edith had a share, however trifling ! Florence had certainly never undergone so much em- bracing, and perhaps had never been, unconsciously, so useful in her life. Mr. Dombey was far from quarrelling, in his own breast, with the manner of his beautiful betrothed. He had that good reason for sympathy with haughtiness and coldness, which is found in a fellow-feeling. It flattered him to think how these deferred to him, in Edith's case, and seemed to have no will apart from his. It flattered him to picture to himself, this proud and stately woman doing the honors of his house, and chilling his guests after his own manner. The dignity of Dombey and Son would be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands. So thought Mr. Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, and mused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in an air of scan! DOMBET AND SON. 303 and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in color 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 ex- hausted negroes holding up two withered branches of candelabra on the sideboard, and a musty smell prevail- ing as if the ashes of ten thousand dinners were on- tombed in the sarcophagus below it. The owner of the house lived much abroad ; the air of England seldom agreed long with a member of the Feenix family ; and the room had gradually put itself into deeper and still deeper mourning for him, until it was become so funereal as to want nothing but a body in it to be quite complete. No bad representation of the body, for the nonce, in his unbending form, if not in his attitude, Mr. Dombey looked down into the cold depths of the dead sea of ma- hogany 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 the left the room ; and Edith's eyes upon her, and Edith's hand put out protectingly. A little figure in low arm-chair came springing next into the light, and looked upon him wonderingly, with its bright eye-) and its old-young fa^e, gleaming as in the flickering of an evening fire. Again came Florem e cljse upon it, and absorbed his whole attention. "Whether as a foredoomed 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 304 DOMBEY AND SON. he could stoop to think, as claiming, at such a time, to ba no more estranged ; or whether as a hint to him that ihe mere appearance of caring for his own blood should be maintained in his new relations ; he best knew. Indif- ferently well, perhaps, at best ; for marriage company and marriage altars, and ambitious scenes still blotted here and there with Florence always Florence turned up so fast, and so confusedly, that he rose, and went up-stairs, to escape them. It was quite late at night before candles were brought; for at present they made Mrs. SkewtOn's head ache, she complained ; and in the mean time Florence and Mrs. Skewton talked together (Cleopatra being very anxious to keep her close to herself), or Florence touched the piano softly for Mrs. Skewlon's delight ; to make no mention of a few occasions in the course of the evening, when that affectionate lady was impelled to solicit an- other kiss, and which always happened after Edith had said anything. They were not many, however, for Edith eat 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 wme other poor deserted girl who was to be pitied for jer sorrow ; and in her pity, sobbed herself to sleep. The week fled fast. There were drives to milliners dress-makers, jewellers, lawyers, florists, pastry-cooks ; nd Florence was always of the party. Florence was to ^o to the wedding. Florence was to cast off her mourn ing, and to wear a brilliant dress on the occasion. The milliner's intentions on the subject of this dress the DOMBEY AXD SON. 305 milliner was a Frenchwoman, and greatly resembled Mrs. Skewtbn were so chaste and elegant, that Mrs. Skewton bespoke one like it for herself. The milliner said it would become her to admiration, and that all the world would take her for the young lady's sister. The week fled faster. Edith looked at nothing and cared for nothing. Her rich dresses came home, and were tried on, and were loudly commended by Mrs. Skewton and the milliners, and were put away without a word from her. Mrs. Skewton made their plans for every day, and executed them. Sometimes Edith sat in the carriage when they went to make purchases ; some- times, 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 indiffer- ence as if she had no concern in it. Florence might perhaps have thought she was haughty and listless, but that she was never so to her. So Florence quenched her wonder in her gratitude whenever it broke out, and soon subdued it. The week fled faster. It had nearly winged its flight away. The last night of the week, the night before the marriage, was come. In the dark room for Mrs. Skewton's head was no better yet, though she expected to recover permanently to-morrow were that lady, Edith, and Mr. Dombey. Edith was at her open win- dow looking out into the street ; Mr. Dombey and Cleo- patra were talking softly on the sofa. It was growing late; and Florence being fatigued, had gone -to bed." " My d^ar Dombey," said Cleopatra, " you will leave me Florence to-morrow, when you deprive me of mj sweetest Edith." VOL. ii. 20 306 DOMBET AND SON. Mr. Dombey said he would, with pleasure. " To have her about me, here, while you are both a< Paris, and to think that, at her age, I am assisting in the formation of her mind, my dear Dombey," said Cleopa- tra, " will be a perfect balm to me in the extremely shat- tered state to which I shall be reduced." Edith turned her head suddenly. Her listless manner was exchanged, in a moment, to one of burning interest, and, unseen in the darkness, she attended closely to their conversation. Mr. Dombey would be delighted to leave Florence in such admirable guardianship. " My dear Dorabey," returned Cleopatra, " a thousand thanks for your good opinion. I feared you were going, with malice aforethought, as the dreadful lawyers say those horrid prosers ! to condemn me to utter soli- tude." " Why do me so great an injustice, my dear madam?" said Mr. Dombey. "Because my charming Florence tells me so posi- tively she must go home to-morrow," returned Cleopatra, "that I began to be afraid, my dearest Dombey, you were quite a Bashaw." " I assure you, madam ! " said Mr. Dombey, " I have laid no commands on Florence ; and if I had, there are no commands like your wish." u My dear Dombey," replied Cleopatra, " what a oourtier you are ! Though I'll not say so, either ; for courtiers have no heart, and yours pervades your eharming-life and character. And are you really going BO early, my dear Dorabey ! " Oh, indeed ! it was late, and Mr. Dombey feared he must DOMBEY AND SON. 30< u Is this a fact, or is it all a dream ! " lisped Cleopatra * Can I believe, my dearest Dombey, that you are coin- ing back to-morrow morning to deprive me of my swet't companion ; my own Edith ! " Mr. Dombey, who was accustomed to take things literally, reminded Mrs. Skewton that they were to mee first at the church. " The pang," said Mrs. Skewton, " of consigning a child, even to you, my dear Dombey, is one of the most excruciating imaginable ; and combined with a naturally delicate constitution, and the extreme stupidity of the pastry-cook who has undertaken the breakfast, is almost too much for my poor strength. But I shall rally, my dear Dombey, in the morning ; do not fear for me, or be uneasy on my account. Heaven bless you ! My dear- est Edith ! " she cried archly. " Somebody is going, pet." Edith, who had turned her head again towards the window, and whose interest in their conversation had ceased, rose up in her place, but made no advance tow- ards 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, and said, " To-morrow morning I shall have the happi- ness of claiming this hand as Mrs. Dombey's," and bowed himself solemnly out. Mrs. Skewton rang for candles as soon as the house- door hail closed upon him. With the candles appeared ber 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 jlder and more hideous than her greasy flannel gown But Mrs. Skewton tried it on with mincing satis 308 DOMBEY AND SON. em irked at her cadaverous self in the glass, as h thought of its killing effect upon the major ; and suf fering her maid to take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into ruins like a house of painted cards. All this time, Edith remained at the dark window looking out into the street. When she and her motbei were at last left alone, she moved from it for the first time that evening, and came opposite to her. The yawn- ing, shaking, peevish figure of the mother, with her eyes raised to confront the proud erect form of the daughter, whose glance of fire was bent downward upon her, had a conscious air upon it, that no levity or temper could conceal. " I am tired to death," said she. " You can't be trusted for a moment. You are worse than a child. Child! No child would be half so obstinate and un- dutiful." " 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 re- turn." " Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return ? " repeated her mother. " Or in that name upon which I shall call to-morrow to witness what I do, so falsely, and so shamefully, 1 swear I will refuse the hand of this man in the church If I do not, may I fall dead upon the pavement ! " The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in~ no degree diminished by the look she met. ** It is enough," said Edith, steadily, " that we are what we are. I will have no youth and truth dragged down to my level. I will have no guileless nature un DOMBEY AND SON. 309 lenniued, corrupted, and perverted, to amuse the leisure of a world of mothers. You know my meaning. Flor ence must go home." " You are an idiot, Edith," cried her angry mother. u Do you expect there can ever be peace for you in that house, till she is married, and away ? " " Ask me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house," said her daughter, " and you know the answer." " And am I to be told to-night, after all my pains and labor, and when you are going, through me, to be ren- dered independent," her mother almost shrieked in her passion, while her palsied head shook like a leaf, " that there is corruption and contagion in me, and that I am not fit company for a girl ! What are you, pray ? What are you ? " " I have put the question to myself," said Edith, ashy pale, and pointing to the window, " more than once when I have been sitting there, and something in the faded likeness of my sex has wandered past outside ; and God knows I have met with my reply. Oh mother, mother if you had but left me to my natural heart when I too was a girl a younger girl than Florence how dif- ferent I might have been ! " Sensible that any show of anger was useless here, her mother restrained herself, and fell a-whimpering, and be- wailed that she kad 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 un- aatural taunts, and cared for life no longer. " If one is to go on living through continual scenes Ijke this," she whined, " I am sure it would be much better for me to think of some means of putting an end 310 DOMBEY AND SON. to my existence. Oh ! The idea of your being my daughter, Edith, and addressing rae in such a strain!" " Between us, mother," returned Edith, mournfully, u the time for mutual reproaches is past." " Then why do you revive it ? " whimpered he* ino'her. "You know that you are lacerating me in the cruellest manner. You know how sensitive I am to unkindness. At such a moment, too, when I have so much to think of, and am naturally anxious to appear to the best advantage ! I wonder at you, Edith. To make your mother a fright upon your wedding-day ! " Edith bent the same fixed look upon her, as she sobbed and rubbed her eyes ; and said in the same low steady voice, which had neither risen nor fallen since she first addressed her, " I have said that Flor- ence must go home." " Let her go ! " cried the afflicted and affrighted par- ent, hastily. " I am sure I am willing she should go. What is the girl to me ? " " She is so much to me, that rather than communicate, or suffer to be communicated to her, one grain of the evil that is in my breast, mother, I would renounce you, as I would (if you gave me cause) renounce him in the church to-morrow," replied Edith. " Leave her alone. She shall not, while I can interpose, be tampered with and tainted by the lessons I have learned. This is no hard condition on this bitter night." " If you had proposed it in a filial manner, Edilb," whined her mother, "perhaps not ; very likely not. But such extremely cutting words " u They are past and at an end between us now," said Edith. fr Take your own way, mother ; share as you please in what you have gained ; spend, enjoy, make DOMBEY AND SON. 311 much of it ; and be as happy as you will. The object of our lives is won. Henceforth let us swear it silently. My lips are closed upon the past from this hour. I for- give you your part in to-morrow's wickedness. May God forgive my own ! " Without a tremor in her voice or frame, and passing onward with a foot that set itself upon the neck of every soft emotion, she bade her mother good-night, and re- paired to her own room. But not to rest : for there was no rest in the tumult of her agitation when alone. To and fro, and to and fro, and to and fro again, five hundred times, among the splendid preparations for her adornment on the morrow ; with her dark hair shaken down, her dark eyes flashing with a raging light, her broad white bosom red with the cruel grasp of the relentless hand with which she spurned it from her, pacing up and down with an averted head, as if she would avoid the sight of her own fair person, and divorce herself from its compan- ionship. Thus, in the dead time of the night before her bridal, Edith Granger wrestled with her unquiet spirit, tearless, friendless, silent, proud, and uncomplain- ing. At length it happened that she touched the open door which led into the room where Florence lay. She started, stopped, and looked in. A light was burning there, and showed her Florence in her bloom of innocence and beauty, fast asleep. Edith held her breath, and felt herself drawn on towards her. Drawn nearer, nearer, nearer yet ; at last, drawn so near, that stooping down, she pressed her lips to the gentle hand that lay outside the bed, and put it softly to her neck. Its touch was like the prophet's rod of old 312 DOMBEY AND SON. upon the rock. He? tears sprung forth beneath it, as she sunk upon her knees, and laid her aching head and streaming hair upon the pillow by its side. Thus Edith Granger passed the night before her bri- dal. Thus the sun found her on her bridal morning. Aon, t^-^ 'ii'- i. : / iiBridr-oiuF -laughter uvin and come b&t ami"i itiii..drripping on the floor iefore her. da.v. p.'lavinf "hfi heo-d against ihnn. and stiU rocku.i .no fr" witha ftv.;iy frajiuc tieijaon^trauoji of winch i. capsble DOMBEY AND SON VOLDMK OH. DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXXI. THE WEDDING. DAWN, with its passionless blank face, steals shiver- ing 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 pave- ment, and broods, sombre and heavy, in nooks and cor- ners of the building. The steeple-clock, perched up above the houses, emerging from beneath another of (he countless ripples in the tide of time that regularly roll and break on the eternal shore, is grayly visible, like a stone beacon, recording how the sea flows on ; but within doors, dawn, at first, can only peep at night, and see that it is there. Hovering feebly round the church, and looking in, dawn moans and weeps for its short reign, and its tears trickle on the window-glass, and the trees against the churdi-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 die spire, and drying up the tears of dawn, and stifling fe DOMBEY AND SON. its 3ornplaining ; and the scared dawn, following the night, and chasing it from its last refuge, shrinks into the vaults itself and hides, with a frightened face, among the dead, until night returns, refreshed, to drive it out. And now, the mice, who have been busier with the prayer-books than their proper owners, and with the hassocks, more worn by their little teeth than by human knees, hide their bright eyes in their holes, and gather close together in affright at the resounding clashing of the church-door. For the beadle, that man of power, comes early this morning with the sexton ; and Mrs. Miff, the wheezy little pew-opener a mighty dry old lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fulness anywhere about her is also here, and has been waiting at the church-gate half an hour, as her place is, for the beadle. A vinegary face has Mrs. Miff, and a mortified bon- net, and eke a thirsty soul for sixpences and shillings. Beckoning to stray people to come into pews, has given Mrs. Miff an air of mystery ; and there is reservation in the eye of Mrs. Miff, as always knowing of a softer seat, but having her suspicions of the fee. There is no such fact as Mr. Miff, nor has there been these twenty years, and Mrs. Miff would rather not allude to him. He held some bad opinions, it would seem, about free-seats; and though Mrs. Miff hopes he may be gone upwards, she couldn't positively undertake to say so. Busy is Mrs. Miff this morning at the church-door, beating and dusting the altar-cloth, the carpet, and the cushions ; and much has Mrs. Miff to say, about the wedding they are going to have. Mrs. Miff is told, that the new furniture and alterations in the house cost full five thousand pound if they cost a penny; and Mrs. Miff has heard, upon the best authority, that the lady hasn'l DOMBEY AND SON. * got a sixpence wherewithal to bless herself. Mrs. Miff remembers, likewise, 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, againat the company arrive. Mr. Sownds, the beadle, who is sitting in the sun upon the church-steps all this time (and seldom does anything else, except, in cold weather, sitting by the fire), approves of Mrs. Miff's discourse, and asks if Mrs. Miff has heard it said, that the lady is uncommon handsome ? The information Mrs. Miff has received being of this nature, Mr. Sownds the beadle, who, though orthodox and corpulent, is still an admirer of female beauty, observes, with unction, yes, he hears she is a spanker an expression that seems somewhat forcible to Mrs. Miff, or would from any lips but those of Mr. Sownds the beadle. In Mr. Dombey's house, at this same time, there ia 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 full dressed before six. Mr. Towlinson is an object of greater consideration than usual to the house-maid, and the cook says at breakfast- time that one wedding makes many, which the house- maid can't believe, and don't think true at all. My Towlinson reserves his sentiments on this question being rendered something gloomy by the engagement of a foreigner with whiskers (Mr. Towlinson is whisker- less himself), who has been hired to accompany the Uappy pair to Paris, and who is bnsy 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 10 DOMBEY AND SON. ladies with prejudice, says, look at Bonaparte, who was at the. head of 'era, and see what he was always up to! Which the house-maid says is very true. The pastry-cook is hard at work in the funereal room in Brook-street, and the very tall young men are busy looking on. One of the very tall young men already smells of sherry, and his eyes have a tendency to become fixed in his head, and to stare at objects without seeing them. The very tall young man is conscious of this fail- ing in himself ; and informs his comrade that it's his " exciseman." The very tall young man would say ex- citement, but his speech is hazy. The men who play the bells have got scent of the marriage ; and the marrow-bones and cleavers too ; and a brass band too. The first are practising in a back set- tlement near Battlebridge ; the second put themselves in communication, through their chLf, with Mr. Towlinson, to whom they offer terms to be bought off; and the third, in the person of an artful trombone, lurks anl dodges round the corner, waiting for some traitor tradesman to reveal the place and hour of breakfast, for a bribe. Ex- pectation 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 splendor from a secret corner of the gallery, und thither to convey the Chicken : for it is Mr. Toots'? desperate intent to point out Florence to the Chicken. toen and there, an 1 openly to say, " Now, Chicken, 1 will not deceive you any longer ; the friend I have tometimes mentioned to you is myself; Miss Dombey DOMBEY AND SON. 11 s 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, if. the mean while, 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 Mid- shipman 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 so- lemnity he is about to witness : for which purpose, the captain gravely lays injunctions on his chaplain, from time to time, to " put about," or to " overhaul that 'ere article again," or to stick to his own duty, and leave the Amens to him, the captain ; one of which he repeats whenever a pause is made by Rob the Grinder, with sonorous satisfaction. Besides all this, and much more, twenty nursery-maids in Mr. Dombey's street alone, have promised twenty families of little women, whose instinctive interest in nuptials dates from their cradles, that they shall go and see the marriage. Truly, Mr. Sownds the beadle has good reason to feel himself in office, as he suns hia portly figure on the church-steps, waiting for the mar- riage hour. Truly, Mrs. Miff has cause to pounce on an unlucky dwarf child, with a giant baby, who peeps in at the porch, and drive her forth with indignation ! Cousin Feenix has come over from abroad, expressly 12 DOMBET AND SON. 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 lord- ship'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 BO, is quite another thing from Cousin Feenix got up : and very dim, indeed, he looks, while being shaved at Long's Hotel, in Bond-street. Mr. Dombey leaves his dressing-room, amidst a gen- eral 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 courtesies ; 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-colored pantaloons, and lilac waistcoat ; and a whisper goes about the house, that Mr. Dombey's hair is curled. A double-knock announces the arrival of the major, who is gorgeous too, and wears a whole geranium in his button-hole, and has his hair curled tight and crisp, as well the native knows. " Dombey !" says the major, putting out both hands,. * how are you ? " " Major," says Mr. Dombey, " how are You ? " " By Jove, sir," says the major, " Joey B. is in such rase this morning, sir," and here he hits himself hard ipnn the breast " in such case this morning, sir, that, DOMBEY AND SON. 13 damme, Dombey, he has half a mind to make a double marriage of it, sir, and take the mothei." 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. J " Dombey," says the major, seeing this, " I give yon joy. I congratulate you, Dombey. By the Lord, sir," aays the major, " you are more to be envied, this day, than any man in England ! " Here again, Mr. Dombey's assent is qualified ; be- cause he is going to confer a great distinction on a lady ; and, no doubt, she is to be envied most. " As to Edith Granger, sir," pursues (he major, " there is not a woman in all Europe but might and would, sir, you will allow Bagstock to add and would give her ears, and her ear-rings, too, to be in Edith Granger's place." " You are good enough to say so, major," says Mr. Dombey. " Dombey," returns the major, " you know it. Let us have no false delicacy. You know it. Do you know it, or do you not, Dombey ? " says the major, almost in a passion. " Oh, really, major " " Damme, sir," retorts the major, " do you know that fact, or do you not ? Dombey ! Is old Joe your friend ' Are we on that footing of unreserved intimacy, Dornbey, that may justify a man a blunt old Joseph B., sir in speaking out; or am I to take open order, Dombey, and to keep my distance, and to stand on forms?" " My dear Major Bagstock," says Mr. Dombey, will * gratified air, " you are quite warm." 14 DOMBEY AND SON. " 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. carcass. And I tell you what, Dombey at such a time a man must blurt out what he feels, or put a muz- zle 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 ques- tion. Now, damme, sir," concludes the major, with great firmness, " what do you make of that ? " " Major," says Mr. Dombey, " I assure you that I am really obliged to you. I had no idea of checking your too partial friendship." " Not too partial, sir ! " exclaims the choleric major. "Dombey, I deny it!" " Your friendship I will say then," pursues Mr. Dom- bey, " on any account. Nor can I forget, major, on such an occasion as the present, how much I am indebted to it." " Dombey," says the major, with appropriate action, * that is the hand of Joseph Bagstock ; of plain old Joey B., sir, if you like that better ! That is the hand, cf which His Royal Highness the late Duke of York did mo the honor to observe, sir, to His Royal Highness the late Duke of Kent, that it was the hand of Josh. ; a rough ind tough, and possibly an up-to-snuff, old vagabond. Dombey, may the present moment be the least unhappy of our lives. God bless you ! " Now, enters Mr. Carker, gorgeous likewise, and smil- ing 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 15 that his voice shakes too, in accord with his arms, as it comes sliding from between his teeth. ' The very day is auspicious," says Mr. Carker. " The brightest and most genial weather ! I hope I am not a moment late ? " " Punctual to your time, sir," says the major. u 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 wagons and I took the liberty of riding round to Brook-street' this to Mr. Dombey " to leave a few poor rari- ties of flowers for Mrs. Dombey. A man in my posi- tion, and so distinguished as to be invited here, is proud to offer some homage in acknowledgment of his vassal- age : and as I have no doubt Mrs. Dombey is over- whelmed with what is costly and magnificent ;" with a strange glance at his patron ; " I hope the very poverty of my offering, may find favor for it." " Mrs. Dombey, that is to be," returns Mr. Dombey, condescendingly, " will be very sensible of your atten- tion, Carker, I am sure." " And if she is to be Mrs. Dombey this morning, sir," says the major, putting down his coffee-cup, and looking at his watch, "it's high time we were off!" Forth, in a barouche, ride Mr. Dombey, Major Bag- stc ck, 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 courtesies and proposes chairs in the vestry. Mr. Dombey prefers remaining in th.3 church. As he looks up at the organ, Miss Tox in the gallery shrinks behind the fat leg of a eherub on a monument, with cheeks like a young Wind. Captain Cuttle, on the contrary, stands up nud 16 DOMBEY AND SON. 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-colored pantaloons, is the father of his love. The Chicken hoarsely whispers Mr. Toots that he's as stiff a cove as ever he see, but that it is within the resources of Science to double him up, with one blow in the waistcoat. Mr. Sownds and Mrs. Miff are eying 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 up-stairs, who salutes him with so much urbanity, drops a courtesy, and informs him that she believes his "good lady " is come. Then, there is a crowding and a whispering at the door, and the good lady enters, with a haughty step. There is no sign upon her face, of last night's suffer- ing ; there is no trace in her manner, of the woman on the bended knees, reposing her wild head, in beautiful abandonment, upon the pillow of the sleeping girl. That girl, all gentle and lovely, is at her side a striking contrast to her own disdainful and defiant figure, stand- ing there, composed, erect, inscrutable of will, resplen- dent and majestic in the zenith of its charms, yet beating down, and treading on, the admiration that it challenges. There is a pause while Mr. Sownds the beadle glides Into the vestry for the clergyman and clerk. At this juncture, Mrs. Skewton speaks to Mr. Dombey ; more distinctly and emphatically than her custom is, and mov- ing, at the same time, close to Edith. " My dear Dombey," says the good mama, " I fear 1 must relinquish darling Florence after all, and suffer her to go home, as she herself proposed. After my loss of DOMBEY AND SON. 17 to-day, my dear Dombey, I feel I shall not have spirits, even for her society." " Had she not better stay with you ? " returns the bridegroom. " I think not, my dear Dombey. No, I think not. I ^ha] I be better alone. Besides, my dearest Edith will De her natural and constant guardian when you return, and I had better not encroach upon her trust, perhaps. She might be jealous. Eh, dear Edith ? " The affectionate mama presses her daughter's arm, as she says this: perhaps entreating her attention ear- nestly. " To be serious, my dear Dombey," she resumes, " I will relinquish our dear child, and not inflict my glnora upon her. We have settled that, just now. She fully understands, dear Dombey. Edith, my dear, she fully understands." Again, the good mother presses her daughter's arm. Mr. Dombey offers no additional remonstrance ; for the clergyman and clerk appear ; and Mrs. Miff, and Mr. Sownds the beadle, group the party in their proper places at the altar rails. " Who giveth this woman to be married to this man ? " Cousin Feenix does that. He has come from Baden- Baden on purpose. " Confound it," Cousin Feenix says good-natured creature, Cousin Feenix " when we do get a rich city fellow into the family, let us show him some attention ; let us do* something for him." " / 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 nf his wilful legs, gives the wrong woman to be married 18 DOMBEY AND SON. to this man, at first to wit, a bridesmaid of some con- dition, distantly connected with the family, and ten years Mrs. Skewton's junior but Mrs. Miff, interposing her mortified bonnet, dexterously turns him back, and runs him, as on castors, full at the " good lady " whom Cousin Feenix giveth to be married to this man ac- cordingly. And will they in the sight of heaven ? Ay, that they will : Mr. Dombey says he will. And what says Edith ? She will. So, from that day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do them part, they plight their troth to one another, and are married. In a firm, free hand, the bride subscribes her name in the register, when they adjourn to the vestry. " There a'n't a many ladies comes here," Mrs. Miff says with a courtesy to look at Mrs. Miff, at such a season, is to make her mortified bonnet go down with a dip " writes their names like this good lady ! " Mr. Sownds the beadle thinks it is a truly spanking signature, and worthy of the writer this, however, between himself and conscience. Florence signs too, but unapplauded, for her hand shakes. All the party sign ; Cousin Feenix last ; who puts his noble name into a wrong place, and enrolls him- self as having been born, that morning. The major now salutes the bride right gallantly, and carries out that branch of milifary 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 and even by Mr. Dombey. La>tly, Mr. Car- DOMBEY AND SON. 19 ker, with his white teeth glistening, approaches Edith, Biore as if he meant to bite her, than to taste the sweets that linger on her lips. There is a glow upon her proud cheek, and a flashing in her eyes, that may be meant to stay him ; but it does not, for he salutes her as the rest have done, and wishes her all happiness. " If wishes," says he in a low voice, " are not super- fluous, applied to such a union." " I thank you, sir," she answers, with a curled lip, and a heaving bosom. But, does Edith feel still, as on the night when she knew that Mr. Dombey would return to offer his al- liance, that Carker knows her thoroughly, and reads he'' right, and that she is more degraded by his knowledge of her, than by aught else ? Is it for this reason th* her haughtiness shrinks beneath his smile, like snow within the hand that grasps it firmly, and that her im- perious glance droops in meeting his, and seeks tb<. ground ? " I am proud to see," says Mr. Carker, with a eervila stooping of his neck, which the revelations making b his eyes and teeth proclaim to be a lie, " I am proud to see that my humble offering is graced by Mrs. Dorabey'p hand, and permitted to hold so favored a place in so joy- ful an occasion." Though she bends her head, in answer, there is some- thing in the momentary action of her hand, as if she would crush the flowers it holds, and fling them, with contempt, -pon the ground. But, she puts the hand through the arm of her new husband, who has been standing near, conversing with the major, and i* proud tgain, and motionless, and silent. 20 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 color of her every article of dress from that mo- ment, and reproduces it on her doll, who is forever being married. Cleopatra and Cousin Feenix enter the same carriage. The major hands into a second carriage, Flor- ence, and the bridesmaid who so narrowly escaped being given away by mistake, and then enters it himself, and ia followed by Mr. Carker. Horses prance and caper ; coach- men and footmen shine in fluttering favors, flowers, aitd 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 moral- ists revenge themselves for not being married too, that morning, by reflecting that these people little think such happiness can't last. Miss Tox emerges from behind the cherub'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 her- self 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-colored \>antaloons, 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 uy 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, nOMBET AND SON. 21 The gallant Mr. Toots, attended by the faithful Ch:cken : leaves the building in torments of love. The Chicken ia us vet 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 cut of their hiding-places, and prepare to rush to Brook- street, when they are delayed by symptoms of indisposi- tion on the part of Mrs. Perch, who entreats a glass of water, and becomes alarming ; Mrs. Perch gets better soon, however, and is borne away ; and Mrs. Miff, and Mr. Sownds the beadle, sit upon the steps to count what they have gained by the affair, and talk it over, while the sexton tolls a funeral. Now, the carriages arrive at the bride's residence, and the players on the bells begin to jingle, and the band strikes up, and Mr. Punch, that model of connubial bliss, salutes his wife. Now, the people run and push, and press round in a gaping throng, while Mr. Dombey, leading Mrs. Dombey by the hand, advances solemnly into the Feenix halls. Now, the rest of the wedding- party alight, and enter after them. And why does Mr. Carker, passing through the people to the hall-door, think of the old woman who called to him in the grove that morning? Or why does Florence, as she passes, think, with a tremble, of her childhood, when she was lost, and of the visage of good Mrs. Brown ? Now, there are more congratulations on this happiest of days, and mor? company, though not much ; and now they leave the drawing-room, and range themselves at table in the dark-brown dining-room, which no confec- tioner can brighten up, let him garnish the exhausted uegroes with as many flowers and love-knots as he will .1 22 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 ad- mires that Edith should be, by nature, such a perfect Dombsy ; and is affable and confidential to Mrs. Skew ton, whose mind is relieved of a great load, an 1 who takes her share of the champagne. The very tall young man who suffered from excitement early, is better ; but H 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 pic- tures 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 haa an especial smile for the bride, who very, very, seldom meets it. Cousin Feenix rises, when the company have break- fasted, and the servants have left the room ; and won- derfully young he looks, with his white wristbands al- most covering his hands (otherwise rather bony), and the bloom of the champagne in his cheeks. " Upon my honor," says Cousin Feenix, " although it's nn unusual sort of thing in a private gentleman's house, I must beg leave to call upon you to drink what is usu- ally called a in fact a toast." The major very hoarsely indicates his approval. Mr. Carker bending his head forward over the table in the direction of Cousin Feenix, smiles and nods a great many times. * A in fact it's not a " Cousin Feenix beginning *gain, thus, comes to a dead stop. DOMBEY AND SON. 2* 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 Dorabey and my lovely and accomplished relative, on the present oc- casion." 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 pro- poses Mrs. Skewton. The breakfast languishes when that is done, the violated hatchments are avenged, and Edith rises to assume her travelling dress. All the servants in the mean time, have been break- fasting 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, jmd with emotion ; for he half begins to think he w an i)ld retainer of the family, and that he is bound to be affected by these changes. The whole party, and es- pecially the ladies, are very frolicsome. Mr. Dombey's 24 DOMBEY AND SON. solemnly return? the bow ; everybody is more or less gratified and affected by this extraordinary, and perhaps unprecedented, appeal to the feelings. " I have not," says Cousin Feenix, " enjoyed those opportunities which I could have desired, of cultivating the acquaintance of my friend Dombey, and studying those qualities which do equal honor to his head, and, in point of fact, to his heart ; for it has been my mis- fortune to be, as we used to say in my time in the House of Commons, when it was not the custom to al- lude to the Lords, and when the order of parliamentary proceedings was perhaps better observed that it is now to be in in point of fact," says Cousin Feenix, cher- ishing his joke, with great slyness, and finally bringing it out with a jerk, " ' in another place ! ' " The mnjor falls into convulsions, and is recovered with difficulty. " But I know sufficient of my friend Dombey," re- sumes Cousin Feenix in a graver tone, as if he had suddenly become a sadder and a wiser man, " to krow that he is, in point of fact, what may be emphatically called a a merchant a British merchant and a and a man. And although I have been resident abroad for some years (it would give me great pleasure to re- ceive 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 my self, of my lovely and accomplished relative, to kno that she possesses every requisite to make a man happy and that her marriage with my friend Dombey is one of inclination and affection on both sides." Many smiles and nods from Mr. Carker. "Therefore," says Cousin Feenix, "I congra'.ulato the DOMBEY AND SON. 2o " Hear, hear ! " says the major, in a tone of convic- tion. Mr Carker softly claps his hands, and bending for- ward over the table again, smiles and nods a great many more tiraeSfthan before, as if he were particularly struck by this last observation, and desired personally to ex- press his sense of the good it has done him. " 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 honor of seconding the address, \va in fact, was laid up for a fortnight with the con- sciousness of failure " The major and Mr. Carker are so much delighted by this fragment of personal history, that Cousin Feenix laughs, and addressing them individually, goes on to say : ' And in point of fact, when I was devilish ill still, you know, I feel that a duty devolves upon me. And when a duty devolves upon an Englishman, he is bound to get out of it, in my opinion, in the best way he can. Well ! our family has had the gratification, to-day, of connecting itself, in the person of my lovely and accom- plished relative, whom I now see in point of fact, present " Here there is general applause. " Present," repeats Cousin Feenix, feeling that it is a neat point which will bear repetition " with one who that i? to say, with a man, at whom the finger of scorn ran never in fact, with my honorable friend Dombey, if he will allow me to call him so." Cousin Fefinix bows to Mr. Dombey ; Mr. Dombej 26 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 in- cluded) has agreed to this ; even the native who is tiger- ish in his drink, and who alarms the ladies (Mrs. Percb 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 in- cluded) in the light of an impossibility. Words have arisen between the house-maid and Mr. Towlinson ; she, on the authority of an old saw, asserting marriages to be made in heaven : he, affecting to trace the manufac- ture 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, where- ever (here the silver-headed butler eyes the house-maid) she may be. Mr. TowHnson returns thanks in a speech replete with feeling, of which the peroration turns on foreigners, regarding whom he says they may find favor, 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 trav- elling chariot. The eye of Mr. Towlinson is so severe and so expressive here, that the house-maid is turning^ hysterical, when she and all the rest, roused by the in- telligence that the Bride is going away, hurry up-staira to witness her departure. The chariot is at the door ; the Bride is descending to the hall, where Mr. Dombey waits for her. Florence i DOMBEY AND SON. 2 1 ready on the staircase to depart too ; and Miss Nipper, Who has held a middle state between the parlor and the kitchen, is prepared to accompany her. As Edith ap- pears, Florence hastens towards her, to bid her farewell Is Edith cold, that she should tremble ! Is there any- thing unnatural or unwholesome in the touch of Florence, that the beautiful form recedes and contracts, as if it could not bear it ! Is there so much hurry in this going away, that Edith, with a wave of her hand, sweeps on, and is gone ! Mrs. Skewton, overpowered by her feelings as a mother, sinks on her sofa in the Cleopatra attitude, when (he clatter of the chariot wheels is lost, and sheds several tears. The major, coming with the rest of the company from table, endeavors to comfort her ; but she will not be comforted on any terms, and so the major takes his leave. Cousin Feenix takes his leave, and Mr. Carker takes his leave. The guests all go away. Cleopatra, left alone, feels a little giddy from her strong emotion, and falls asleep. Giddiness prevails below stairs too. The very tall young man whose excitement came on so soon, appears to have his head glued to the table in the pantry, and cannot be detached from it. A violent revulsion has taken place in the spirits of Mrs. Perch, who is low on account of Mr. Perch ; and tells cook that she fears he is net 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 insida his head. The house-maid wifihes it wasn't wicked to wish that one was dead. There is a general delusion likewise, in these lower , ^ regions, on the subject of time everybody vdiiceivmg 28 UOMBEY AND SON. 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 pro- jected visit to the play. Any one reviving the notion of the ball, would be scouted as a malignant idiot. Mrs. Skewton sleeps up-stairs, two hours afterwards, and naps are not yet over in the kitchen. The hatch- ments in the dining-room look down on crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine, half-thawed ice, stale discolored 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 break- fast. Mr. Dotnbey's servants moralize 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 con- firmed 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 pre- pared for any amount of dissipation, is amazed to find himself coldly received, and Mrs. Perch but poorly, and to have the pleasing duty of escorting that lady home by the next omnibus. Night closes in. Florence having rambled through .Iic 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 iear Paul, and sits down to read, with Diogenes winking and blinking on the ground beside her. But Florence DOMBEY AND SON. 29 cannot read to-night. The house seems strange s.nd uew, 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. Wal- ter, too, poor wandering shipwrecked boy, oh, where is he! The major don't know ; that's for certain ; and don't care. The major, having choked and slumbered, all the afternoon, has taken a late dinner at his club, and now sits over his pint of wine, driving a modest young man, with a fresh-colored 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 gentlemanly friend, Lord Feenix. While Cousin Feenix, who ought to be at Long's, and in bed, finds him- self, instead, at a gana ing-table, where his wilful legs have taken him, perhaps, in his own despite. Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pavement to roof, and holds dominion through the silent hours. Pule 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 tht great door clashes, and Mr. Sownds and Mrs. Miff, tread- \ng 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 ; SO DOMBEY AND SON. and again this man taketh this woman, and this .vomau taketh this man, on the solemn terms: ~ To have and to hold, from this daj forward, for belter for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do them part." The very words that Mr. Carker rides into town re- peating, with his mouth stretched to the utmost, as lie picks his dainty way. DOMBEY AND 8ON. CHAPTER XXXII. THB WOODEX MIDSHIPMAN GOES TO PIECES. HONEST Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over Liia in his fortified retreat, by no means abated any of \A.i 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 en- dure 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 deter- mined and dauntless character of Mrs. MacStinger, to doubt that that heroic woman had devoted herself to the task of his discovery and capture. Trembling beneath the weight of these reasons, Captain Cuttle lived a very close and retired life ; seldom stirring abroad until after dark; venturing even then only into the obscurest streets; never going forth at all on Sundays ; and both within and without the walls of his retreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging lions. The captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon by Mrs. MacStinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer resistance. He felt that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly \n a hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodging-. He foresaw that, once immured there, he was a lost man ; ais hat gone ; Mrs. MacStinger watchful of him day and 32 DOMBEY AND SOW. night ; reproaches heaped upon his head, b fore the in- fant family ; himself the guilty object of suspicion and distrust : an ogre in the children's eyes, and in their mother's a detected traitor. A violent perspiration, and a lowness of spirits always came over the captain as this gloomy picture uresented itself to his imagination. It generally did so previous to his stealing out of doors at night for air and exercise. Sensible of the risk he ran, the captain took leave of Rob, at those times with the solemnity which became a man who might never return : exhorting him in the event of his (the captain's) being lost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue, and keep the brazen instruments well polished. But not to throw away a chance : and to secure to himself a means, in case of the worst, of holding com- munication 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 com- mander, in the hour of adversity. After much cogita- tion, the captain decided in favor 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 instruc- tions on his mind : " Now, my lad, stand by ! If ever I'm took " " Took, captain ! " interposed Rob, with his ronnd eyes wide open. " Ah ! " said Captain Cuttle darkly, " if ever I goea iway, meaning to come back to supper, and don't come within hail again twenty-four hours arter my loss, go you DOMBEY AND SON. 83 to Brig-place and whistle that 'ere tune near my old moorings not as if you was a-meaning of it, you un- derstand, but as if you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in that tune, you sheer off, ray lad, and come back four-and-twenty hours arterwards ; if I answer in another tune, do you stand off and on, and wait till 1 throw out further signals. Do you understand them orders, now ? " " What am I to stand off and on of, captain ? " in- quired Rob. " The horse-road ? " " Here's a smart lad for you ! " cried the captain, ey- ing him sternly, "as don't know his own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back again alternate d'ye understand that ? " "Yes, captain," said Rob. " Very good, my lad, then," said the captain, relent- ing. " Do it ! " That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle some- times condescended, of an evening, after the shop was shut, to rehearse the scene : retiring into the parlor for the purpose, as into the lodgings of a supposititious Mac- Stinger, and carefully observing the behavior of hia ally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinder discharged himself of his duty with so tnuch 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 grad- ually fell stealing over his spirit the resignation of a man who had made provision for the worst, and taken every reasonable precaution against an unrelenting fate. Nevertheless, the captain did not tempt ill-fortune, bjp being a whit more venturesome than before. Though he considered it a point of good-breeding in himself, as" a vo),. in. 3 34 DOMBEY AND SON. > general friend of the family, to attend Mr. Dombey*! wedding (of which he had heard from Mr. Perch), and to show that gentleman a pleasant and approving coun- tenance 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 commun- ion with the Establishment The captain got safe home again, and fell into the or- dinary 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 lie heavier 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 FlorenceT If he had had good news to carry to her, the honest captain would have braved the newly decorated house and splendid furniture though these connected with the lady he had seen at church, were awful to him and made his way \nto 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 risit from Florence, than from Mrs. MacStinger herself DOMBEY AND SON. 35 It was a chill dark autumn evening, and Captain Cut- tle had onlered a fire to be kindled in the little back- parlor, 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 cap- tain'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 in- fluence, quite distinct from the subject-matter of his thoughts, the captain's spirits sank, and his hopes turned pale, as those of wiser men had often done before him, and will often do again. Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilderness of house-tops, and looked for something cheery there in vain. The prospect near at hand was no better. In sundry tea-chests, and other rough boxes at his feet, the pigeons of Rob the Grinder were cooing like so many dismal breezes getting up. A crazy weathercock of a midshipman, with a telescope at his eye, once visible from the street, but long bricked out, creaked and complained upon his rusty pivot as the shrill blast spun him round and round, and sported with him cruelly. Upon the captain's coarse blue vest the cold rain-drops started like, steel beads ; and he could bardly maintain himself aslant against the stiff nor'wes- ter 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 vaptain thought, as he held his hat on, it certainly kep' 36 DOMBEY AND SON. house, and wasn't out of doors ; so the captain, shak- ing his head in a despondent manner, went in to look for it. Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little back parlor, and, seated in his accustomed chair, looked for t in the fire ; but it was not there, though the fire waa 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 vapor 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 reckon- ings for the missing ship, in spite of any opposition he could offer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea. The wind still rushing, and the rain still pattering, against the closed shutters, the captain brought to before the wooden Midshipman upon the counter, and thought, as he dried the little officer's uniform with his sleeve, how many years the Midshipman had seen, during which few changes hardly any had transpired among his ship's company ; how the changes had come all together one day, as it might be ; and of what a sweeping kind they were. Here was the little society of the back par- lor 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 nc Sright face of " Wal'r" in the house ; here the captair V AND SON. 37 transferred his sleeve for a moment from the midship- man's uniform to his own cheek; the familiar wig and buttons of Sol Gills were a vision of the past ; Rich- ard Whittington was knocked on the head ; and every plan and project, in connection with the Midshipman, lay drifting, without mast or rudder, on the waste of waters. As the captain, with a dejected face, stood revolving these thoughts, and polishing the Midshipman, partly in the tenderness of old acquaintance, and partly in the absence of his mind, a knocking at the shop-door com- municated a frightful start to the frame of Rob the Grinder, seated on the counter, whose large eyes had been intently fixed on the captain's face, and who had been debating within himself, for the five hundredth time, whether the captain could have done a murder, that he had such an evil conscience, and was always running away. " What's that ! " said Captain Cuttle, softly. " Somebody's knuckles, captain," answered Rob the Grinder. The captain, with an abashed and guilty air, immedi- ately sneaked on tiptoe to the little parlor and locked himself in. Rob, opening the door, would have par- leyed with the visitor on the threshold if the visitor had come in female guise ; but the figure being of the male sex, and Rob's orders only applying to women, Rob held the door open and allowed it to enter: which it did very quickly, glad to get out of the driving rain. " A job for Burgess and Co. at any rate," said (ho visitor looking over kis shoulder compassionately at bis own legs, which were very wet and covered will Oli, bow-de-do, Mr. Gills ? " 88 DOMBEY AND SON. The salutation, was addressed to the captain, now emerging from the back-parlor with a most transpar- ent and utterly futile affectation of coming out by ac- cident " Thankee," the gentleman went on to say in the same breath ; " I'm very well indeed, myself, I'm much obliged to you. My name is Toots, Mister Toots." The captain remembered to have seen this young gentleman at the wedding, and made him a bow. Mr Toots replied with a chuckle ; and being embarrassed. as he generally was, breathed hard, shook hands with the captain for a long time, and then falling on Roli the Grinder, in the absence of any other resource, shook hands with him in a most affectionate and cor- dial manner. " I say ; I should like to speak a word to you, Mr. Gills, if you please," said Toots at length, with surpris- ing presence of mind. " I say ! Miss D. 0. M. you know ! " The captain, with responsive gravity and mystery, immediately waved his hook towards the little parlor, whither Mr. Toots followed him. " Oh ! I beg your pardon though," said Mr. Toots, looking up in the captain's face, as he sat down in a chair by the fire, which the captain placed for him ; u you don't happen to know the Chicken at all ; do you Mr. Gills ? * " The Chicken ? " said the captain. " The Game Chicken," said Mr. Toots. The captain shaking his head, Mr. Tocts explained that the man alluded to was the celebrated public char- acter who had covered himself and his country with glory in his contest with the Nobby Shropshire One . AND SON. 35 but this piece of information did not appear to enliglu*> the captain ^ery much. "Because he's outside: that's all," said Mr. Toots, u But it's of no consequence ; he won't get very wet perhaps." " I can pass the word for him in a moment," said the captain. " Well, if you would have the goodness to let him sii in the shop with your young man," chuckled Mr. Toots, U I should be glad ; because you know, he's easily of- fended, and the damp's rather bad for his stamina. .Til call him in, Mr. Gills." With that, Mr. Toots, repairing to the shop-door, sent a peculiar whistle into the night, which produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy white great-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very short hair, a broken nose, and a considerable tract of bare and sterile country be- hind each ear. " Sit down, Chicken," said Mr. Toots. The compliant Chicken spat out some small pieces of straw on which he was regaling himself, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve he carried in his hand. "There a'n't no drain of nothing short handy, ia there ? " said the Chicken, generally. " Tin's here sluic- ing night is hard lines to a man as lives on his con- dition." Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which tho Chicken, throwing back his head, emptied into himself, as into a cask, after proposing the brief sentiment, " Tow- urds us ! " Mr. Toots and the captain returning then to tli3 parlor, and taking their seats before the fire, Mr Toots began : " Mr. Gills " 40 DOMBEY AND SOX. u Awast I " said the captain. " My name's Cuttle." Mr. Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the cap- tain proceeded gravely : " Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is my na- tion, this here is my dwelling-place, and blessed bo creation Job," said the captain, as an index to his authority. " Oh ! I couldn't see Mr. Gills, could I ? " said Mr. Toots; "because" " If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n," said the captain, impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr. Toots's knee, " old Sol, mind you with your own eyes as you sit there you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astern, to a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. And why can't you see Sol Gills ? " said the captain, apprised by the face of Mr. Toots that he vas making a profound impression on that gentleman's mind. " Because he's inwisible." Mr. Toots in his agitation was going to reply that it \vas of fto consequence at all. But he corrected him- self, and said, " Lor bless me ! " " That there man," said the captain, " has left me in charge here by a piece of writing, but though he was a'most as good as my sworn brother, I know no more where he's gone, or why he's gone ; if so be to seek his nevy, or if so be along of being not quite settled in his mind ; than you do. One morning at daybreak, he went over the side," said the captain, " without a splash, without a ripple. I have looked for that man high and low, and never set eyes, nor ears, nor nothing else, upon him, from that hour." " But, good gracious, Miss Dombey don't know '' Mr. Toots began. DOMBEY AND SON. -11 " Why, I ask you, as a feeling heart," said the cap- tain, dropping his voice, " why should she know ? why should she be made to know, until such time as there warn't any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did that sweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affabil- ity, with a what's the good of saying so? you know her." " I should hope so," chuckled Mr. Toots, with a con- scious blush that suffused his whole countenance. u And you come here from her ? " said the captain. " I should think so," chuckled Mr. Toots. " Then all I need observe is," said the captain, " that you know a angel, and are chartered by a angel." Mr. Toots instantly seized the captain's hand, and re- quested the favor of his friendship. " Upon my word and honor," said Mr. Toots, earnest- ly, " I should be very much obliged to you if you'd im- prove my acquaintance. I should like to know you, captain, very much. I really am in want of a friend, I am. Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber's, and would have been now, if he'd have lived. The Chicken," said Mr. Toots, in a forlorn whisper, " is very well admirable in his way the sharpest man per- haps in the world ; there's not a move he isn't up to, everybody says so but I don't know he's not every" thing. 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 culti- vate my acquaintance." Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite man- ner, but still without committing himself to its accept- ance ; merely observing, " Ay, ay, my lad. We shal" 42 DOMBEY AND SON. gee, we shall see ; " and reminding Mr. Toots of his im- mediate mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honor of that visit. "Why the fact is," replied Mr. Toots, "that it's the young woman I come from. Not Miss Dombey Susan you know." The captain nodded his head once, with a grave ex- pression of face, indicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect. u 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 neighborhood very often ; and when I find myself there, why why I call." " Nat'rally," observed the captain. "Yes," said Mr. Toots. "I called this afternoon. Upon my word and honor, I don't think it's possible to form an idea of the angel Miss Dombey was this after- noon." The captain answered with a jerk of his head, imply- ing that it might not be easy to some people, but was quite so, to him. " As I was coming out," said Mr. Toots, " the young woman, in the most unexpected manner, took me into the pantry." The captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this proceeding ; and leaning back in his chair, looked at Mr. Toots with a distrustful, if not threatening visage. " Where she brought out," said Mr. Toots, " this news- paper. She told me that she had kept it from Misa 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 DOMBEY AND SON. > Bhe said wait a minute ; what was it, she said though ! " Mr. Toots, endeavoring to concentrate his mental pow- ers on this question, unintentionally fixed the captain's eye, and was so much discomposed by its stern expres- sion, that his difficulty in resuming the thread of his subject was enhanced to a painful extent. " Oh ! " said Mr. Toots after long consideration. " Oh, ah ! Yes ! She said that she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn't be true ; and that as she couldn't very well come out herself, without surprising Miss Dombey, would I go down to Mr. Solomon Gills the Instrument-maker's in this street, who was the party's uncle, and ask whether he believed it was true, or had heard anything else in the city. She said, if he couldn't speak to me, no doubt Captain Cuttle could. By the by ! " said Mr. Toots, as the discovery flashed upon him, "you, you know !" The captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr. Toots's hand, and breathed short and hurriedly. " Well," pursued Mr. Toots, " the reason why I'm rather late is, because I went up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweed that grows there, for Miss Dombey's bird. But I came on here, directl}' afterwards. You've seen the paper, I suppose ? " The captain, who had become c? utious of reading the news, lest he should find himself advertised at full length by Mrs. MacStinger, shook his head. " Shall I read the passage to you ? " inquired Mr. Toots. The captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr. Foots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence : " ' Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, 44 DOMBEY AND SON. Commander, arrived in this port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in' in such and such a latitude, you know," said Mr. Toots, after making a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them. " Ay ! " cried the captain, striking his clinched hand on the table. " Heave ahead, my lad ! " u latitude," repeated Mr. Toots, with a startled glance at the captain, " and longitude so-and-so, ' the lookout observed, half an hour before sunset, some frag- ments 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 stern 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 frag- ments. 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 Barbadoes, are now set at rest forever ; that she broke up in the last hurricane ; and that every soul on board perished.' " Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discourage- ment, 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 00 DOMBEY AND 8ON. 45 bis glazed bat, which, in his visitor's hono , he had laid upon the table, the captain turned his back, and bent his head down on the little chimney-piece. " Oh, upon my word and honor," cried Mr. Toots, whose tender heart was moved by the captain's unex- pected 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 nevei should have looked forward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. I never saw such a world. It's i\ great deal worse than Blimber's." Captain Cuttle, without altering his position, signed tc Mr. Toots not to mind him ; and presently turned round, with his glazed hat thrust back upon his ears, and hi* hand composing and smoothing his brown face. " Wal'r, my dear lad," said the captain, u farewell ! Wal'r, my child, my boy, and man, I loved you ! He warn't my flesh and blood," said the captain, looking sit '.lie fire " I a'n't got none but something of what a f;itli<-r feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal'r. For why ? " said the captain. " Because it a'n't one loss, but a round dozen. Where's that there young schoolboy with the rosy face and curly hair, that used to be as merry in this here parlor, 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 clown with Wal'r. It a'n't one Wal'r. There wa* a dozen Wal'rs that I know'd and loved, all holding round hi? 46 DOMBEY AND SON. neck when he went down, and they're a-holding round mine now ! " Mr. Toots sat silent : folding and refolding the news- paper as small as possible upon his knee. " And Sol Gills," said the captain, gazing at the fire, * poor nevyless old Sol, where are you got to ! you was left in charge of me ; his last words was, ' Take care of my uncle.' What came over you, Sol, when you went and gave the go-by to Ned Cuttle ; and what am I to put in my accounts that he's a-looking down upon, re- specting you ! Sol Gills, Sol Gills ! " said the captain, shaking his head slowly, " catch sight of that there newspaper, away from home, with no one as know'd Wal'r by, to say a word ; and broadside-to you broach, and down you pitch, head-foremost ! " Drawing a heavy sigh, the captain turned to Mr. Toots, and roused himself to a sustained consciousness of that gentleman's presence. " My lad," said the captain, " you must tell the young woman honestly that this here fatal news is too correct. They don't romance, you see, on such pints. It's en- tered 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 nc 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 ell 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 griz- zled head despairingly, and tossed the handkerchief in again, with the indifference of deep dejection. u Oh I I assure you," said Mr. Toots, " really 1 am ireadfully sorry. Upon my word I am, though I waideration of Mr. Toots'^ offer of friendship, and thna dismissed him. Captain Cuttle's spirits were so low, in truth, that he half determined, that day, to take no fur- ther precautions against surprise from Mrs. MacStinger, but to abandon himself recklessly to chance, and be indif- 56 DOMBET AND SON. feront to what might happen. As evening came on, h 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. Roh did not blush to hear the captain earnest in his praises, but sat staring at him, and affecting to snivel with sym- pathy, and making a feint of being virtuous, and treas- uring up every word he said (like a young spy as he was) with very/ promising deceit. When Rob had turned in, and was fast asleep, the captain trimmed the candle, put on his spectacles he had felt it appropriate to take to spectacles on entering into the Instrument Trade, though his eyes were like a hawk's and opened the prayer-book at the Burial Ser- vice. And reading softly to himself, in the little back- parlor, and stopping now and then to wipe his eyes, the captain, in a true and simple spirit, committed Walter's body to the deep. DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXXIH. CONTRASTS. TURN we our eyes upon two homes; not lying sid by .side, but wide apart, though both within easy range and reach of the great city of London. The first is situated in the green and wooded country near Norwood. It is not a mansion ; it is of no preten- sions as to size ; but it is beautifully arranged, and taste- fully 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 veranda 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 hou^e of refinement and luxury. Rich colors, excel- lently blended, meet the eye at every turn ; in the fur- niture its proportions admirably devised to suit the shapes and sizes of the small rooms ; on the walls; upon the floors ; tinging and subduing the light that comes ir through the odd glass-doors and windows here and there There are a few choice prints and pictures, too : ii- ^uaint nooks and recesses there is no want of bookd. 58 DOMBEY AND SON. and there are games of skill and chance set forth oi tables fantastic chessmen, dice, backgammon, cards, and billiards. And yet, amidst this opulence of comfort, there is something in the general air that is not well. Is it tha\ the carpets and the cushions are too soft and noiseless, so that those who move or repose among them seem to act by stealth ! Is it that the prints and pictures do not commemorate great thoughts or deeds, or render nature in the poetry of landscape, hall, or hut, but are of one voluptuous cast mere shows of form and color and no more ? Is it that the books have all their gold out* side, 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 is here and there belied by an affectation of humility, in some unim- portant 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 him- self, which gives a vague expression of himself to every- thing about him ? It is Mr. Carker the manager who sits in the easy- chair. A gaudy parrot in a burnished cage upon the table tears at the wires with her beak, and goes walking, upside down, in its dome-top, shaking her house and screeching ; but Mr. Carker is indifferent to the bird, find looks with a musing smile at a picture on the op- posite wall. " A most extraordinary accidental likeness, certainly,' says he. Perhaps it is a Juno ; perhaps a Potiphar's wife ; DOMBEY AND SON. 59 perhaps some scornful nymph according as the Pic- ture 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 spec- tator, flashes her proud glance upon him. It is like Edith. With a passing gesture of his hand at the picture what ! a menace ? No ; yet something like it. A wave as if triumph? No; yet more like that. An insolent salute wafted from his lips ? No ; yet like that too he resumes his breakfast, arid calls to the chafing and im- prisoned bird, who, coming down into a pendant gilded hoop within the cage, like a great wedding-ring, swings in it, for his delight. The second home is on the other side of London, near to where the busy great north road of bygone days is silent and almost deserted, except by wayfarers who toil along on foot. It is a poor, small house, barely and sparely furnished, but very clean ; and there is even an attempt to decorate it, shown in the homely flowers trained about the porch and in the narrow garden. The neighborhood in which it stands has as little of the coun- try to recommend it, as it has of the town. It is neither of the town or 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, timong 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 cornea 60 DOMBEY AND SOX. occasionally, though he swears every time to come M more this second home is to be found. She who inhabits it, is she who left the first in her devotion to an outcast brother. She withdrew from that borne its redeeming spirit, and from its master's breast his solitary angel : but though his liking for her is gone, after this ungrateful slight as he considers it ; and though he abandons her altogether in return, an old idea of her is not quite forgotten even by him. Let her flower- garden, in which he never sets his foot, but which is yet maintained, among all his costly alterations, as if she had quitted it but yesterday, bear witness ! Harriet Carker has changed since then, and on her beauty there has fallen a heavier shade than Time of his unassisted self can cast, all-potent as he is the shadow of anxiety and sorrow, and the daily struggle of a poor existence. But it is beauty still ; and still a gentle, quiet, and retiring beauty that must be sought out, for it cannot vaunt itself; if it could, it would be what it is, no more. Yes. This slight, small, patient figure, neatly dressed in homely stuffs, and indicating nothing but the dull, household virtues, that have so little in common with the received idea of heroism and greatness, unless, indeed, any ray of them should shine through the lives of the great ones of the earth, when it becomes a constellation and is tracked in heaven straightway this slight, small, patient figure, leaning on the man still young but worn and gray, is she his sister, who, of all the world, went aver to him in his shame and put her hand in his, and with a sweet composure and determination, led him hopefully upon his bairen way. "It is early, John," she said. "Why do you go so early?" DOMBEY iND SON. 61 " Not many minutes earlier than usual, Harriet. If 1 have the time to spare, I should like, I think it's a fancy to walk once by the house where I took leave of him." " I wish I had ever seen or known him, John." " It is better as it is, my dear, remembering his fate." " But I could not regret it more, though I had known him. Is not your sorrow mine ? And if I had, perhaps you would feel that I was a better companion to you in speaking about him, than I may seem now." " My dearest sister ! Is there anything within the range of rejoicing or regret, in which I am not sure of your companionship ? " " I hope you think not, John, for surely there is noth- ing!" " How could you be better to me, or nearer to me then, than you are in this, or anything?" said her brother. " I feel that you did know him, Harriet, and that you shared my feelings towards him." She drew the hand which had been resting on his shoulder, round his neck, and answered, with some hesi- tation : " No, not quite." " True, true," he said ; " you think I might have don* him no harm if I had allowed myself to know him bet- ter ? " " Think ! I know it." " Designedly, Heaven knows I would not," he replied, shaking his head mournfully : " but his reputation was too precious to be perilled by such association. Whether you share that knowledge, or do not, my dear" " I do not," she said quietly. " II is still the truth, Harriet, and my mind is lightel *b to) I limit of tarn, Bar flat wftidh aaide it fciHwitsr 34ifnuT lie cindboi baaself ia IK taaa af aaaV ndh%- 3* sn** apaa'her as he sni "Gooi-ty.* * Go3-fty, -dear Jala! Is te cverag, M He H iirot iooi jiHaoe, I teffl eel - - --:-::-- ;s< :.:-. f IHB funa&OKMft ami grittf; fir in Ae dhni ke aw -..--. ::?_- V - >.; ---- f -- r ::..'.: r.vlit ;.-' -' --. 3wac. ami Ihsgjft, lie saw t&e lfesr ffirwte rf IB ail < - :if 5,.:>: .'--::. at be ANT Utn* after ioa^ widi iae MMiJy daysi it carih aAn^ as he aafc Ma way - - - -.^ ,-,-- i;i-.; s.^; , -/ - ' dhanc. Wlbewsrer he iu he Ja farflanCalaiDe rUmBip Bbe m igjht * ic. ---T -.:.: ..- ; -.,:: -- .. -; .. - f.r : : :-:!.: a;- :./ ': r- ' You are *&**, r 2 " dbe 'I tote dat Ba.illj, a> he 64 DOMBEY AND SUN. After a moment's hesitation, she opened the door. :mey's only Mr. Dombey's. Since then, darling, I Lave seen them often. I have seen him." In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as if with a sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though the daughter's face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehement pas- sion, she remained still : except that she clinched her arras tighter and tighter within each other, on her bosom, -is if to restrain them by that means from doing an m- B6 DQMBET AND SON. jury to herself, or some one else, in the blind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her. " Little he thought who I was ! " said the old woman, shaking her clinched hand. " And little he cared ! " muttered her daughter, l>e- tween her teeth. " But there we were," said the old woman, " face t/) fe.ce. I spoke to him, and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a long grove of trees ; and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body." " He will thrive in spite of that," returned the daugh- ter disdainfully. " Ay, he is thriving," said the mother. She held her peace ; for the face and form before her were unshaped by rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions that strove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, was no less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeak- ing the violent and dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, and she asked, after a silence : " Is he married ? " v " No, deary," said the mother. " Going to be ? " "Not that I know of, deary. But his master find 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. " Noth- ing but joy to us will come of that marriage. Mind e!" The daughter looked at her for an explanation. * But you are wet and tired : hungry and thirsty, DOMBEY AND SON. 87 said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard : " and there's little here, and little " diving down into her pocket, and jingling a few halfpence on the table u little here. Have you any money, Alice, deary ? " The covetous, sharp, eager face with which she asked the question and looked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she had so lately received, told almost as much of the history of this parent and child as the child herself had told in words. " Is that all ? " said the mother. " I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity." "But for charity, eh, deary?" said the old woman, bending greedily over the table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of her daughter's still re- taining in her hand, and gazing on. " Humph ! six and six is twelve and six eighteen so we must make the most of it. I'll go buy something to eat and drink." With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of her appearance for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit as ugly she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet on her head, and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eying the money in her daughter's hand, with the same sharp desire. " What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother ? " asked the daughter. " You have not told me that." " The joy," she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fidgers, " of no love at all, and much pride and hate, my vleary. The joy of confusion and strife among 'em, ^roud as they are, and of danger danger, Alice ! " " What danger ? " " / have seen what I have seen. / know what I 88 DOMBEY AND SON. know ! " chuckled the mother. " Let some look to it Let some be upon their guard. My gal may keep good company yet ! " Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness with which her daughter regarded her, her hand involuntarily closed upon the money, the old woman made more speed to secure it, and hurriedly added, " but I'll go buy some- thing ; I'll go buy something." As she stood with her hand stretched out before her daughter, her daughter, glancing again at the money, put it to her lips before parting with it. "What, Ally! Do you kiss it?" chuckled the old woman. " That's like me I often do. Oh, it's so good to us ! " squeezing her own tarnished halfpence up to her bag of a throat, " so good to us in everything but not coming in heaps ! " " I kiss it, mother," said the daughter, "or I did then I don't know that I ever did before for the giver's sake." 14 The giver, eh, deary ? " retorted the old woman, whose dimmed eyes glistened as she took it. " Ay ! I'll kiss it for the giver's sake, too, when the giver can make it go farther. But I'll go spend it, deary. I'll be back directly." " You seem to say you know a great deal, mother," said the daughter, following her to the door with her eyes. " You have grown very wise since we parted." u 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-by. I know nil about him." The daughter smiled incredulously. w I know of his brother. Alice," said the eld woman DOMBEY AND SON. 89 stretching out her neck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, "who might have been where you have been for stealing money and who lives with his sister, over yonder, by the north road out of London." " Where ? " " By the north road out of London, deary. You shall see the house, if you like. It a'n'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 mile- stone, where the stones are heaped ; to-morrow, deary, if it's fine, and you are in the humor. But I'll go spend " " Stop ! " and the daughter flung herself upon her, with her former passion raging like a fire. "The sister is a fair-faced devil, with brown hair ? " The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head. " I see the shadow of him in her face ! It's a red house standing by itself. Before the door there is a email green porch." Again the old woman nodded. " In which I sat to-day ! Give me back the money." " Alice ! Deary ! " " Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt." She forced it from the old woman's hand as she spoke, rind utterly indifferent to her complainings and entreaties, threw on the garments she had taken off, and hurried out, with headlong speed. The mother followed, limping after her as she could, and expostulating with no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain and darkness that encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, and in- 90 DOMBEY AND SON. diffei-ent to all besides, the daughter defied the weather and the distance, as if she had known no travel ot fatigue, and made for the house where she had been relieved. After some quarter of an hour's walking, the old woman, spent and out of breath, ventured to hold by her skirts ; but she ventured no more, and they travelled on in silence through the wet and gloom. If the mother now and then uttered a word of complaint, she stifled it lest her daughter should break away from her and leave her behind ; and the daughter was dumb. It was within an hour or so of midnight, when they left the regular streets behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral ground where the house was situated. The town lay in the distance, lurid and lowering ; the bleak wind howled over the open space ; all around was black, wild, desolate. " This is a fit place for me ! " said the daughter, stop- ping to look back. "I thought so, when I was here before, to-day." "Alice, my deary," cried the mother, pulling her gently by the skirt. u Alice ! " "What now, mother?" " Don't give the money back, my darling ; please don't We can't afford it We want supper, deary. Money is money, whoever gives it Say what you will, bat keep the money." " See there ! " was all the daughter's answer. u That is the house I mean. Is that it ? " The old woman nodded in the affirmative ; and a few more paces brought them to the threshold. There was the light of fire and candle in the room where Alice had sat to dry her clothes ; and on her knocking at the doot John Carker appeared from that room. DOMBEY AND SON. 9Tl He was surprised to see such visitors at such an Lour, and asked Alice what she wanted. " I want your sister," she said. " The woman who gave me money to-day." At the sound of her raised voice Harriet came out " Oh ! " said Alice. " You are here I Do you re- member me ? " " Yes ? " she answered, wondering. The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on her now with such invincible hatred and defiance ; and the hand that had gently touched her arm, was clinched with such a show of evil purpose, as if it would gladly strangle her ; that she drew close to her brother for protection. " That I could speak with you, and not know you ! That I could come near you, and not feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tingling of my own I" said Alice with a menacing gesture. " What do you mean ? What have I done ? " " Done ! " returned the other. " You have sat me by your fire ; you have given me food and money ; you have bestowed your compassion on me ! You ! whose name I spit upon ! " The old woman, with a malevolence that made her ugliness quite awful, shook her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of her daughter, but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless, imploring her to keep the money. " If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it np ! 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 ! " ?2 LiOMBET AND SON. As s-he said the words, she threw the money down npon the ground, and spurned it with her foot. - 1 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 lo your house ! " Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her to go on uninterrupted. - It was well that I should be pitied and forgiven by yon, or any one of jour name, in the first hour of my return ! It was well that you should act the kind good lady to me ! Ill thank you when I die ; I'll pray for yon, and all your race, yon may be sure!" With a fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred on the ground, and with it devoted those who were standing there to destruction, she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out into the wild night The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and again in vain, and had eyed the money lying on the threshold with an absorbing greed that seemed to con- centrate 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 whimper- ing and bemoaning their loss upon the road, and fret- fully bewailing, as openly as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her handsome girl in depriving her of a sup- per, on the very first night of their reunion. Supperless to bed she went, saving for a few coarse fragments; and those she sat mumbling and munching over a scrap of fire, long after her undutiful daughter lay asleep. DOMBET AND SON. 9d Were this miserable mother, and this miserable daughter, only the reduction to Iheir 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 He close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey's end is but our starting-place ? Allowing for great difference of stuff nd texture, was the pattern of this woof repeated among gentle blood at all? Say, Edith Dombey ! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have your testimony I 94 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXXV. THE HAPPY PAIR. THE dark blot on the street is gone. Mr. Dombey's mansion, if it be a gap among the other houses any longer, is only so because it is not to be vied with in its brightness, and haughtily cast 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 altai to the Household Gods is raised up here ! Lights are sparkling in the windows this evening, and the ruddy glow of fires is warm and bright upon the hangings and soft carpets, and the dinner waits to be served, and the dinner-table is handsomely set forth, though only for four persons, and the sideboard is cum- brous with plate. It is the first time that the house has been arranged for occupation since its late changes, and the happy pair are looked for every minute. Only second to the wedding-morning, in the interest and expectation it engenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home. Mrs. Perch is in the kitchen taking tea; and has made the tour of the estab- lishment, and priced the silks and damasks by the yard jtnd exhausted every interjection in the dictionary an out of it expressive of admiration and wonder. T! yphoLiterer's foreman who has left his hat, with DOMKEY AND SON. 95 pocket-handkerchief in it, both smelling strongly of var* nish, under a chair in the hall, lurks about the house, gazing upward at the cornices, and downward at the carpets, and occasionally, in a silent transport of enjoy ment, taking a rule out of his pocket, and skirmishingly measuring expensive objects, with unutterable feeling 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 house-maid hopes is, happiness for 'em but mar- riage 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 pays that's his opinion too, and give him war besides, and down with the French for this young man has a general impression that every foreigner is a Frenchman, and must be by the laws of nature. At each new sound of wheels, they all stop, whatever they are saying, and listen ; and more than once there is a general starting up and a cry of " Here they are ! " But here they are not yet ; and cook begins to mourn over the dinner, which has been put back twice, and the upholsterer's foreman still goes lurking about the room?, nndisturbed in his blissful revery ! 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 know?. But the fluttering heart sends added color to her cheeks. and brightness to her eyes ; and they say down-stairs, drawing their heads together for they always speak 96 DOMBEY AND SON. softly when they speak of her how beautiful Miss Florence looks to-night, and what a sweet young lady she has grown, poor dear ! A pause succeeds ; and then cook, feeling as president, that her sentiments are waited for, wonders whether and there stops. The house- maid 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 op- portunity 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 persua- sively, " but Miss Florence can't well be the worse for any change, Tom." Mr. Towlinson's rejoinder, preg- nant with frightful meaning, is, " Oh, can't she though!" and sensible that a mere man can scarcely be more prophetic, or improve upon that, he holds his peace. Mrs. Skewton, prepared to greet her darling daughter and dear son-in-law with open arms, is appropriately attired for that purpose in a very youthful costume, with short sleeves. At present, however, her ripe charms are blooming in the shade of her own apartments, whence she has not emerged since she took possession of them a few hours ago, and where she is fast growing fret- ful, 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 sstate ; considering her quarterly stipend much safer than here- tofore, and foreseeing a great improvement in her board and lodging. Where are the happy pair, for whom this brave home DOMBEY AND SON. 97 (a waiting ? Do steam, tide, wind, and horses, all abate their speed, to linger on such happiness ? Does tho 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 brier? 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 an- ticipates the rush of Mr. Towlinson and party to open it ; and Mr. Dombey and his bride alight, and walk in arm and arm. " My sweetest Edith ! " cries an agitated voice upon the stairs. " My dearest Dombey ! " and the short sleeves wreath themselves about the happy couple in turn, and embrace them. Florence had come down to the hall too, but did not advance : reserving her timid welcome until these nearer and dearer transports should subside. But the eyes of Edith sought her out, upon the threshold ; and dismissing her sensitive parent with a slight kiss on the cheek, she hurried on to Florence and embraced her. " How do you do, Florence ? " said Mr. Dombey, put- ting out his hand. A? Florence, trembling, raised it to her lips, she met Ins glance. The look was cold and distant enough, but ft stirred her heart to think that she observed in it something more of interest than he had ever shown be- fore. It even expressed a kind of faint surprise, and not a disagreeable surprise, at sight cf her. She dared dot raise her eyes to his any more; but she felt that VOL. in. 7 98 DOMBEY AND SOK. he looked at her once again, and not less favorably Oil ! what a thrill of joy shot through her, awakened by even this intangible and baseless confirmation of her hope that she would learn to win him, through her new and beautiful mama ! " You will not be long dressing, Mrs. Dombey, I pre- sume ? " said Mr. Dombey. " I shall be ready immediately." " Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an hour." With that Mr. Dombey stalked away to his own dress- ing-room, and Mrs. Dombey went up-stairs to hers. Mrs. Skewton and Florence repaired to the drawing- room, where that excellent mother considered it incum- bent on her to shed a few irrepressible tears, supposed to be forced from her by her daughter's felicity ; and which she was still drying, very gingerly, with a laced corner of her pocket-handkerchief, when her son-in-law appeared. " And how, my dearest Dombey, did you find that delightfullest of cities, Paris ? " she asked, subduing her emotion. " It was cold," returned Mr. Dombey. u Gay as ever," said Mrs. Skewton, "of course." " Not particularly. I thought it dull," said Mr. Dom- bey. " Fie, my dearest Dombey !" archly ; " dull! " u It made that impression upon me, madam," said Mr. Dombey, with grave politeness. " I believe Mrs. Dom- bey found it dull too. She mentioned once or twice that the thought it so." " Why, you naughty girl ! " cried Mrs. Skewton, rally ing her dear child, who now entered, " what dreadfullj heretical things have you been saying about Paris ? " DOMBEY AND SON. 99 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 hand- gome garniture, and barely glancing at them as she passed, sat down by Florence. " My dear Dombey," said Mrs. Skewton, " how charm ingly these people have carried out every idea that wt hinted. They have made a perfect palace of the house, positively." " It is handsome," said Mr. Dombey, looking round. u I directed that no expense should be spared ; and all that money could do, has been done, I believe." " And what can it not do, dear Dombey ? " observed Cleopatra. " It is powerful, madam," said Mr. Dombey. He looked in his solemn way towards his wife, but not a word said she. " I hope, Mrs. Dombey," addressing her after a mo- ment's silence, with especial distinctness ; " that these alterations meet with your approval ? " ' They are as handsome as they can be," she returned, with haughty carelessness. " They should be so, of course. And I suppose they are." An expression of scorn was habitual to the proud face, and seemed inseparable from it ; but the contempt with which it received any appeal to admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his riches, no matter how slight or ordinary in itself, was a new and different ex- pression, 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 com- olete enlightenment ; and at that moment it might have 100 DOMBEY AND SON. been effected by the one glance of the dark eye that lighted on him, after it had rapidly and scornfully sur- veyed 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 recog- nition from the defiant woman, linked to him, but arrayed with her whole soul against him. He might have read in that one glance that even for its sordid and mercenary influence upon herself, she spurned it, while she claimed its utmost power as her right, her bargain as the base and worthless recompense for which she had become hia wife. He might have read in it that, ever baring her own head for the lightning of her own contempt and pride to strike, the most innocent allusion to the power of his riches degraded her anew, sunk her deeper in her own respect, and made the blight and waste within her more complete. But dinner was announced, and Mr. Dombey led down Cleopatra ; Edith and his daughter following. Sweep- ing past the gold and silver demonstration on the side- board as if it were heaped-up dirt, and deigning to bestow no look upon the elegancies around her, she took her place at his board for the first time, and sat, like a statue, at the feast. Mr-. Dombey, being a good deal in the statue way him- self, 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 behavior was agreeable and congenial to him. Presiding, there- fore, with his accustomed dignity, and not at all reflect- ing on his wife by any warmth or hilarity of his own, \je performed his shar of the honors of the table witb DOMUET AND SON. 101 & cool satisfaction ; and the installation dinner, though aot regarded down-stairs as a great success, or very promising beginning, passed off, above, in a sufficiently polite, genteel, and frosty manner. Soon after tea, Mrs. Skewton, who affected to be quite overcome and worn out by her emotions of happiness arising in the contemplation of her dear child united to the man of her heart, but who, there is reason to suppose, found this family party somewhat dull, as she yawned for one hour continually behind her fan, retired to bc-d. Edith, also, silently withdrew and came back no more. Thus, it happened that Florence, who had been up-stairs to have some conversation with Diogenes, returning to the drawing-room with her little work-bas- ket, found no one there but hex father, who was walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence. " I beg your pardon. Shall I go away, papa ? " said Florence faintly, hesitating at the door. '' No," returned Mr. Dombey, leoking round over hia shoulder ; "you can come and go here, Florence, as you please. This is not my private room." Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work : finding herself for the first time in her life for the very first time within her memory from her infancy to that hour alone with her father, as his companion. She, his natural companion, his only child, who in her lonely life and grief had known the suffering of a breaking heart; who, in her rejected love, had never breathed his name to God at night, but with a tearful blessing, heavier on him than a curse ; who had prayed to die young, so she might only die in his arms who had, all through, repaid the agony of slight and fldnes. and dislike, with patient unexacting lov* 102 DOMBEY AND SON. excusing him, and pleading for him, like his better nngel ! 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, inno- cent of wrong ! Unnatural the hand that had directed the sharp plough, which furrowed up her gentle nature for the sowing of its seeds ! Bent upon not distressing or offending him by her distress, Florence controlled herself, and sat quietly at her work. After a few more turns across and across the room, he left off pacing it ; and withdrawing into a shad- owy corner at some distance, where there was an easy- chair, covered his head wi'ih a handkerchief, and com- posed himself to sleep. It was enough for Florence to sit there, watching him ; turning her eyes towards his cliair from time to time ; watching him with her thoughts, when her face was intent upon her work ; and sorrowfully glad to think that he could sleep, while she was there, and that he was not made restless by her strange and long-forbidden presence. What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he was steadily regarding her ; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by design, was so adjusted tliaf his sight was free, and that it never wandered from her face an instant. That when she looked towards him, iu the obscure dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and pathetic in their voiceless speech than all the orators DOMBEY AND SON. 103 cf all the world, and impeaching him more nearly iu their mute address, met his, and did not know it. That when she bent her head again over her work, he drew his breath more easily, but with the same attention looked upon her still upon her white brow and her falling hair, and busy hands ; and once attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes away ! And what were his thoughts meanwhile ? With what emotions did he prolong the attentive gaze covertly di- rected on his unknown daughter ? Was there reproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes ? Had he begun to feel her disregarded claims, and did they touch him home at last, and waken him to some sense of his cruel injustice ? There are yielding moments in the lives of the stern- est and harshest men, though such men often keep their secret well. The sight of her in her beauty, almost changed into a woman without his knowledge, may have struck out some such moments even in his life of pride. Some passing thought that he had had a happy home within his reach had had a household spirit bending at his feet had overlooked it in his stiff-necked sullen arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself, may have engendered them. Some simple eloquence dis- tinctly heard, though only uttered in her eyes, uncon- sciou^hat 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 rny heart, oh, father, turn to me uud seek a refuge in my love before it is too late I " may have arrested them. Mearer and lower thoughts, as that his dead boy was now superseded by new ties, and he ?( uld forgive (he having been supplanted in his affection, 1 04 DOMBEY AND SON- may have occasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with all the ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient But as he looked, he softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she became blended with the child he had loved, and he could hardly separate the two. As he looked, he saw her for an instant by a clearer and a brighter light, not bending over that child's pillow as his rival monstrous thought but as the spirit of his home, and in the ac- tion 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 > him. The words " Florence, come here ! " were rising to his lips but slowly and with difficulty, they were so very strange when they were checked and stifled by a footstep on the stair. It was his wife's. She had exchanged her dinner- dress for a loose robe, and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was not the change in her that startled him. " Florence, dear," she said, " I have been looking for you everywhere." As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped nnd kissed her hand. He hardly knew his wife. She was 30 changed. It was not merely that her smile was new to him though that he had never seen ; fttt hei manner, the tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, and confidence, and winning wish to please^, expressed in all this was not Edith. " Softly, dear mama. Papa is asleep." It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and he knew that face and manner very veil. DOMBEY AND SON. 103 " I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence." Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant " I left here early," pursued Edith, " purposely to sil up-stairs and talk with you. But, going to your room, I found ray bird was flown, and I have been waiting there ever since, expecting its return." If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more tenderly and gently to her breast, than ghe did Florence. " Come, dear ! " " Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes," hesitated Florence. " Do you think he will, Florence ? " said Edith, look- ing full upon her. Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her work-basket. Edith drew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room like sisters. Her very step was different and new to him, Mr. Dombey thought as his eyes followed her to the door. He sat in his shadowy corner so long, that the church clocks struck the hour three times before he moved thai night. All that while his face was still intent upon the spot where Florence had been seated. The room grew darker, as the candles waned and went out : but a darkness gathered on his face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and rested there. Florence and Edith, seated before the fire in the rS- more room where little Paul had died, talked together tor 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 i06 DOMBEY AND SON dudgeon, he soon appeared to comprehend, that with the most amiable intentions he had made one of those mis- takes 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, lis- tening to the conversation. It turned, at first, on Florence's books and favorite pursuits, and on the manner in which she had beguiled the interval since the marriage. The last theme opened up to her a subject which lay very near her heart, and she said, with the tears starting to her eyes: " Oh, mama ! I have had a great sorrow since that day." a You a great sorrow, Florence ! " " Yes. Poor Walter is drowned." Florence spread her hands before her face, and wept with all her heart. Many as were the secret tears which Walter's fate had cost her, they flowed yet, when she thought or spoke of him. " But tell me, dear," said Edith, soothing her. " Who was Walter ? What was he to you ? " " He was my brother, mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would be brother and sister. I had known him a long time from a little child. He knew Paul, \Mio liked him very much ; Paul said, almost at the last, ' Take care of Walter, dear papa ! I was fond of him ! Walter had been brought in to see him, and was there then in this room." " And did he take care of Walter ? " inquired Edith, sternly. " Papa ? He appointed him to go abroad. He was DOMBEY AND SON. 107 drowned in shipwreck on his voyage," said Florence, sobbing. " Does he know that he is dead ? " asked Edith. * I cannot tell, mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear mama ! " cried Florence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon her bosom, " I know that you have seen " " Stay ! Stop, Florence," Edith turned so pale, and spoke so earnestly, that Florence did not need her re- straining hand upon her lips. " Tell me all about Wal- ter first ; let me understand this history all through." Florence related it, and everything belonging to it, even down to the friendship of Mr. Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her distress without a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him. When she bad concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding her hand, listened with close attention, and when a silence haff succeeded, Edith said : " What is it that you know I have seen, Florence ? " " That I am not," said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the same quick concealment of her face aa before, " that I am not a favorite child, mama. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I have missed the way, and had no one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn from you, how to become dearer to papa. Teach me ! you, who can so well ! " and clinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words of gratitude and endearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long, but not as painfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother. Pale, even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure until its proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon the weeping girl, and ono? 108 DOMBEY AND SON. kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself, and putting Florence away, she said, stately and quiet, as a marble image, and in ft voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other token of emotion in it : " Florence, you do not know me ! Heaven forbid that you should learn from me ! " " Not Isarn from you ? " repeated Florence, in sor* prise. " That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid ! " said Edith. " If you could teach me, that were better ; but it is too late. You are dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever be so dear to me, as you are in this little time." She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with her hand, and went on. " I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you as much, if not as well as any one in this world could. You may trust in me I know it ^nd I say it, dear, with the whole confidence even of your pure heart. There are hosts of women whom he might have married, better and truer in all other respects than I am, Florence ; but there is not one who could come here, his wife, whose heart could beat with greater truth to you than mine does." " I know it, dear mama ! " cried Florence. " From that first most happy day I have known it." " Most happy day ! " Edith seemed to repeat the words involuntarily, and went on. " Though the merit _ is not mine, for I thought little of you until I saw you, let the undeserved reward be mine in your trust and love. And in this in this, Florence ; on the first . night of my taking up my abode here ; I am led on as it is best I should be, to say it for the first and lasl time." DOMBET AND SON. 109 Florence, without knowing why, felt almost afraid to hear her proceed, but kept her eyes riveted on the beau- tiful face so fixed upon her own. " Never seek to find in me," said Edith, laying her hand upon her breast, " what is not here. Never if you can help it, Florence, fall off from me because it is not here. Little by little you will know me better, and the time will come when you will know me, as I know my- self. Then, be as lenient to me as you can, and do not turn to bitterness the only sweet remembrance I shall have." The tears that were visible in her eyes as she kept them fixed on Florence, showed that the composed face Was but as a handsome mask; but she preserved it, and continued : " I have seen what you say, and know how true it is. But believe me you will soon, if you cannot now there is no one on this earth less qualified to set it right or help you, Florence, than I. Never ask me why, or speak to me about it or of my husband, more. There should be, so far, a division, and a silence between us two, like the grave itself." She sat for some time silent ; Florence scarcely ven- turing to breath^ meanwhile, as dim and imperfect shad- ows of the truth, and all its daily consequences, chased each other through her terrified, yet incredulous imagi- nation. Almost as soon as she had ceased to speak, Edith's face began to subside from its set composure to lhat 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 Flor- ence good-night, W2nt quickly, and without looking 110 DOMBEY AND SON. But when Florence was in bed, and the room was dark except for the glow of the fire, Edith returned, and eaying 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 Doble figure before them, crowned with its flowing hair, and in its thoughtful eyes reflecting back their light, be- came confused and indistinct, and finally were lost in slumber. In her sleep, however, Florence could not lose an un- defined impression of what had so recently passed. It formed the subject of her dreams, and haunted her ; now in one shape, now in another ; but always oppressively ; and with a sense of fear. She dreamed of seeking her father in wildernesses, of following his track up fearful heights, and down into deep mines and caverns ; of being charged with something that would release him from extraordinary suffering she knew not what, or why yet never being able to attain the goal and set him free. Then she saw him dead, upon that very bed, and in that very room, and knew that he had never loved her to the last, and fell upon his cold breast, passionately weeping. Then a prospect opened, and a river flowed, and a plain- live 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 law what 1 another Edith lying at the bottom. DOMBFT ANT> SON. 1 1 I In the terror of this dream, she cried out, and awoke Fhe thought. A soft- voice seemed to whisper io her ear " Florence, dear Florence, it is nothing but a dream ! and stretching out her arms, she returned the caress ol her new mama, who then went out at the door in the light of the gray morning. In a moment, Florence sat up wondering whether this had really taken place or not ; but she was only certain that it was gray morning indeed, and that the blackened ashes of the fire were oo the hearth, and that she was alone. So passed the night on which the happy pair came home. DOMBBY AND SUN. CHAPTER XXXVL HOUSE-WARMING. MANT succeeding days passed in like manner ; ex- cept 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, witli her new mama, who was imperious and proud to all the house but her Florence could not but observe that and who, although she always sent' for her or went to her when she came home from visiting, and would always go into her room at night, before retiring to rest, however late the hour, and never lost an opportunity of being with her, was often her silent and thoughtful companion for a long time together. Florence, who had hoped for so much from this mar- riage, 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 any me, though everything went on luxuriously and regu- larly, 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 as- DOMBET AND SON. 113 surance her new mama had given her so strongly, that there was no one on the earth more powerless than her gelf to teach her how to win her father's heart. And soon Florence began to think resolved to think would be the truer phrase that as no one knew so well, hew hopeless of being subdued or changed her father's cold ness 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 en- courage any faint foreshadowings of the truth as it con- cerned her father ; tender of him, even in her wander- ing thoughts. As for his home, she hoped it would become a better one, when its state of novelty and transition should be over : and for herself, thought little, and lamented less. If none of the new family were particularly at home in private, it was resolved that Mrs. Dombey at least should be at home in public, without delay. A series of entertainments in celebration of the late nuptials, and in cultivation of society, were arranged chiefly by Mr. Dombey and Mrs. Skewton ; and it was settled that the festive proceedings should commence by Mrs. Dombey '9 being at home upon a certain evening, and by Mr. and Mrs. Dombey's requesting the honor of the company of a great many incongruous people to dinner on the same day. Accordingly Mr. Dombey produced a list of sundry oastern magnates who were, to be bidden to this feast oil his behalf; to which Mr?. Skewton, acting for her dearest child, who was haughtily careless on the sub- ject, subjoined a western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, aot yet returned to Baden Baden, greatly to the "letri- 114 DOMBEY 1ND SON. ment 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 her- self, without any lasting injury to their wings. Florence was enrolled as a member of ihe dinner-party, by Edith's command elicited by a moment's doubt and hesitation on the part of Mrs. Skewton ; and Florence, with a wondering heart, and with a quick instinctive sense of everything that grated on her father in the least, toot her silent share in the proceedings of the day. The proceedings commenced by Mr. Dombey, in a cravat of extraordinary height and stiffness, walking rest- lessly 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 ma- terial called nankeen, arrived, and was received by Mr. Dombey alone. The next stage of the proceedings was Mr. Dombey 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 conversa- tional point of view, and as Mr. Dombey was not the man to pick him up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in the person of Mrs. Skewton ; whom the Director, as a pleasant start in life for the evening, mistook for Mrs. Dombey, and greeted with enthu- siasm. The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy up anything human Nature generally, if he should take it in his head to influence the money market in that direction but who was a wonderfully modest-spoken man, almost boastfully so, and mentioned DOMBEY AND SON. 115 his "little place" at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being barely equal to giving Dombey a bed and a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies, he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take upon himself to invite but if Mrs. Skewton and her daughter, Mrs. Dombey, should ever find themselves ir that direction, and would do him the honor 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 with- out 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 neck- cloth, 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 hia hands in hia pockets, and excessive satisfaction twinkling in his eyes. Now Mrs. Dombey appeared, beautiful and proud, and as disdainful and defiant of them all as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been a garland of steel spikes put on to force concession from her which she would die sooner than yield. With her was Florence. When they entered together, the shadow of the night of the return again darkened Mr. Dombey's face. But unob- served : for Florence did not venture to raise her eyes to his, and Edith's indifference was too supreme to take the least heed of him. The arrivals quickly became numerous. More direc- tors, chairmen of public companies, elderly ladies carry- ing burdens on their heads for full dress, Cousin Feenix, 116 DOMBEY AND SOW. 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 scfas, and had doors opened smartly from without against their heads, and underwent every sort of discomfiture. When dinner was announced, Mr. Dombey took down an old lady like a crimson velvet pincushion stuffed with bank-notes, who might have been the identical old lady of Threadneedle-street, she was so rich, s.nd looked so unaccommodating ; Cousin Feenix took down Mrs. Dom- bey ; Major Bagstock took down Mrs. Skewton ; th young thing with the shoulders was bestowed, as an ex- tinguisher, upon the East India Director ; and the re maining ladies were left on view in the drawing-room by the remaining gentlemen, until a forlorn hope volun- teered to conduct them down-stairs, and those brave spirits with their captives blocked up the dining-room door, shutting out seven mild men in the stony-hearted aall. When all the rest were got in and were seated, DOMBEY AND SON. 117 one of these mild men still appeared, b smiling con- fusion, totally destitute, and unprovided for, and, escorted by the butler, made the complete circuit of the table twice before his chair could be found, which it finally was. on Mrs. Dombey's left hand ; after which the mild man never held up his head again. Now, the spacious dining-room, with the company seated round the glittering table, busy with their glitter ing 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, separat- ing him from Mrs. Dombey, whereon frosted Cupids offered scentless flowers to each of them, was allegorical to see. Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked aston- ishingly young. But he was sometimes thoughtless in his good humor his memory occasionally wandering like his legs and on this occasion caused the company to shudder. It happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regarded Cousin Feenix with sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the East India Director into leading her to the chair next him : in return for which good office she immediately abandoned the Di- rector 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 118 DOMBET AND SOW. little lower down), whether that might not be considered public property. "Why, upon my life," said Cousin Feenix, "there's nothing in it ; it really is not worth repeating ; in point of fact, it's merely an anecdote of Jack Adams. I dart say my friend Dombey ; " for the general attentioc was concentrated on Cousin Feenix ; " may remember Jack Adams, Jack Adams, not Joer that was his brother. Jack little Jack man with a cast in his eye. and a slight impediment in his speech man who sat for some- body's borough. We used to call him in my parliamen- tary time W. P. Adams, in consequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who was in his minor- ity. Perhaps my friend Dombey may have known the man?" Mr. Dombey, who was as likely to have known Guy Fawkes, replied in the negative. But one of the seven mild men unexpectedly leaped into distinction, by saying he had known Urn, and adding, " always wore Hessian boots ! " " Exactly," said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to gee the mild man, and smile encouragement at him down the table. " That was Jack-. Joe wore " " Tops ! " cried the mild man, rising in public ettima* tion every instant. " Of course," said Cousin Feenix, "you were intimate with 'em ? " * I knew them both," said the mild man. With whom Mr. Dombey immediately took wine. " Devilish good fellow, Jack ? " said Cousin Feenix, again bending forward, and smiling. " Excellent," returned the mild man, becoming bold MI his success. " One of the best fellows I ever knew." DOMBEY AND SON. Ifr " No doubt you have heard the story ? " said Cousir Feenix. " I shall know," replied the bold mild raan, " when I have heard your Ludship tell it." With that, he leaned hack in his chair and smiled at the ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled. " In point of fact, it's nothing of a story in itself," said Cousin Feenix, addressing the table with a smile, and a gay shake of his head, " and not worth a word of preface. But it's illustrative of the neatness of Jack's humor. The fact is, that Jack was invited down to a marriage which I think took place in Barkshire ? " " Shropshire," said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to. " Was it ? well ! In point of fact it might have been in any shire," said Cousin Feenix. * So, my friend being invited down to this marriage in Anyshire," with a pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke, " goes. Just as some of us having had the honor of being invited to the marriage of my lovely and accomplished relative with my friend Dombey, didn't require to be asked twice, and were devilish glad to be present on so interesting an occasion. Goes Jack goes. Now, this marriage was, in point of fact, the marriage of an uncommonly 6ne 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 tho nuptial?, a man he knew, meeting him in the lobby of the House of Commons, says, ' Well, Jack, how are tne ill-matched couple ? ' l Ill-matched,' says Jack. ' Not %t all. It's a perfectly fair and equal transaction. Sh & regularly bought, and you may take your oatb he \t <*a regularly sold ! ' " 120 DOMBEY AHTD SOBT. 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 fore- knowledge of the fctory as the child unborn, had the ex- quisite misery of reading in every eye that he was re- garded as the prime mover of the mischief. Mr. Dombey's face was not a changeful one, and being cast in its mould of state that day, showed little other apprehension of the story, if any, than that which he expressed when he said solemnly, amidst the silence, that it was li Very good." There was a rapid glance from Edith towards Florence, but otherwise she re- mained, externally, impassive and unconscious. Through the various stages of rich meats and wines, continual gold and silver, dainties of earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, and that unnecessary article in Mr. Dombey's banquets ice the dinner slowly made its way ; the later stages being achieved to the sono- rous 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 find to see how she swept past him with his daughter on her arm. Mr. Dombey was a grave sight, behind the decanters, in a state of dignity ; and the East India Director was a forlorn sight near the unoccupied rnd of the table, in * state of solitude ; and the major was a military sight. DOMBEY AND SON. 121 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 thought- ful sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands and stealth- ily adjusted his wig. But all these sights were of short duration, being speedily broken up by coffee, and the desertion of the room. There was a throng in the state-rooms up-stairs, in creasing every minute ; but still Mr. Dombey's list of visitors appeared to have some native impossibility of amalgamation with Mrs. Dombey's list, and no one could have doubted which was which. The single exception to this rule perhaps was Mr. Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he stood in the circle that was gathered about Mrs. Dombey watchful of her, of them, his chief, Cleopatra, and the major, Florence, and everything around appeared at ease with both divisions of guests, and not marked as exclusively be- longing to either. Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room a nightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for her eyes were drawn towards uim every now and then, by an attraction of dislike and distrust that she could not resist. Yetiier thoughts were busy with other things ; for as she sat apart not unad- mired or unsought, but in the gentleness of her quiet spirit she felt how little part her father had in what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease he seemed to be, and how little regarded he was as he lingered about near the door, for those visitors whom he wished to distinguish with particular attention, and took them 122 DOMBET AJfD SON. ap 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 con. Bultation of his wishes, or in welcome of his friends, opened her lips. It was not the less perplexing or pain* ful to Florence, that she who acted thus, treated her so kindly, and with such loving consideration, that it almost seemed an ungrateful return on her part even to know of what was passing before her eyes. Happy Florence would have been, might she have ventured to bear her father company, by so much as a look ; and happy Florence was, in little suspecting the main cause of his uneasiness. But afraid of seeming to know that he was placed at any disadvantage, lest he should be resentful of that knowledge ; and divided be- tween 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 feel had never come there, if the old dulness and decay had never been replaced by novelty and splendor, if the neglected child had found no friend in Edith, but had lived her solitary life, unpitied and forgotten. Mrs. Chick had some such thoughts too, but they were uot so quietly developed in her mind. This good matron had been outraged m the first instance by not receiv- ing an invitation to dinner. That blow partially recov- ered, 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, moun- tains high, on the head of Mrs. Skewton. "But I am made," said Mrs. Chick to Mr Chick, DOMBEY USD SON. 125 * of no more account than Florence ! Who takes the imallest notice of me ? No one ! " " No one, my dear," assented Mr. Chick, who waa seated by the side of Mrs. Chick against the wall, and could console himself, even there, by soray whistling. " Does it at all appear as if I was wanted here ? " exclaimed Mrs. Chick, with flashing eyes. " No, my dear, I don't think it does," said Mr. Chick. Paul's mad ! " said Mrs. Chick. Mr. Chick whistled. " Unless you are a monster, which I sometimes think you are," said Mrs. Chick with candor, " don't sit there humming tunes. How any one 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 Bag- stock, for whom, among other precious things, we are indebted to your Lucretia Tox " " My Lucretia Tox, my dear ! " said Mr. Chick astounded. " Yes," retorted Mrs. Chick, with great severity, "your Lucretia Tox I say how anybody can see that mother- in-law of Paul's, and that haughty wife of Paul's, and these indecent old frights with their backs and shoulders, and in short this at home generally, and hum," on which word Mrs. Chink laid a scornful emphasis that made Mr. Chick start, " is, I thank Heaven, a mystery to me!" Mr. Chick screwed his mouth into a form irreconciU able with humming or whistling, and looked very con- templative. " But I hope I know what is due to myself," said MM. Chick, swelling with indignation, " though Paul has for- gotten what is due to me. -I am not going to sit here, 124 DOMBEY AND SOTS. a member of this family, to be taken no notice of. I am not the dirt under Mrs. Dombey's feet, yet not quite yet," said Mrs. Chick, as if she expected to become BO, about the day after to-morrow. " And I shall go. 1 will not say ^vhatever I may think) that this affair has been got up solely to degrade and insult me. I shall merely go. I shall not be missed ! " Mrs. Chick rose erect with these words, and took the arm of Mr. Chick, who escorted her from the room, after half an hour's shady sojourn there. And it is due to her penetration to observe that she certainly was not missed at all. But she was not the only indignant guest ; for Mr. Dombey's list (still constantly in difficulties) were, as a body, indignant with Mrs. Dombey's list, for looking at them through eye-glasses, 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), con- fidentially 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 Mrs. 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 gen- eral 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. Dom- oey ; and the speechless female in the black velvet hat DOMBEY AND SON. 125 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 disparage- ment on stairs and in by-places. The general dissatis- faction and discomfort so diffused itself, that the assem- bled footmen in the hall were as well acquainted with it as the company above. Nay, the very linkmen outside got hold of it, and compared the party to a funeral out of mourning, with none of the company remembered in the will. At last, the guests were all gone, and the linkmen too ; and the street, crowded so long with carriages, was clear ; and the dying lights showed no one in the rooms, but Mr. Dombey and Mr. Carker, who were talking to- gether 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 Carkor, the latter advanced obsequiously to take leave. " I trust," he said, " that the fatigues of this delight- ful evening will not inconvenience Mrs. Dombey to- morrow." " Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, advancing, u has sufficiently spared herself fatigue, to relieve you from any anxiety of that kind. I regret to say, Mrs. Dom- bey, that I could have wished you had fatigued your- self a little more on this occasion." She looked at him with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worth her while to protract, and turned awai hei eyes without speaking. 126 DOMBEY AND SON. " I am sorry, madam," said Mr. Dombey, " that you should not have thought it your duty " She looked at him again. " Your duty, madam," pursued Mr. Dombey, " to have received my friends with a little more deference. Some of those whom you have been pleased to slight to-night in a very marked manner, Mrs. Dombey, confer a dis- tinction upon you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you." " Do you know that there is some one here ? " she returned, now looking at him steadily. " No ! Carker ! I beg that you do not. I insist that you do not/' cried Mr. Dombey, stopping that noiseless gentleman in his withdrawal. " Mr. Carker, madam, as you know, possesses my confidence. He is as well ac- quainted 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 con- fer a distinction upon me : " and Mr. Dombey drew him- self up, as having now rendered them of the highest possible importance. " I ask you," she repeated, bending her disdainful, steady gaze upon him, " do you know that there is some one here, sir ? " " I must entreat," said Mr. Carker, stepping forward, "I must beg, I must demand, to be released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is " Mrs. Skewton, who had been intent upon her daugh- ter's face, took him up here. " My sweetest Edith," she said, " and my deare?' Dombey ; our excellent friend Mr. Carker, for so I a- Bure I ought to mention him " Mr. Carker murmured, " Too much honor." UOMBEY AND SON. 127 " has used the very words that were in my mind, and that T have been dying, these ages, for an oppor tunity of introducing. Slight and unimportant ! Mj sweetest Edith, and my dearest Dombey, do we not know that any difference between you two No, Flow- ers ; not now." Flowers was the maid, who, finding gentlemen present, retreated with precipitation. "That any difference between you two," resumed Mrs. Skewton, " with the heart you possess in common, and the excessively charming bond of feeling that there is between you, must be slight and unimportant ? What words could better define the fact ? None. Therefore I am glad to take this slight occasion this trifling occasion, that is so replete with Nature, and your indi- vidual characters, and all that so truly calculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes to say that I attach no importance to them in the least, except as developing these minor elements of Soul ; and that, un- like most mamas-in-law (that odious phrase, dear Dom- bey ! ) as they have been represented to me to exist in this I fear too artificial world, I never shall attempt to interpose between you, at such a time, and never can much regret, after all, such little flashes of the torch of What's-his-name not Cupid, but the other delightful creature." There was a sharpness in the good mother's glance at both her children as she spoke, that may have been expressive of a direct and well-considered purpose hid- den between these rambling words. That purpose, prov- idently to detach herself in the beginning from all tin 1 ciankings of their chain that were to come, and to shelter herself with the fiction of her innocent belief 128 DOMBET AND SON. in their mutual affection, and their adaptation to each other. " I have pointed out to Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, in his most stately manner, " that in her con- duct thus early in our married life, to which I object, and which, I request, may be corrected. Carker," with nod of dismissal, " good-night to you ! " Mr. Carker bowed to the imperious form of the bride, whose sparkling eye was fixed upon her husband ; and stopping at Cleopatra's couch on his way out, raised to his lips the hand she graciously extended to him, in lowly and admiring homage. If his handsome wife had reproached him. or even changed countenance, or broken the silence in which she remained, by one word, now that they were alone (for Cleopatra made off with all speed), Mr. Dombey would have been equal to some assertion of his case against her. But the intense, unutterable, withering scorn, with which, after looking upon him, she dropped her eyes as if he were too worthless and indifferent to her to be challenged with a syllable the ineffable dis- dain and haughtiness in which she sat before him the cold inflexible resolve with which her every feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by he had no resource against ; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beauty concentrated on despising him. Was he coward enough to watch her, an hour after- wards, 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 Flor- ence lay, and marked again the face so changed, which t could not subdue. DOMBET AND SON. 121) But it could never alter as his own did. It never, in its utmost pride and passion, knew the shadow that had fallen on his, in the dark corner, on the night of the re- turn ; and often since ; and which deepened on it now as he looked up. 130 DOMBEY AND BOH. CHAPTER XXXVIL MORE WARNINGS THAN FLORENCE, Edith, and Mrs. Skewton were together next day, and the carriage was waiting at the door to take them out. For Cleopatra had her galley again now, and Withers, no longer the wan, stood upright in a pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-less chair at dinner-time, and butted no more. The hair of Withers was radiant with pomatum, in these days of down, and he wore kid gloves and smelt of the water of Cologne. They were assembled in Cleopatra's room. The Ser- pent 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-colored velvet bonnet ; the artificial roses in which nodded to uncommon advantage, as the palsy trifled with them, like a breeze. " I think I am a little nervous this morning, Flowers," Baid Mrs. Skewton. " My hand quite shakes." " You were the life of the party last night, ma'am, you know," returned Flowers, " and you suffer for it to-day, you see." Edith, who had beckoned Florence to the window, and DOMBEY AND SON. 131 was looking out, with her back turned on the toilet of her esteemed mother, suddenly withdrew from it, as if it had lightened. " My darling child," cried Cleopatra, languidly, " you are not nervous ? Don't tell me, my dear Edith, that you, so enviably self-possessed, are beginning to be a martyr too, like your unfortunately constituted mother! Withers, some one at the door." " Card, ma'am," said Withers, taking it towards Mrs. Dombey. " I am going out," she said, without looking at it. u My dear love," drawled Mrs. Skewton, " how very odd to send that message without seeing the name ! Bring it here, Withers. Dear me, my love ; Mr. Carker, too ! that very sensible person ! " ' I am going out," repeated Edith, in so imperious a tone, that Withers, going to the door, imperiously in- formed the servant who was waiting, " Mrs. Dombey is going out. Get along with you," and shut it on him. But the servant came back after a short absence, and whispered to Withers again, who once more, and not very willingly, presented himself before Mrs. Dom- bey. " If you please, ma'am, Mr. Carker sends his re- spectful compliments, and begs you would spare him one minute, if you could for business, ma'am, if you please." " Really, my love," said Mrs. Skewton in her raildesi manner; for her daughter's face was threatening; "if you would allow me to offer a word, I should recom- mend " " Show him this way," said Edith. As Withers dis- 132 DOMBEY AND SON. appeared to execute the command, she added, frowning on her mother, "As he comes at your recommendation, let him come to your room." " May I shall I go away ? " asked Florence, hur* riedly. Edith nodded yes, but on her way to the door Flor- ence met the visitor coming in. With the same disar greeable mixture of familiarity and forbearance with whicli he had first addressed her, he addressed her now in his softest manner hoped she was quite well needed not to ask, with such looks to anticipate the an- swer had scarcely had the honor to know her, last night, she was so greatly changed and held the door open for her to pass out ; with a secret sense of power in her shrinking from him, that all the deference and politeness of his manner could not quite conceal. He then bowed himself for a moment over Mrs. Skewton's condescending hand, and lastly bowed to Edith. Coldly returning his salute without looking at him, and neither seating herself nor inviting him to be seated, she waited for him to speak. Entrenched in her pride and power, and with all the obduracy of her spirit summoned about her, still her old conviction that she and her mother had been known by this man in their worst colors, from their first ac- quaintance ; 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 under- mined 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 iti- DOMBEY AND SON. 133 trusioi., and the dark lashes of her eye sullenly veiling their light, that no ray of it might shine upon him and submissively as he stood before her, with an en treating injured manner, but with complete submission lo her will she knew, in her own soul, that the case* were reversed, and that the triumph and superiority were his, and that he knew it full well. u I have presumed," said Mr. Carker, " to solicit an interview, and I have ventured to describe it as being one of business, because " " Perhaps you are charged by Mr. Dombey with some message of reproof," said Edith. " You possess Mr. Dombey's confidence in such an unusual degree, sir, that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business." " I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre upon his name," said Mr. Carker. " But I entreat that lady, on my own behalf, to be just to a very humble claimant for justice at her hands a mere dependant of Mr. Dombey's which is a position of humility ; and to reflect upon my perfect helplessness last night, and the impossibility of my avoiding the share that was forced upon me in a very painful occasion." " My dearest Edith," hinted Cleopatra in a low voice, as she held her eye-glass aside, " really very charming of Mr. What's-his-name. And full of heart ! " " For I do," said Mr. Carker, appealing to Mr?. Skew- toil with a look of grateful deference, "! do venture to call it a painful occasion, though merely because if was so to me, who had the misfortune to be present 80 slight a difference, as between the principals be- tween those who love each other with disinterested de- votion, and would make any sacrifice of eelf, ic such 134 DOMBEY AND SOX. R cause is nothing. As Mrs. Skewton herself ex pressed, with so much truth and feeling last night, it ia nothing." Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments, "And your business, sir" '* Fdith, my pet," said Mrs. Skewton, "all this time Mr. Carker is standing 1 My dear Mr. Carker, take a seat, I beg." He offered no reply to the mother, but fixed his eyes on the proud daughter, as though he would only be bid- den by her, and was resolved to be bidden by her. Edith, in spite of herself, sat down, and slightly mo- tioned with her hand to him to be sealed too. No ac- tion 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 sal down. " May I be allowed, madam," said Carker, turning his white teeth on Mrs. Skewton like a light "a lady of your excellent sense and quick feeling will give me credit, for good reason, I am sure to address what I have to say, to Mrs. Dombey, and to leave her to im- part it to you who are her best and dearest friend next to Mr. Dombey ? " Mrs. Skewton would have retired, but Edith stopped her. Edith would have stopped him too, and indignantly ordered him to speak openly or not at all, but that he said, in a low voice " Miss Florence the young lady who has just left the room " Edith suffered him to proceed. She looked at him DOW. As he bent forward, to be nearer, with the utmost DOMBEY AND SON. 135 show of delicacy and respect, and with his teeth persua- Bively arrayed, in a self-depreciating smile, she felt as if she could have struck him dead. " Miss Florence's position," he began, " has been on unfortunate one. I have a difficulty in alluding to it tc you, whose attachment to her father is naturally watch- ful 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 be 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 admira- tion of Mr. Dombey's character, may I say, without offence to your tenderness as a wife, that Miss Florence has unhappily been neglected by her father. May I say by her father ? " Edith replied, " I know it." " You know it ! " said Mr. Carker, with a great ap- pearance of relief. " It removes a mountain from my breast. May I hope you know how the neglect origi- nated ; in what an amiable phase of Mr. Dombey's pride character I mean ? " " You may pass that by, sir," she returned, " and come the sooner to the end of what you have to say." " Indeed, I am sensible, madam," replied Carker, " trust me, I am deeply sensible, that Mr. Dombey can require no justification in anything to you. But, kindly judge of my breast by your own, and you will forgive my interest in him, if, in its excess, it goes at all astray." What a stab to her proud heart, to sit there, face to face with him, and have him tendering her false oath the altar again and again for her acceptance, and 136 DOMBEY AND SON. pressing it upon her like the dregs of a sickening cop phe could not own her loathing of, or turn away from ! How shame, remorse, and passion raged within her, when, upright and majestic in her beauty before him, she knew that in her spirit she was down at his feet ! " Miss Florence," said Carker, " left to the care if one may call it care of servants and mercenary people, in every way her inferiors, necessarily wanted some guide and compass in her younger days, and, nat- urally, 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 fortu- nately dead now : and some very undesirable associa- tion, I regret to say, with certain coasting sailors, of anything but good repute, and a runaway old bank- rupt." " I have heard the circumstances, sir," said Edith, flashing her disdainful glance upon him, " and I know that you pervert them. You may not know it, I hope so." " Pardon me," said Mr. Carker, " I believe that no- body knows them so well as I. Your generous and ardent nature, madam the same nature which is so nobly imperative in vindication of your beloved and honored husband, and which has blessed him as even his merits deserve I must respect, defer to, bow be- fore. But, as regards the circumstances, which is indeed the business I presumed to solicit your attention to, I can have no doubt, since, in the execution of my trust as Mr. Dombey's confidential I presume to say friend, I have fully ascertained them. In my execution of that trust ; in my deep concern, which you can so Weil understand, for everything relating to him, inten- DOMBEY AND SON. 137 gified, if you will, (for I fear I labor under your dis- pleasure), by the lower motive of desire to prove my diligence, and make myself the more acceptable ; I have 'ong pursued these circumstances by myself and trust- worthy instruments, and have innumerable and most minute proofs." She raised her eyes no higher than his mouth, but she saw the means of mischief vaunted in every tooth it contained. "Pardon me, madam," he continued, "if, in my per- plexity, I presume to take counsel with you, and to con- sult your pleasure. I think I have observed that you are greatly interested in Miss Florence ? " What was there in her he had not observed, and did aot 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 com- posure on it, and distantly inclined her head in reply. " This interest, madam so touching an evidence of everything associated with Mr. Dombey being dear to you induces me to pause before I make him acquainted with these circumstances, which, as yet, he does not know. It so far shakes me, if I may make the confes- sion, in my allegiance, that on the intimation of the least desire to that effect from you, I would suppress them." Edith raised her head quickly, and starting back, bent her dark glance upon him. He met it with his blandest and most deferential smile, and went on. " You say that as I describe them, they are perverted. I fear not I fear not : but let us assume that they are. The uneasiness I have for some time felt on the subject, irises in this : that the mere circumstance of such asso- ciation often repeated, on the part of Miss Florence, 138 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 occa- sionally contemplated it) of separation and alienation of her from his home. Madam, bear with me, and remem- ber my intercourse with Mr. Dombey, and my knowledge of him, and my reverence for him, almost from child- hood, when I say that if he has a fault, it is a lofty stub- bornness, 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 char- acters ; and which grows upon itself from day to day, and year to year." She bent her glance upon him still ; but, look as stead- fast as she would, her haughty nostrils dilated, and her breath came somewhat deeper, and her lip-would slightly curl as he described that in his patron to which they must all bow down. He saw it ; and though his expression did not change, she knew he saw it. " Even so slight an incident as last night's," he said, " if I might refer to it once more, would serve to illus- trate 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. Dora- bey 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 Learning- ,on. There I saw you. There I could not help know- ing what relation you would shortly occupy towards him to his enduring happiness and yours. There I re- solved to await the time of your establishment a' home DOMBET AND SON. 139 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. Dora- bey, if I bury what I know in your breast ; for where there is but one heart and mind between two persons as in such a marriage one almost represents the other. I can acquit my conscience therefore, almost equally, by confidence, on such a theme, in you or him. For the reasons I have mentioned, I would select you. May I aspire to the distinction of believing that my confidence is accepted, and that I am relieved from my responsibil- ity ? " He long remembered the look she gave him who could see it, and forget it ? and the struggle that en- sued within her. At last she said : "I accept it, sir. You will please to consider this matter at an end, and that it goes no farther." He bowed low, and rose. She rose too, and he took leave with all humility. But Withers, meeting him on the stairs, stood amazed at the beauty of his teeth, and at his brilliant smile ; and as he rode away upon his white-legged horse, the people took him for a dentist, such was the dazzling show he made. The people took her, when she rode out in her carriage presently, for a great lady, as happy as she was rich and fine. But they had not seen her, just before, in her own room with no one by ; and they had not heard her utterance of the three words, "Oh Florence, Florence!" Mrs. Skewton, reposing on her sofa, and sipping her chocolate, had heard nothing but the low word business, for which she had a mortal aversion, insomuch that she had long banished it from her vocabulary, and had gone nigh, in a charming manner and with an immense amount of heart, to say nothing of soul, to ruin diver" 140 DOMBEY AND SON. milliners and others in consequence. Therefore, Mrs, Skewton asked no questions, and showed no curiosity. Indeed, the peach-velvet bonnet gave her sufficient occu- pation 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 alms-house full of super- annuated zephyrs ; and altogether Mrs. Skewton had enough to do, and got on but indifferently. She got on no better towards night ; for when Mrs. Dombey in her dressing-room, had been dressed . and waiting for her half an hour, and Mr. Dombey, in the drawing-room, had paraded himself into a state of solemn fretfulness (they were all three going out to dinner), Flowers the maid appeared with a pale face to Mrs. Dombey saying : " If you please, ma'am, I beg your pardon, but I can't do nothing with missis ! " " What do you mean ? " asked Edith. " Well, ma'am," replied the frightened maid, " I hardly know. She's making faces ! " Edith hurried with her to her mother's room. Cleo- patra was arrayed in full dress, with the diamonds, short- sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, and other juvenility all com- plete ; but Paralysis was not to be deceived, had known her for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where she lay like a horrible doll that had tumbled down. They took her to pieces in very shame, and put the little of her that was real on a bed. Doctors were sent for, and soon came. Powerful remedies were resorted DOMBEY AND SON. . 141 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 : some- tiraos 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 gcs- p ture, or in her unwinking eyes. Ai length she began to recover consciousness, and in ome 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 im- mediately provided, thinking she was going to make a will, or write some last request ; and Mrs. Dombcy being from home, the maid awaited the result with solemn feelings. After much painful scrawling and erasing, and putting in of wrong characters, which seemed to tumble out of I he pencil of their own accord, the old woman produced (hi* document : " Rose-colored curtains." The maid being perfectly transfixed, and with tolera- ble reason, Cleopatra amended the manuscript by adding two words more, when it stood thus : " Rose-colored curtains for doctors." The maid now perceived remotely that she wished these articles to be provided for the better presentation of her complexion to the faculty ; and as those in the house who knew her best, had no doubt of the correct- ness of this opinion, which she was soon able to estab- lish for herself, the rose-colored curtains were added to her bed, and she mended with increased rapidity frorc 142 DOMBEY AND SON. that hour. She was soon able to sit up, in curls and a laced cap and night-gown, and to have a little artificial bloom dropped into the hollow caverns of her cheeks. It was a tremendous sight to see this old woman in her finery leering and mincing at Death, and playing off her youthful tricks upon him as if he had been the major ; but an alteration in her mind that ensued on the paralytic stroke was fraught with as much matter for reflection, and was quite as ghastly. Whether the weakening of her intellect made her more cunning and false than before, or whether it con- fused her between what she had assumed to be and what she really had been, or whether it had awakened any glimmering of remorse, which could neither struggle into light nor get back into total darkness, or whether, in the jumble of her faculties, a combination of these effects had been shaken up, which is perhaps the more likely supposition, the result was this : That she became hugely exact 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 remem- bering that compact made between them for an avoid- ance of the subject, she constantly alluded to her daugh- ter'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 commen- tary on her levity and youthfulness. " Where is Mrs. Dombey ? " she would say to her maid. " Gone out, ma'am." " Gone out ! Does she go out to shun her mama V lowers ? " DOMBEY AND SON. 143 "La bless you, no ma'am. Mrs. Doinbey lias only gone out for a ride with Miss Florence." " Miss Florence. Who's Miss Florence ? Don't tell me about Miss Florence. What's Miss Florence to her, compared to me ? " The opposite display of the diamonds, or the i.eacli- 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 re- main in a complacent state until Edith came to see her $ when, at a glance of the proud face, she would relapse again. " Well, I am sure, Edith ! " she would cry, shaking her head. What is the matter, mother ? " " Matter ! I really don't know what is the matter. The world is coining to such an artificial and ungrateful state, that I begin to think there's no Heart or any- thing of that sort left in it, positively. Withers is more a child to me than you are. He attends to me much more than my own daughter. I almost wish I didn't look so young and all that kind of thing and then perhaps I should be more considered." " What would you have, mother?" '* Oh, a great deal, Edith," impatiently. " Is there anything you want that you have not? Jl i your own fault if there be." 4i My own fault ! " beginning to whimper. " The par- ent I have been to you, Edhh : making you a companion from your cradle ! And when you neglect me, and have 10 more natural affection for me than if I was a stran- Sjor not a twentieth part of the affection that jou 144 DOMBEY AND SON. have for Florence but I am only your mother and should corrupt her in a day! you reproach me with its being my own fault." " Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why w ill yo\i always dwell on this ? " " Isn't it natural that I should dwell on this, when 1 am all affection and sensitiveness, and am wounded in the cruellest way, whenever you look at me ? " " I do not mean to wound you, mother. Have you no remembrance of what has been said between us ? Let tht Past rest." " Yes, rest ! And let gratitude to me, rest ; and let affection for me, rest ; and let tM rest in my out-of-the- way room, with no society and no attention, while you find new relations to make much of, who have no earthly claim upon you ! Good gracious, Edith, do you know what an elegant establishment you are at the head of?" " Yes. Hush ! " " And that gentlemanly creature, Dombey ? do you know that you are married to him, Edith, and that you have a settlement, and a position, and a carriage, and I don't know what ? " " Indeed I know it, mother ; well." " As you would have had with that delightful, good soul what did they call him ? Granger if he hadn't died. And who have you to thank for all "his, Edith ? " " You, mother ; you." " Then put your arms round my neck, and kiss me ; and show me, Edith, that you know there never was a bettor mama than I have been to you. And don't let ACQUAIXTAXC*. THE forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by hei friend Loo- isa Qiick, and bereft of Mr. Dombey's countenance for no delicate pair of wedding-cards, united by a silver thread, graced the chimney-glass in Princess's-place, or the harpsichord, or any of those little posts of displaj which Locretia reserved for holiday occupation be- came 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 Tor's ancestor with the powdered head and pigtafl. Miss Tox, however, was not of an age or of a dis- position long to abandon herself to unavailing regrets. Only two notes of the harpsichord were dumb from dis- use when die Bird Waltz again warbled and billed in the crooked drawing-room; only one slip of geranium fell a Tictim to imperfect nursing, before she was gar- dening at her green baskets again, regularly every morn- jig ; die powdered-beaded ancestor had not been under a cloud for more than six. weeks, when Miss Toi breathed on his benignant visage, and polished him ap with a piece of wash-leather. SOL, Miss Tox was lonely, and at a loss. Her attach- eats, however ludicrously shown, were real and strong; DOMBET AXD SOS. 147 nod she was, as be expressed it, "deeply hurt by die unmerited contumely die had met with from Louisa.** But there was no such thing as anger in Miss Tax** 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 Chide in the street one day, at a considerable distance, so overpowered her milky nature, that she wa* fain to seek immediate refuge in a pastry-cook's, "d 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 plenti- fully. Against Mr. Dombey Miss Tox hardly felt that she had any reason of complaint. Her sense of that gen- tleman's magnificence was such, that once removed from him, she felt as if her distance always had been im- measurable, 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. Dom- bey had made her subservient to his convenience and caprices, and had graciously permitted her to be one of Vie nurses of his little son. She only thought, in her OTn words, u that she had passed a great many happy uours in that house, which she must ever remember with (ratification,, and that she could never cease to regard Mr. Dombey as one of the most impressive and dig- nified of men." Cut off, however, from the implacable Louisa, and H8 DOMBET AND SON. being shy of the major (whom she viewed with son* distrust now), Miss Tox found it very irksome to know nothing of what was going on in Mr. Dombey's establish- ment. And as she really had got into the habit of con- sidering Dombey and Son as the pivot on which tho 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 commu- nication with his servants. Perhaps Miss Tox in seek- ing out the Toodle family, had the tender motive hid- den in her breast of having somebody to whcm she could talk about Mr. Dombey, no matter how humble that somebody might be. At all events, towards the Toodle habitation Miss Tox directed her steps one evening, what time Mr. Toodle, cindery and swart, was refreshing himself with tea, in the bosom of his family. Mr. Toodle had only three stages of existence. He was either taking refreshment in the bosom just mentioned, or he was tearing through the country at from twenty-five to fifty miles an hour or he was sleeping after his fatigues. He was always in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peaceable contented easy-going man Mr. Toodle was in either state, who seemed to have made over all his own inheritance of fuming and fretting to the engines with which he was connected, which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and wore themselves out in a most unsparing manner, while Mr. Toodle led a mild and equable life. " Polly, my gal," said Mr. Toodle, with a young Toodle on each knee, and two more making tea for him, and plenty more scattered about Mr. Toodle was never DOMBEY AND SON. 149 wit of children, but always kept a good supply on hand " You a'n't seen our Biler lately, have you ? " " No," replied Polly, " but he's almost certain to look in to-night. It's his right evening, and he's very regular." " I suppose," said Mr. Toodle, relishing his meal in- finitely, " as our Biler is a-doin' now about as well as a boy can do, eh, Polly ? " " Oh ! he's a-doing beautiful ! " responded Polly. " He a'n't got to be at all secret-like has he, Pol- ly ? " inquired Mr. Toodle. " No ! " said Mrs. Toodle, plumply. " I'm glad he a'n't got to be at all secret-like, Polly," observed Mr. Toodle in his slow and measured way, and shovelling in his bread and butter with a clasp-knife, as if he were stoking himself, " because that don't look well ; do it, Polly ? " "Why, of course it don't, father. How can you ask!" " You see, my boys and gals," said Mr. Toodle, look- ing round upon his family, "wotever you're up to in a honest wayj it's my opinion as you can't do better than k>e open. If you find yourselves in cuttings or in tun- nels, don't you play no secret games. Keep your whia- ties going, and let's know where you are." The rising Toodles set up a shrill murmur, expressive of their resolution to profit by the paternal advice. " But what makes you say this along of Rob, father?" asked his wife, anxiously. " Polly, old 'ooman," said Mr. Toodle, " I don't know as I said it partickler along o' Rob, I'm sure. I starts light with Rob only ; I comes to a branch ; I takes on what I finds there; and a whole train of ideas gets 150 DOMBEY AND SON. coupled on to him, afore I knows where I am, or \vherc they comes from What a Junction a man's thoughts is," said Mr. Toodle, "to-be-sure!" This profound reflection Mr. Toodle washed down with a pint mug of tea, and proceeded to solidify with a great weight of bread and butter ; charging his young daughters meanwhile, to keep plenty of hot water in the pot, as he was uncommon dry, and should take the indefinite quantity of " a sight of mugs," before his thirst was appeased. In satisfying himself, however, Mr. Toodle was not regardless of the younger branches about him, who, al- though 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 ex- pectant 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 glad- ness. These vents for their excitement found, they grad- ually closed about Mr. Toodle again, and eyed him hard ds he got through more bread and butter and tea : affect- ing, however, to have no further expectations of their own in reference to those viands, but to be conversing on foreign subjects, and whispering confidentially. Mr. Toodle, in the midst of this family group, and letting 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 con- UOMBEY AND SOy. 15\ templating the rest over a barrier of bread and butter when Rob the Grinder, in his sou'wester hat and mourn- ing slops, presented himself, and was received with a general rush of brothers and sisters. "Well, mother!" said Rob, dutifully kissing her; " how are you, mother ? " " There's my boy ! " cried Polly, giving him a hug and a pat on the back. "Secret! Bless you, father, not he ! " This was intended for Mr. Toodle's private edification, but Rob the Grinder, whose withers were not unwrung. caught the words as they were spoken. " What ! father's been a-saying something more again me, has lie ? " cried the injured innocent. " Oh, what a hard thing it is that when a cove has once gone a little wrong, a cove's own father should be always a- throwing it in his face behind his back ! It's enough," cried Rob, resorting to his coat-cuff in anguish of spirit, " to make a cove go and do something out of spite ! " " My pqor boy ! " cried Polly, " father didn't mean anything." " If father didn't mean anything," blubbered the in- jured 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 some- body'd take and chop my head off. Father wouldn't inind doing it, I believe, and I'd much rather he did that than t'other." At these desperate words all the young Toodlea 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 buf 152 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 instru- ment. Matters having reached this point, Mr. Toodle ex- plained, and the virtuous feelings of his son being there- by calmed, they shook hands, and harmony reigned again. " Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy ? " inquired his father, returning to his tea with new strength. "No, thank'ee, father. Master and I had tea to- gether." " And how is master, Rob ? " said Polly. " Well, I don't know, mother ; not much to boast on. There a'n't no bis'ness done, you see. He don't know anything about it, the cap'en don't. There was a man come into the shop this very day, and says 'I want a so- and-so,' he says some hard name or another. ' A which ? ' says the cap'en. ' A so-and-so,' says the man. ' Brother,' says the cap'en, ' will you take a observation round the shop ? ' ' Well,' says the man, ' I've done it.' ' Do you see wot you want ? ' says the cap'en. ' No, I don't,' says the man. ' Do you know it wen you do gee it ? ' says the cap'en. ' No, I don't,' says the man. Why, then I tell you wot, my lad,' says the cap'en, ' you'd better go back and ask wot it's like, outside, for no more don't I ! " " That a'n't the way to make money, though, is it ? " said Polly. " Money, mother ! He'll never make money. He has such ways as I never see. He a'n't a bad master though DOMBEY AND SON 15?k HI say that for him. But that a'n't much to me, for 1 don't think I stall stop with him long." " Not stop in your place, Rob ! " cried his mother ; while Mr. Toodle opened his eyes. " Not in that place, p'raps," returned the Grinder, with a wink. " I shouldn't wonder friends at court pou know but never you mind, mother, just now ; I'm all right, that's all." The indisputable proof afforded in these hints, and in (he Grinder's mysterious manner, of his not being sub- ject to that failing which Mr. Toodle had, by implication, attributed to him, might have led to a renewal of his wrongs, and of the sensation in the family, but for the opportune arrival of another visitor, who to Polly's great surprise, appeared at the door, smiling patronage and friendship on all there. " How do you do, Mrs. Richards ? " said Miss Tox. " I have come to see you. May I come in ? " The cheery face of Mrs. Richards shone with a hos- pitable reply, and Miss Tox, accepting the proffered chair, and gracefully recognizing Mr. Toodle on her way to it, untied her bonnet-strings, and said that in the first place she must beg the dear children, one and all, to come and kiss her. The ill-starred youngest Toodle but one, who would appear, from the frequency of his domestic troubles, to have been born under an unlucky planet, was prevented From performing his part in this general salutation by having fixed the sou'wester hat (with which he had been previously trifling) deep on his head, hind side before, and being unable to get it off again ; which accident presenting to his terrified imagination a dismal picture of his passing the rest of his days in darkness, and in 154 DOMBEY AND SON. hopeless seclusion from his friends and family, caused him to struggle with great violence, and to utter suffo- cating cries. Being released, his face was discovered to be very hot, and red, and damp ; and Miss Tox took him on her lap, much exhausted. " You have almost forgotten me, sir, I dare say," said Miss Tox to Mr. Toodle. " No, ma'am, no," said Toodle. " But we've all on us got a little older since then." " And how do you find yourself, sir ? " inquired Miss Tox, blandly. " Hearty, ma'am, thank'ee," replied Toodle. " How do you find yourself, ma'am. Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, ma'am ? We must all expect to grow into 'em, as we gets on." "Thank you," said Miss Tox. "I have not felt any inconvenience from that disorder yet." " You're wery fortunate, ma'am," returned Mr. Too- dle. " Many people at your time of life, ma'am, is martyrs to it. There was my mother " But catch- ing his wife's eye here, Mr. Toodle judiciously buried the rest in another mug of tea. " You never mean to say, Mrs. Richards," cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob, " that that is your " " Eldest, ma'am," said Polly. " Yes, indeed, it is. That's the little fellow, ma'am, that was the innocent cause of so much." " This here, ma'am," said Toodle, " is him with the short legs and they was," said Mr. Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, " unusual short for leath- ers as Mr. Dombey made a Grinder on." The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had a peculiar interest for her directly DOMBEY AND SON. 15a She asked him to shake hands, and congratulated hia mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearing her, called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly the right look. " And now, Mrs. Richards," said Miss Tox, " and you too, sir," addressing Toodle " I'll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have come here for. You may be aware, Mrs. Richards and, possibly you may be aware too, sir that a little distance has interposed itself be- tween me and some of my friends, and that where I used to visit a good deal, I do not visit now." Polly, who, with a woman's tact, understood this at once, expressed as much in a little look. Mr. Toodle who ha^ not the faintest idea of what Miss Tox was talking about, expressed that also, in a stare. " Of course," said Miss Tox, " how our little coolness has arisen is of no moment, and does not require to be discussed. It is sufficient for me to say, that I have the greatest possible respect for, and interest in, Mr. Dom- bey ; " Miss Tox's voice faltered ; " and everything that relates to him." Mr. Toodle, enlightened, shook his head, and said he had heerd it said, and, for his own part, he did think, as Mr. Dombey was a difficult subject. " Pray don't say so, sir, if you please," returned Miss Tox. " Let me entreat you not to say so, sir, either now, or at any future time. Such observations cannot but be very painful to me, and to a gentleman, whose mind is constituted as I am quite sure yours is, can afford no permanent satisfaction." Mr. Toodle, who had not entertained the least doubl of offering a remark that would be received with acqui escence, was greatly confounded. 156 DOMBEY AND SOX. " All that I wish to say, Mrs. Richards," resumed Miss Tox, " and I address myself to you too, sir, is thi& 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 times. And && Mi's. Richards and I never had the least indifference (though I could wisli now that we had been better ac- quainted, but I have no one but myself to blame for that), I hope she will not object to our being very good friends now, and to my coming backwards and forwards here, when I like, without being a stranger. Now, I really hope Mrs. Richards," said Miss Tox, earnestly, " that you will take this, as I mean it, like a good-hu- mored creature as you always were." Polly was gratified, and showed it. Mr. Toodle didn't know whether he was gratified or not, and preserved a stolid calmness. " You see, Mrs. Richards," said Miss Tox " and I hope you see too, sir there are many little ways in which I can be slightly useful to you, if you will make no stranger of me ; and in wlych I shall be delighted to be so. For instance, I can teach your children some- thing. I shall bring a few little books if you'll allow me, and some work, and of an evening now and then, they'll learn dear me, they'll learn rf great deal, I trust, and be a credit to their teacher." Mr. Toodle, who had a great respect for learning, jerked his head approvingly at his wife, and moistened bis hands with dawning satisfaction. " Then, not being a stranger, I shall be in nobody's way," said Miss Tox, " nd everything will go on just DOMBEY AND SON. 157 as if I were not here. Mrs. Richards will do her mend- ing, or her ironing, or her nursing, whatever it is, with- out minding me : and you'll smoke your pipe, too, if you're so disposed, sir, won't you ? " " Thank'ee mum," said Mr. Toodle. " Yos ; 111 lake my bit of backer." " Very good of you to say so, sir," rejoined Miss Tox, " and I really do assure you now, unfeignedly, that it will be a great comfort to me, and that whatever good I may be fortunate enough to do the children, you will more than pay back to me, if you'll enter into this little bargain comfortably, and easily, and good-naturedly, without another word about it." The bargain was ratified on the spot ; and Miss Tox found herself so much at home already, that without delay she instituted a preliminary examination of the children all round which Mr. Toodle much admired and booked their ages, names, and acquirements, on a piece of paper. This ceremony, and a little attendant gossip, prolonged the time until after their usual hour of going to bed, and detained Miss Tox at the Toodle fireside until it was too late for her to walk home alone. The gallant Grinder, however, being still there, politely offered to attend her to her own door ; and as it waa something to Miss Tox, to be seen home by a youth whom Mr. Dombey had first inducted into those manly garments which are rarely mentioned by name, she very readily accepted the proposal. After shaking hands with Mr. Toodle and Polly, and kissing all the children, Miss Tox left the house, there- fore, 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 iU 158 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 ex- pressed it to his mother, " drew him out," upon the road. He drew out so bright, and clear, and shining, that Miss Tox was charmed with him. The more Miss Tox drew him out, the finer he came like wire. There never was a better or more promising youth a more affectionate, steady, prudent, sober, honest, meek, candid young man than Rob drew out that night. -" I am quite glad," said Miss Tox, arrived at her own door, " to know you. I hope you'll consider me your Friend, and that you'll come and see me as often as you like. Do you keep a money-box ? " " Yes, ma'am," returned Rob ; " I'm saving up against" I've got enough to put in the Bank, ma'am." " Very laudable indeed," said Miss Tox. " I'm glad to hear it Put this half-crown into it, if you please." " Oh thank you, ma'am," replied Rob, " but really I couldn't think of depriving you." " I commend your independent spirit," said Miss Tox, u but it's no deprivation, I assure you. I shall be of- fended if you don't take it, as a mark of my good-will. Good-night, Robin." ** Good-night, ma'am," said Rob, " and thank you ! " Who ran sniggering off to get change, and tossed it away with a pieman. But they never taught honor at the Grinders' School, where the system that pre- vailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy Insomuch, that many of the friends ar masters of past Grinders said, if this were what car. pf education for the common people, let us have noi DOMBEY AND SON. !5b 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 Rssurtirig that they could have only turned out well be- cause of it. Which settled the business of those ob Sectors out of hand, and established the glory of the it finders' Institution. 160 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XXXIX. ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN EDWARD CUTTLR MARINER. TIME, sure of foot and strong of will, had so pressed onward, that the year enjoined by the old Instrument- maker, as the term during which his friend should refrain from opening the sealed packet accompanying the letter he had left for him, was now nearly expired, and Cap- tain Cuttle began to look at it of an evening, with feel- ings of mystery and uneasiness. The captain, in' his honor, 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- parlor 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 con- spicuously among the coals, or took up an advantageous position on the whitewash. DOMBET AND SON. 161 In respect of Heart's Delight, the c&ptain's parental regard and admiration knew no change. But since hia 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 favorable 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 mod- esty he made the best atonement he could think of. by putting himself out of the way of doing any harm to any one, and, as it were, throwing himself overboard for a dangerous person. Self-buried, therefore, among the instruments, the cap- tain 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 any one but Rob the Grinder, whom he esteemed as a pat- tern of disinterested attachment and fidelity. In this retirement, the captain, gazing at the packet of an even- ing, 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 childrei* of his first remem orance. The captain did not, however, in his musings, neglect 'ais own improvement, or the mental culture of Rob the VOL. III. 11 162 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 be was accustomed to quote the text, without book, after his own manner, he appeared to read it with as reverent an understanding of its heavenly spirit, as if he had got it all by heart in Greek, and had been able to write any number of fierce theological disquisitions on its every phrase. Rob the Grinder, whose reverence for the inspired writings, under the admirable system of the Grinders' School, had been developed by a perpetual bruising of hi* intellectual shins against all the proper names of all the tribes of Judah, and by the monotonous repetition of hard verses, especially by way of punishment, and by the parading of him at six years old in leather breeches three times a Sunday, very high up, in a very hot church, with a great organ buzzing against his drowsy head, like an exceedingly busy bee Rob the Grinder made a mighty show of being edified when the captain ceased to read, and generally yawned and nodded while the read- ing was in progress. The latter fact being never so much as suspected by the good captain. Captain Cuttle, also, as a man of business, took to- keeping books. In these he entered observations on the weather, and on the currents of the wagons and other vehicles : which he observed in that quarter, to set west- ward in the morning and during the greater part of the lay, and eastward towards the evening. Two or threa DOMBEY AND SON. 163 stragglers appearing in one week, who " spoke him " BO the captain entered it on the subject of spectacles and who, without positively purchasing, said they would look in again, the captain decided that the business was improving, and made an entry in the day-book to that effect ; the wind then blowing (which he first recorded) pretty fresh, west and by north ; having changed in the night. One of the captain's chief difficulties was Mr. Toots, who called frequently, and who, without saying much, seemed to have an idea that the little back-parlor 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 forebore to decide against him for the present ; merely eying him, with a sagacity not to be described, whenever he approached the subject that was nearest to his heart. " Captain Gills," blurted out Mr. Toots, one day all at once, as his manner was, " do you think you could think favorably of that proposition of mine, and give me the pleasure of your acquaintance ? " " Why, I'll tell you what it is, my lad," replied the captain, who had at length concluded on 8 course el action ; " I've beeti turning that there, over." " Captain Gills, it's very kind of you," retorted Mr. loots. "I'm much obliged to you. Upon my word 164 DOMBEY AND SON. and honor. Captain Gills, it would be a charity to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. It really would." "You see, brother," argued the captain slowly, "I don't know you." " But you never can know me, Captain Gills/' replied Mr. Toots, steadfast to his point, " if you don't give me the pleasure of your acquaintance." The captain seemed struck by the originality and power of this remark, and looked at Mr. Toots as if he thought there was a great deal more in him than he had expected. " Well said, my lad," observed the captain, nodding his head thoughtfully ; " and true. Now look'ee here : You've made some observations to me, which gives me to understand as you admire a certain sweet creetur. Hey ? " " Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots, gesticulating vio- lently with the hand in which he held his hat, " Ad- miration is not the word. Upon my honor, you have no conception what my feelings are. If I could be dyed black, and made Miss Dombey's slave, I should consider it a compliment.- If, at the sacrifice of all my property, I could get transmigrated into Miss Dombey's dog I I really think I should never leave off wag- ging my tail. I should be so perfectly happy, Captain Gills ! " Mr. Toots said it with watery eyes, and pressed his hat against his bosom with deep emotion. " My lad," returned the captain, moved to compas- sion, " if you're in arnest " " Captain Gills," cried Mr. Toots, " I'm in such a state &f mind, and am so dreadfully in earnest, that if I could DOMBEY AND SON. 16J 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 accom plishing his dread purpose. The captain pushed his glazed hat back upon his nead, stroked his face down with his heavy hand making his nose more mottled in the process and planting himself before Mr. Toots, and hooking him by the lappel of his coat, addressed him in these words, while Mr. Toots looked up into his face with much atten- tion and some wonder. " If you're in arnest, you see, my lad," said the cap- tain, " 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 m them garden angels was a-singing of, so many times over. Stand by ! This here proposal o' your'n 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 yon 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' know what harm mayn't have been done by naming of it too free afore now, and thereby I brings up short D'ye make me out pretty clear, brother ? " " Well, you'll excuse me, Captain Gills," replied Mr Toots, " if I don't quite follow you sometimes. But upon ray word I it's . hard thing, Captain Gills, noi 166 DOMBEY AND SON. to be able to mention Miss Dombey. I really have got puch a dreadful load here ! " Mr. Toots pathetically touched his shirt-front with both hands "that I feel night and day exactly as if somebody was sitting upon me." " Them," said the captain, " is the terms I offer. If they're hard upon you, brother, as mayhap they are, give 'em a wide berth, sheer off, and part company cheerily ! " " Captain Gills," returned Mr. Toots, " I hardly know how it is, but after what you told me when I came here, for the first time, I I feel that I'd rather think about Miss Dombey in your society than talk about her in almost anybody else's. Therefore, Captain Gills, if you'll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance, I shall be very happy to accept it on your own conditions. I wish to be honorable, 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 think- ing about Miss Dombey. It's impossible for me to make a promise not to think about her." " My lad," said the captain, whose opinion of Mr. Toots was much improved by this candid avowal, " a man's thoughts is like the winds, and nobody can*, an; wer for 'em for certain, any length of time together. Is it a treaty as to words?" "As to words, Captain Gills," returned Mr. Toots, "I think I can bind myself." Mr. Toots gave Captain Cuttle his hand upon it, then" and there ; and the captain, with a pleasant and gra- cious show of condescension, bestowed his acquaintance upon him formally. Mr. Toots seemed much relieved ind gladdened by the acquisition, and chuckled raptur DOMBEY AND SOX. 167 Busly d'jr'.ng the remainder of his visit. The caplain, for his part, was not ill pleased to occupy that position of patronage, and was exceedingly well satisfied by his own prudence and foresight. But rich as Captain Cuttle was in the latter quality, he received a surprise that same evening from a no less ingenuous and simple youth, than Rob the Grinder. That artless lad, drinking tea at the same table, and bending meekly over his cup and saucer, having taken sidelong observations of his master for some time, who was reading the newspaper with great difficulty, but much dignity through his glasses, broke silence by saying " Oh ! I beg your pardon, captain, but you mayn't be in want of any pigeons, may you, sir?" " No, my lad," replied the captain. " Because I was wishing to dispose of mine, captain,'" said Rob. " Ay, ay ? " cried the captain, lifting up his bushy eyebrows a little. " Yes ; I'm going, captain, if you please," said Rob. " Going ? Where are you going ? " asked the captain, looking round at him over the glasses. "What? didn't you know that I was going to leave you. captain?" asked Rob, with a sneaking smile. The captain put down the paper, took off his spec- tacles, and brought his eyes to bear on the deserter. " Oh yes, captain, I am going to give you warning. I thought you'd have known that beforehand, perhaps," said Rob, rubbing his hands, and getting up. " If you 3ould 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 Ihink?" 168 DOMBEY AND SON. 'And you're a-going to desert your colors are you my lad ? " said the captain, after a long examination of his face. " 01:, 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 a'n't be- cause I'm a servant and you're a master, that you're to go and libel me. What wrong have I done ? Come, captain, let me know what my crime is, will you ? " The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye. " Come, captain," cried the injured youth, u give my crime a name ! What have I been and done ? Have I stolen any of the property ? Have I set the house afire ? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it ? But to take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant to you, because he can't afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and what a bad return for faithful service ! This is the way young coves is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, captain, I do." All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachry- mose whine, and backing carefully towards the door. "And so you've got another berth, have you, my lad ?" eaid the captain, eying him intently. * Yes, captain, since you put it in that shape, I have got another berth," cried Rob, backing more and more ; " a better berth than I've got here, and one where I don't so much as want your good word, captain, which is fort'nate for me, after all the dirt you've throw'd at me, because I'm poor, and can't afford to stand in ray DOMBEY AND SON. 16S DWD 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 fox your good, captain? How can you so demean your- gelf ? " " Look ye here, my boy," replied the peaceful cap- tain. " Don't you pay out no more of them words." " Well, then, don't you pay in no more of your words, captain," retorted the roused innocent, getting louder in his whine, and backing into the shop. " I'd sooner you took my blood than my character." " Because," pursued the captain calmly, " you have heerd, maybe, of such a thing as a rope's end." " Oh, have I though, captain ? " cried the taunting Grinder. " No I haven't. I never heerd of any such a article ! " " Well," said the captain, " it's my belief as you'll know more about it pretty soon, if you don't keep a bright look-out. I can read your signals, my lad. You may go." " Oh ! I may go at once, may I, captain ? " cried Rob, exulting in his success. "But mind! / never asked to go at once, captain. You are not to take away my char- acter again, because you s^end me off of your own accoid. And you're not to stop any of my wages, captain ! " His employer settled the last point by producing the tin canister and telling the Grinder's money out in full upon the table. Rob, snivelling and sobbing, and griev- ously wounded in his feelings, took up the pieces one by one, with a sob and a snivel for each, and tie if the parlor might have gone down next, and not surprised him much by its sinking, or given him any very great concern. Therefore Captain Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention and no comprehension, and therefore Captain Cuttle said nothing whatever about Rob to him- self, or admitted to himself that he was thinking about him, or would recognize in the most distant manner that Rob had anything to do with his feeling as lonely as Robinson Crusoe. In the same composed, business-like way, the captain stepped over to Leadenhall Market in the dusk, and effected an arrangement with a private watchman on duty there, to come and put up and take down the shut- ters of the Wooden Midshipman every night and morn- ing. He then called in nt 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 up-stairs, as sole guar- dian of the property. From this bed Captain Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped on his glazed hat at six o'clock in the morn- ing, with the solitary air of Crusoe finishing his toilet with his goat-skin cap ; and although his fears of a visi- tation 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 with- out any symptom? of the cannibals, he still observed a regular routine of defensive operations, and never en- 172 DOMBEY AND SON. countered a bonnet without previous survey from his castle of retreat. In the mean time (during which he received no call from Mr. Toots, who wrote to say ho was out uf town) his own voice began to have a strange sound in his ears : and he acquired such habits of pro- found meditation from much polishing and stowing away of the stock, and from much sitting behind the counter reading, or looking out of window, that the red rim made on his forehead by the hard glazed hat, sometimes ached again with excess of reflection. The year being now expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to open the packet ; but as he had always designed doing this in the presence of Rob the Grinder, whp had brought it to him, and as he had an idea that it would be regular and ship-shape to open it in the pres- ence of somebody, he was sadly put to it for want of a witness. In this difficulty, he hailed one day with un- usual delight the announcement in the Shipping Intel- ligence of the arrival of the Cautious Clara, Captain John Bunsby, from a coasting voyage ; and to that phi- losopher immediately despatched a letter by post, enjoin- ing inviolable secrecy as to his place of residence, and requesting to be favored with an early visit, in the even- ing season. Bunsby, who was one of those sages who act upon conviction, took some days to get the conviction thor- oughly into his mind, that he had received a letter to this effect. But when he had grarpled with the fact, and mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the mes- sage, " He's a-coming to-night." Who being instructed to deliver those words and disappear, fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit, charged with a mysterious warning. The captain, well pleased to receive it, made prepara DOMBEY AND SON. 173 tion of pipes and rum and water, and awaited his visitor in the back-parlor. 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 along- side ; whom he instantly admitted, shaggy and loose, and with his stolid mahogany visage, as usual appearing to have no consciousness of anything before it, but to be attentively observing something that was taking place in quite another part of the world. " Bunsby," said the captain, grasping him by the hand, " What cheer, my lad, what cheer ? " " Shipmet," replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccom- panied by any sign on the part of the commander him- self, " Hearty, hearty." " Bunsby ! " said the captain, rendering irrepressible homage to his genius, " here you are ! a man as can give an opinion as is brighter than di'monds and give me the lad with the tarry trousers as shines to me like di'monds bright, for which you'll overhaul the Stanfell'a Budget, and when found make a note. Here you are, a man as gave an opinion in this here very place, that has come true, every letter on it,"* which the captain sincerely believed. " Ay, ay ? " growled Bunsby. " Every letter," said the captain. "For why?" growled Bunsby, looking at his fnend for the first time. "Which way? If so, why not? Therefore." With these oracular words they seemed almost to make the captain giddy; they launched him upon such a sea of speculation and conjecture the age submitted to be helped off with his pilot-coat, and accompanied his friend into the back-parlor, where his IT4 DOMBEY AND SON. hand presently alighted on the rum-bottle, from which he brewed a stiff glass of grog; and presently after- wards on a pipe, which he filled, lighted, and began to smoke. Captain Cuttle, imitating his visitor in the matter of these particulars, though the rapt and imperturbable manner of the great commander was far above his pow- ers, sat in the opposite corner of the fireside, observing him respectfully, and as if he waited for some encourage- ment 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 any- thing but warmth and tobacco, except once, when taking his pipe from his lips to make room for his glass, he incidentally remarked with exceeding gruffness, that his name was Jack Bunsby a declaration that presented but small opening for conversation the captain bespeak- ing his attention in a short complimentary exordium, narrated the whole history of Uncle Sol's departure, with the change it had produced in his own life and fortunes; and concluded by placing the packet on the table. After a long pause, Mr. Bunsby nodded his head. " Open ? " said the captain. Bunsby nodded again. The captain accordingly broke the seal, and disclosed to view two folded papers, of which he severally read the indorsements, thus : " Last Will and Testament of Solomon Gills." " Letter for Ned Cuttle." Bunsby, with his eye on the coast of Greenland, teemed to listen for the contents. The captain there fore hemmed to clear his throat, and read the lettei aloud. DOMBEY AND SON. 175 " ' My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for (he West Indies'" Here the captain stopped, and looked hard at Bun.by, who looked fixedly at the coast of Greenland. " ' in forlorn search of intelligence of tuy dear boy, I knew that if you were acquainted" with my de-sigu, 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 nay 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 meditat- ing; "no more. There he lays, all his days" Mr. Bunsby, who had a musical ear, suddenly bel- lowed, " 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 acknowledg- ment, and was fain to wipe his eyes. " Well, well ! " said the captain with a sigh, as the lament of Bunsby ceased to ring and vibrate in the sky- light. " Affliction sore, long time he bore, and let ua overhaul the wollume, and there find it" " Physicians," observed Bunsby, " was in vain." " Ay, ay, to be sure," said the captain, " what's the good o' them in two or three hundred fathoms o' water!" i'lien, returning to the letter, he read on : " ' But if ho should be by, when it is opened ; ' " the captain in- voluntarily looked round, and shook his head ; " ' or should know of it at any other time;"' the captain shook \is head again " ' my blessing on- him In case t*ie I7C DOMBEY AND SON. 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) other- wise, 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.' Buns- by ! " said the captain, appealing to him solemnly, " what do you make of this ? There you sit, a man as has had his head broke from infancy up'ards, and has got a new opinion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you make o' this ? " " If so be," returned Bunsby, with unusual prompti- tude, " 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 bear- ings of this obserwation lays in tlie application on it." " Bunsby ! " said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to have estimated the value of his distinguished friend's opinions in proportion to the immensity of the difficulty he experienced in making anything out of them; ' Buns- by," said the captain, quite confounded by admiration, " you carry a weight of mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage soon. But in regard o' this here will, I don't mean to take no steps towards the property Lord forbid ! except to keep it for a more rightful owner; and I hope yet as the rightful owner, Sol Gills, is living and '11 come back, strange as it is that he a'n't forwarded no dispatches. Now, what is your opinion, TJun.;by, as to stowing of these -here papers away again, and marking outside as they was opened, such a day, in presence of John Bunsby and Ed'ard Cuttle ? " Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Green- DOMBEY AND SON. 177 land or elsewhere, to this proposal, it was carried into execution ; and that great rnan, bringing his eye into the present for a moment, affixed his sign-manual to thfc cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, from the use of capital letters. Captain Cuttle, having attached his own left-handed signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe, entreated his guest to mix another glass and smoke another pipe ; and doing the like himself, fell a-musing over the fire on the possible fortunes of the poor old Instrument-maker. And now a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that Captain Cuttle, unsupported by the presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneath it, and been a lost man from that fatal hour. How the captain, even in the satisfaction of admitting such a guest, could have only shut the door, and not locked it, of which negligence he was undoubtedly guilty, is one of those questions that must forever re- main 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 parlor, bringing Alexander MacStinger in her parental arms, and confusion and vengeance (not to mention Ju- liana MacStinger, and the sweet child's brother, Charlea MacStinger, popularly known about the scenes of hia youthful sports, as Chowley) in her train. She came so swiftly and so silently, like a rushing air from the neighborhood of the East India Docks, that Captain Cuttle found himself in the very act of sitting looking at her, before the calm face with which he had been meditating, changed to one of horror and dismay. But the moment Captain Cuttle understood the full extent of his misfortune, self-preservation dictated an at VOL in. 12 178 DOMBEY AND SON. tempt at flight. Darting at the little door which openeo from the parlor 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 Chow- ley, who pinning him by the legs one of those dear children holding on to each claimed him as their friend, with lamentable cries. In the mean time, Mrs. MacStinger, who never entered upon any action of im- portance without previously inverting Alexander Mac- Stinger, to bring him within the range of a brisk bat- tery of slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the reader first beheld him, performed that solemn rite, aa if on this occasion it were a sacrifice to the Furies ; and having deposited the victim on the floor, made at the captain with a strength of purpose that appeared to threaten scratches to the interposing Bunsby. The cries of the two elder MacStingers, and the wail- ing 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 exist- ence, 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. Mao Stinger, its terrors were at their height. " Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle ! " said Mrs. Mac- Stinger, 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 Cut- tle, do you dare to look me in the face, and not be struck down in the herth ! " DOMBEY AND SON. 17$ The captain, who looked anything but daring, feebly muttered " Stand by ! " " Oh I was a weak and trusting fool when I took you under my roof, Cap'en Cuttle, I was ! " cried Mrs. Mao- Stinger. " To think of the benefits I've showered on that man, and the way in which I brought my children up to love and honor him as if he was a father to 'em, when there a'n't a 'ousekeeper, no nor a lodger in our street, don't know that I lost money by that man, and by his guzzlings and his muzzlings" Mrs. MacStinger used the last word for the joint sake of alliteration and aggravation, rather than for the expression of any idea " and when they cried out one and all, shame upon him for putting upon an industrious woman, up early and late for the good of her young family, and keeping her poor place so clean that a individual might have ate his dinner, yes, and his tea too, if he was so disposed, off any one of the floors or stairs, in spite of all his guzzlings and his muzzlings, such was the care and pains bestowed upon him ! " Mrs. MacStinger stopped to fetch her breath ; and her face flushed with triumph in this second happy in- troduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings. " And he runs awa-a-a-ay ! " 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 twelvemonth ! From a woman ! Sitch is his conscience ! ' He hasn't the cour- age to meet her hi-i-i-igh ; " long syllable again ; " but steals away, lik? a felion. Why, if that baby of mine," V*id 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 ISO DOMBEY AND SON. The young Alexander, interpreting this into a posi live promise, to be shortly redeemed, tumbled over \vitb fear and grief, and lay upon the floor, exhibiting the goles of his shoes and making such a deafening outcry, that Mrs. MacStinger found it necessary to take him up hi her arms, where she quieted him, ever and anon, as he broke out again, by a shake that seemed enough to loosen his teeth. " A pretty sort of a man is Cap'en Cuttle," said Mrs. MacStinger, with a sharp stress on the first syllable of the captain's name, u to take on for and to lose sleep for, and to faint along of and to think dead for- sooth and to go up and down the blessed town like a mad woman, 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 man- ner, " I "wish to know if you're a-coming home." The frightened captain looked into his hat, as if he saw nothing for it but to put it on, and give himself op. " Cap'en Cuttle," repeated Mrs. MacStinger, in the same determined manner, " I wish to know if you're a- coming home, sir." The captain seemed quite ready to go, but faintly sug- gested something to the effect of " not making so much aoise about it" " Ay, ay, ay," said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. " Awast, my lass, awast ! " " And who may YOU be, if you please ! " retorted Mrs. MacStinger, with chaste loftiness. " Did you ever lodge % Number Nine, Brig-place, sir? My memory may b DOMBEY AND SOX. 181 bad, but not with me, I think. There was a Mrs. Jolt on lived at Number Nine before me, and perhaps you're mi.-uiking me tor her. That is my only ways of ac- counting for yoi.r familiarity, sir." " Come, come, my lass, awast, awast ! " said Bunsby. Captain Cuttle could hardly believe it, even of this great man, though he saw it done with his waking eyes ; but IJunsby, advancing boldly, put his shaggy blue arm round Mrs. MacStinger, and so softened her by his magic way of doing it, and by these few words he said no more that she melted into tears, after looking upon him for a few moments, and observed that a child might conquer her now, she was so low in her courage. Speechless and utterly amazed, the captain saw him gradually persuade this inexorable woman into the shop, return for rum and water and a candle, take them to her, and pacify her without appearing to utter one word. Presently he looked in with his pilot-coat on, and said, " Cuttle, I'm a-going to act as convoy home ;" and Cap- tain 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 favorite, and Chowley, who had the claim upon him that he was nat- urally of a maritime build, before the Midshipman was abandoned by them all; and Bunsby, whispering that he'd carry on smart, and hail Ned Cuttle again before he went aboard, shut the door upon himself, as the last member of the party. Some uneasy ideas that he must be walking in hia sleep, or that he had been troubled with phantoms, and Ib2 DOMBEY AND SON. not a family of flesh and blood, beset the cap;ain at first, when he went back to the little parlor, and found himself alone. Illimitable faith in. and immeasurable admira- tion of, the commander of the Cautious Clara, succeeded, and threw (he captain into a wondering trance. Still, as time wore on, and Bunsby failed to reapj>ear, the captain began to entertain uncomfortable doubts of another kind. Whether Bunsby had been artfully de- coyed to Brig-place, and was there detained in safe cus- tody as hostage for his friend ; in which case it would become the captain, as a man of honor, 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 endeavoring to lose the family amid the wilds and savage places of the city. Above all, what it would behoove 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 con- junctions of events, might possibly happen. He debated all this until he was tired ; and still no Bunsby. He made up his bed under the counter, all ready for turning in ; and still no Bunsby. At length, when tbe captain had given him up, for that night, at least, and had begun to undress, the sound of approach- ing wheels was heard, and, stopping at the door, was succeeded by Bunsby's hail. The captain trembled to think that Mrs. MacSli tiger was not to be got rid of, and had been brought back in a DOMBEY AND SON. 183 But no. Bunsby was accompanied by nothing but & large box, which he hauled into the shop with his own hands, and as soon as he had hauled in, sat upon. Cap- tain Cuttle knew it for the chest he had left at Mrs. Mac- Stinger's house, and looking, candle in hand, at Bunsbj more attentively, believed that he was three sheets in the wind, or, in plain words, drunk. It was difficult, however, to be sure of this ; the commander having no trace of expression in his face when sober. " Cuttle," said the commander, getting off the chest, and opening the lid, " are these here your traps ? " Captain Cuttle looked in and identified his property. " Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet ? " said Bunsby. The grateful and bewildered captain grasped him by the hand, and was launching into a reply expressive of his astonished feelings, when Bunsby disengaged himself by a jerk of his wrist, and seemed to make an effort to wink with his revolving eye, the only effect of which attempt, in his condition, was nearly to overbalance him. He then abruptly opened the door, and shot away to rejoin the Cautious Clara with all speed supposed to be his invariable custom, whenever he considered he had made a point. As it was not his hv-mor 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 bave elapsed. The captain, therefore, renewed his soli- tary life next morning, and thought profoundly, many mornings, noons, and nights, of old Sol Gills, and Buns- by's sentiments concerning him, and the hopes there were vf his return. Much of such thinking strengthened Cap- 184 DOMBEY AND SON. tain Cuttle's hopes ; and he humored them and himself by watching for the Instrument-maker at the door as h-2 ventured to do now, in his strange liberty and setting his chair in its place, and arranging the little parlor as it used to be, in ca.se he should come home unexpectedly. He likewise, in his thoughtfulness, took down a certain little miniature of Walter as a schoolboy, from its ac- customed nail, lest it should shock the old man on his return. The captain had his presentiments, too, some- times, that he would come on such a day ; and one par- ticular Sunday, even ordered a double allowance of din- ner, he was so sanguine. But come, old Solomon did not ; and still the neighbors noticed how the seafaring man in the glazed hat, stood at the shop-door of an even* ing, looking up and down the street DOMBEY AND SON. 185 CHAPTER XL. DOMESTIC RELATIONS. IT was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr, Dombey's mood, opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should be softened in the im- perious asperity of his temper ; or that the cold hard armor of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexible by constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curse of such a nature it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itself it bears within itself that while deference and concession swell its evil qualities, and are the food it grows upon, resistance, and a questioning of its exacting claims, foster it too, no less. The evil that is in it finds equally its means of growth and propagation in opposites. It draws support and life from sweets and bitters ; bowed down before, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the breast in which it has its throne ; and, worshipped or rejected, i3 as hard a master as the Devil in dark fables. Towards his first wife, Mr. Dombey, in his cold and iofty 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 recognized it. He had kept his distant seal 186 DOMBEY AND SON. of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station on its lowest step ; and much good it- had done him, so to live in solitary bondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of his second wife would have been added to his own would have merged into it, and exalted his greatness. He had pictured him- self haughtier than ever, with Edith's haughtiness sub- servient to his. He had never entertained the possibil- ity of its arraying itself against him. And now, when he found it rising in his path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contemptuous face Upon him, this pride of his, instead of withering, or hanging down its head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots, became more concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been before. Who wears such armor, too, bears with him ever an- other heavy retribution. It is of proof against concilia- tion, love, and confidence ; against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness, all soft emotion ; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable as the bare breast to steel ; and such tormenting festers rankle there, as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand of pride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down. Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude of his old rooms ; whither he now began often to retire again, and pass long solitary hours. It seemed his fate to be ever proud and powerful; ever humbled and powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated to work out that doom ? Who ? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his bpy ! Who was it who had shown him that DOMBEY AND SON. 187 new victory, as he sat in the dark corner ! Who was it whose least word did what his utmost moans could not ? Who was it who, unaided by his love, regard, or notice, thrived and grew beautiful when those so aided died ! Who could it be, but the same child at whom he had often glanced uneasily in her motherless infancy, with a kind of dread, lest he might come to hate her; and of whom his foreboding was fulfilled, for he DID hate her in his heart. Yes, and he would have it hatred, and he made it hatred, though some sparkles of the light in which she had appeared before him on the memorable night of his return home with his bride, occasionally hung about her still. He knew now that she was beautiful ; he did not dispute that she was graceful and winning, and that in the bright dawn of her womanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he turned even this against her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the unhappy man, with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a vague yearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted picture of his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against her. The worthier she promised to be of him, the greater claim he was disposed to antedate upon her duty and submission. When had she ever shown him duty and submission ? Did she "race his life or Edith's? Had her attrac- O lions been manifested first to him or Edith ? Why, he and she had never been, from her birth, like father and child! They had always been estranged. She had crossed him every way and everywhere. She was leagued against him now. Her very beauty softened natures that were obdurate to him, and inrulted him with %n unnatural triumph. *i88 DJMBEY AND SON. It may have been that in all this there were mutter ings of an awakened feeling in his breast, however selfishly aroused by his position of disadvantage, in com- parison with what she might have made his life. But he silenced the distant thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride. He would bear nothing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap of inconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her. To the moody, stubborn, sullen demon, that possessed him, his wife opposed her different pride in its full force. They never could have led a happy life together ; but nothing could have made it more unhappy, than the wil- ful 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 re- cognition from Edith ! He little knew through what a storm and struggle she had been driven onward to the crowning honor of his hand. He little knew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered him to call her wife. Mr. Dombey was resolved to show her that he was supreme. There must be no will but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be proud for, not against him. As he eat 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 dislik* ing, pleasure or displeasure, than if he had been her groom. Her cold supreme indifference his own un- questioned attribute usurped stung him more than any other kind of treatment could have done ; and he de- termined to bend her to his magnificent and stately wilL DOMBEY AND SON. 189 He had been long communing with these thoughts, when one night he sought her in her own apartment, after be 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 melan- choly and pensive, when he came upon her ; but it marked him at the door ; for, glancing at the mirror before it, he saw immediately, as in a picture- frame, the knitted brow, and darkened beauty that he knew so well. " Mrs. Dombey," he said, entering, "I must beg leave to have a few words with you." " To-morrow," she replied. " There is no time like the present, madam," he re- turned. " You mistake your position. I am used to choose my own times ; not to have them chosen for me. I think you scarcely understand vho and what I am, Mrs. Dombey." " I think," she answered, " that I understand you very well." She looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms, sparkling with gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away her eyes. If she had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure, she might not have had the power of impressing him with the sense of disadvantage that pene- trated 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 th luxuries of dress, were scattered here and there, and dis- regarded ; not in mere caprice and carelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast, haughty, disregard of costly hings : and felt it more and more. Chaplets of ftoivera, 190 DOMBEY AND SON. plume i of feathers, jewels, laces, silks, and satins; look where he would, he saw riches, despised, poured out, and made of no account. The very diamonds a marriage gift that rose and fell impatiently upon her bosom, eeemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round her neck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them. He felt his disadvantage, and he showed it. Solemn and strange among this wealth of color and voluptuous glitter, strange and constrained towards its haughty mis- tress, whose repellant 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 him- self, he sat down, and went on in no improved humor : " Mrs. Dombey, itjs very necessary that there should be some understanding arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me, madam." She merely glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but 'she might have spoken for an hour, and expressed less. " I repeat, Mrs. Dombey, does not please me. I have already taken occasion to request that it may be cor- rected. I now insist upon it." " You chose a fitting occasion for your first remon- strance, sir, and you adopt a fitting manner, and a fitting word for your second. You insist ! To me ! " "Madam," said Mr. Dombey, with his most offensive air of state, " I have made you my wife. You bear nv name. You are associated with my position and it reputation. I will not say that the world in general m* be disposed to think you honored by that association ; t -' DOMBEY AND SON. lt ,. I will say that I am accustomed to ' insist,' to my con- nection.- and dependents." "Which may you be pleased to consider me?" she asked. " Possibly I may think that my wife should paitakc or does partake, and cannot help herself of both chm acter>, Mrs. Dombey." She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set Lei trembling lips. He saw her bosom throb, and saw hex face flush and turn white. All this he could know, and did : but he could not know that one word was whisper- ing in the deep recesses of her heart, to keep her quiet ; and that the word was Florence. Blind idiot, rushing to a precipice ! He thought she stood in awe of him ! "You are too expensive, madam," said Mr. Dombey. " You are extravagant. You waste a great deal of money or what would be a great deal in the pockets of most gentlemen in cultivating a kind of society that is useless to me, and, indeed, that upon the whole is disagreeable to me. I have to insist upon a total change in all these respects. I know that in the novelty of possessing a tithe of such means as fortune has placed at your disposal, ladies are apt to run into a sudden extreme. There has been more than enough of thai extreme. I beg that Mrs. Granger's very different ex- periences may now come to the instruction of Mrs. Don- key." 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 hei oi the beating of her heart. His insolence of self-importance dilated as he saw this 192 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 ! IJ had resolved to conquer her, and look here ! " You will further please, madam," said Mr. Dombey in a tone of sovereign command, u 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 un- reasonable return for the worldly advancement that has befallen you ; and I believe nobody will be surprised, either at its being required from you, or at your making it. To me to me ! " he added, with emphasis. No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him. " I have learnt from your mother, Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, with magisterial importance, " what nc doubt you know, namely, that Brighton is recommended for her health. Mr. Carker has been so good " She changed suddenly. Her face and bosom glowed as if the red light of an angry sunset had been Hung upon them. Not unobservant of the change, and putting (us own interpretation upon it, Mr. Dombey resumed : u Mr. Carker has been so good as to go dow n and secure a house there, for a time. On the return of the establishment to London, I shall take such steps for ita Detter management as I consider necessary. One of these, will be the engagement at Brighton (if it is to be 3ffected), of a very respectable reduced person there, a Mrs. Pipchin, formerly employed in a situation of trust DOMBEY AND SON. 1 95 n my family, to act as house-keeper. An establishment like this, presided over but nominally, Mrs. Dombey, requires a competent head." She had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and now sat still looking at him fixedly turning a bracelet round and round upon her arm ; not winding it about with a light womanly touch, but pressing and dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limb showed a bar of red. "I observed," said Mr. Dombey "and this concludes what I deem it necessary to say to you at present, Mrs. Dombey I observed a moment ago, madam, that my allusion to Mr. Carker was received in a peculiar man- ner. 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 bet- ter 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. Dom- bey, 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. Dom- bey," 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 intrust Mr. barker 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 VOL. in. 13 194 DOMBEY AND SON. a lady upon whom I have conferred the highest distinc- tion that it is in ray power to bestow, I shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I see occasion." " And now," he thought, rising in his moral mag- nificence, and rising a stiffer and more impenetrable man than ever, "she knows me and my resolution." The hand that had so pressed the bracelet was laid heavily upon her breast, but she looked at him still, with an unaltered face, and said in a low voice : " Wait ! For God's sake ! I must speak to you." Why did she not, and what was the inward struggle that rendered her incapable of diinj so, for minutes, while, in the strong constraint she put upon her face, it was as fixed as any statue's looking upon him with neither yielding nor unyielding, liking nor hatred, pride nor humility : nothing but a searching gaze. " Did I ever tempt you to seek my band ? Did I evei use any art to win you ? Was I ever more conciliating to you when you pursued me, than I have been since our marriage ? Was I ever other to you than I am ? " " It is wholly unnecessary, madam," said Mr. Dombey, " to enter upon such discussions." " Did you think I loved you ? Did you know I did not ? Did you ever care, man ! for my heart, or propose to yourself to win the worthless thing ? Was there any poor pretence of any in our bargain ? Upon your side, or on mine ? " "These questions," said Mr. Dombey, "are all wide &f the purpose, madam." She moved between him and the door to prevent hia ^oing away, and drawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon him still. u You answer each of them. You answer me before J DOMBEY AND SON. 195 , I see. How can you help it ; you who know th miserable truth as weH as I ? Now, tell me. If I loved you to devotion, could I do more than render up my whole will and being to you, as you have just demanded ? If my heart were pure and all untried, and you its idol could you ask more ; could you have more ? " " Possibly not, madam," he returned coolly. " You know how different I am. You see me looking on you now, and you can read the warmth of passion for you that is breathing in my face." Not a curl of the proud lip, not a fla.sh of the dark eye, nothing but the same intent and searching look, accompanied these words. " You know my general history. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, or bend, or break me to submission and obedience ? " Mr. Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether he thought he could raise (en thousand pounds. " If there is anything unusual here," she said, with a slight motion of her hand before her brow, which did not for a moment flinch from its immovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, "as I know there are unusual feel- ings here/' raising the hand she pressed upon her bosom, and heavily returning it, " consider that there is no com- mon meaning in the appeal I am going to make you. Yes, for I am going ; " she said it as in prompt reply to something in his face ; " to appeal to you." Mr. Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of bis chin that rustled and cracked his stiff cravat, sal down on a sofa that was near him, to bear the appo;:!. " If you can believe that I am of such a nature now," ne fancied he saw tears glistening in hei eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he had forced them from her. 196 DOMBEY AND SOX. though none fell on her cheek, and she regarded him as eteadily as ever, "as would make what I now say almost incredible to myself, said to any man who had be- come my husband, but, above all, said to you, you may, perhaps, attach the greater weight to it. In the dark end to which we are tending, and may come, we shall not involve ourselves alone (that might -not be much), but others." Others ! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily. " I speak to you for the sake of others. Also your own sake ; and for mine. Since our marriage, you have been arrogant to me ; and I have repaid you in kind You have shown to me and every one around us, every day and hour, that you think I am graced and distin- guished by your alliance. I do not think so, and have shown that too. It seems you do not understand, or (so far as your power can go) intend that each of us shall take a separate course ; and you expect from me instead, a homage you will never have." Although her face was still the same, there was em- phatic confirmation of this " Never," in the very breath she drew. " I feel no tenderness towards you ; that you know. You would care nothing for it, if I did or could. I know as well that you feel none towards me. But we are linked together ; and in the knot that ties us, as I have said, others are bound up. We must both die; we. are both connected with the dead already, each by a little* child. Let us forbear/' Mr Dombey took a long respiration, as if he would have said, Oh ! was this all ! " There is no wealth," she went on, turning paler a? DOMBEY AND SON. 197 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 aie 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 endeavor too ; and I will look forward to a better and a happier use of age than I have made of youth or prime." Throughout she had spoken in a low plain voice, that neither rose nor fell ; ceasing, she dropped the hand with which she had enforced herself to be so passionless and di.-tinct. but not the eyes with which slur-had so steadily observed him. Madam," said Mr. Dombey, with his utmost dignity, " I cannot entertain any proposal of this extraordinary nature." She looked at him yet, without the least change. " I cannot," said Mr. Dombey, rising as he spoke, "consent to temporize 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 ultimttlum, madam, and have only to request your very serious at- tention to it." To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity ! To see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see the lighting of the haughty brow To se^ scorn, nnger, indignation, and abhorrent* 198 DOMBEY AND SON. starting into sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanish like a mist ! He could not choose but look, although he looked to his dismay. " " Go, sir ! " she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards the door. "Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth." "I shall take my rightful course, madam," said Mr. Dombey, " undeterred, you may be sure, by any general declatnalion." She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before her glass. " I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correct feeling, and better reflection, madam," said Mr. Dombey. She answered not one word. He saw no more ex- pression of any heed of him, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall, or beetle on tlie floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other, seen and crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among the ignominious and dead vermin of the ground. He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon the well-lighted and luxurious room, the beautiful and glitter- ing 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 him- self 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 some- times comes into a man's head) how they would all look when he saw them next. For the rest, Mr. Dombey was very taciturn, and very DOMBEY AND SON. 199 dignified, and very confident of carrying out his pur- pose ; and remained so. He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton ; but he graciously informed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, which arrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon. There was no time to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any place recommended as being salutary ; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the earth, earthy. Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, the old woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from the first. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncerlain 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 in- differently, both. But she was youthful, very youthful still: and in her youthfulness appeared at breakfast, before going away, in a new bonnet, made express, and a travelling robe that was embroidered and braided like an old baby's. It was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or to keep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding head, when it was got on. In this instance, it hiid 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 dur- ing breakfast to perform that duty. "Now my dearest Grangeby," said Mrs. Skewton, you must posively prom," she cut some r.f her words BOO DOMBEY AND SON. short, and cut out others altogether, " come down very soon." " I said just now, madam," returned Mr. Dombey, loudly, and laboriously, " that I am coming in a day or two." " Bless you, Domber ! " Here the major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and who was staring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs. Skewton's face, with the disinterested composure of an immortal being, said : " Begad, ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come ! " " Sterious wretch, who's he ? " lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnet from Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, " Oh ! You mean yourself, you naughty creature ! " " Devilish queer, sir," whispered the major to Mr. Dorabey. " 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 Bagsfock Joseph Your slave Joe, ma'am? Here! Here's the man ! Here are the Bagstock bellows, ma'am ! " cried the major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest. "My dearest Edith Grangeby it's most trordinry thing," said Cleopatra, pettishly, " that Major " " Bagstock ! J. B. ! " cried the major, seeing that she faltered for his name. "Well, it don't matter," said Cleopatra, "Edith, my love, you know I never could remember names \\l\i\'. was it? oh! most trordinry thing that so many people want to com 3 down to see me. I'm not going for long I'm coming back. Surely they can wait, till I come buck ! " DOMBEY AND SOX. 201 Cleopatra looked all round the table as tjhe said it, and appeared very uneasy. "I won't have visitors really don't want visitors," she said ; ' little repose and all that sort of thing 8 what I quire. No odious brutes must proach me till I've shaken off this numbness ; " and in a grisly resumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the major with her fan, but overset Mr. Dombey's breakfast-cup instead, which was in quite a different direction. Then she called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly that word was left about some trivial altera- tions in her room, wliich 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 guaranty for their execution ; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, it appeared as if he couldn't help looking strangely at the major, who couldn't help looking strangely at Mr. Dombey, who couldn't help looking strangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over one eye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them as if she were playing castanets. Edith alone never lifted her eyes to any face at the table, and never seemed dismayed by anything he* 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 some- limes stopped her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back with a monosyllable, to the point from vhich they had strayed. The mother, however unsteady 202 DOMBEY-AND SON. in other things, was constant in this that she wa* always observant of her. She would look at the beauti- ful face, in its marble stillness and severity, now with a kind of fearful admiration ; now iii 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, ihat never fluctuated like her other ideas, but had con- stant possession of her. From Edith she would some- rimes look at Florence, and back again at Edith, in a manner that was wild enough ; and sometimes she would try to look elsewhere, as if to escape from her daughter's face ; but back to it she seemed forced to come, although it never sought hers unless sought, or troubled her with one single glance. The breakfast concluded, Mrs. Skewton, affecting to lean girlishly upon the major's arm, but heavily sup- ported on the other side by Flowers the maid, and propped up behind by Withers the page, was conducted to the carriage, which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton. " And is Joseph absolutely banished ? " said the major, thrusting in his purple face ovej the steps. " Damme, ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-hearted as to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence ? " 44 Go along ! " said Cleopatra, " I can't bear you. You shall see me when I come back, if you are very good." ** Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, ma'am," said the major ; u or he'll die in despair." Cleopatra shuddered and leaned back. " Edith, my dear," she said. Tell him " " What ? " u Such dreadful words," said Cleopatra. " He aaca ich dreadful words!" DOMBEY AND SON. 203 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. * O " I'll tell you what, sir," said the major, with his hands behind him, and his legs very wide asunder, " a fair friend of ours has removed to Queer-street." " What do you mean, major ? " inquired Mr. Dombej. u I mean to say, Dombey," returned the major, " that you'll soon be an orphan-in-law." Mr. Dombey appeared to relish this waggish descrip- tion of himself so very little that the major wound up with the horse's cough, as an expression of gravity. " Damme, sir," said the major, " there is no use in dis- guising 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 de-vilish rusty, old rasper, of a close-toothed, J. B. file, you do find him. Dombey," said the major, "your wife's mother is on the move, sir." "I fear," returned Mr. Dombey, with much philos- ophy. " that Mrs. Skewton is shaken." " Shaken, Dombey ! " said the major. u Smashed ! " " Change, however," pursued Mr. Dombey, u and at- tention may do much yet." " Don't believe it, sir," returned the major. " Damme, sir, she never wrapped up enough. If a man don't wrap up," said the major, taking in another button of his buff waistcoat, " he has nothing to fall back upon. But some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They're obstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental ; it may not be refined ; it may be rough and tough ; but a little of the genuine old Eng- lish Bagstock stamina, sir, would do all the good in the to the human breed." 204 DOMBEY AND SON. After imparting this precious piece of information, the major, who was certainly true-blue, whatever other en- dowments he may have possessed or wanted, coming within the " genuine old English " classification, which has never been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and his apoplexy to the club, and choked there all day Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-compla- cent, 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-colored curtains, which were carried down to shed their bloom upon her. It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should take a carriage airing every day, and that it was important she should get out every day and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attend her al- ways ready to attend her, with the same mechanical at- tention and immovable beauty and they drove out alone ; for Edith had an uneasiness in the presence of Florence, now that her mother was worse, and told Florence, with a kiss, that she would rather they two went alone. Mrs. Skewton, on one particular day, was in the ir- resolute, exacting, jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her first attack. After sit- ting 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 be- gan to whimper and moan, and say what a mother she DOMBEY AND SON. 205 had been, and how she was forgotten ! This she con- tinued to do at capricious intervals, even when they had alighted; when she herself was halting along with' the joint support of Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage slowly following at a little distance. It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downs with nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. The mother, with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint, was still repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proud form of her daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancing over a dark ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an exaggerated imitation of their own, that Kdith stopped. Almost us she stopped, the two figures stop/ped ; 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 rec- ognized enough -that was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quite free from fear, came on and then they came on together. The greater part of this observation she made while walking towards them, for her stoppage had been mo- mentary. Nearer observation showed her that they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country ; that the younger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and that the old one toiled on empty-handed. And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in lignity, in beauty, Edith could not but compare the 1206 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 pre- senting something of her own. air and stature, ami ap- pearing to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep over her, as if the day were darkening, and the wind were colder. They had now come up. The old woman holding out her hand importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs. Skew- ton. The younger one stopped too, and she and Edith looked in one another's eyes. " What is it that you have to sell ? " said Edith. " Only this," returned the woman, holding out hei wares, without looking at them. " I sold myself long ago." " My lady, don't believe her," croaked the old woman to Mrs. Skewton ; " don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's my handsome and unduti- ful 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 nether with her looks." As Mrs. Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerly fumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watched for their heads all but touching in their hurry and decrepitude Edith in- terposed : " I have seen you," addressing the old woman, " be- fore." " Yes, my lady," with a courtesy. " Down in "War- wickshire. The morning among the trees. When you DOMBEY AND SON. 207 wouldn't yive me nothing. But the gentleman he give rue something! 0, bless him, bless him ! " mumbled the old woman, holding up her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter. "It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith! "said Mrs. Skewton, angrily anticipating an objection from her. " You know nothing about it. I won't be dis- suaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and u good mother." ' Yes, my lady, yes," chattered the old woman, hold- ing out her avaricious hand. " Thankee, my lady. Lord bless you, my lady. Sixpence more, my pretty lady, as a good mother yourself." " And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes, I assure you," said Mrs. Skewton, whimpering. " There ! Shake hands with me. You're a very good old creature full of what's-his-name^ and all that. You're all affection and et cetera, a'n't you ? " " Oh yes, my lady ! " " Yes, I'm sure you are ; and so 's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. I must really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know ; and I hope," addressing the daughter, " that you'll show more gratitude, and natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it but I never did remember names for there never was a better mother than the good old creature's b en to you. Come, Edith ! " As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyes with a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighborhood, the old woman hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not we word more, nor one other gesture, had been ex- 208 DOMBEY AND SON. changed between Edith and the younger woman, but neither had removed her eyes from the other for a mo- ment. They had remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakening from a dream, passed slowly on. " You're a handsome woman," muttered her shadow, looking after her; "but good looks won't save us. Aid you're a proud woman ; but pride won't save us. We iftd need to know each other when we meet again ! * DOMBEY AND SON 209 CHAPTER XLI. NEW VOICES m THE WAVES. ALL is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery : the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight ; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on the old ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him in the quiet place, where lie 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 mur- Diur of the sea, his little story told again, his very words repeated ; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs, since in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to have a portion in the burden of the marvellous song. And gentle Mr. Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking -wistfully towards the figure that he dotes upon, und has followed there, but cannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears the requiem of little Dom- Oey on the waters, rising and falling in the lulls of their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes ! and he fointly understands, poor Mr. Toots, that they are saying VOl, Ill 14 210 DOMBEY AND SON. Eomething 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 gatisfaction in their soothing reminder that he is re- lieved from present responsibility to the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in the country training (at Toots's cost) for his great mill with the Larkey Boy. But Mr. Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him; and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr. Toots affects amazement when he comes near her, and says (having followed closo on the carriage in which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving even to be choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprised in all his life. " And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey ! " eays Mr. Toots, thrilled through and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly and frankly given him. No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr. Toota has reason to observe him, for he comes straightway at Mr. Toots's legs, and tumbles over himself in the des- peration with which he makes at him, like a very dog of Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress " Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di ? For shaine ! " Oh ! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, and run back, and rm round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody coming by, to *bow hi* devotion. Mr. Toots would run headlong at DOMBEY AND SON 211 anybody, too. A. military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing better than to run at him, full tilt. " Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't be, Miss Dombey ? " says Mr. Toots. Florence assents, with a grateful smile. " Miss Dombey," says Mr. Toots, " beg your pardon, but if you would like to walk to Blimber's, I I'm going there." Florence puts her arm in that of Mr. Toots without a word, and they walk away together, with Diogenes go- ing on before. Mr. Toots's legs shake under him ; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misflts, and sees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co., and % wishes he had put on that brightest pair of boots. Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an air as ever ; and up there is the window where she used to look for the pale face, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wasted little hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the same weak-eyed young man, whose im- becility 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 au- dience 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 uni- versal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls every, thing to earth. And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs ; *nd here is Mrs. Biimber, with her sky-blue cap ; and here is Cornelia, with her sandy little row of curls, and 212 DOMBEY AND SOX. her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton in the graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he eat forlorn and strange, the " new boy " of the school and hither comes the distant cooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the old principle ! ** Toots ! " says Doctor Blimber, " I am very glad to sue you. Toots." Mr. Toots chuckles in reply. u Also to see you, Toots, in such good company," says Doctor Blimber. Mr. Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he haa met Miss Dombey by accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the old place, they have come together. "You will like," says Doctor Blimber, "to step among* our young friends, Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow- students of yours, Toots, once. I think we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear," says Doctor Blimber to Cornelia, " since Mr. Toots left us." " Except Bitherstone," returns Cornelia. " Ay, truly," says the doctor. " Bitherstone is new to Mr. Toots." New to Florence, too, almost ; for, in the school-room, Bitherstone no longer Master Bitherstone of Mrs. Pipchin's shows in collars and a neckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath some Bengal Btar of ill-omen, is extremely inky ; and his lexicon has got so dropsical from constant reference, that it won't hut, 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' DOMBEY AND SON. 213 in India. He'd precious soon find himself carried jp the country by a few of his (Bitherstone's) coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that. Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Toser, too ; and Johnson, too ; and all the rdlt the older pupils being principally engaged in forgetting, with prodigious labor, everything they knew when they were younger. All are as polite and pale as ever ; and among them, Mr. Feeder, B. A., with his bony hand and bristly head, is still hard at it : with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his other barrels on a shelf behind him. A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots , who is regarded with a kind of awe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to come back, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whose jewelry, whispers go about, behind hands ; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr. Toots's time, af- fecting to despise the latter to the smaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like to see him coining that sort of thing in Bengal, where hia mother has got an emerald belonging to him, that was taken out of the footstool of a rajah. Come now ! Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sighv of Florence, with whom every young gentleman imme- diately falls in love, again; except, as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out of contra- diction. Black jealousies of Mr. Toots arise, and Briggs is of opinion that he a'n'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 ZH DOMBEY AND SON. today at the Bedford ; in right of which feats he mighl Bet up as Old Parr, if he chose, unquestioned. There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire on the part of each young gentleman to take*Toots down in Miss Dombey's good graces ; and then, Mr. Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his old desk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs. Blimber and Cornelia ; and Doctor Blimber is heard to observe be- hind them as he comes out last, and shuts the door, M Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies." For that and little else is what the doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it saying all his life. Florence then steals away and goes up-stairs 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 won- dering 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 piti- lessly 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, look out of an upper window, laughing " at that there Toots," and saying of Miss Dombey, " But really though, now a'n't she like her brother, only prettier ? " Mr. Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon her face, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he did wrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her faying she is very glad to have been there again, and DOMBEY 'AND SON. 215 by her talking quite cheerfully about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with the voices there fcnd her sweet voice, when they come near Mr. Dom- bey's house, and Mr. Toots must leave her, he is so enslaved that he has not a scrap of free-will left ; when she gives him her hand at parting, he cannot let it go. " Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon," says Mr. Toots, in a sad fluster, " but if you would allow me to to " The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop. " If you would allow me to if you would not con- sider it a liberty, Miss Dombey, if I was to without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope, you know," says Mr. Toots. Florence looks at him inquiringly. " Miss Dombey," says Mr. Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, " I really am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know whaf to do with myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the corner of the square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope that I may may think it possible that you " " Oh, if you please, don't ! " cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmed and distressed. " Oh, pray don't, Mr. Toots. Stop, if you please. Don't say any more. As a kindness and a favor to me, don't." Mr. Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens. " You have been so good to me," says Florence, " I Bra so grateful to you, I have such reason to like you tor being a kind friend to me, and I do like you sa iuch;" and hero the ingenuous face smiles upon him 216 DOMBEY AND SON. with tin; pleasantest look of honesty in the world ; " thai I am sure you are only going to say good-by ! " " Certainly, Miss Dombey," says Mr. Toots, "I I that's exactly what I mean. It's of no consequence." " Good-by ! " cries Florence. " Good-by, Miss Dombey ! " stammers Mr. Toots. " 1 hope you won't think anything about it. It's it's of no consequence, thank you. It's not of the least conse- quence in the world." Poor Mr. Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks himself into his bedroom, flings him- self 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 entertain- ment. And the generous influence of that social virtue, hos- pitality (to make no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr. Toots's heart, and warms him to conversa- tion. He does not tell Mr. Feeder, B. A., what passed at the corner of the square ; but when Mr. Feeder asks him " When it is to come off? " Mr. Toots replies, " that there are certain subjects " which brings Mr. Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr. Toots adds, that he don't know what right Blimber had to notice hia 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 it's only his ignorance. Mr. Feeder says he has no doubt of it. Mr. Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from the subject. Mr. Toots merely require.* DOMBEY AND ^ON. 217 that it should be mentioned mysteriously, and with feel- ing. After a few glasses of wine, he gives Miss Dom- bey'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 honor, old boy." Mi. Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands and says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr. Feeder like- wise says, that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr. Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least, the flute; for women like music when you are paying your addresses to 'em, and he has found the advantage of it himself. This brings Mr. Feeder, B. A., to the confession that he has his eye upon Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr. Toots that he don't object to spectacles, and that if the doctor were to do the handsome thing and give up the business, why, there they are provided for. He says it's his opinion that when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he is bound to give it up ; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it which any man might be proud of. Mr. Toots replies by launching wildly out into Miss Dombey's praises, and by insinua- tions that sometimes he thinks he should like to blow his brains out. Mr. Feeder strongly urges that it would be a rash attempt, and shows him, as a reconcilement to existence, Cornelia's portrait, spectacles and all. Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded place to night, Mr. Toots walks home with Mr. Feeder, and parts with him at Doctor Klira- ber'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, 218 DOMBEY AND SOW. Mr. Feeder plainly hears the waves informing him, u he loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business ; and he feels a soft romantic pleasure in look- ing at the outside of the house, and thinking that the doctor will first paint it, and put it into thorough re- pair. Mr. Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that contains his jewel ; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light, and which he has no doubt is Florence's. But it is not, for that is Mrs. Skewton's room ; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations live again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the patient boy's on the same theatre, once more to connect it but how differently ! with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and complaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest ; and by it, in the terror of her unim- passioned loveliness for it has terror in the sufferer's failing eyes sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the stillness of the night to them ! u Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me.. Don't you see it?" " There is nothing, mother, but your fancy." u But my fancy ! Everything is my fancy. Look 1 la it possible that you don't see it ! " " Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit un- moved, if there were any such thing there ?" " Unmoved ? " looking wildly at her " it's gone no* and why are you so unmoved ? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you sitting at mj side." DOMBEY AND SON. 219 " I am sorry mother." " Sorry ! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me ! " With that, she cries ; and tossing her restless head from side to side upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and the mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return the daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and hides her face upon the bed. Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror, " Edith ! we are going home soon ; going back. You mean that I shall go home again ? " " Yes mother, yes." " And what he said what's his name, I never could remember names major that dreadful word, when we came away it's not true? Edith!" with a shriek and a stare, " it's not that that is the matter with me." Night after night, the light burns 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 ; tli sea-birds soar and hover ; the winds and clouds are on their trackless flight ; the white arras beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, ivhere the stone arm part of a figuie of some tomb, ghe cays is raised to strike her. At last it falls ; and 220 DOMBEY AND SON. then a dumb old woman lies upon the bed, and she is crooked, and shrunk up, and half of her is dead. Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day, looking, as it goes, for the good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it peers among the crowd ia vain. Such is the figure that i? often wheeled down to the margin of the sea, and sta tioned there ; but on which no wind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no soothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour ; but its speech is dark and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when her eyes wander over the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolation between earth and heaven. Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at. Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in her bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and often wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her but Edith. It is better that few eyes should see her ; and her daughter watches alone by the bedside. A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the cov- erlet join feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice not like hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language says " For I nursed you Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice loser to the. sinking head, and answers : DOMBEY AND SON. 221 " Mother, can you hear me ? " Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer. " Can you recollect the night before I married ? " The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does. " I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to forgive my own. I told you that the past was at an end between us. I say so now, again. Kiss me, mother." Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all ia Btill. A moment afterwards, her mother, with her girl- ish laugh, and the skeleton of the Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed. Draw the rose-colored curtains. There is something else upon its flight besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-colored curtains close ! Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr. Dombey in town, who waits upon Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden)? who has just re- ceived it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Fee- nix is the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family renders it right that he should be consulted. " Dombey," says Cousin Feenix, " upon my &oul, I am very much shocked to see you on such a melancholy occa- sion. My poor aunt ! She was a devilish lively woman." Mr. Dombey replies, " Very much so." " And made up," says Cousin Feenix, " really young, you know, considering. I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at Brooks's little Billy Joper you know him, no doubt man with a glass in his eye ? " 222 DOMBEY AND SOW. Mr. Dombey bows a negative. " ID reference to the obsequies," he hints, " whether there is any sugges- tion " " 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, T should have had it put to rights ; but I believe the peo- ple come and make pic-nic parties there inside the iron railings." Mr. Dombey is clear that this won't do. " There's an uncommon good ohurch in the village," says Cousin Feenix, thoughtfully ; " pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably well sketched too by tady Jane Finchbury woman with tight stays but they've spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it's a long journeyt" " Perhaps Brighton itself," Mr. Dombey suggests. " Upon my honor, Dombey, I don't think we could do better," says Cousin Feenix. " It's on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place." " And when," hints Mr. Dombey, " would it be con- venieqt ? " u I shall make a point," says Cousin Feenix, " of pledging myself for ^>ny day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure, of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the in point of fact, to the grave," says Cousin Feenix. failm? m the other turn of speech '* Would Monday do for leaving town ? " says $1 Dorabey. DOMBEY AND SON. 229 " 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 excessivelysorry, Dombey, that you should have so much trouble about it ; " to which Mr I torn bey answers, " Not at all." At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr. Dom- bey meet, and go down to Brighton, and representing, in tliL-ir 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, recognizes innumerable acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr. Dombey's information, as " Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What are you here, Tommy ? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls " and so forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these are the occasions to make a man think, in point of fact, that he is getting shaky ; and his eyes are really moistened, when it is over. But he soon recovers ; and so do the rest of Mrs. Skewton's relatives and friends, of whom the major continually tells the club that she never did wrap up enough ; while the young lady with the back, who has so much trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must have been enormously old, und that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you mustn't mention it. So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind to the dust that is piled upon Lhe shore, and to the white arms that are beckoning, in 224 DOMBEY AND SON. the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the un known sea ; and Edith standing there alone, and listou- iiig to its waves, has dank weed cast up at her feet, to her path in life withal. DOMBEY AND SON. 225 CHAPTER XLII. CONFIDENTIAL AND ACCIDENTAL. AITIRED no more in Captain Cuttle's sable slops and Bou'-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 con- fident 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 wnen he devoted a few minutes of his leisure time to crowing over those inseparable worthies, and re- calling, with much applauding music from that brazen in- strument, his conscience, the triumphant manner in which he had disembarrassed himself of their company, now served his patron, Mr. Carker. Inmate of Mr. Carker's house, and serving about his person, Rob kept his round eyes on the white teeth with fear and trembling, and felt that he had need to open them wider than ever. He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before the teeth, though he had come into the ser- vice 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 think- ttig about him when he was absent, lest he should f*jJ VOL. Ill 15 226 DOMBET AND SON. 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 be 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 en- thralment, that, hardly daring to think at all, but with his mind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his patron's irresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with him, he would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his orders, in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things. Rob had not informed himself perhaps in his then state of mind it would have been an act of no common temerity to inquire whether he yielded so completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating suspicions of his patron's being a master of certain treacherous arts in which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders' School. But certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr. Carker, per- haps, was better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost nothing by his management of it. On the very night when he left the captain's service, Rob, after disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had gone straight down to Mr. Carker's house, and hotly presented himself before hia new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect commendation. " What, scapegrace ! " said Mr. Carker, glancing at his bundle. " Have you left your situation and come *o Die ? " DOMBEY AND SON. 227 " Oh if you please, sir," faltered Rob, " you said, you know, when I come here last " " /said." returned Mr. Carker, " what did I say ?" " If you please, sir, you didn't say nothing at all, sir," returned Rob, warned by the manner of this inquiry and very much disconcerted. His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his forefinger, observed : " You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's ruin in store for you." " Oh if you please, don't, sir ! " cried Rob, with his logs trembling under him. " I'm sure, sir, I only want to work for you, sir, and to wait upon you, sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, sir." " You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,** returned his patron, " if you have anything to do with me." " Yes, I know that, sir," pleaded the submissive Rob ; " I'm sure of that, sir. If you'll only be so good as try me, sir ! And if ever you find me out, sir, doing any- thing against your wishes, I give you leave to kill me." " You dog ! " said Mr. Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at him serenely. " That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceive me." " Yes, sir," replied the abject Grinder, " I'm sure you would be down upon me dreadful, sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, sir, not if I was bribed with golden guineas." Thoroughly checked in his expectation of commenda- tion, the crest-fallen Grinder stood looking at his patror, and vainly endeavoring not to look at him, with the un- easiness which a cur will often manifest ir A sirailni situation. 228 DOMBEY AND SON. " So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you into mine, eh ? " said Mr. Carker. " Yes, if you please, sir," returned Rob, who, in doing BO, had acted on his patron's own instructions, but dared riot justify himself by the least insinuation to that ef- fect. ; ' Well ! " said Mr. Carker. " You know me, boy ? " " Please, sir, yes, sir," returned Rob, fumbling with hia hat, and still fixed by Mr. Carker's eye, and fruitlessly endeavoring to unfix himself. Mr. Carker nodded. " Take care then ! " Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of this caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved by the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped him. " Halloa ! " he cried, calling him roughly back. " You have been shut that door." Rob obeyed as if-his life had depended on his alacrity. " You have been used to eavesdropping. Do you know what that means ? " " Listening, sir ? " Rob hazarded, after some embays rassed reflection. His patron nodded. " And watching, and so forth." " I wouldn't do such a thing here, sir," answered Rob ; " upon my word and honor, 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 as much as all the world was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered, sir." " You had better not You have been used, too, to babbling and tattling," aaid his patron with perfect cool aess. " Beware of that here, or you're a lost rascal-' DOMBEY AND SON. 229 and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his forefinger. The Grinder's breath came short and thick with con- sternation. He tried to protest the purity of his inten- tions, 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 'down- stairs, after observing him for some moments in silence, and gave him to understand that he was retained in his employment. This was the manner of Rob the Grinder's engage- ment by Mr. Carker, and his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and increased, if possi- ble, with every minute of his service. It was a service of some months' duration, when early one morning, Rob opened the garden-gate to Mr. Dom- bey, who was come to breakfast with his master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome with all his teeth. "I never thought," said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from his horse, " to see you here, I'm sure. This is an extraordinary day in my calendar. No occa- sion is very special to a man like you, who may do any- thing'; but to a man like me, the case is widely different." "You have a tasteful place here, Carker," said Mr Dombey, condescending to stop upon the lawn, to look about him. " You can afford to say so," returned Carker. " Thank you." " Indeed," said Mr. Dombey, in his lofty patronage, '' any one might say so. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged place quite elegant." 230 DOMBEY AND SON. u 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 Kin afford to praise it, I thank you none the less, Will you walk in?" Mr. Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do, the complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for comfort and effect that abounded there. Mr. Carker, in his ostentation of humility, received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he understood its delicate meaning, and appreci- ated it, but in truth the cottage was good enough for one in his position better, perhaps, than such a man should occupy, poor as it was. " But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better than it is," he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest stretch. " Just as raonarchs im- agine attractions in the lives of beggars." He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr. Dombey as he spoke, and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr. Dombey, drawing himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily as his cold eye wandered over them, Carter's keen glance accompanied his, and kept pace witn his, marking exactly where it went, and what it saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed *o breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so catlike and vigi- lant, but the eye of his great chief passed from that, aa from the others, and appeared no more impressed by it than by the rest Carker looked at it it was tho picture that re- iembled Edith as if it were a living thing; and with DOMBEY AND SON. 231 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 hia own seat opposite to it as usual. Mr. Uombey 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 neck- cloth, 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 hia leather smalls. , " Allow me," said Carker, suddenly, ; ' to ask how Mrs, Dombey is ? " He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the in- quiry, with his chin resting on his hand ; and at the same time his eyes went up to the picture, as if be said to it, " Now, see, how I will lead him on ! " Mr. Dombey reddened as he answered : " Mrs. Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, oi some conversation that I wish to have with you." " Robin, you can leave us," said his master, at wborfo mild tones Robin stalled and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last. " You don't remember that boy, of course ? " ha added, when the immeshed ^rindcr was gone. 232 DOMBEY AND SON. " No," said Mr. Dombey. with magnificent indifFer- ence. " Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly pos- sible," murmured Carker. " But he is one of that fam- ily from whom you took a nurse. Perhaps you may remember having generously charged yourself with his education ?" " Is it that boy ? " said Mr. Dombey, with a frown. * He does little credit to his education, I believe." " Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid," returned Car- ker, 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 dare say) 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 recognized connection with your affairs is merely of a business character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything belonging to you, that " He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr. Dombey far enough yet And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered at the picture. " Carker," said Mr. Dombey, " I am sensible that you do not limit your " " Service," suggested his smiling entertainer. "No; I prefer to say your regard," observed Mr Dombey ; very sensible, as he said so, thai he was pay- ing him a handsome and flattering compliment, "to oui mere business relations. Your consideration for my feelings, hopes, and disappointments, in the little in- stance you have just now mentioned, is an example in ooint. I am obliged to you, Carker." Mr. Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly DOMBEY AND SON. 233 rubbed hiu hands, as if he were afraid Ly any action to disturb the current of Mr. Dombey's confidence. "Your allusion to it is opportune," said Mr. Dombey after a little hesitation, " for it prepares the way to whal I was beginning to say to you, and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relations between us, although it may involve more personal confidence on my part than I have hitherto " " Distinguished me with," suggested Carker, bending his head again : " I will not say to you how honored I am ; for a man like you well knows how much honor he has in his power to bestow at pleasure." u Mrs. Dombey and myself," said Mr. Dombey, pass- ing 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 some- thing to learn." " Mrs. Dombey is distinguished by many rare attrac- tions ; and has been accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation," said the smooth, sleek watcher of hi? slightest look and tone. " But where there is affection duty, and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes are soon set right." Mr. Dombey's thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had looked at him in his wife's dressing-room, when an imperious hand was stretched towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and respect, ex- pressed in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite as plainly as the watchful eyes upon him saw it '.here. " 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 234 DOMBEY AND SON. formed a general understanding from having been a witness of what passed between Mrs. Dombey and my- self on the evening when you were at our at my house." " When I so much regretted being present," said the smiling Carker. "Proud as a man in my position ne- cessarily must be of your familiar notice though I give you no credit for it ; you may do anything you please without losing caste and honored as I was by an early presentation to Mrs. Dombey, before she was made em- inent by bearing your name, I almost regretted that night, I assure you, that I had been the object of such especial good fortune." That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the being distinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral phenomenon which Mr. Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore responded, with a considerable accession of dignity. " Indeed ! And why, Carker ? " " I fear," returned the confidential agent, " that Mrs. Dombey, never very much disposed to regard me with favorable interest one in my position could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride be- comes her so well may not easily forgive my innocent part in that conversation. Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember ; and to be visited with it before a third party " " Carker," said Mr. Dombey, arrogantly ; " I presume ~ that /am the first consideration ?" ' Oh ! Can there be a doubt about it ? " replied the jther, with the impatience of a man admitting a noto- p'ous and incontrovertible fact. "Mrs. Dombey becomes a secondary consideration DOMBEY AND SON. 235 when we are both in question, I imagine," said Mr. Dora bey. "Is that so?" " Is it so ? " returned Carker. " Do you know better than any one, that you have no need to ask ? " " Then I hope, Carker," said Mr. Dombey, " that your regret in the acquisition of Mrs. Dombey's displeasure, may be almost counterbalanced by your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion." " I have the misfortune, I find," returned Carker, " to have incurred that displeasure. Mrs. Dombey has ex- pressed it to you ? " " Mrs. Dombey has expressed various opinions," said Mr. Dombey, with majestic coldness and indifference, " in which I do not participate, and which I am not in- clined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mrs. Dombey ac- quainted, 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. 1 failed to con- vince Mrs. Dombey of the expediency of her immedi- ately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her own peace and welfare, and my dignity ; and I informed Mrs. Dombey that if I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion to her through yourself, my confidential agent." Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look at the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of lightning. " Now, Carker," said Mr. Dombey, " I do not hesitate to say to you that I will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs. Dombey must understand that my will is law, and (hat 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 236 DOMBEY AND SON. unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may politely profess for which I am obliged to you on be- half of Mrs. Dombey ; and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded, to discharge it as exactly as any othe commission." " You know," said Mr. Carker, " that you have only to command me." " I know," said Mr. Dombey, with a majestic indi- cation of assent, " that I have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this. Mrs. Dom- bey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many re- spects, to " " To do credit even to your choice," suggested Carker, with a fawning show of teeth. " Yes ; if you please to adopt that form of words," said Mr. Dombey, in his tone of state ; " and at present I do not conceive that Mrs. Dombey does that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle of oppo- sition in Mrs. Dombey that must be eradicated ; that must be overcome : Mrs. Dombey does not appear to understand," said Mr. Dombey, forcibly, " that the idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd." " We, in the City, know you better," replied Carker, with a smile from ear to ear. " You know me better," said Mr. Dombey. " I hope BO. 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 c-n my expressing my disapprobation and determi- nation to her, with some severity, on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonition appeared to pro- duce a very powerful effect." Mr. Dombey delivered himself of tlwse words with most portentous stateliness. DOMBEY AND SON. 237 " 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 (hat I shall be under the very disagreeable necessity of making you the bearer of yet more unwelcome and ex- plicit communications, if she has not the good sense and the proper feeling to adapt herself to my wishes, as the first Mrs. Dombey did, and, I believe I may add, as any other lady in her place would." *' The fir^t Mrs. Dombey lived very happily," said Carker. " The first Mrs. Dombey had great good sense," said Mi-. Dombey, in a gentlemanly toleration of the dead, ' and very correct feeling." " Is Miss Dombey like her .mother, do you think ? " said Carker. Suiftly and darkly, Mr. Dombey's face changed. His confidential agent eyed it keenly. " I have approached a painful subject," he said, in a soft regretful tone of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. " Pray forgive me. I forget these chains of asso- ciation in the interest I have. Pray forgive me. ' But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr. Dom- bey's downcast face none the less closely ; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at the picture, as appeal- ing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, and what was coining. " Carker." said Mr. Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and speaking in a somewhat altered and ISS DOMBET AND SON. Tnore 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 behavior towards my daughter." " Pardon me," said Mr. Carker, " I don't quite undei- stand." " Understand then," returned Mr. Dombey, " that yon may make that that you will make that, if you please matter of direct objection from me to Mrs. Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likely to induce people to contrast Mrs. Dombey in her relation towards my daughter, with Mrs. Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have the goodness to let Mrs. Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it ; and that I expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs. Dombey may be in earnest, or she may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me ; but I object to it in any case, and in every case. If Mrs. Dombey is in earnest, so much the less reluctant should she be to desist ; for she will not serve my daughter by any such display. If my wife has any superfluous gentleness, and duty over and above her proper submission to me, she may bestow them where she pleases, perhaps ; but I will have submission first! Carker," said Mr. Dombey, checking the unusual emo- tion with which he had spoken, and falling into a tone more like that in which he was accustomed to assert hia greatness, " you will have the goodness not to omit ot *lur this point, but to consider it a very important part if your instructions." Mr. Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table. DOMBEY AND SON. 239 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 l v y de- grees, or cooling his emotion in his sense of having aken a high position, sat gradually stiffening again, and look- ing at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her i;reat wedding-ring. " I beg your pardon," said Carter, after a silence, sud- denly resuming his chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr. Dombey's, " but let me understand. Mrs. Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of your displeasure ? " " Yes," replied Mr. Dombey. " I have said so." "Yes," rejoined Carker, quickly; "but why?" ' Why ! " Mr. Dombey repeated, not without hesita- tion. " Because I told her." . " Ay," replied Carker. " But why did you tell her ? You see," he continued with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have laid its sheathed claws, on Mr. Dombey's arm ; "if I perfectly understand what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I have not the honor of Mrs. Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I have no reason to expect it ; but I take the fact to be, t iat I have not got it ? " " Possibly not," said Mr. Dombey. " Consequently," pursued Carker, " your making ihese V>mmunications to Mrs. Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady ? " "It appears to me," said Mr. Dombey, with haughty HO DOMBEY AND SON. reserve, and yet with some embarrassment, " that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form no part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be so." "And pardon me do I misconceive you," said Corker, "when I think you descry in this, a like?y means of humbling Mrs. Dombey's pride I use the word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds, adorns and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and accomplishments and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her to the submission you so naturally and justly require?" " I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know," said Mr. Dombey, " to give such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt, but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that any confidence I could intrust to you, would be likely to degrade you " " Oh ! 1 degraded ! " exclaimed Carker. " In your service ! " '* or to place you," pursued Mr. Dombey, " in a false position." " / in a false position ! " exclaimed Carker. " I shall be proud delighted to execute your trust. 1 could have wished, I own, to have given the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and devotion for is slit: not your wife! no new cause of dislike; but a wish from you is, of course, paramount to every other con- sideration 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. DOMBEY AND SON. 241 I shall hope that she will perceive in the slight part 1 take, only a grain my removed and different sphere gives room for little more of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all considerations to you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to garner up a great store every day." Mr. Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild speech of his confidential agenl an echo of the words, " Nothing can make us stranger to each other than we are henceforth ! " But he shook off the fancy, and did not shake in his resolution, and said, " Certainly, no doubt." "There is nothing more," quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its old place for they had taken little breakfast as yet and pausing for an answer before he sat down. " Nothing," said Mr. Domboy, " 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 be- come me to temporize or treat upon any matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say is final." Mr. Carker signified his understanding of these cre- dentials, 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 revery of worshipful terror. Breakfast concluded, Mr. Dombey's horse was ordered out again, and Mr. Carker mounting his own, \hey rode off for the City together. Mr. Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much, VOL. III. 16 i42 DOMBEY AND SON. Mr. Dombey received his conversation with the sever eign 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 character- istically enough. But Mr. Dombey, in his dignity, rodo with very long stirrups, and a very loose rein, and very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse went. In consequence of which it happened that Mr. Dombey's horse, while going at a round trot stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolled over him, and lashing out with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to get up, kicked him. Mr. Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and a good horseman, was afoot, and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by the bridle, in a moment. Otherwise that morning's confidence would have been Mr. Dombey's last. Yet even with the flush and "hurry of this action red upon him, he bent over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and muttered as he stooped down, "I have given goed cause of offence to Mrs. Dombey now, if she knew it ! " Mr. Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, was carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker's direction, to the nearest public- house, which was not far off, and where he was soon at- tended by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succes- sion 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, thes*> gentlemen examined into the nature of his injuries. One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture f the leg, which was the landlord's opinion abo; but two surgeons who lived at a distance, and were only in DOMBEY AND SON. 243 that neighborhood by accident, combated this opinion so disinterestedly, that it was decided at last thnt the pa tient, though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so, and might be carefully taken home before night. His injuries being dressed and bandaged, which was a long operation, and he at length left to repose, Mr. Carker mounted his horse again, and rode away to carry the intelligence home. Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at its worst when he set forth on this errand ; animated by the craft and cruelty of thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather than of design or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and women. Drawing rein at length, and slackening in his speed, as he came into the more public roads, lie checked his white-legged horse into pick- ing his way along as usual, and hid himself beneath his sleek, hushed, crouching manner, and his ivory smile, as he best could. He rode direct to Mr. Dombey's house, alighted at the door, and begged to see Mrs. Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed him to Mr. Dom- bey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs. Dombey's hour for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not having mentioned it before. Mr. Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold recep- tion, 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), f he were not equally sure of the occasion being suf- ficient for his justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs, Dombey's maid appeared, and conducted him to a mri> 244 DOMBEI A-ND SON. ing room up-stairs, where Edith and Florence were to gether. He had never thought Edith half so beautiful be- fore. 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 beau- tiful. Her glance fell haughtily upon him in the door-way ; but he looked at Florence though only in the act of bending his head, as he came in with some irrepres- sible expression of the new power he held ; and it was his triumph to see the glance droop and falter, and to see that Edith half rose up to receive him. He was very sorry, he was deeply grieved ; he couldn't say with what unwillingness he came to prepare her for the intelligence of a very slight accident. He entreated Mrs. Dombey to compose herself. Upon his sacred word of honor, there was no cause of alarm. But Mr. Dombey Florence uttered a sudden cry. He did not look at her, but at Edith. Edith composed and reassured hei. She uttered no cry of distress. No, no. Mr. Dombey had met with an accident in riding. Hia horse had slipped, and he had been thrown. Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt ; that he was killed ! No. Upon his honor, 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, be, the distressed intruder, never could have had the courage to present himself before Mrs. Dombey. It was the truth indeed, he solemnly assured her. All this he said as if he were answering Edith, and UOMBEY AND SON. 245 not Florence, and with his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith. He then went on to tell her where Mr. Dornbey was lying, and to request that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home. 4i Mama." faltered Florence in tears, " If I might ven hire to go ! " Mr. Carker, having his eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her a secret look and slightly shook hia head. He saw how she battled with herself before she answered him with her handsome eyes, but he wrested the answer from her he showed her that he would have it, or that he would speak and cut Florence to the heart and she gave it to him. As he had looked at the picture in the morning, so he looked at her after- wards, when she turned her eyes away. "lam directed to request," he said, "that the new house-keeper Mrs. Pipchin, I think, is the name " Nothing escaped him. He saw, in an instant, that she was another slight of Mr. Dombey's on his wife. " may be informed that Mr. Dombey wishes to have his bed prepared in his own apartments down-stairs, 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 ia 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, be- rieve me." He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of Reference and conciliation ; and having returned to Mr. Oombey's room, arid there arranged for a carriage being ent after him to the City, mounted his hor^e again, and 246 DOMBEY AND rode slowly thither. He was very -thoughtful as he went along, and very thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriage oa his way back to the place where Mr. Dorabey had been left. It was only when sitting by that gentleman's couch that he was quite himself again, and conscious of his teeth. About the time of twilight, Mr. Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches and pains, was helped into his car- riage, and propped with cloaks and pillows on one side of it, while his confidential agent bore him company upon the other. As he was not to be shaken, they moved at little more than a foot pace ; and hence it was quite dark when he was brought home. Mrs. Pipchin, bitter and grim, and not oblivious of the Peruvian mines, as the establishment in general had good reason to know, received him at the door, and freshened the domestics with several little sprinklings of wordy vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to his room. Mr. Carker remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, as he declined to receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress who presided over his household, waited on Mrs. Dombey once more, with his report on her lord's condition. He again found Edith alone with Florence, and he again addressed the whole of his soothing speech to Edith, as if she were a prey to the liveliest and most affectionate anxieties. So earnest he was in his respect- ful sympathy, that, on taking leave, he ventured with one more glance towards Florence at the moment to take her hand, and bending over it, to touch it with hia lips. Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike *iis fair face with it, despite the flush upon her *.heek. DOMBEY AND SON. 247 the bright light in her eyes, and the dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her own room, she struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was bruised, and bled ; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if she could have thrust it in and burned it. Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark and threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as if her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapes of out- rage and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that might happen, flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resented figure marshalled them against bar. And that figure was her husband. 248 DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XLIII. THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT. FLORENCE, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the estrangement between her fathei and Edith, and saw it widen more and more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every day. Each day's added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love and hope, roused up the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and made it even heavier to bear than it had been before. It had been hard how hard may none but Florence ever know ! to have the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony ; and slight, or stern re- pulse, 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 Jove tor each -^of them, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder. Yet Florence now began to do so ; and the doing of it was a task imposed upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly from. She saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her ; hard, in- dexible, unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself witb DOMBEY AND SOX. 249 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 every one but her, with what disdain she treated him, how distantly she kept apart from him, and what she had said on the night when she 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 na- ture yearning to them both, feeling the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own duty to both, Flor- ence in her wider and expanded love, and by the side of Edith, endured more, than when she had hoarded up her undivided secret in the mournful house, and her beautiful mama had never dawned upon it. One exquisite unhappiness that would have far out- weighed 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 tho 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 beer beneath it o the presence of that higher Father who does not re- 250 DOMBEY AND SON. ject bis children's love, or spurn their tried and broken hearts, Heaven knows ! But it was otherwise, and that was well. No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on these subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise, a division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt that she was right. In this state of affairs her father was brought home suffering and disabled : and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by servants, not approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion but Mr. Carker, who withdrew near midnight. " And nice company he is, Miss Floy," said Susan Nipper. " Oh, he's a precious piece of goods ! If ever he wants a character don't let him come to me whatever he does, that's all I tell him." " Dear Susan," urged Florence, " don't ! " " Oh it's very well to say ' don't' Miss Floy," returned the Nipper, much exasperated ; " but raly begging your pardon we're coming to such passes that it turns all the blood in a person's body into pins and needles, with their pints all ways. Don't mistake me, Miss Floy, I don't mean nothing again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady should though she is rather high 1 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 growing too outrageous ! " " Papa thinks well of Mrs. Pipchin, Susan," returned Florence, " and has a right to choose his house-keeper fou know. Pray don't ! " DOMBU AND SON. 251 " Well, Miss Floy," returned the Nipper, " uhen you say don't, I never do I hope, but Mrs. Pipchin actg like early gooseberries upon me miss, and nothing less." Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punc- tuation in her discourse on this night, which was tho night of Mr. Dombey's being brought home, because, having been sent down-stairs by Florence to inquire after him, she had been obliged to deliver her message to her mortal enemy Mrs. Pipchin ; who, without carry- ing it in to Mr. Dombey had taken upon herself to re- turn 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 at- tached 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 % art of her own dominion to the handsome wife, without 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 252 DOMBEY AND SON. necessarily retired somewhat, since the marriage, Miss Nipper looked on, therefore, at domestic affairs in gen- eral, with a resolute conviction that no good would come of Mrs. Doiubey ; always being very careful to publish on all possible occasions, that she had nothing to say against her. " Susan," said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, " it is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night." u 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, Misa Floy and I'm thankful for it I'm sure. I've not a word to say against 'em." u 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 Nip- per, that she fell a-sobbing. " Now my dear Miss Floy," said Susan, '' let me go down-stairs again and see how your pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me go down-stairs again and knock at his door my own self." " No," said Florence, " go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning. I will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I dare say ; " Flor- ence blushed, for she had no such hope ; " or is there now, perhaps. Good-night ! " Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the probability of Mrs. Dombey's being in DOMBEY AND S0\. 25 S 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 mada her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother dead, her father unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting him away, but loving her. and loved by her, it seemed as if her affection could never prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was soon hushed, but the thoughts in which it had arisen were too true and strong to be dismissed with it; and they made the night desolate. Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all day, the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own room, untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy hours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and clasp her hands though it was not a new one in her mind that he might die, and never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought of once more stealing down-stairs, and venturing to hia door. She listened at her own. . The house was quiet, and all the lights were out. It was a long, long time", she chought, since she used to make her nightly pilgrimage* 254 DOMBEY AND SOS. to his door ! It was a long, long time, she tried to think, since she hud entered his room at midnight, and he had led her back to the stair-foot ! With the same child's heart within her, as of old : even with the child's sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence as strange to her father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept down the staircase, listening as she went, and drew near to hia room. No one was stirring in the house. The door waa partly open to admit air ; and all was so still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire, and count the tick- ing of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece. , She looked in. In that room, the house-keeper wrapped in a blanket was fast asleep in an easy-chair before the 6re. 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 hia bed. All was so very still that she could hear from hia breathing that he was asleep. This gave her courage to pass round the screen, and look into his chamber. It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had not expected to see it. Florence stood ar- rested on the spot, and if he had awakened then, must have remained there. There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair, which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms, resting outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it waa not this, that after the first quick glance, and first assur- ance of hii> 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 he; tyes. DOMBEf AND SON. 255 She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon it or she fancied so some disturbing ronfteiousness ef he:. She had never seen his face in all her life, but hope had su,,k within her, and her tiniiil glance had drooped before its stern, unloving, and repel- ling harshness. As she looked upon it now, she saw il, for the first time, free from the cloud that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil night, was reigning in its stead. He might have gone to sleep, for anything she saw there, blessing her. Awake, unkind father ! Awake now, sullen man ! The time is flitting by ; the hour is coming with an an- gry tread. Awake ! There was no change upon his face ; and as she watched it, awfully, its motionless repose recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked, so would he ; so she, his weeping child, who should say when ! so all the world of love and hatred and indifference around them ! When that time should come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she was going to do ; and it might fall something lighter upon her. She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief moment by its side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch him, round about him on Uie pillow. Awake, doomed man, while she is near ! The time is flitting by ; the hour is coming with an angry tread ; its foot is in the house. Awake ! In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften him towards her, if it might be so ; and if Dot, to forgive him if he was wrong, and pardon her th orayer. which almost seemed impiety. And doing so, 256 DOMBEY AND SON. and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly away, passed out of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone. He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is come ! Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept up-stairs. The quiet house had grown more dis- mal since she came down. The sleep she had been look- ing 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 oppres- sive. She felt unwilling, almost unable, to go on to her own chamber ; and turning into the drawing-rooms," where the clouded moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the empty streets. The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if they were cold. There was a dis- tant glimmer of something that was not quite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky ; and foreboding night was shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick bed, she had noted this bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden natural antipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy. Her mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause of her having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than in her ardent long- vng to have somebody to speak to, and to break this spell at' gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards ihe chamber where she slept. The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly .o her hesitating hand. She was surprised to find a DOMBEY AND SON. 257 bright light burning; still more surprised, on looking in, to see that her mama, but partially undressed, was sit- ting 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. u Mama ! " she cried, " what is the matter ! " Edith started ; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face, that Florence was more frightened than before. " Mama ! " said Florence, hurriedly advancing. " Dear mama ! what is the matter ! " " I have not been well," said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her in the same strange way. " I have had bad dreams, my love." " And not yet been to bed, mama ? " " No," she returned. " Half-waking dreams." Her features gradually softened ; and suffering Flor- ence to come close to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, " But what does my bird do here 1 What does my bird do here ! " " I have been uneasy, mama, in not seeing you to- night, and in not knowing how papa was ; and I " Florence stopped there, and said no more. "Is it late?" asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face. " Very late. Near day." " Near day ! " she repeated in surprise. " Dear mama, what have you done to your hand ? * aid Florence. vou in. 17 258 DOMBEY AND SON. 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, - yes, 1 say to some and all I do ! " and here the black-eyed shook her head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked a sob ; " but true and faithful service gives me right to speak I hope, and speak I must and will now, right or wrong." " What do you mean, woman ! " said Mr. Dombey, glaring at her. " How do you dare ? " " What I mean, sir, is to speak respectful and without offence, but out, and how I dare I know not but I do ! * Baid Susan. " Oh ! jou don't know my young lady sir you don't indeed, you'd never know so little of her, if you did." Mr. Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell- rope ; but there was no bell-rope on that side of the fire, and he could not rise and <*.ross to the other without assistance. The quick eye of the Nipper detected his Z64 DOMBEY AND SON. helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, she felt she had got him. " Miss Floy," said Susan Nipper, " is the must de- voted and most patient and most dutiful and beautiful of daughters, there a'n't no gentleman, no sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest of England put together," but might be proud of her and would and ought. If he knew her value right, he'd rather lose his greatness and his fortune piece by piece and beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to some and all, he would ! " cried Susan Nipper, bursting into tears, " than bring the sorrow on her tender heart that I have seen it suffer in this house ! " " Woman," cried Mr. Dombey, " leave the room." " Begging your pardon, not even if I am to leave the situation, sir," replied the steadfast Nipper, " in which I have been so many years and seen so much although I hope you'd never have the heart to send me from Miss Floy for such a cause will I go now till I have said the rest, I may not be a Indian widow sir and I am not and I would not so become but if I once made up my mind to burn myself alive, I'd do it! And I've made my mind up to go on." Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper's countenance, than by her words. " There a'n'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 df times thought of speaking to you and never been able to make my mind up to it till last night, but last night iecided of me." Mr. Dombey, in a paroxysm of rage, made anothei DOMBEY AND SOW. 265 grasp at the bell-rope that was not there, and, in its absence, pulled his hair rather than nothing. " I have seen," said Susan Nipper, " Miss Floy strive and strive when nothing but a child so sweet and patiem that the best of women might have copied from her, I've seen her sitting nights together half the night through to help her delicate brother with his learning, I've seen her helping him and watching him at other times some well know when I've seen her, with no encouragement and no help, grow up to be a lady, thank God ! that is the grace and pride of every company she goes in, and I've always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feel- ing of it I say to some and all, I have ! and never said one word, but ordering one's self lowly and rever- ently towards one's betters, is not to be a worshipper of graven images, and I will and must speak ! " " Is there anybody there ! " cried Mr. Dombey, call- ing out. " Where are the men ? where are the women ! Is there no one there ! " " I left my dear young lady out of bed late last night," said Susan, nothing checked, " and I knew why, for you was ill sir and she didn't know how ill and that was enough to make her wretched as I saw it did. I may not be a peacock ; but I have my eyes arid I sat up a little in my own room, thinking she might be lonesome and might want me, and I saw her steal down-stairs 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 (>far to hear it. I cannot bear to bear it," sj.id Susan Nipper, wiping her black eyes, and fixing them un- dauntedly on Mr. Dombey 's infuriated face. "It's not the first time I have heard it, not by many and manj 266 DOMBEY AND SON. a time you don't know your own daughter, sir, you don't know what you're doing, sir, I say to some and all," cried Susan Nipper, in a final burst, " that it's a sinful shame ! " " Why, hoity, toity ! " cried the voice of Mrs. Pip- chin, as the black bombazine garments of that fair Peruvian Miner swept into the room. " What's this, indeed ! " Susan favored Mrs. Pipchin with a look she had invented expressly for her when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to Mr. Dombey. " What's this ! " repeated Mr. Dombey almost foam- ing. " What's this, madam ? You who are at the head of this household, and txmnd to keep it in or- der, have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman ? " " I know very little good of her, sir," croaked Mrs. Pipchin. " How dare you come here, you hussy ? Go along with you ! " But the inflexible Nipper, merely honoring Mrs. Pip- chin with another look, remained. " Do you call it managing this establishment, madam," said Mr. Dombey, " to leave a person like this at lib- erty to come and talk to me ! A gentleman in hi? own house in his own room assailed with the im- pertinences of women servants ! " " Well sir," returned Mrs. Pipchin, with vengeance in her hard gray 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 267 shaking her head at Susan Nipper. " For shame, you hussy ! Go along with you ! " " If you find people in my service who are not to be controlled, Mrs. Pipchin," said Mr. Dorabey, turning back towards the fire, " you know what to do with them* I presume. You know what you are here for ? Take her away ! " " Sir, I know what to do," retorted Mrs. Pipchin, u and of course shall do it. Susan Nipper," snapping her up particularly short, " a month's warning from this hour." " Oh indeed ! " cried Susan, loftily. " Yes," returned Mrs. Pipchin, " and don't smile at me, you minx, or I'll know the reason why ! Go along with you this minute ! " " I intend to go this minute, you may rely upon it," said the voluble Nipper. " I have been in this house waiting on my young lady a dozen year and I won't stop in it one hour under notice from a person owning to the name of Pipchin, trust me, Mrs. P." " A good riddance of bad rubbish ! " said that wrath- ful old lady. " Get along with you, or I'll have you car- ried out ! " " My comfort is," said Susan, looking back at Mr. Dombey, "that I have told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long before and can't be told too often or too plain and that no amount of Pipchinses I hope the number of 'em mayn't be great" (here Mrs. Pipchin uttered a very sharp "Go along with you ! " and Miss Nipper repeated the look) " can unsay what I have said, though they gave a whole year full of warnings beginning at ten o'clock in the forenoon and never leaving off till twelve at night 268 DOMBEY AND SON. and died of the exhaustion which would be a Jubi- lee!" With these words, Miss Nipper preceded her foe out of the room ; and walking up-stairs to her own apart- ment in great state, to the choking exasperation of the ireful Pipchin, sat down among her boxes and began to cry. . From this soft mood she was soon aroused, with a very wholesome and refreshing effect, by the voice of Mrs. Pipchin outside the door. " Does that bold-faced slut," said the fell Pipchin, " intend to take her warning, or does she not ? " Miss Nipper replied from within that the person described did not inhabit that part of the house, but that her name was Pipchin, and she was to be found in the house-keeper's room. " You saucy baggage ! " retorted Mrs. Pipchin, rat- tling 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 gentlewoman who has seen bet- ter days ? " To which Miss Nipper rejoined from her castle, that Bhe 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. a 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 ntay take your affidavit." The Dowager expressed her lively satisfaction at thia intelligence, and with some general opinions upon young hussies as a race, and especially upon their demerits aftei DOMBEY AND SON. 269 being spoiled by Miss Dombey, withdrew to prepare the Nipper's wages. Susan then bestirred herself to get her trunks iii order, that she might take an immediate and dignified departure ; sobbing heartily all the time, 08 she thought of Florence. The object of her regret was not long in coining 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 rumor, Florence found to be so correct, that Susan had locked the last trunk and was Billing upon it with her bonnet on, when she came into her room. " Susan ! " cried Florence. " Going to leave me ! You ! " "Oh for goodness gracious sake, Miss Floy," said Susan sobbing, " don't speak a word to me or I shall demean myself before them Pi-i-pchinses, and I wouldn't have 'em see me cry Miss Floy for worlds ! " " Susan ! " said Florence. " My dear girl, my old friend ! What shall I do without you ! Can you bear to go away so ? " " No-n-o-o, my darling dear Miss Floy, I can't indeed," gobbed Susan. " But it can't be helped, I've done my duty, mi>s, I have indeed. It's no fault of mine. I am quite resi-ign?d. I couldn't stay my month or I could never leave you then my darling and I must at la>t as well as at first, don't speak to me Miss Floy, for though I'm pretty firm I'm not a marble door-post, my own dear.' "What is it! Why is it ?" said Florence. "Won't fou tell me ? " For Susan was shaking her head. 270 DOMBEY AND SON. " 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 as God bless you my own pre- cious and forgive me any harm I have done, or any temper I have showed in all these many years ! " With which entreaty, very heartily delivered, Susan hugged her mistress in her arms. " My darling there's a many that may come to serve you and be glad to serve you and who'll serve you well and true," said Susan, " but there can't be one who'll serve you so affectionate as me or love you half as dearly, that's my comfort. Go-ood-by, sweet Miss Floy ! " " Where will you go, Susan ? " asked her weeping mistress. " I've got a brother down in the country miss a farmer in Essex," said the heart-broken Nipper, " that keeps ever so many co-o-ows and pigs and I shall go down there by the coach and sto-op with him, and don't mind me, for I've got money in the Savings' Banks my dear, and needn't take another service just yet, which I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't do, my heart's own mis- tress ! " Susan finished with a burst of sorrow, which was opportunely broken by the voice of Mrs. Pipchin talking down-stairs ; on hearing which, she dried her ted and swollen eyes, and made a melancholy feint of calling jauntily to Mr. Towlinson to fetch a cab and carry down her boxes. Florence, pale and hurried and distressed, but with- held from useless interference even here, by her dread of causing any new division between her father and hij wife (whose stern, indignant face had been a warning DOMBEi" AND SJN. 271 .o 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, fol- lowed, weeping, down-stairs to Edith's dressing-room, whither Susan betook herself to make her parting cour- fc*y. " Now, here's the cab, and here's the boxes, ge t along Vnth you, do ! " said Mrs. Pipchin, presenting herself at the same moment. " I beg your pardon, ma'am, but Mr. Dombey's orders are imperative." Edith, sitting under the hands of her maid she was going out to dinner preserved her haughty face, and took not the least notice. " There's your money," said Mrs. Pipchin, who, in pursuance of her system, and in recollection of the Mines, was accustomed to rout the servants about, as she had routed her young Brighton boarders ; to the everlasting acidulation of Master Bitherstone, " and the sooner this house sees your back the better." Susan had no spirits even for the look that belonged to Mrs. Pipchin by right ; so she dropped her courtesy to Mrs. Dombey (who inclined her head without one word, and whose eye avoided every one but Florence), and gave one last parting hug to her young mistress, and received her parting embrace in return. Pool Susan's face at this crisis, in the intensity of her feel- ings and the determined suffocation of her sobs, lest one r hould become audible and be a triumph to Mrs. Pipchin, presented a series of the most extraordinary physiog- nomical phenomena ever witnessed. " I beg your pardon, miss, I'm sure," said Towlinson, Wtside the door with the boxes, addressing Florence, *but Mr. Toots is in the dining-room, and send? hi* 272 DOAIBEY AND SON. compliments, and begs to know how Diogenes and mas- ter is." Quick as thought, Florence glided out and hastened down-stairs, where Mr. Toots, in the most splendid vest- ments, was breathing very hard with doubt and agitatiou nn the subject of her coming. "Oh, howde do, Miss Donibey," said Mr. Toots, "God bless my soul ! " This last ejaculation was occasioned by Mr. Toots'a deep concern at the distress he saw in Florence's face : which caused him to stop short in a fit of chuckles, and become an image of despair. " Dear Mr. Toots," said Florence, " you are so friendly to me, and so honest, that I am sure I may ask a favor of you." " Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, " if you'll only name one, you'll you'll give me an appetite. To which," said Mr. Toots, with some sentiment, " I have long been a stranger." " Susan, who is an old friend of mine, the oldest friend I have," said Florence, " is about to leave here suddenly, and quite alone, poor girl, She is going home, a liitle way into the country. Might I ask you to 'take care of her until she is in the coach ? " " Miss Dombey," returned Mr. Toots, " you really do me an honor and a kindness. This proof of your confi- dence, after the manner in which I was Beast enough to conduct myself at Brighton " " Yes," said Florence, hurriedly "no don't think of that. Then would you have the kindness to to go ? and to be ready to meet her when she comes out ? Tliank you a thousand times ! You ease my mind so Kiudu She doesn't seem so desolate. You cannot think DOME I Y AND SON. 273 how grateful I feel to you, or what a good friend I am sure you are!" And Florence in her earnestness thanked him again and again ; and Mr. Toots in his earnestness hurried away but backwards, that he might lose no glimpse of her. Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in the hall, with Mrs. Pipchin driving hei forth, and Diogenes jumping about her, and terrifying Mrs. Pipchin to the last degree by making snaps at her bombazine skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of her voice for the good duenna was the deorest 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 tes- tify an impossibility of conviction that he had no longer any property in the fare ; and the door was shut, and the hurry over, and her tears flowed fast for the loss of an old friend, whom no one could replace. No one. No one. Mr. Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was, stopped the cabriolet in a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission, at which she cried more than before. " Upon my soul and body ! " said Mr. Toots, taking his seat beside her, " I feel for you. Upon my word and honor I think you can hardly know your own feel- ings better than I imagine them. 1 can conceive nothing more dreadful than to have to leave Miss Dombey." Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really rcus touching to see her. " I say," said Mr. Toots, " now, don't ! at least I mean uow do, you know ! " " Do what, Mr. Toots ? " cried Susan. VOL. in. 18 274 DOMBEY ANI- SOU. " Why, come home to my place, and have ^ome dinner before you start," said Mr. Toots. " My cook's a most respectable woman one of the most motherly people I ever saw and she'll be delighted to make you comfort- able. Her son," said Mr. Toots, as an additional rec- ommendation, " was educated in the Blue-coat School, and blown up in a powder-mill." Susan accepting this kind offer, Mr. Toots conducted her to his dwelling, where they were received by the matron in question who fully justified his character of her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, on see- ing a lady in the vehicle, that Mr. Dombey had been doubled up, agreeably to his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman awakened in Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment ; for, hav- ing been defeated by the Larkey boy, his visage was ia a state of such great dilapidation, as to be hardly pr<<- sentable in society with comfort to the beholders. The Chicken himself attributed this punishment to his hav- ing 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 3im ilar strange inconveniences, until he had been gono into and finished. After a good repast, and much hospitality, Susan set oat 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 275 by the moral weight and heroism of hi? 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 riil 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 un- acceptable. The night-coach by which Susan was to go, was on the point of departure. Mr. Toots having put her in- side, lingered by the window, irresolutely, until the driver was about to mount ; when, standing on the step, and putting in a face that by the light of the lamp was anxious and confused, he said abruptly : " I say, Susan ! Miss Dombey, you know " " Yes, sir." " Do you think she could you know eh ? " " I beg your pardon, Mr. Toots," said Susan, " but I don't hear you." " Do you think she could be brought, you know. not exactly at once, but in time in a long time to to love me, you know ! There ! " said poor Mr. Toots. " Oh dear no ! " returned Susan, shaking her head. u I should say never. Ne ver 1 " w Thank'ee ! " said Mr. Toots. " It's of no conse- quence. Good-night. It's of no consequence, thank'ee ! '' 276 DOMBEY AND SOU. CHAPTER XLV. THE TRUSTY AGENT. EDITH went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a few minutes after ten o'clock, when her carriage rolled along the street in which she lived. There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been when she was dressing ; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or rendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered brain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. So obdu- rate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought that nothing could soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in life had hardened it. Arrived at her own door, she was alighting, when borne one .xmnng 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. u How is your patient, sir ? " she said, with a curled Up. " He is better," returned Carker. " He is doing very well. I have left him for the night." DOMBEY AND SON. 277 She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followed and said, speaking at the bottom : "Madam! May I beg the favor of a minute's au- dience ? " She stopped and turned her eyes back. " It is an un- seasonable time, sir, and I am fatigued. Is ycur busi- r.ess urgent?" " It is very urgent," returned Carker. " As I am so fortunate as to have met you, let me press my petition.' She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked up at her, standing above him in her stately dress, and thought, again, how beautiful she was. " Where is Miss Dombey ? " she asked the servant, aloud. " In the morning room, ma'am." " Show the way there ! " Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman at the bottom of the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of her head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on. " I beg your pardon ! madam ! Mrs. Dombey ! " cried the soft and nimble Carker, at her side in a moment. u May I be permitted to entreat that Miss Dombey IH not present ? " She confronted him, with a quick look, but with the lame self-possession and steadiness. - I would spare Miss Dombey," said Carker, in a low voice, " the knowledge of what I have to say. At least, \nadam, I would leave it to you to decide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is my Dounden duty to you. After bur former interview, it vould be monstrous in me if I did otherwise." She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turn 278 DOMBEY AND SON. ing 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 liis eyes bent upon the carpet, stood before her, at soina little distance. " Before I hear you, sir," said Edith, when the door was closed, " I wish you to hear me." "To be addressed by Mrs. Dombey," he returned, u even in accents of unmerited reproach, is an honor I so greatly esteem, that although I were not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most readily." " If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, sir;" Mr. Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise, but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention ; " with any message to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive it. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have expected you some time." " It is my misfortune," he replied, " to be here, wholly against my will, for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes. That is one." " That one, sir," she returned, " is ended. Or, if you return to it " " Can Mrs. Dombey believe," said Carker, coming nearer, " that I would return to it in the face of her pro- hibition ? Is it possible that Mrs. Dombey, having no *egard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to wnsider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful injustice ? " " Sir," returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full DOMBEY AND SON. 279 upon him, and speaking with a rising pasjion that in- flated her proud nostril and her swelling neck, and Ptirred the delicate white down upon a rohe she wore, thrown loosely over shoulders that could bear its snowy neighborhood. " Why do you present yourself to me, RS 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 honor him ? How dare you venture so to affront me, when you know 1 do not know bet- ter, sir : I have seen it in your every glance, and heard it in your every word that in place of affection be- tween us there is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less than I despise myself for being his ! Injustice ! If I had done justice to the torment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have put upon me, I should have slain you ! " She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride and wrath, and self-humiliar tion, which she was, fiercely as she bent her gaze upon him, she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring her to this declaration. She saw it not, and cared not whether it was there or no. She saw only the indignities and struggles she had undergone, and had to undergo, and was writhing under then. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve her as a fan, and rained them on the ground. He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs of her anger as had escaped her con- rol subsided, with the air of a man who had his suf- ficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it 280 DOMBET AND SOX. And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes. " Madam," he said, " I know, and knew before to-day that I have found no favor with you ; and I knew why, Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence" " Confidence ! " she repeated, with disdain. He passed it over. " that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the first, that there was no affection on your part, for Mr. Dombey how could it possibly exist between such different subjects ! And I have seen, since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been en- gendered in your breast how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced as you have been. But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to you in so many words ? " " Was it for you, sir," she replied, " to feign that other belief, and audaciously to thrust it on me day by day ? " " Madam, it was," he eagerly retorted. " If I had done less, if I had done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus ; and I foresaw who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of Mr. Dombey than myself? that unless your character should prove to be as yielding and obedient as that of Ins first submissive lady, which I did not believe " A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that ha might repeat this. " I say, which I did not believe, the time was likely to come, when such an understanding as we have nonv M rived at, would be serviceable." " Serviceable to whom, sir ? " she demanded scorn fully. !>OMBEY AND SON. 281 " To you. 1 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 dis- tasteful to one whose aversion and contempt," with great expression, " are so keen." " It is honest in you, sir," said Edith, " to confess t your ' limited commendation,' and to speak in that tone of disparagement, even of him : being his chief counsel- lor and flatterer ! " "Counsellor, yes," said Carker. "Flatterer no. A little reservation I fear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly oblige many of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have part- nerships of interest and convenience, friendships of inter- est and convenience, dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest and convenience, every day." She bit her blood-red lip ; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch she kept upon him. " Madam," said Mr. Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near her, with an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, " why should I hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak plainly! It was natural that a lady endowed as you are, should Ihink it feasible to change her husband's character in ome respects, and mould him to a better form." " It was not natural to me, sir," she rejoined. " I had aever any expectation or intention of that kind." The proud undaunted face showed him it was resolute to wear no mask he offered, but was set upon a reckless disclosure of itself, indifferent to any aspect in which il e money. DOMBET AND SON. 299 " A shilling, dear ! " she said, with her eager, avari cious face, " or sixpence ! For old acquaintance' sake I'm so poor. And my handsome gal" looking over her shoulder " she's my gal, Rob half starves me. But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, hei daughter, coming quietly back, caught the hand in hers and twisted out the coin. " What," she said, " mother ! always money ! money from the first, and to the last. Do you mind so little what I said but now ? Here. Take it ! " The old woman uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter's side out of the yard, and along the by-street upon which it opened. The astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped, and fell to earnest conversation very soon ; and more than once observed a darkly threatening action of the younger woman's hand (ob- viously having reference to some one of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble imitation of it on the part of Mrs. Brown, that made him earnestly hope he might not be the subject of their discourse. With the present consolation that they were gone, and with the prospective comfort that Mrs. Brown could not live forever, 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 inci- dental 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 re- ceive his master's orders. SCO DOMBEY AND SOJX. 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 caieful, and to use despatch a mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder's imagination with dismal warnings and threats ; and more powerful with him than any words. Alone again, in his own room, Mr. Carker applied himself to work, and worked all day. He saw many visitors ; overlooked a number of documents ; went in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort ; and indulged in no more abstraction until the day's busi- ness was done. But, when the usual clearance, of papers from his table was made at last, he fell into his thought- ful mood once more. He was standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyes intently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring back some letters that had been taken out in the course of the day. He put them quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr. Car- ker the manager, whose eyes had rested on him on his entrance, as if they had all this time had him for the subject for their contemplation, instead of the office-floor, said: u Well, John Carker, and what brings you here ? " His brother pointed to the letters, and was again with drawing. a I wonder," said the manager, " that you can com* and go, without inquiring how our master is." " We had word this morning, in the counting-house, that Mr. Dombey was doing well," replied his brother. " You are such a meek fellow," said the manager with DOMBET AND SON. 301 \ smile " but you have grown so, in the course o* fears that if any harm came to him, you'd be misera* ale, I dare swear now." " I should be truly sorry, James," returned the other. " He would be sorry ! " said the manager, pointing at him, as if there were some other person present to whom he was appealing. " He would be truly sorry ! This brother of mine ! This junior of the place, this slighted piece of lumber, pushed aside with his face to the wall, like a rotten picture, and left so, for Heaven knows how many years ; he's all gratitude and respect, and devotion too, he would have me believe ! " " I would have you believe nothing, James," returned the other. " Be as just to me as you would to any other man below you. You ask a question, and I answer it." " And have you nothing, spaniel," said the manager, with unusual irascibility, "to complain of in him? No proud treatment to resent, no insolence, no foolery of Btate, no exaction of any sort ! What the devil ! are you man or mouse ? " "It would be strange if any two persons could be to- gether for so many years, especially as superior and in- ferior, without each having something to complain of in the other as he thought, at all events," replied John Carker. " But apart from my history here " " His history here ! " exclaimed the manager. " Why, (here it is. The very fact that makes him an extreme wise, puts him out of the whole chapter ! Well ? " "Apart from that, which, as you hint, gives me a rea- wn 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 L Jbat anybody here would be indifferent to a mischance S02 DOMBEt AND BON. or misfortune happening to the head of the House, or anything than truly sorry for it?" " You have good reason to be bound to him too ! " said the manager, contemptuously. " Why, don't you believe that you are kept here, as a cheap example, and a famous instance of the clemency of Dombey and Son, redounding to the credit of the illustrious House ? " "No," replied his brother mildly, "I have long be- lieved that I am kept here for more kind and disinter- ested reasons." " But you were going," said the manager, with the snarl of a tiger-cat, " to recite some Christian precept, I observed." " Nay, James," returned the other, " though the tie of brotherhood between us has been long broken and thrown away " " Who broke it, good sir ? " said the manager. " I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you." The manager replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, " Oh, you don't charge it upon me ! " and bade him go on. " I say, though there is not that tie between us, do not, I entreat, assail me with unnecessary taunts, or mis- interpret 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 otheis, for advancement, confidence, and distinction (se- lected, in the beginning, I know, f or your great ability and trustfulness), and who communicate more freely with Mr. Dombey than any one, and stand, it may be eaid, on equal terms with him, and have been favored and enriched by him that it would be a mistake to juppose that it is only you who are tender of his welfare DOMBEY AND SON. 303 Rnd reputation. There is no one in the house, from yourself down to the lowest, I sincerely believe, who does not participate in that feeling." " You lie," said the Manager, red with sudden anger. " You're a hypocrite, John Carker, and you lie ! " " James ! " cried the other, flushing in his turn What do you mean by these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked ? " " I tell you," said the manager, " that your hypocrisy and meekness that all the hypocrisy and meekness of this place is not worth that to me, snapping his thumb and finger, " and that I see through it as if it were air ! There is not a man employed here, standing between myself and the lowest in place (of whom you are very considerate, and with reason, for he is not far off), who wouldn't be glad at heart to see his master humbled . who does not hate him, secretly : who does not wish him evil rather than good : and who would not turn upon him, if he had the power and boldness. The nearer to his favor, the nearer to his insolence ; the closer to him, the farther from him. That's the creed here ! " " I don't know," said his brother, whose roused feel- ings 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 dif- ferent aspect from any that I ever saw in you I will only say to you, once more, you are deceived." " 1 know I am," said the manager. " I have told you so." u Not by me," returned his brother. ' By your in B04 DOMBET AND SON. forraant, if you have one. If not, by your own thoughts and suspicions." " I have no suspicions," said the manager. " Mine are certainties. You pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs ! All making the same show, all canting the same story, all whining the same professions, all har- boring the same transparent secret." His brother withdrew, without saying more, and shut the door as he concluded. Mr. Carker the manager drew a chair close before the fire, and fell to beating the coals softly with the poker. " The faint-hearted, fawning knaves," he muttered, with his two shining rows of teeth laid bare. " There's not one among them, who wouldn't feign to be so shocked and outraged ! Bah ! There's not one among them, but if he had at once the power, and the wit and daring to use it, would scatter Dombey's pride and lay it low, as ruthlessly as I rake out these ashes." As he broke them up, and strewed them in the grate, he looked on with a thoughtful smile, at what he was doing. " Without the same queen beckoner too ! " he added presently ; " and there is a pride there, not to be forgotten witness our own acquaintance ! " With that he fell into a deeper revery, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he rose up like a man who had Deen absorbed in a book, and looking round him took bis hat and gloves, went to where his horse was waiting, mounted, and rode away through the lighted streets ; for it was evening. He rode near Mr. Dombey's house ; and falling into a walk as he approached it, looked up at the windows. The window where he had once seen Florence sitting with her dog, attracted his attention first, though there DOMBEY AND SON. 805 tvas no light in it ; but he smiled as he carried his eyes up the tall front of the house, and seemed to leave that object superciliously behind. " Time was," he said, " when it was well to watch even your rising little star, and know in what quartei there were clouds, to shadow you if needful. But planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light." He turned the white-legged horse, round the street corner, and sought one shining window from among those at the back of the house. Associated with it was a cer- tain 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 ris- ing of a distant storm. These were the things he carried with him as he turned away again, and rode through the darkening and deserted parks at a quick rate. In fatal truth, these were associated with a woman, a proud woman, who hated him, but who by slow and suro degrees had been led on by his craft, and her pride ami resentment, to endure his company, and little by little to receive him as one who had the privilege to talk to hr i f 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 deeplyi 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 reasou ; since 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 800 DOMBEY AND SON. shuddered at, and never seen again, would have been sufficient stain upon her soul. Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on Lis ride ; true to the reality, and obvious to him ? Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was She bore him company with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty ; with nothing plainer to him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes haughty and repellant 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 dis- guise, and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going. And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and came into the light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothing smile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of the gloved hand, and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion. Upon the dangerous way that she was going, he was still ; and not a footprint did she mark upon it, but he set his own there, straight. ? ,sfa.ii!> ct'.' ii*T recovery Captain Cuttle . witb an. ii-.' . c: -v'/^ti'h with ;. j'Lvsji-ian'3 tj^atnierit of a paUfnt.iocik .wi, uov.ri fr. -;;. ih- aiaatRl-ahptf.aTiii hoidmg it cut on. his hook taking rlorei^f-p's hand in his, locked steadily from one to the othe x.p*:i-ting ihr difti tt no aoTTip thing.* DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XLyil. THE THUNDERBOLT. THE barrier between Mr. Dombey and his wife, was not weakened by time. Ill-assorted couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, bound together by no tie but the manacle that joined their fettered hands, and straining that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore and chafed to the bone, Time, consoler of afflic- tion and softener of anger, could do nothing to help them. Their pride, however different in kind and object, was equal in degree ; and, in their flinty opposition, struck out fire between them which might smoulder or might blaze, as circumstances were, but burned up everything within their mutual reach, and made their marriage way a road of ashes. Let us be just to him : In the monstrous delusion of his life, swelling with every grain of sand that shifted in its glass, he urged her on, he little thought to what, or considered how ; but still his feeling towards her, such as it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit of unaccountably putting herself in opposition to the rec- gnition of his vast importance, and to the acknowledg- ment of her complete submission to it, and so far it waa 8 DOMBEY AND SON. necessary to correct and reduce her ; but otherwise he still considered her, in his cold way, a lady capable of doing honor, if she would, to his choice and name, and of reflecting credit on his proprietorship. Now, she with all her might of passionate and proud resentment, bent her dark glance from day to day, and hour to hour from that night in her own chamber, when she had sat gazing at the shadows on the wall, to the deeper night fast coming upon one figure directing a crowd of humiliations and exasperations against her; and that figure, still her husband's. Was Mr. Dombey's master-vice that ruled him so in- exorably, an unnati ral characteristic ? It might be worth while, sometimes, to inquire what Nature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced distor- tions 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 de- signing people standing round, and what is Nature to the willing captive who has never risen up upon the wings of a free mind drooping and useless soon to see her in her comprehensive truth ! Alas ! are there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and yet most natural in being so ! Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the unnatural outcasts of society ; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all dis- tinctions 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 doc- tor, who, with his life imperilled at every breath he Iraws, goes down into their dens, lying within the echoes DOMBEY AND SOX. 9 of cur carriage-wheels and daily tread upon the pave- ment stone*. Look round upon the world of odious sights millions of immortal creatures have no other world on earth at the lightest mention of which hu- manity 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 forth to the sun as GOD designed it. And then, calling up some ghastly child, with stunted form and wicked face, hold forth on its unnatural sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far away from Heaven but think a little of its having been conceived, and born and bred in Hell! Those who study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the health of man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from vitiated air, were pal- pable 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 eter- ';al laws of outraged Nature, is inseparable from them, ould be made discernible too, how terrible the revela- tion ! Then should we see depravity, impiety, drunk- enness, theft, murder, and a long train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of mankind, iverhunging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blighf 10 DOMBEY AND SON. 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, aud make the convict-ships swim deep, and roll across the seas, and over-run vast continents with crime. Theu should we stand appalled to know, that where we genei. ate 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 in guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we bear. Unnatural humanity ! When we shall gather grapes from thorns, and tigs from thistles ; when fields of grain shall spring up from the offal in the by-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fat. church-yards that they cherish ; then we may look for natural humanity, and find it growing from such seed. Oh for a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more potent aud benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes, to swel 1 the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forll 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 retri- butions 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 stum- bling-blocks of their own making, which are but specks of dust upon the path between them ana eternity, would ihen apply themselves, like creatures of one DOMBEY AND SOX. 11 origin, owning one duty to the Father of one family, and tending to one common end, to make the world a better place ! Not the less bright and blest would that day be for rousing some who never have looked out upon the world of human life around them, to a knowledge of their own relation to it, and for making them acquainted with a perversion of nature in their own contracted sympathies and estimates ; as great, and yet as natural in its devel- opment when once begun, as the lowest degradation known. But no such day had ever dawned on Mr. Dombey, or his wife ; and the course of each was taken. Through six months that ensued upon his accident tli<-v held the same relations one towards (lie 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 lie more sullen or more cold than he. The hope that had fluttered within her when the promise of her new home dawned, was quite gone from the heart of Florence now. That home was nearly two years old ; and even the patient trust that was in her, could not survive the daily blight of such experience. If she had any lingering fancy in the nature of hope lef', 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 remembrarce of hia coldness since and before, or only remembered as a sorrowful delusion. Florence loved him still, but by degrees, had come to 1 2 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 her mother, Beemed 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 fro- zen, 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 lift, than the image she would sometimes conjure up of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to be a man, who would protect and cherish her. The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almost seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these thoughts. She was often alone now, for the old association be- tween her and her mama was greatly changed. At the time of her father's accident, and when he was lying in his room down-stairs, Florence had first observed that Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile this with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her own room at night, once more. " Mama," said Florence, stealing softly to her side * have I offended you ? " Edith answered, "No." u I must have done something," said Florence. " Tell DOMBEY AND SON. 18 me what it is. You have changed your manner to me, dear mama. I cannot say how instantly I feel the least change ; for I love you with my whole heart." " As I do you," said Edith. " Ah, Florence, believe me never more than now ! " " Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away ? " asked Florence. " And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear mama ? You do so, do you not ? " Edith signified assent with her dark eyes. " Why," returned Florence imploringly. " Tell me why, that I may know how to please you better ; and tell me this shall not be so any more." " My Florence," answered Edith, taking the hand that embraced her neck, and looking into the eyes that looked into hers so lovingly, as Florence knelt upon the ground before her ; " why it is, I cannot tell you. It is neither for me to say, nor you to hear ; but that it is, and that it must be, I know. Should I do it if I did not ? " " Are we to be estranged, mama ? " asked Florence, gazing at her like one frightened. Edith's silent lips formed " Yes." Florence looked at her with increasing fear and won- der, until she could see her no more through the blind- ing tears that ran down her face. " Florence ! my life ! " said Edith, hurriedly, " listen to me. I cannot bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is it nothing to oae?" She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words, and added presently : "Not wholly estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance, Florence, for in my own breast I am still 14 DOMBEY AND SON. Che same to you, and ever will be. But what I dc is not done for myself." " Is it for me, mama ? " asked Florence. " It is enough," said Edith, after a pause, " to know what it is ; why, matters little. Dear Florence, it id better it is necessary it must be that oui asso- ciation should be less frequent. The confidence thfic has been between us must be broken off." " When ? " cried Florence. " Oh, mama, when ? " Now," said Edith. " For all time to come ? " asked Florence. " I do not say that," answered Edith. " I do not know that. Nor will I say that companionship between us, is, at the best, an ill-assorted and unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My way here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way henceforth may lie God knows I do not see it" Her voice died away into silence ; and she sat, look- ing 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 oad the charm. " Mama," said Florence anxiously, " there is a change in you, in more than what you say to me, which alarms ne. Let me stay with you a little." DOMBEl' AND SON. 15 " No." said Edith, " no, dearest. I am best left alone low, and 1 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 ycur dark home I am a shadow on it, I know well and It t us never speak of this again." " Mama," sobbed Florence, " we are not to part?" " We do this that we may not part," said Edith. " Ask no more. Go, Florence ! My love and my remorse go with you !" She embraced her, and dismissed her ; and as Flor- ence passed out of her room, Edith looked on the retir- ing figure, as if her good angel went out in that form, and left her to the haughty and indignant passions that now claimed her for their own, and set their seal upon her brow. From that hour, Florence and she were, as they had been, no more. For days together, they would seldom meet, except at table, and when Mr. Dombey was pres- ent. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent, never looked at her. Whenever Mr. Curker was of the party, as he often was, during the progress of Mr. Dombey's recovery, and afterwards, Edith held herself moie re- moved from her, and was more distant towards her, than at other times. Yet she and Florence never encoun- tered, when there was no one by, but she wculd 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 whispe/ 16 DOMBEY AND SON. * 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. Jiut less and less often as the months went OL. And now the void in Florence's own heart began again, indeed, to make a solitude arc.und her. As the image of the father whom she loved had insensibly be- come 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 earnest- ness and tenderness she had shown, was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which she stood, upon the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring to look down. There was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith, and though it was slight comfort to her burdened heart, she tried to think it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty to the two, Florence could love both and do no injustice to either. As shadows of her fond imagination, she could give them equal place in her own bosom, and wrong them with no doubts. So she tried to do. At times, and often too, wonder- ing 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 DOMBEY AND SON. 17 wad clouded in the general gloom that hung upon the house, and to weep and be resigned. Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her young heart expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she had experienced little but tho rolling back of that strong tide upon itself, Florenc grew to be seventeen. Timid and retiring as her soli- tary 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 fair face and fragile delicacy of shape, and gracefully to mingle there ; as if the ppring 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 strange ethereal light that seemed to rest upon her head, and always in a certain pensive air upon her beauty, there was an expression, euch as had been seen in the dead boy ; and the coun- cil in the Servants' Hall whispered so among themselves, and shook their heads, and ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of good-fellowship. This observant body had plenty to say of Mr. and Mrs. Dombey, and of Mr. Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came and went as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They all deplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that Mrs. Pipchin (whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand in it ; but, upon the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subject for a rallying point, and they made a great deal of it, and en- joyed themselves very much. VOL iv. 2 18 DOMBEY AND SCN. The general visitors who came to the hou^e, 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. Skew- ton's death ; observing to some particular friends, with ber usual engaging little scream, that she couldn't sepa- rate 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 consid- ered a daughter-in-law objectionable in principle ; other- wise, she had nothing to say against Florence, but that she sadly wanted " style " which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who only came to the house on state occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, and said, go- ing home, " Indeed ! was that Miss Dombey, in the corner? Very pretty, but a little delicate and thoughtful in appearance ! " None the less so, certainly, for her life of the, last six months, Florence took her seat at the dinner-table, on the day before the second anniversary of her father's marriage to Edith (Mrs. Skewton had been lying stricken Avith 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 t it, and the presence of Mr. Carker, which, always un- pleasant to her, was more so on this day, than she had iver fell it before. Edith was richly dressed, for she and Mr. Dombey were engaged in the evening to some large assembly DOMBEY AND SON. 19 am! 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 lustroua as sin was, there was that in her face and air which itemed to separate her hopelessly from Florence, and from every one, for evermore. And yet, for an instant, Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turned on her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself, a greater cause of sorrow and regret than ever. There was very little said at dinner. Florence heard her father speak to Mr. Carker sometimes on business matters, and heard him softly reply, but she paid little attention to what they said, and only wished the dinner at an end. When the dessert was placed upon the table, and they were left alone, with no servant in attendance, Mr. Dornbey, who had been several times clearing hia throat in a manner that augured no good, said : " Mrs. Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the house-keeper that there will be some com- pany to dinner here to-morrow." " I do not dine at home," she answered. " Not a large party/' pursued Mr. Dombey, with an indifferent assumption of not having heard her; "merely some twelve or fourteen. My sister, Major Bagstock, and some others whom you know but slightly." " I do not dine at home," she repeated. " However doubtful reason I may have, Mrs. Dom- bf y," said Mr. Dombey, still going majestically on, as if she had not spoken, " to hold the occasion in very pleas- ant remembrance just now, there are appearances in Jhese things which must be maintained before the world, If you have no respect for yourself, Mrs. Dombey " 20 DOMBEY AND SON. " I have none," she said. " Madam," cried Mr. Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, " hear me, if you please. I say. if you have no respect for yourself" " And / say I have none," she answered. He looked at her ; but the face she showed him i i return would not have changed, if death itself Laxi looked. " Carker," said Mr. Dombey, turning more quietly tc that gentleman. " as you have been my medium of com- munication 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-mor- row." " Tell your sovereign master, sir," said Edith, " that I will take leave to speak to him on this subject by-and-by, and that I will speak to him alone." " Mr. Carker, madam," said her husband, " being in possession of the reason which obliges me to refuse you that privilege, shall be absolved from the delivery of any such message." He saw her eyes move, while he spoke, and followed them with his own. " Your daughter is present, sir," said Edith. " My daughter will remain present," said Mr. Dombey, Florence, who had risen, sat down again, hiding her face in her hands, and trembling. " My daughter, madam " began Mr. Dombey. I But Edith stopped him, in a voice which, although nol raised in the least, was so clear, emphatic, and distinct, that it might have been heard in a whir' wind. DOMBEY AND SON. 21 " I tell you I will speak to you alone," she said. * If you are not mad, heed what I say." " I have authority to speak to you, madam," returned her husband, " when and where I please ; and it is my pleasure to speak here and now." She rose up as if to leave the room ; but sat down again, and looking at him with all outward composure, said, in the same voice : "You shall!" " I must tell you first, that there is a threatening appearance in your manner, madam," said Mr. Dombey, " which does not become you." She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled. There are fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer being in dan- ger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light would have taken flight that moment, and they would have been as dull as lead. Corker listened with his eyes cast down. " As to my daughter, madam," said Mr. Dombey, re- suming the thread of his discourse, " it is by no means inconsistent with her duty to me, that she should know what conduct to avoid. At present you are a very strong example to her of this kind, and I hope she may profit by it." " I would not stop you now," returned his wife, im movable in 3ye, and voice, and attitude ; " I would not rise and go away, and save you the utterance of one word, if the room were burning." Mr. Dombey moved his head, as if in a sarcastic acknowledgment of the attention, and resumed. But not with so much self-possession as before ; for Edith'a quick uneasiness in reference to Florence, and Edith'g 22 DOMBEY AND SON. indifference to him and his censure, chafed and galled him like a stiffening wound. " Mrs. Dombey," said he, " it may not be inconsistent with my daughter's improvement to know how very much to be lamented, and how necessary to be corrected, a stubborn disposition is, especially when it is indulged in unthankf'ully indulged in, I will add after the gratification of ambition and interest. Both of which, 1 believe, had some share in inducing you to occupy your present station at this board." " No ! I would not rise, and go away, and save you the utterance of one word," she repeated, exactly as be- fore, " if the room were burning." " It may be natural enough, Mrs. Dombey," he pur- sued, " that you should be uneasy in the presence of any auditors of these disagreeable truths; though why" he could not hide his real feelings here, or keep hts eyes from glancing gloomily at Florence " why any one can give them greater force and point than myself, whom they so nearly concern, I do not pretend to un- derstand. 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 mani- fested with some doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasion before our marriage towards your de- ceased 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." DOMBEY AND SON. 2S " So it >s 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 gtill 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 band 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-de- served, but not conceivable by such as you) in which I wish I had died ! You add to all this, do you, the last crowning meanness of making her a witness of the depth to which I have fallen ; when you know that you have made me sacrifice to her peace, the only gentle feeling and interest of my life ; when you know that for her sake, I would now if I could but I cannot, my soul recoils from you too much submit myself wholly to your will, and be the meekest vassal that you have ! " This was not the way to minister to Mr. Dombey's greatness. The old feeling was roused by what she said, into a stronger and fiercer existence than it had ever had. Again, his neglected child, at this rough passage of his life, put forth by even this rebellious woman, as powerful where he was powerless, and every- thing where he was nothing! He turned on Florence, as if it were she who had spoken, and bade her leave the room. Florence with her covered face obeyed, trembling and weeping as she went. " I understand, madam," said Mr. Dombey, with an angry flush of triumph, " the spirit of opposition \\\*\\ 24 DOMBEY AND SON. turned your affections in that channel, but they have been met, Mrs. Dombey ; they have been met, and turned back ! '' " The worse for you ! " she answered, with her voice and manner still unchanged. " Ay ! " for he turned sharply when she said so, " what is the worse for me, in twenty million times the worse for you. Heed that, if you heed nothing else." The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair, flashed and glittered like a starry bridge. There was no warn- ing in them, or they would have turned as dull and dim as tarnished honor. Carker still sat and listened, with his eyes cast down. " Mrs. Dombey," said Mr. Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his arrogant composure, "you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any purpose, by this course of conduct." " It is the only true although it is a faint expression of what is within me," she replied. " But if I thought it would conciliate you, I would repress it, if it were repressible by any human effort. I will do nothing that you ask." " I am not accustomed to ask, Mrs. Dombey," he ob- served ; " I direct." " I will hold no place in your house to-morrow, or on any recurrence of to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave you purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage-day, I would keep it as a day of shame. Self-respect ! appearances before the world what are these to me ? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, and they are nothing." " Curker," said Mr. Dombey, speaking with knitted brows, and after a moment's consideration, " Mrs. Dona- DOMBEY AND SON. 25 bey is so foigetful of herself and me in all this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, that I must bring this state of matters to a close." " Release me, then," said Edith immovable in voice, in look, and bearing, as she had been throughout, " from he chain by which I am bound. Let me go." ** Madam ? " exclaimed Mr. Dombey. ** Loose me. Set me free ! " " Madam ? " he repeated, " Mrs. Dombey ? " u Tell him," said Edith, addressing her proud face to Carker, *' that I wish for a separation between us. That there had better be one. That I recommend it to him. Tell him it may take place on his own terms his .wealth is nothing to me but that it cannot be too Boon." " 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 rep- resent ? Did you ever hear of Dombey and Son ? People to say that Mr. Dombey Mr. Dombey ! was separated from his wife ! Common people to talk of Mr. Dombey and his domestic affairs ! Do you se- riously think, Mrs. Dombey, that I would permit my name to be handed about in such connection ? Pooh, pooh, madam ! Fie for shame ! You're absurd." Mr, Dombey absolutely laughed. But not as she did. She had better have been dead than laugh as she did, in reply, with her intent look fixed upon him. He had better have been dead, than Bitting there, in his magnificence, to hear her. '' No, Mrs. Dombey," he resumed, " no, madam. There is no possibility of separation between you and 26 DOMBEY AND SON. me, and therefore I the more advise you to be awakened lo a sense of duty. And, Carker, as I was about to say to you " Mr. Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his eyes, in which there was a bright un- asual light- " As I was about to say to you," resumed Mr. Domb ?y, " I must beg you, now that matters have come to this, to inform Mrs. Dombey, that it is not the rule of my life to allow myself to be thwarted by anybody anybody, Carker or to suffer anybody to be paraded as a stronger motive for obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am myself. The mention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made of my daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatu- ral. 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 to-day, 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'a own avowal, and shall visit her with my severe displeas- ure. Mrs. Dombey has asked 'whether it is not enough,' that she had done this and that. You will please to answer no, it is not enough." " A moment ! " cried Carker, interposing, " permit ine ! painful as my position is, at the best, and unusually pain- ful in seeming to entertain H different opinion from you," addressing Mr. Dombey, " I must ask, had you not bet ter reconsider the question of a separation. I know how incompatible it appears with your high public po- sition, and I know how determined you are when you DOM13EY AND SON. 27 ghe Mrs. Dombey to understand" the light in hia eyes fell upon her as he separated his words each from each, with the distinctness of so many bells "that nothing but death can ever part you. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs. Doiubey, by living in this house, and making it, as you have said, a scene of contention, not only has her part in that contention, but compromises Miss Dombey every day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust to another, almost intolerable ? Does this not seem like I do not say it is sacrificing Mrs. Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent and unassailable position ? " Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at her husband : now with an extraordinary and awful srnile upon her face. ' Carker," returned Mr. Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone that was intended to be final, " you mistake your position in offering advice to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to find) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say." " Perhaps," said Carker, with an unusual and inde- finable taunt in his air, "you mistook my position, when you honored me with the negotiations in which I have been engaged here" with a motion of his hand towards Mrs. Dombey. " Not at all, sir, not at all," returned the other haugh- tily. " You were employed " " Being an inferior person, for the humiliation cf Mra, Dombuy. I forgot. Oh, yes, it was expressly under stood ! " said Carker. " I beg your pardon ! " 28 DOMBEY AND SON. As he bunt his head to Mr. Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way. She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up with such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty of scorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels radiant on her head, and, plucking it off with a force that dragged and strained her rich black hair with heedless cruelty, and brought it tumbling wildly on her shoulders, cast the gems upon the ground. From each arm, she un- tlasped a diamond bracelet, flung it down, and trod upon the glittering heap. Without a word, without a shadow on the fire of her bright eye, without abatement of her awful smile, she looked on Mr. Dombey to the last, in moving to the door ; and left him. Florence had heard enough before quitting the room, to know that Edith loved her yet ; that she had suffered for her sake ; and that she had kept her sacrifices quiet, lest they should trouble her peace. She did not want to speak to her of this she could not, remembering to whom she was opposed but she wished, in one silent and affectionate embrace, to assure her that she felt it all. and thanked her. Her father went out alone, that evening, and Florence issuirij from her own chamber soon afterwards, went aboiu the house in search of Edith, but unavailingly. She v*s in her own roqms, where Florence had long ceased *o go, and did not dare to venture now, lest she bhould unconsciously engender new trouble. Still Flor- ence, haying to meet her before going to bed, changed from roirm to room, ana wandered through the house DOMBEY AND SON. 29 BO splendid and so dreary, without remaining any- where. She was crossing a gallery of communication that opened at some little distance on the staircase, and was only lighted on great occasions, when she saw, through the opening, which was an arch, the figure of a man coming down some few stairs opposite. Instinctively apprehensive of her father, whom she supposed it was, she stopped, in the dark, gazing through the arch into the light. But it was Mr. Carker coming down alone, and looking over the railing into the hall. No bell was rung to announce his departure, and no servant was in attendance. He went down quietly, opened the door for himself, glided out, and shut it softly after him. Her invincible repugnance to this man, and perhaps the stealthy act of watching any one, which, even under such innocent circumstances, is in a manner guilty and oppressive, made Florence shake from head to foot. Her blood seemed to run cold. As soon as she could for at first she felt an insurmountable dread of moving she went quickly to her own room and locked her door; but even then, shut in with her dog beside her, felt a chill sensation of horror, as if there were danger brood- ing somewhere near her. It invaded her dreams and disturbed the whole night. Rising in the morning, unrefreshed, and with a heavy recollection of the domestic unhappiness of the preced- ing day, she sought Edith again, in all the rooms, and did so, from time to time, alt the morning. But she remained in her own chamber, and Florence saw noth- ing of her. Learning, however, that the projected din- ner at home was put off, Florence thought it likely that *he would go out in the evenirg i n fulfil the engagement 80 DOMBEY AND SON. she had spoken of: and resolved to try and meet her, then, upon the staircase. When the evening had set in, she heard, from the room in which she sat on purpose, a footstep on th< stairs that she thought to be Edith's. Hurrying out and up towards her room, Florence met her immediately coming down alone. What was Florence's affright and wonder when, a sight of her, with her tearful face, and outstretched arms, Edith recoiled and shrieked ! " Don't come near me ! " she cried. " Keep away ! Let me go by ! " " Mama ! " said Florence. u Don't call me by that name ! Don't speak to me Don't look at me ! Florence ! " shrinking back, as Florence moved a step towards her, " don't touch me ! " As Florence stood transfixed before the haggard face and staring eyes, she noted, as in a dream, that Edith spread her hands over them, and, shuddering through all her form, and crouching down against the wall, crawled by her like some lowe.r animal, sprang up, and fled away. Florence dropped upon the stairs in a swoon ; and was found there by Mrs. Pipchin, she supposed. She knew nothing more, until she found herself lying on her own bed, with Mrs. Pipchin and some servants standing round her. u Where is mama ? " was her first question. " Gone out to dinner," said Mrs. Pipchin. " And papa ? " " Mr. Dombey's in his own room, Miss Dorabey," said Mis. Pipchin, " and the best thing you can do, is to take off your things and go to bed this minute." This was DOMBEY AND SON. 31 the sagacious woman's remedy for all complaints, partic- ularly lowness of spirits, and inability to sleep; for which offences many young victims in the days of the Brighton Castle had been committed to bed at ten o'clock in the morning. Without promising obedience, but on the plea of desir- ing to be very quiet, Florence disengaged herself, as soon as she could, from the ministration of Mrs. Pipchin and her attendants. Left alone, she thought of what had happened on the staircase, at first in doubt of its reality ; then with tears ; then with an indescribable and terrible alarm, like that she had felt the night before. She determined not to go to bed until Kdith 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 nol know, and did not dare to think. She only knew that until Edith came back, there was no repose for her aching head or throbbing heart. The evening deepened into night ; midnight came ; no Edith. Florence could not read, or rest a moment. She paced her own room, opened the door and paced the staircase-gallery outside, looked out of window on the night, listened to the wind blowing and the rain fall- ing, sat down and watched the faces in the fire, got up and watched the moon flying like a storm-driven ship through the sea of clouds. All the house was gone to bed, except two servants who were waiting the return of their mistress, down- ttairs. One o'clock. The carriages that rumbled in the dis- tance, turned away, or stopped short, or went past ; the 82 DOMBET AND SON. silence gradually deepened, and was morp and mort rarely broken, save by a rush of wind or sweep of rain. Two o'clock. No Edith. Florence, more agitated, paced her room ; and pacec. the gallery outside; and looked out at the night, blurred and wavy with the rain-drops on the glass, and the tears in her own eyes ; and looked up at the hurry in the sky BO different from the repose below, and yet so tranquil and solitary. Three o'clock ! There was a terror in every ash that dropped out of the fire. No Edith yet. More and more agitated, Florence paced her room, and paced the gallery, and looked out at the moon with a new fancy of her likeness to a pale fugitive hurrying away and hiding her guilty face. Four struck ! Five ! No Edith yet. But now there was some cautious stir in the house; and Florence found that Mrs. Pipchin had been awak- ened 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 despatched a mes- senger to the stables to inquire whether the coachman was there; and while the man was gone, dressed him- self very hurriedly. The man came back, in great haste, bringing tho coachman with him, who said he had been at home and in bed since ten o'clock. He had driven his mis- tress to her old house in Brook-street, where she had been met by Mr. Carker Florence stood upon the very spot where she had seen him coming down. Again she shivered with the name- DOMBEY AND SON. 33 less terror of that sight, and had hardly steadiness enough to hear and understand what followed. Who had told him, the man went on to say, that his mistress would not want the carriage to go home in ; and had dismissed him. She saw her father turn white in the face, and heard him ask in a quick, trembling voice, for Mrs. Dombey'd maid. The whole 'house was roused ; for she was thero in a moment, very pale too, and speaking incoherently. She said she had dressed her mistress early full two hours before she went out and had been told, as she often was, that she would not be wanted at night. She had just come from her mistress's rooms, but " " But what ! what was it?" Florence heard her father demand like a madman. " But the inner dressing-room was locked, and the key gone." Her father seized a candle that was flaming on the ground some one had put it down there, and forgotten it and came running up-stairs 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 wildly spread, and her hair streaming, and her face like a distracted person's, back to her own room. When the door yielded, and he rushed in, what did he Bee 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 ?n which he had seen, in yonder mirror, the proud face discard him. Tins was the room in which he had wtn- :lered, idly, how these things would look when he should *ee them next ! VOL. IV. 8 84 DOMBEY AND SON. 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 mar- riage, and a letter. He read that she was gone. He read that he was dishonored. He read that she had fledf upon her shameful wedding-day, with the man whom he had chosen for her humiliation ; and he tore out of the room, and out of the house, with a frantic idea of finding her yet, at the place to which she had been taken, and beating all trace of beauty out of the triumphant face with his bare hand. Florence, not knowing what she did, put on a shawl Rnd bonnet, in a dream of running through the streets until she found Edith, and then clasping her in her arms, to save and bring her back. But when she hurried out upon the staircase, and saw the frightened servants going up and down with 'lights, and whispering together, and falling away from her father as he passed down, she awoke to a sense of her own powerlessness ; and hiding in one of the great rooms that had been made gorgeous for this, felt as if her heart would burst with grief. Compassion for her father was the first distinct emotion that made head against the flood of sorrow which over- whelmed her. Her constant nature turned to him in his distress, as fervently and faithfully, as if, in his pros- perity, 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 itood before her wronged and deserted ; and again her yearning love impelled her to his side. He was not long away : for Florence was yet weeping In the great room and nourishing these thoughts, when DOMBET AND SON. 3d lhe heard him come back. He ordered the servants to et about their ordinary occupations, and went into his own apartment, where he trod so heavily that she could hear him walking up and down from end to end. Yielding, at once, to the impulse of her affection, timid at all other times, but bold in its truth to him i?i his adversity, and undaunted by past repulse, Florence dressed as she was, hurried down-stairs. As she set her light foot in the hall, he came out of his room. She hastened towards him unchecked, with her arms stretched out, and crying " Oh dear, dear papa ! " as if she would have clasped him round the neck. And so she would have done. But in his frenzy, he lifted up his cruel arm, and struck her, crosswise, with that heaviness that she tottered on the marble floor ; and as he dealt the blow, he told her what Edith was, and bade her follow her, since they had always been in league. She did not sink down at his feet ; she did not shut out the sight of him with her trembling hands ; she did not weep ; she did not utter one word of reproach. But she looked at him, and a cry of desolation issued from her heart. For as she looked, she saw him murdering that fond idea to which she had held in spite of him. She saw his cruelty, neglect, and hatred dominant above it, and stamping it down. She saw she had no father upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from hia bouse. Ran out of his house. A moment, and her hand waa on the lock, the cry was on her lips, his face was there, amde paler by the yellow candles hastily put down and guttering away, and by the daylight coming in above the loor. Another moment, and the close darkness of the 86 DOMBEY AND SON. shut-up house (forgotten to be opened, though it wag long since day) yielded to the unexpected glare and freedom of the morning; and Florence, with her head bent down to bide her agony of tears, was in the treete DOMBEY AND SON. CHAPTER XLVIII. THE FLIGHT OF FLORENCE. IN the wildness of her sorrow, shame, and terror, the forlorn girl hurried through the sunshine of a bright morning, as if it were the darkness of a winter night. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, insensible to everything but the deep wound in her breast, stunned by the loss of all she loved, left like the sole survivor on a lonely shore from the wreck of a great vessel, she fled without a thought, without a hope, without a purpose, but to fly somewhere anywhere. The cheerful vista of the long street, burnished by the morning light, the sight of the blue sky and airy clouds, the vigorous freshness of the day, so flashed and rosy in its conquest of the night, awakened no responsive feel- ings in her so hurt bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hide her head ! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never more to look upon the place from which she fled ! But there were people going to and fro ; there were opening shops, and servants at the doors of houses ; there was the rising clash and roar of the day's struggle. Flor- uice 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 38 DOM BEY AND SON. hurry on the faster, they did her the good service of recalling her in some degree to herself, and reminding her of the necessity of greater composure. Where to go ? Still somewhere, anywhere ! still going on ; but where! She thought of the only other time she had been lost in the wide wilderness of London though not lost as now and went that way. To the home of Walter's uncle. Checking her sobs, and drying her swollen eyes, and endeavoring to calm the agitation of her manner, so as to avoid attracting notice, Florence, resolving to keep to the more quiet streets as long as she could, was going on more quietly herself, when a familiar little shadow darted past upon the sunny pavement, stopped short, wheeled about, came close to her, made off again, bounded round and round her, and Diogenes, panting for breath, and yet making the street ring with his glad bark, was at her feet. " Oh, Di ! oh, dear, true, faithful Di, how did you come here ! How could I ever leave you, Di, who would never leave me ! " Florence bent down on the pavement, and laid his rough, old, loving, foolish head against her breast, and they got up together, and went on together ; Di more off the ground than on it, endeavoring 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 house-maids who were cleaning doorsteps, and continually stopping, in the midst of a thousand extravagances, to took back at Florence, and bark until all the dogs within hearing answered, and all the dogs who could come out* same out to stare at him. DOMBEY AND SON. 39 Willi this last adherent, Florence hurried away in the advancing morning, arid the strengthening sunshine, to the city. The roar soon grew more loud, the passengers more nuniM-ons, the shops more busy, until she wan 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, liko the broad river, side by side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, and green moss, and rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works and cares of men, to the deep sea. At length the quarters of the little Midshipman arose in view. Nearer yet, and the little Midshipman himself was seen upon his post, intent as ever, on his observa- tions. 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 parlor. 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 pal- pitating remembrance of the dreadful Mrs. MacStinger, at the instant when Florence made a motion with her hand towards him, reeled, and fell upon the floor. The captain, pale as Florence, pale in the very knoba upon his face, raised her like a baby, and laid her on the same old sofa upon which she had slumbered long ago. " It's Heart's Delight ! " said the captain, looking 40 DOMBET AND SON. intently in her face. " It's the sweet creetur grow'd a woman ! " Captain Cuttle was so respectful of her, and had such a reverence for her, in this new character, that he would not have held her in his arms, while she was unconscious, for a thousand pounds. 14 My Heart's Delight!" said the captain, withdrawing to a little distance, with the greatest alarm and sympathy depicted on his countenance. " If you can hail Ned Cuttle with a finger, do it!" But Florence did not stir. " My Heart's Delight ! " said the trembling captain. * For the sake of Wal'r drownded in the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something or another, if able ! " Finding her insensible to this impressive adjuration also, Captain Cuttle snatched from his breakfast-table, a basin of cold water, and sprinkled some upon her face. Yielding to the urgency of the case, the captain then, using his immense hand with extraordinary gentleness, relieved her of her bonnet, moistened her lips and fore- head, put .back her hair, covered her feet witli his own coat which he pulled off for the purpose, patted her hand so small in his, that he was struck with wonder when he touched it and seeing that her eyelids quivered, and that her lips began to move, continued these restora- tive applications with a better heart. " Cheerily," said the captain. u Cheerily ! Stand by, my pretty one, stand by ! There ! You're better now. Steady's the word, and steady it is. Keep her so ! Drink a little drop o' this here," said the captain. "There you are ! What cheer now, my pretty, what cheer now ? " At this stage of her recovery, Captain Cuttle, with an DOMBEY AND SON. 41 Imperfect association of a Watch with a Physician's treat- ment of a patient, took his own down from the mantel shelf, and holding it out on his hook, and taking Flor- ence's hand in his, looked steadily from one to the other, as expecting the dial to do something. " What cheer, my pretty ?" said the captain. " What cheer now ? You've done her some good my lad, I believe," said the captain, under his breath, and throw- ing an approving glance upon his watch. " Put you back half an hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the afternoon, and you're a watch as can be ekalled by few and excelled by none. What cheer, my lady lass ! " " Captain Cuttle ! Is it you ! " exclaimed Florence, raising herself a little, " Yes, yes, my lady lass," said the captain, hastily deciding in his own mind upon the superior elegance of that form of address, as the most courtly he could think of. " Is Walter's uncle here ? " asked Florence. "Here, pretty!" returned the captain. "He a' n't been here this many a long day. He a'n't been heerd on, since he sheered off arter poor Wal'r. But," said the captain, as a quotation, " Though lost to sight, to memory dear, and England, Home, and Beauty ! " "Do yofl live here?" asked Florence. " Yes, my lady lass," returned the captain. "Oh Captain Cuttle!" cried Florence, putting her Lands together, and speaking wildly. "Save me! keep me here ! Let no one know where I am ! I'll tell you what has happened by and by, when I can. I have no one in the world to go to. Do not send me away ! " " Send you away, my lady lass' '* exclaimed the cap- 42 DOMBEY AJSu SON. tain. " You, my Heart's Delight ! Stay a bit ! We'll put up this here dead-light, and take a double turn on the key ! " With these words, the captain, using his one hand and his hook with the greatest dexterity, got out the shuttef of the door, put it up, made it all fast., and locked th door itself. When he came back to the side of Florence, she took his hand, and kissed it. The helplessness of the action, the appeal it made to him, the confidence it expressed, the unspeakable sorrow in her face, the pain of mind she had too plainly suffered, and was suffering then, his knowledge of her past history, her present lonely, worn, and unprotected appearance, all so rushed upon the good captain together, that he fairly overflowed with compas- sion and gentleness. " My lady lass," said the captain, polishing the bridge of his nose with his arm until it shone like burnished copper, "don't you say a word to Ed'ard Cuttle, until such times as you finds yourself a-riding smooth and esisy ; which won't be to-day, nor yet to-morrow. And as to giving of you up, or reporting where you are, yea verily, and by God's help, so I won't, Church catechism, make a note on ! " This the captain said, reference and all, in one breath, and with much solemnity ; taking off *his hat at "yes verily," and putting it on again, when he had quite concluded. Florence could do but one thing more to thank him and to show him how she trusted in him ; and she did it Clinging to this rough creature as the last asylum of her bleeding heart, she laid her head upon his honest shoul- ier, and clasped him round hi? ck. and would have EJMBEY AND SCN. 43 kneeled down to bless him 'but that he divined her pur pose, and held her up like a true man. " Steady ! " said the captain. " Steady ! You're too weak to stand, you see, my pretty, and must lie down here again. There, there ! " To see the captain lift her on the sofa, and cover her with his coat, would have been worth a hundred state sights. " And now," said the captain, " you must take some breakfast, lady lass, and the dog shall have some too. And arter that you shall go aloft to old Sol Gills's room, and fall asleep there, like a angel." Captain Cuttle patted Diogenes when he made allu- sion to him, and Diogenes met that overture graciously, halt-vt-ay. During the administration of the restoratives Oe had olearly been in two minds whether to fly at the captain or to offer him his friendship ; and he had ex- pressed that conflict of feeling by alternate waggings of his tail, and lisplays of his teeth, with now and then a growl or sc. But by this time his doubts were all re- moved. It w."u plain that he considered the captain one of the most ai/iiable of men, and a man whom it was an honor to a dog to know. In evidence o/ these convictions, Diogenes attended on the captain while ae made some tea and toast, and showed a lively interest in his house-keeping. But it was in vain for the kind captain to make such preparations for Florence, who sorely tried to do some honor 1o them, but could touch nothing, and could only weep and weep again. " Well, well ! " said the compassionate captain, ' arter turning in, my Heait'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 m\& Vress aloft " 14 DOMBEf AND SON. Diogenes, however, although he hud heen eying hia intended breakfast with a watering mouth and glistening eyes, instead of falling to, ravenously, when it was put before him, pricked up his ears, darted to the shop-door, and barked there furiously : burrowing with his head at the bottom, as if he were bent on mining his way out. " Can there be anybody there ! " asked Florence, in alarm. " No, my lady lass," returned the captain. " Who'd stay there, without making any noise ! Keep up a good heart, pretty. It's only people going by." But for all that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed and burrowed with pertinacious fury ; and whenever he stopped to listen, appeared to receive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking and burrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return to his breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very doubtful air ; and was off again, in another paroxysm, before touching a morsel. " If there should be some one listening and watching," whispered Florence. " Some one who saw me come who followed me, perhaps." " It a'n't the young woman, lady lass, is it ? " said the captain, taken with a bright idea. "Susan?" said Florence, shaking her head. "Ah no ! Susan has been gone from me a long time." " Not deserted, I hope ? " said the captain. " Don't Bay that that there young woman's run, my pretty ! " " Oh, no, no ! " cried Florence. " She is one of the truest hearts in the world ! " The captain was greatly relieved by this reply, and expressed his satisfaction by taking off his hard glazed hat, and dabbing his head all over with his handkerchief, DOMBEY A.ND SON. 45 rolled up like a ball, observing several times, wilh infinite complacency, and with a beaming countenance, that he know'd it. "So you're qmet now, are you, brother?" said the captain to Diogenes. " There warn't nobody there, my lady lass, bless you ! " Diogenes was not so sure of that. The door still had an attraction for him at intervals ; and he went snuffing about it, and growling to himself, unable to forget the subject. This incident, coupled with the captain's ob- servation of Florence's fatigue and faintness, decided him to prepare Sol Gills's chamber as a place of retire- ment for her immediately. He therefore hastily betook himself to the top of the house, and made the best ar- rangement of it that his imagination and his means sug- gested. 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 tea- spoons, a flower-pot, a telescope, his celebrated walch, a pocket-comb, and a song-book, as a small collection of rarities, that made a choice appearance. Having dark- ened the window, and straightened the pieces of carpet on the floor, the captain surveyed these preparations with great delight, and descended to the little parlor again, to bring Florence to her bower. Nothing would induce the captain to believe thai it was possible for Florence to walk np-stairs. If he could flave got the idea into his head, he would have considered t an outrageous breach of hospitality to allow her to do 46 DOMBEY AND SON. K). Florence was too weak to dispute the point, and the captain carried her up out of hand, laid her down, and covered her with a great watch-coat. " My lady lass ! " said the captain, " you're as safe here as if you was at the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, with the ladder cast off. Sleep is what you want, afore all other things, and may you be able to show yourself smart with that (here balsam for the still small woice of a wownded 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'sird Cuttle, as'll stand off and on outside that door, and that there man will wibi-ate with joy." The captain concluded by kissi ig the hand that Florence stretched out to him, with the chivalry of any old knight-errant, and walking on tiptoe out of the room. Descending to the little parlor, Captain Cuttle, after holding a hasty council with himself, decided to open the shop-door for a few minutes, and sati.-fy himself that now, at all events, there was no one loitering about it. Ac- cordingly he set it open, and stood upon the threshold, keeping a bright look-out, and sweeping the whole street with his spectacles. u How de do, Captain Gills ? " said a voice beside him. The captain, looking down, found that he had IKMJII boarded by Mr. Toots while sweeping the horizon. " How are you, my lad ? " replied the captain. " Well, I'm pretty well, thank'ee, Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots. " You know I'm never quite what I could wish to be, now. I don' expect that I ever shall be iny more." Mr. Toots never approached any n^rer than this to .he great theme of his life, when in conversation witb DOMBEY AND SON. 47 Captain Cuttle, on account of the agreement between them. " Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots, " if I could have the pleasure of a word with you, it's it's rather particu- lar." " "Why, you see my lad," replied the captain, leading the way into the parlor, " I a'n't what you may call ex- actly free this morning; and therefore if you can clap on a bit, I should take it kindly." " Certainly Captain Gills," replied Mr. TooU, who seldom had any notion of the captain's meaning. " To clap on, is exactly what I could wish to do. Naturally." " If so be, my lad," returned the captain. " Do it ! " The captain was so impressed by the possession of Ins tremendous secret by the fact of Miss Dombey being at that moment under his roof, while the innocent and unconscious Toots sat opposite to him that a perspira- tion broke out on his forehead, and he found it impos- sible, while slowly drying the same, glazed hat in hand, to keep his eyes off Mr. Toots's face. Mr. Tocts, who himself appeared to have some secret reasons for being in a nervous state, was so unspeakably disconcerted by the captain's stare, that after looking at him vacantly for some time in silence, and shifting uneasily on his chair, he said : "I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you don't hap pen to see anything particular in me, do you ? " " No, my lad," returned the captain. " No." " Because you know," said Mr. Toots with a chuckle, " 1 KNOW I'm wasting away. You needn't at all mind alluding to that. I I should like it. Burgess and Co. Dave altered my measure, I'm in that state of thinness. It's a gratification to me. I I'm glad of it. I I'd 48 DOMBEY AND SUN. a great deal rather go into a decline, if I could. I'm a mere brute you know, grazing upon the surface of the earth, Captain Gills." The more Mr. Toots went on in this way, the more tl.c captain was weighed down by his secret, and stared Bt him. What with this cause of uneasiness, and his desire to get rid of Mr. Toots, the captain was in such B scared and strange condition, indeed, that if he had been in conversation with a ghost, he could hardly have evinced greater discomposure. fa But I was going to say, Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots. " Happening to be this way early this morning to tell you the truth, I was coming to breakfast with you. As to sleep, you know I never sleep now. I might be a Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on his mind." " Carry on, my lad ! " said the captain, in an admon- itory voice. " Certainly, Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots. u Per- fectly true ! Happening to be this way early this morning (an hour or so ago), and finding the door shut " " What! were you waiting there, brother?" demanded the captain. " Not at all, Captain Gills," returned Mr. Toots. " I didn't stop a moment. I thought you were out. Bui the person said by the by, you don't keep a dog do you, Captain Gills ? " The captain shook his head. " To be sure," said Mr. Toots, " that's exactly what I said. I knew you didn't. There it a dog, Captain Gills, connected with but excuse me. That's forbid len gi-ound." DOMBET AND SON. 49 The captain stared at Mr. Toots until lie seemed tc swell to twice his natural size ; and again the perspira- tion broke out on the captain's forehead, when he though; of Diogenes taking it into his head to come down and make a third in the parlor. "The person said," continued Mr, Toots, "that he hail 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 ho had seen the dog." " What person, my lad ? " inquired the captain. * Why, you see there it is, Captain Gills," said Mr. Toots, with a perceptible increase in the nervousness of his manner. " It's not for me to say what may have taken place, or what may not have taken place. In- deed, I don't know. I get mixed up with all sorts of things that I don't quite understand, and I think there's something rather weak in my in my head, in short." The captain nodded his own, as a mark of assent. " But the person said, as we were walking away," continued Mr. Toots, " that you knew what, under ex- isting circumstances, might occur he said ' might,' very strongly and that if you were requested to prepare yourself, you would, no doubt, come prepared." " Person, my lad ! " the captain repeated. " I don't know what person, I'm sure, Captain Gills," replied Mr. Toots, " I haven't the least idea. But com- ing to the door, I Tbund him waiting there ; and he said was I coming back again, and I said yes ; and he said did I know you, and I said, yes, I had the pleasure of your acquaintance you had given me the pleasure of your acquaintance, after some persuasion ; and he said, if that was the case, would I say to you what I hare said VOL. iv. 4 50 DOMBEY AND SON. about existing circumstances and coming prepared, and as soon as ever I saw you, would I a*k you to step round the corner, if it was only for one minute, on most impor- tant business, to Mr. Brogley's the broker's. Now, I tell you what, Captain Gills whatever it is, I am con- vinced it's very important; and if you like to step round Dow, I'll wait here till you come back." The captain, divided between his fear of compromis- ing 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 men- tal 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 inter- view he was going to have, was quite satisfied, and did not review his own discreet conduct without chuckles. At length the captain decided, as the lesser of two evils, to run round to Brogley's the broker's : previ- ously locking the door that communicated with the up- per part of the house, and putting the key in his pocket. ' If so be," said the captain to Mr. Toot*, with not a lit- tle shame and hesitation, " as you'll excuse my doing of it, brother." " Captain Gills," returned Mr. Toots, " whatever you do, is satisfactory to me." The captain thanked him heartily, and promising to come back in less than five minutes, went out in quest of the person who had intrusted Mr. Toots "A'ith this mysterious message. Poor Mr. Toots, left to himself, lay down upon the sofa, little thinking who had reclinea there last, and, gazing up at the skylight and resigning himself to visions of Miss Dombey, lost all heed of time and place. DOMBEY AND SON. 5l II w-.is as well that he did so ; for although the captain was not