Bot-S: Dombey and Son

If it wasn’t at the corner
of the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg and entreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hope
that I may--may think it possible that you--’

‘Oh, if you please, don’t!’ cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmed
and distressed. ‘Oh, pray don’t, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don’t
say any more. As a kindness and a favour to me, don’t.’

Mr Toots is dreadfully abashed, and his mouth opens.

‘You have been so good to me,’ says Florence, ‘I am so grateful to you,
I have such reason to like you for being a kind friend to me, and I do
like you so much;’ and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with the
pleasantest look of honesty in the world; ‘that I am sure you are only
going to say good-bye!’

‘Certainly, Miss Dombey,’ says Mr Toots, ‘I--I--that’s exactly what I
mean. It’s of no consequence.’

‘Good-bye!’ cries Florence.

‘Good-bye, Miss Dombey!’ stammers Mr Toots. ‘I hope you won’t think
anything about it. It’s--it’s of no consequence, thank you. It’s not of
the least consequence in the world.’

Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, locks
himself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and lies
there for a long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence,
nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B.A., is coming to dinner, which happens
well for Mr Toots, or there is no knowing when he might get up again.
Mr Toots is obliged to get up to receive him, and to give him hospitable
entertainment.

And the generous influence of that social virtue, hospitality (to make
no mention of wine and good cheer), opens Mr Toots’s heart, and warms
him to conversation. He does not tell Mr Feeder, B.A., what passed at
the corner of the Square; but when Mr Feeder asks him ‘When it is to
come off?’ Mr Toots replies, ‘that there are certain subjects’--which
brings Mr Feeder down a peg or two immediately. Mr Toots adds, that he
don’t know what right Blimber had to notice his being in Miss Dombey’s
company, and that if he thought he meant impudence by it, he’d have him
out, Doctor or no Doctor; but he supposes its only his ignorance. Mr
Feeder says he has no doubt of it.

Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded from
the subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentioned
mysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he gives
Miss Dombey’s health, observing, ‘Feeder, you have no idea of the
sentiments with which I propose that toast.’ Mr Feeder replies, ‘Oh,
yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, old
boy.’ Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; and
says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either
by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he
would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute;
for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to ‘em, and he
has found the advantage of it himself.

This brings Mr Feeder, B.A., to the confession that he has his eye
upon Cornelia Blimber. He informs Mr Toots that he don’t object to
spectacles, and that if the Doctor were to do the handsome thing and
give up the business, why, there they are--provided for. He says it’s
his opinion that when a man has made a handsome sum by his business, he
is bound to give it up; and that Cornelia would be an assistance in it
which any man might be proud of. Mr Toots replies by launching wildly
out into Miss Dombey’s praises, and by insinuations that sometimes he
thinks he should like to blow his brains out. Mr Feeder strongly urges
that it would be a rash attempt, and shows him, as a reconcilement to
existence, Cornelia’s portrait, spectacles and all.

Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded place
to night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him at
Doctor Blimber’s door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and when
Mr Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, and
think about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informing
him, as he loiters along, that Doctor Blimber will give up the business;
and he feels a soft romantic pleasure in looking at the outside of the
house, and thinking that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it into
thorough repair.

Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket that
contains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and not
unsuspected by the police, gazes at a window where he sees a light,
and which he has no doubt is Florence’s. But it is not, for that is Mrs
Skewton’s room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreams
lovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associations
live again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for the
patient boy’s on the same theatre, once more to connect it--but how
differently!--with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful and
complaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it,
in the terror of her unimpassioned loveliness--for it has terror in
the sufferer’s failing eyes--sits Edith. What do the waves say, in the
stillness of the night, to them?

‘Edith, what is that stone arm raised to strike me? Don’t you see it?’

‘There is nothing, mother, but your fancy.’

‘But my fancy! Everything is my fancy. Look! Is it possible that you
don’t see it?’

‘Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there were
any such thing there?’

‘Unmoved?’ looking wildly at her--‘it’s gone now--and why are you
so unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see you
sitting at my side.’

‘I am sorry, mother.’

‘Sorry! You seem always sorry. But it is not for me!’

With that, she cries; and tossing her restless head from side to side
upon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, and
the mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold return
the daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence,
she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, and
hides her face upon the bed.

Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick old
woman clutches her round the neck, and says, with a look of horror,

‘Edith! we are going home soon; going back. You mean that I shall go
home again?’

‘Yes, mother, yes.’

‘And what he said--what’s-his-name, I never could remember
names--Major--that dreadful word, when we came away--it’s not true?
Edith!’ with a shriek and a stare, ‘it’s not that that is the matter
with me.’

Night after night, the lights burn in the window, and the figure lies
upon the bed, and Edith sits beside it, and the restless waves are
calling to them both the whole night long. Night after night, the waves
are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon
the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds are on
their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the
invisible country far away.

And still the sick old woman looks into the corner, where the stone
arm--part of a figure of some tomb, she says--is raised to strike her.
At last it falls; and then a dumb old woman lies upon the bed, and
she is crooked and shrunk up, and half of her is dead.

Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that is
drawn slowly through the crowd from day to day; looking, as it goes,
for the good old creature who was such a mother, and making mouths as it
peers among the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeled
down to the margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which no
wind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has no
soothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speech
is dark and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when her
eyes wander over the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolation
between earth and heaven.

Florence she seldom sees, and when she does, is angry with and mows at.
Edith is beside her always, and keeps Florence away; and Florence, in
her bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, and
often wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on her
but Edith. It is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughter
watches alone by the bedside.

A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpened
features, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall that
shuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverlet
join feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voice
not like hers, not like any voice that speaks our mortal language--says,
‘For I nursed you!’

Edith, without a tear, kneels down to bring her voice closer to the
sinking head, and answers:

‘Mother, can you hear me?’

Staring wide, she tries to nod in answer.

‘Can you recollect the night before I married?’

The head is motionless, but it expresses somehow that she does.

‘I told you then that I forgave your part in it, and prayed God to
forgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. I
say so now, again. Kiss me, mother.’

Edith touches the white lips, and for a moment all is still. A moment
afterwards, her mother, with her girlish laugh, and the skeleton of the
Cleopatra manner, rises in her bed.

Draw the rose-coloured curtains. There is something else upon its flight
besides the wind and clouds. Draw the rose-coloured curtains close!

Intelligence of the event is sent to Mr Dombey in town, who waits upon
Cousin Feenix (not yet able to make up his mind for Baden-Baden), who
has just received it too. A good-natured creature like Cousin Feenix is
the very man for a marriage or a funeral, and his position in the family
renders it right that he should be consulted.

‘Dombey,’ said Cousin Feenix, ‘upon my soul, I am very much shocked to
see you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilish
lively woman.’

Mr Dombey replies, ‘Very much so.’

‘And made up,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘really young, you know, considering.
I am sure, on the day of your marriage, I thought she was good
for another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man at
Brooks’s--little Billy Joper--you know him, no doubt--man with a glass
in his eye?’

Mr Dombey bows a negative. ‘In reference to the obsequies,’ he hints,
‘whether there is any suggestion--’

‘Well, upon my life,’ says Cousin Feenix, stroking his chin, which he
has just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; ‘I really don’t
know. There’s a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I’m afraid
it’s in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. But
for being a little out at elbows, I should have had it put to rights;
but I believe the people come and make pic-nic parties there inside the
iron railings.’

Mr Dombey is clear that this won’t do.

‘There’s an uncommon good church in the village,’ says Cousin Feenix,
thoughtfully; ‘pure specimen of the Anglo-Norman style, and admirably
well sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury--woman with tight stays--but
they’ve spoilt it with whitewash, I understand, and it’s a long journey.’

‘Perhaps Brighton itself,’ Mr Dombey suggests.

‘Upon my honour, Dombey, I don’t think we could do better,’ says Cousin
Feenix. ‘It’s on the spot, you see, and a very cheerful place.’

‘And when,’ hints Mr Dombey, ‘would it be convenient?’

‘I shall make a point,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘of pledging myself for any
day you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure,
of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the--in point
of fact, to the grave,’ says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn of
speech.

‘Would Monday do for leaving town?’ says Mr Dombey.

‘Monday would suit me to perfection,’ replies Cousin Feenix. Therefore
Mr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presently
takes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, at
parting, ‘I’m really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have so
much trouble about it;’ to which Mr Dombey answers, ‘Not at all.’

At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down to
Brighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mourners
for the deceased lady’s loss, attend her remains to their place of rest.
Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerable
acquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, in
decorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey’s
information, as ‘Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White’s. What,
are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls’--and so
forth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that these
are the occasions to make a man think, in point of fact, that he is
getting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened, when it is over. But
he soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton’s relatives and
friends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she never
did wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so much
trouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must have
been enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and you
mustn’t mention it.

So Edith’s mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf to
the waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blind
to the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that are
beckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But all
goes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edith
standing there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast up
at her feet, to strew her path in life withal.

CHAPTER 42. Confidential and Accidental

Attired no more in Captain Cuttle’s sable slops and sou’-wester hat, but
dressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while it
affected to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really as
self-satisfied and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Rob
the Grinder, thus transformed as to his outer man, and all regardless
within of the Captain and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a few
minutes of his leisure time to crowing over those inseparable worthies,
and recalling, with much applauding music from that brazen instrument,
his conscience, the triumphant manner in which he had disembarrassed
himself of their company, now served his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of Mr
Carker’s house, and serving about his person, Rob kept his round eyes
on the white teeth with fear and trembling, and felt that he had need to
open them wider than ever.

He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before the
teeth, though he had come into the service of some powerful enchanter,
and they had been his strongest spells. The boy had a sense of power and
authority in this patron of his that engrossed his whole attention and
exacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He hardly considered
himself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest he should
feel himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the morning
when he first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teeth
finding him out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face to
face with him, Rob had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secret
thoughts, or that he could read them by the least exertion of his will
if he were so inclined, than he had that Mr Carker saw him when he
looked at him. The ascendancy was so complete, and held him in such
enthralment, that, hardly daring to think at all, but with his
mind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his patron’s
irresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with him, he
would stand watching his pleasure, and trying to anticipate his orders,
in a state of mental suspension, as to all other things.

Rob had not informed himself perhaps--in his then state of mind it would
have been an act of no common temerity to inquire--whether he yielded
so completely to this influence in any part, because he had floating
suspicions of his patron’s being a master of certain treacherous arts
in which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders’ School. But
certainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker, perhaps,
was better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost nothing
by his management of it.

On the very night when he left the Captain’s service, Rob, after
disposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry,
had gone straight down to Mr Carker’s house, and hotly presented
himself before his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expect
commendation.

‘What, scapegrace!’ said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle ‘Have you
left your situation and come to me?’

‘Oh if you please, Sir,’ faltered Rob, ‘you said, you know, when I come
here last--’

‘I said,’ returned Mr Carker, ‘what did I say?’

‘If you please, Sir, you didn’t say nothing at all, Sir,’ returned Rob,
warned by the manner of this inquiry, and very much disconcerted.

His patron looked at him with a wide display of gums, and shaking his
forefinger, observed:

‘You’ll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There’s ruin
in store for you.

‘Oh if you please, don’t, Sir!’ cried Rob, with his legs trembling under
him. ‘I’m sure, Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to wait upon
you, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I’m bid, Sir.’

‘You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid,’ returned his
patron, ‘if you have anything to do with me.’

‘Yes, I know that, Sir,’ pleaded the submissive Rob; ‘I’m sure of that,
SIr. If you’ll only be so good as try me, Sir! And if ever you find me
out, Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to kill
me.’

‘You dog!’ said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at him
serenely. ‘That’s nothing to what I’d do to you, if you tried to deceive
me.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ replied the abject Grinder, ‘I’m sure you would be down upon
me dreadful, Sir. I wouldn’t attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if I
was bribed with golden guineas.’

Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallen
Grinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to look
at him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a similar
situation.

‘So you have left your old service, and come here to ask me to take you
into mine, eh?’ said Mr Carker.

‘Yes, if you please, Sir,’ returned Rob, who, in doing so, had acted
on his patron’s own instructions, but dared not justify himself by the
least insinuation to that effect.

‘Well!’ said Mr Carker. ‘You know me, boy?’

‘Please, Sir, yes, Sir,’ returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and still
fixed by Mr Carker’s eye, and fruitlessly endeavouring to unfix himself.

Mr Carker nodded. ‘Take care, then!’

Rob expressed in a number of short bows his lively understanding of this
caution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved by
the prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stopped
him.

‘Halloa!’ he cried, calling him roughly back. ‘You have been--shut that
door.’

Rob obeyed as if his life had depended on his alacrity.

‘You have been used to eaves-dropping. Do you know what that means?’

‘Listening, Sir?’ Rob hazarded, after some embarrassed reflection.

His patron nodded. ‘And watching, and so forth.’

‘I wouldn’t do such a thing here, Sir,’ answered Rob; ‘upon my word and
honour, I wouldn’t, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anything
that could be promised to me. I should consider it is as much as all
the world was worth, to offer to do such a thing, unless I was ordered,
Sir.’

‘You had better not’ You have been used, too, to babbling and tattling,’
said his patron with perfect coolness. ‘Beware of that here, or you’re
a lost rascal,’ and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with his
forefinger.

The Grinder’s breath came short and thick with consternation. He tried
to protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at the
smiling gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smiling
gentleman seemed well enough satisfied, for he ordered him downstairs,
after observing him for some moments in silence, and gave him to
understand that he was retained in his employment.

This was the manner of Rob the Grinder’s engagement by Mr Carker, and
his awe-stricken devotion to that gentleman had strengthened and
increased, if possible, with every minute of his service.

It was a service of some months’ duration, when early one morning, Rob
opened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to breakfast with
his master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came,
hurrying forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcome
with all his teeth.

‘I never thought,’ said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight from
his horse, ‘to see you here, I’m sure. This is an extraordinary day in
my calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like you, who may do
anything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different.’

‘You have a tasteful place here, Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, condescending
to stop upon the lawn, to look about him.

‘You can afford to say so,’ returned Carker. ‘Thank you.’

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Dombey, in his lofty patronage, ‘anyone might say
so. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arranged
place--quite elegant.’

‘As far as it goes, truly,’ returned Carker, with an air of
disparagement. ‘It wants that qualification. Well! we have said
enough about it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank you
nonetheless. Will you walk in?’

Mr Dombey, entering the house, noticed, as he had reason to do, the
complete arrangement of the rooms, and the numerous contrivances for
comfort and effect that abounded there. Mr Carker, in his ostentation
of humility, received this notice with a deferential smile, and said he
understood its delicate meaning, and appreciated it, but in truth the
cottage was good enough for one in his position--better, perhaps, than
such a man should occupy, poor as it was.

‘But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look better
than it is,’ he said, with his false mouth distended to its fullest
stretch. ‘Just as monarchs imagine attractions in the lives of beggars.’

He directed a sharp glance and a sharp smile at Mr Dombey as he spoke,
and a sharper glance, and a sharper smile yet, when Mr Dombey, drawing
himself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by his
second in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorily
as his cold eye wandered over them, Carker’s keen glance accompanied
his, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what it
saw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed to
breathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eye
of his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and appeared no
more impressed by it than by the rest.

Carker looked at it--it was the picture that resembled Edith--as if it
were a living thing; and with a wicked, silent laugh upon his face, that
seemed in part addressed to it, though it was all derisive of the great
man standing so unconscious beside him. Breakfast was soon set upon the
table; and, inviting Mr Dombey to a chair which had its back towards
this picture, he took his own seat opposite to it as usual.

Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quite
silent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage,
attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of his
visitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, looked
fixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raising
his eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all his
faculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his master,
that he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that the
visitor was the great gentleman before whom he had been carried as a
certificate of the family health, in his childhood, and to whom he had
been indebted for his leather smalls.

‘Allow me,’ said Carker suddenly, ‘to ask how Mrs Dombey is?’

He leaned forward obsequiously, as he made the inquiry, with his chin
resting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to the
picture, as if he said to it, ‘Now, see, how I will lead him on!’

Mr Dombey reddened as he answered:

‘Mrs Dombey is quite well. You remind me, Carker, of some conversation
that I wish to have with you.’

‘Robin, you can leave us,’ said his master, at whose mild tones Robin
started and disappeared, with his eyes fixed on his patron to the last.
‘You don’t remember that boy, of course?’ he added, when the enmeshed
Grinder was gone.

‘No,’ said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference.

‘Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible,’ murmured
Carker. ‘But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse.
Perhaps you may remember having generously charged yourself with his
education?’

‘Is it that boy?’ said Mr Dombey, with a frown. ‘He does little credit
to his education, I believe.’

‘Why, he is a young rip, I am afraid,’ returned Carker, with a shrug.
‘He bears that character. But the truth is, I took him into my service
because, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had been
taught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, and
was constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And although
my defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of a
business character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everything
belonging to you, that--’

He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr Dombey far
enough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered at
the picture.

‘Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘I am sensible that you do not limit your--’

‘Service,’ suggested his smiling entertainer.

‘No; I prefer to say your regard,’ observed Mr Dombey; very sensible, as
he said so, that he was paying him a handsome and flattering compliment,
‘to our mere business relations. Your consideration for my feelings,
hopes, and disappointments, in the little instance you have just now
mentioned, is an example in point. I am obliged to you, Carker.’

Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, as
if he were afraid by any action to disturb the current of Mr Dombey’s
confidence.

‘Your allusion to it is opportune,’ said Mr Dombey, after a little
hesitation; ‘for it prepares the way to what I was beginning to say
to you, and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relations
between us, although it may involve more personal confidence on my part
than I have hitherto--’

‘Distinguished me with,’ suggested Carker, bending his head again: ‘I
will not say to you how honoured I am; for a man like you well knows how
much honour he has in his power to bestow at pleasure.’

‘Mrs Dombey and myself,’ said Mr Dombey, passing this compliment with
august self-denial, ‘are not quite agreed upon some points. We do not
appear to understand each other yet. Mrs Dombey has something to learn.’

‘Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has been
accustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation,’ said the smooth, sleek
watcher of his slightest look and tone. ‘But where there is affection,
duty, and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes are
soon set right.’

Mr Dombey’s thoughts instinctively flew back to the face that had looked
at him in his wife’s dressing-room when an imperious hand was stretched
towards the door; and remembering the affection, duty, and respect,
expressed in it, he felt the blood rush to his own face quite as plainly
as the watchful eyes upon him saw it there.

‘Mrs Dombey and myself,’ he went on to say, ‘had some discussion, before
Mrs Skewton’s death, upon the causes of my dissatisfaction; of which you
will have formed a general understanding from having been a witness of
what passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the evening when you were
at our--at my house.’

‘When I so much regretted being present,’ said the smiling Carker.
‘Proud as a man in my position necessarily must be of your familiar
notice--though I give you no credit for it; you may do anything
you please without losing caste--and honoured as I was by an early
presentation to Mrs Dombey, before she was made eminent by bearing your
name, I almost regretted that night, I assure you, that I had been the
object of such especial good fortune.’

That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the being
distinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral phenomenon
which Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore responded, with a
considerable accession of dignity. ‘Indeed! And why, Carker?’

‘I fear,’ returned the confidential agent, ‘that Mrs Dombey, never very
much disposed to regard me with favourable interest--one in my position
could not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pride
becomes her so well--may not easily forgive my innocent part in that
conversation. Your displeasure is no light matter, you must remember;
and to be visited with it before a third party--’

‘Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, arrogantly; ‘I presume that I am the first
consideration?’

‘Oh! Can there be a doubt about it?’ replied the other, with the
impatience of a man admitting a notorious and incontrovertible fact.

‘Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both in
question, I imagine,’ said Mr Dombey. ‘Is that so?’

‘Is it so?’ returned Carker. ‘Do you know better than anyone, that you
have no need to ask?’

‘Then I hope, Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘that your regret in the
acquisition of Mrs Dombey’s displeasure, may be almost counterbalanced
by your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion.’

‘I have the misfortune, I find,’ returned Carker, ‘to have incurred that
displeasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?’

‘Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions,’ said Mr Dombey, with
majestic coldness and indifference, ‘in which I do not participate, and
which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mrs Dombey
acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain
points of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary
to insist. I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of her
immediately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her
own peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that
if I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should
express my opinion to her through yourself, my confidential agent.’

Blended with the look that Carker bent upon him, was a devilish look
at the picture over his head, that struck upon it like a flash of
lightning.

‘Now, Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘I do not hesitate to say to you that
I will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey must
understand that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exception
to the whole rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertake
this charge, which, coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope,
whatever regret you may politely profess--for which I am obliged to you
on behalf of Mrs Dombey; and you will have the goodness, I am persuaded,
to discharge it as exactly as any other commission.’

‘You know,’ said Mr Carker, ‘that you have only to command me.’

‘I know,’ said Mr Dombey, with a majestic indication of assent, ‘that I
have only to command you. It is necessary that I should proceed in this.
Mrs Dombey is a lady undoubtedly highly qualified, in many respects,
to--’

‘To do credit even to your choice,’ suggested Carker, with a yawning
show of teeth.

‘Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words,’ said Mr Dombey, in his
tone of state; ‘and at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey does
that credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle of
opposition in Mrs Dombey that must be eradicated; that must be overcome:
Mrs Dombey does not appear to understand,’ said Mr Dombey, forcibly,
‘that the idea of opposition to Me is monstrous and absurd.’

‘We, in the City, know you better,’ replied Carker, with a smile from
ear to ear.

‘You know me better,’ said Mr Dombey. ‘I hope so. Though, indeed, I am
bound to do Mrs Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent it
may seem with her subsequent conduct (which remains unchanged), that
on my expressing my disapprobation and determination to her, with
some severity, on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonition
appeared to produce a very powerful effect.’ Mr Dombey delivered himself
of those words with most portentous stateliness. ‘I wish you to have
the goodness, then, to inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I must
recall our former conversation to her remembrance, in some surprise that
it has not yet had its effect. That I must insist upon her regulating
her conduct by the injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. That
I am not satisfied with her conduct. That I am greatly dissatisfied with
it. And that I shall be under the very disagreeable necessity of making
you the bearer of yet more unwelcome and explicit communications, if
she has not the good sense and the proper feeling to adapt herself to
my wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey did, and, I believe I may add, as any
other lady in her place would.’

‘The first Mrs Dombey lived very happily,’ said Carker.

‘The first Mrs Dombey had great good sense,’ said Mr Dombey, in a
gentlemanly toleration of the dead, ‘and very correct feeling.’

‘Is Miss Dombey like her mother, do you think?’ said Carker.

Swiftly and darkly, Mr Dombey’s face changed. His confidential agent
eyed it keenly.

‘I have approached a painful subject,’ he said, in a soft regretful tone
of voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. ‘Pray forgive me. I forget
these chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me.’

But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey’s downcast face
none the less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at the
picture, as appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, and
what was coming.

‘Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, and
saying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a paler
lip, ‘there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association is
with the matter in hand, and not with any recollection, as you suppose.
I do not approve of Mrs Dombey’s behaviour towards my daughter.’

‘Pardon me,’ said Mr Carker, ‘I don’t quite understand.’

‘Understand then,’ returned Mr Dombey, ‘that you may make that--that you
will make that, if you please--matter of direct objection from me to
Mrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for my
daughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likely
to induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards my
daughter, with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will have
the goodness to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; and
that I expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey may
be in earnest, or she may be pursuing a whim, or she may be opposing me;
but I object to it in any case, and in every case. If Mrs Dombey is in
earnest, so much the less reluctant should she be to desist; for she
will not serve my daughter by any such display. If my wife has any
superfluous gentleness, and duty over and above her proper submission
to me, she may bestow them where she pleases, perhaps; but I will have
submission first!--Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, checking the unusual emotion
with which he had spoken, and falling into a tone more like that in
which he was accustomed to assert his greatness, ‘you will have the
goodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a very
important part of your instructions.’

Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standing
thoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, looked
down at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, half
human and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. Mr
Dombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotion
in his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffening
again, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her great
wedding ring.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming his
chair, and drawing it opposite to Mr Dombey’s, ‘but let me understand.
Mrs Dombey is aware of the probability of your making me the organ of
your displeasure?’

‘Yes,’ replied Mr Dombey. ‘I have said so.’

‘Yes,’ rejoined Carker, quickly; ‘but why?’

‘Why!’ Mr Dombey repeated, not without hesitation. ‘Because I told her.’

‘Ay,’ replied Carker. ‘But why did you tell her? You see,’ he continued
with a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might have
laid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey’s arm; ‘if I perfectly understand
what is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to have
the happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. I
have not the honour of Mrs Dombey’s good opinion. In my position, I have
no reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not got
it?’

‘Possibly not,’ said Mr Dombey.

‘Consequently,’ pursued Carker, ‘your making the communications to Mrs
Dombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?’

‘It appears to me,’ said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet with
some embarrassment, ‘that Mrs Dombey’s views upon the subject form no
part of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may be
so.’

‘And--pardon me--do I misconceive you,’ said Carker, ‘when I think you
descry in this, a likely means of humbling Mrs Dombey’s pride--I use the
word as expressive of a quality which, kept within due bounds,
adorns and graces a lady so distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments--and, not to say of punishing her, but of reducing her
to the submission you so naturally and justly require?’

‘I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘to give
such close reasons for any course of conduct I think proper to adopt,
but I will gainsay nothing of this. If you have any objection to found
upon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that you
have one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, that
any confidence I could entrust to you, would be likely to degrade you--’

‘Oh! I degraded!’ exclaimed Carker. ‘In your service!’

‘--or to place you,’ pursued Mr Dombey, ‘in a false position.’

‘I in a false position!’ exclaimed Carker. ‘I shall be
proud--delighted--to execute your trust. I could have wished, I own,
to have given the lady at whose feet I would lay my humble duty and
devotion--for is she not your wife!--no new cause of dislike; but a wish
from you is, of course, paramount to every other consideration on
earth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is converted from these little errors
of judgment, incidental, I would presume to say, to the novelty of her
situation, I shall hope that she will perceive in the slight part I
take, only a grain--my removed and different sphere gives room for
little more--of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all considerations
to you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to garner up a
great store every day.’

Mr Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her hand
stretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mild
speech of his confidential agent an echo of the words, ‘Nothing can make
us stranger to each other than we are henceforth!’ But he shook off the
fancy, and did not shake in his resolution, and said, ‘Certainly, no
doubt.’

‘There is nothing more,’ quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its old
place--for they had taken little breakfast as yet--and pausing for an
answer before he sat down.

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘but this. You will be good enough to
observe, Carker, that no message to Mrs Dombey with which you are or
may be charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me no
reply. Mrs Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise or
treat upon any matter that is at issue between us, and that what I say
is final.’

Mr Carker signified his understanding of these credentials, and they
fell to breakfast with what appetite they might. The Grinder also, in
due time reappeared, keeping his eyes upon his master without a
moment’s respite, and passing the time in a reverie of worshipful tenor.
Breakfast concluded, Mr Dombey’s horse was ordered out again, and Mr
Carker mounting his own, they rode off for the City together.

Mr Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey received
his conversation with the sovereign air of a man who had a right to
be talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words to
carry on the conversation. So they rode on characteristically enough.
But Mr Dombey, in his dignity, rode with very long stirrups, and a very
loose rein, and very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horse
went. In consequence of which it happened that Mr Dombey’s horse, while
going at a round trot, stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolled
over him, and lashing out with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles to
get up, kicked him.

Mr Carker, quick of eye, steady of hand, and a good horseman, was afoot,
and had the struggling animal upon his legs and by the bridle, in a
moment. Otherwise that morning’s confidence would have been Mr Dombey’s
last. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon him, he
bent over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and muttered
as he stooped down, ‘I have given good cause of offence to Mrs Dombey
now, if she knew it!’

Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, was
carried by certain menders of the road, under Carker’s direction, to
the nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soon
attended by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from all
parts, and who seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vultures
are said to gather about a camel who dies in the desert. After being
at some pains to restore him to consciousness, these gentlemen examined
into the nature of his injuries. One surgeon who lived hard by was strong
for a compound fracture of the leg, which was the landlord’s opinion
also; but two surgeons who lived at a distance, and were only in that
neighbourhood by accident, combated this opinion so disinterestedly, that
it was decided at last that the patient, though severely cut and bruised,
had broken no bones but a lesser rib or so, and might be carefully taken
home before night. His injuries being dressed and bandaged, which was a
long operation, and he at length left to repose, Mr Carker mounted his
horse again, and rode away to carry the intelligence home.

Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was a
sufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was at
its worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft and
cruelty of thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility rather
than of design or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men and
women. Drawing rein at length, and slackening in his speed, as he came
into the more public roads, he checked his white-legged horse into
picking his way along as usual, and hid himself beneath his sleek,
hushed, crouched manner, and his ivory smile, as he best could.

He rode direct to Mr Dombey’s house, alighted at the door, and begged to
see Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed him to
Mr Dombey’s own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey’s
hour for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not having
mentioned it before.

Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception, wrote upon a
card that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, and
that he would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (this
he underlined), if he were not equally sure of the occasion being
sufficient for his justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey’s
maid appeared, and conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where Edith
and Florence were together.

He had never thought Edith half so beautiful before. Much as he admired
the graces of her face and form, and freshly as they dwelt within his
sensual remembrance, he had never thought her half so beautiful.

Her glance fell haughtily upon him in the doorway; but he looked
at Florence--though only in the act of bending his head, as he came
in--with some irrepressible expression of the new power he held; and
it was his triumph to see the glance droop and falter, and to see that
Edith half rose up to receive him.

He was very sorry, he was deeply grieved; he couldn’t say with what
unwillingness he came to prepare her for the intelligence of a very
slight accident. He entreated Mrs Dombey to compose herself. Upon his
sacred word of honour, there was no cause of alarm. But Mr Dombey--

Florence uttered a sudden cry. He did not look at her, but at Edith.
Edith composed and reassured her. She uttered no cry of distress. No,
no.

Mr Dombey had met with an accident in riding. His horse had slipped, and
he had been thrown.

Florence wildly exclaimed that he was badly hurt; that he was killed!

No. Upon his honour, Mr Dombey, though stunned at first, was soon
recovered, and though certainly hurt was in no kind of danger. If this
were not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never could have had
the courage to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It was the truth
indeed, he solemnly assured her.

All this he said as if he were answering Edith, and not Florence, and
with his eyes and his smile fastened on Edith.

He then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and to request
that a carriage might be placed at his disposal to bring him home.

‘Mama,’ faltered Florence in tears, ‘if I might venture to go!’

Mr Carker, having his eyes on Edith when he heard these words, gave her
a secret look and slightly shook his head. He saw how she battled with
herself before she answered him with her handsome eyes, but he wrested
the answer from her--he showed her that he would have it, or that he
would speak and cut Florence to the heart--and she gave it to him. As
he had looked at the picture in the morning, so he looked at her
afterwards, when she turned her eyes away.

‘I am directed to request,’ he said, ‘that the new housekeeper--Mrs
Pipchin, I think, is the name--’

Nothing escaped him. He saw in an instant, that she was another slight
of Mr Dombey’s on his wife.

‘--may be informed that Mr Dombey wishes to have his bed prepared in
his own apartments downstairs, as he prefers those rooms to any other.
I shall return to Mr Dombey almost immediately. That every possible
attention has been paid to his comfort, and that he is the object of
every possible solicitude, I need not assure you, Madam. Let me again
say, there is no cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite at
ease, believe me.’

He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of deference and
conciliation; and having returned to Mr Dombey’s room, and there
arranged for a carriage being sent after him to the City, mounted his
horse again, and rode slowly thither. He was very thoughtful as he went
along, and very thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriage
on his way back to the place where Mr Dombey had been left. It was only
when sitting by that gentleman’s couch that he was quite himself again,
and conscious of his teeth.

About the time of twilight, Mr Dombey, grievously afflicted with aches
and pains, was helped into his carriage, and propped with cloaks and
pillows on one side of it, while his confidential agent bore him company
upon the other. As he was not to be shaken, they moved at little more
than a foot pace; and hence it was quite dark when he was brought home.
Mrs Pipchin, bitter and grim, and not oblivious of the Peruvian mines,
as the establishment in general had good reason to know, received him at
the door, and freshened the domestics with several little sprinklings
of wordy vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to his room. Mr
Carker remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, as
he declined to receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress who
presided over his household, waited on Mrs Dombey once more, with his
report on her lord’s condition.

He again found Edith alone with Florence, and he again addressed the
whole of his soothing speech to Edith, as if she were a prey to the
liveliest and most affectionate anxieties. So earnest he was in his
respectful sympathy, that on taking leave, he ventured--with one more
glance towards Florence at the moment--to take her hand, and bending
over it, to touch it with his lips.

Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike his fair face with
it, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes, and
the dilation of her whole form. But when she was alone in her own room,
she struck it on the marble chimney-shelf, so that, at one blow, it was
bruised, and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as if
she could have thrust it in and burned it.

Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark and
threatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, as
if her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapes
of outrage and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that might
happen, flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resented
figure marshalled them against her. And that figure was her husband.

CHAPTER 43. The Watches of the Night

Florence, long since awakened from her dream, mournfully observed the
estrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more and
more, and knew that there was greater bitterness between them every day.
Each day’s added knowledge deepened the shade upon her love and hope,
roused up the old sorrow that had slumbered for a little time, and made
it even heavier to bear than it had been before.

It had been hard--how hard may none but Florence ever know!--to have
the natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony; and
slight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest protection and
the dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what she
had felt, and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But it
was much more hard to be compelled to doubt either her father or Edith,
so affectionate and dear to her, and to think of her love for each of
them, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder.

Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposed
upon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not fly
from. She saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard,
inflexible, unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with starting
tears, that her own dear mother had been made unhappy by such treatment,
and had pined away and died? Then she would think how proud and stately
Edith was to everyone but her, with what disdain she treated him, how
distantly she kept apart from him, and what she had said on the night
when they came home; and quickly it would come on Florence, almost as a
crime, that she loved one who was set in opposition to her father, and
that her father knowing of it, must think of her in his solitary room as
the unnatural child who added this wrong to the old fault, so much wept
for, of never having won his fatherly affection from her birth. The next
kind word from Edith, the next kind glance, would shake these thoughts
again, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but she had
cheered the drooping heart of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and been
its best of comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to them
both, feeling for the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her own
duty to both, Florence in her wider and expanded love, and by the side
of Edith, endured more than when she had hoarded up her undivided secret
in the mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it.

One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this, Florence
was spared. She never had the least suspicion that Edith by her
tenderness for her widened the separation from her father, or gave him
new cause of dislike. If Florence had conceived the possibility of such
an effect being wrought by such a cause, what grief she would have felt,
what sacrifice she would have tried to make, poor loving girl, how fast
and sure her quiet passage might have been beneath it to the presence
of that higher Father who does not reject his children’s love, or spurn
their tried and broken hearts, Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, and
that was well.

No word was ever spoken between Florence and Edith now, on these
subjects. Edith had said there ought to be between them, in that wise, a
division and a silence like the grave itself: and Florence felt she was
right.

In this state of affairs her father was brought home, suffering and
disabled; and gloomily retired to his own rooms, where he was tended by
servants, not approached by Edith, and had no friend or companion but Mr
Carker, who withdrew near midnight.

‘And nice company he is, Miss Floy,’ said Susan Nipper. ‘Oh, he’s a
precious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don’t let him come
to me whatever he does, that’s all I tell him.’

‘Dear Susan,’ urged Florence, ‘don’t!’

‘Oh, it’s very well to say “don’t” Miss Floy,’ returned the Nipper, much
exasperated; ‘but raly begging your pardon we’re coming to such passes
that it turns all the blood in a person’s body into pins and needles,
with their pints all ways. Don’t mistake me, Miss Floy, I don’t mean
nothing again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady should
though she is rather high I must say not that I have any right to object
to that particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses and having them
put over us and keeping guard at your Pa’s door like crocodiles
(only make us thankful that they lay no eggs!) we are a growing too
outrageous!’

‘Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan,’ returned Florence, ‘and has a
right to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don’t!’

‘Well Miss Floy,’ returned the Nipper, ‘when you say don’t, I never do
I hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon me Miss, and
nothing less.’

Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punctuation in her
discourse on this night, which was the night of Mr Dombey’s being
brought home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence to
inquire after him, she had been obliged to deliver her message to her
mortal enemy Mrs Pipchin; who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey, had
taken upon herself to return what Miss Nipper called a huffish answer,
on her own responsibility. This, Susan Nipper construed into presumption
on the part of that exemplary sufferer by the Peruvian mines, and a deed
of disparagement upon her young lady, that was not to be forgiven; and
so far her emphatic state was special. But she had been in a condition
of greatly increased suspicion and distrust, ever since the marriage;
for, like most persons of her quality of mind, who form a strong and
sincere attachment to one in the different station which Florence
occupied, Susan was very jealous, and her jealousy naturally attached to
Edith, who divided her old empire, and came between them. Proud and glad
as Susan Nipper truly was, that her young mistress should be advanced
towards her proper place in the scene of her old neglect, and that
she should have her father’s handsome wife for her companion and
protectress, she could not relinquish any part of her own dominion to
the handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague feeling of ill-will,
for which she did not fail to find a disinterested justification in her
sharp perception of the pride and passion of the lady’s character. From
the background to which she had necessarily retired somewhat, since
the marriage, Miss Nipper looked on, therefore, at domestic affairs
in general, with a resolute conviction that no good would come of Mrs
Dombey: always being very careful to publish on all possible occasions,
that she had nothing to say against her.

‘Susan,’ said Florence, who was sitting thoughtfully at her table, ‘it
is very late. I shall want nothing more to-night.’

‘Ah, Miss Floy!’ returned the Nipper, ‘I’m sure I often wish for them
old times when I sat up with you hours later than this and fell asleep
through being tired out when you was as broad awake as spectacles,
but you’ve ma’s-in-law to come and sit with you now Miss Floy and I’m
thankful for it I’m sure. I’ve not a word to say against ‘em.’

‘I shall not forget who was my old companion when I had none, Susan,’
returned Florence, gently, ‘never!’ And looking up, she put her arm
round the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to hers, and
bidding her good-night, kissed it; which so mollified Miss Nipper, that
she fell a sobbing.

‘Now my dear Miss Floy,’ said Susan, ‘let me go downstairs again and
see how your Pa is, I know you’re wretched about him, do let me go
downstairs again and knock at his door my own self.’

‘No,’ said Florence, ‘go to bed. We shall hear more in the morning.
I will inquire myself in the morning. Mama has been down, I daresay;’
Florence blushed, for she had no such hope; ‘or is there now, perhaps.
Good-night!’

Susan was too much softened to express her private opinion on the
probability of Mrs Dombey’s being in attendance on her husband, and
silently withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her hands
as she had often done in other days, and did not restrain the tears
from coursing down her face. The misery of this domestic discord and
unhappiness; the withered hope she cherished now, if hope it could be
called, of ever being taken to her father’s heart; her doubts and fears
between the two; the yearning of her innocent breast to both; the heavy
disappointment and regret of such an end as this, to what had been a
vision of bright hope and promise to her; all crowded on her mind and
made her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother dead, her father
unmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting him away, but
loving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her affection could never
prosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was soon hushed, but the
thoughts in which it had arisen were too true and strong to be dismissed
with it; and they made the night desolate.

Among such reflections there rose up, as there had risen up all day,
the image of her father, wounded and in pain, alone in his own room,
untended by those who should be nearest to him, and passing the tardy
hours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start and
clasp her hands--though it was not a new one in her mind--that he might
die, and never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame.
In her agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of once
more stealing downstairs, and venturing to his door.

She listened at her own. The house was quiet, and all the lights were
out. It was a long, long time, she thought, since she used to make her
nightly pilgrimages to his door! It was a long, long time, she tried to
think, since she had entered his room at midnight, and he had led her
back to the stair-foot!

With the same child’s heart within her, as of old: even with the child’s
sweet timid eyes and clustering hair: Florence, as strange to her
father in her early maiden bloom, as in her nursery time, crept down the
staircase listening as she went, and drew near to his room. No one was
stirring in the house. The door was partly open to admit air; and all
was so still within, that she could hear the burning of the fire, and
count the ticking of the clock that stood upon the chimney-piece.

She looked in. In that room, the housekeeper wrapped in a blanket was
fast asleep in an easy chair before the fire. The doors between it and
the next were partly closed, and a screen was drawn before them; but
there was a light there, and it shone upon the cornice of his bed. All
was so very still that she could hear from his breathing that he was
asleep. This gave her courage to pass round the screen, and look into
his chamber.

It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had not
expected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he had
awakened then, must have remained there.

There was a cut upon his forehead, and they had been wetting his hair,
which lay bedabbled and entangled on the pillow. One of his arms,
resting outside the bed, was bandaged up, and he was very white. But it
was not this, that after the first quick glance, and first assurance
of his sleeping quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It was
something very different from this, and more than this, that made him
look so solemn in her eye.

She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been upon
it--or she fancied so--some disturbing consciousness of her. She had
never seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, and
her timid glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and repelling
harshness. As she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the first time,
free from the cloud that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquil
night was reigning in its stead. He might have gone to sleep, for
anything she saw there, blessing her.

Awake, unkind father! Awake, now, sullen man! The time is flitting by;
the hour is coming with an angry tread. Awake!

There was no change upon his face; and as she watched it, awfully, its
motionless response recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked,
so would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all the
world of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that time
should come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she was
going to do; and it might fall something lighter upon her.

She stole close to the bed, and drawing in her breath, bent down, and
softly kissed him on the face, and laid her own for one brief moment
by its side, and put the arm, with which she dared not touch him, round
about him on the pillow.

Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the hour
is coming with an angry tread; its foot is in the house. Awake!

In her mind, she prayed to God to bless her father, and to soften him
towards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he was
wrong, and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And doing
so, and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidly
away, passed out of his room, and crossed the other, and was gone.

He may sleep on now. He may sleep on while he may. But let him look for
that slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour is
come!

Sad and grieving was the heart of Florence, as she crept upstairs. The
quiet house had grown more dismal since she came down. The sleep she had
been looking on, in the dead of night, had the solemnity to her of death
and life in one. The secrecy and silence of her own proceeding made the
night secret, silent, and oppressive. She felt unwilling, almost unable,
to go on to her own chamber; and turning into the drawing-rooms, where
the clouded moon was shining through the blinds, looked out into the
empty streets.

The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as if
they were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was not
quite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding night
was shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end.
Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had noted
this bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden natural
antipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy.

Her Mama had not come to her room that night, which was one cause of her
having sat late out of her bed. In her general uneasiness, no less than
in her ardent longing to have somebody to speak to, and to break the
spell of gloom and silence, Florence directed her steps towards the
chamber where she slept.

The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her hesitating
hand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning; still more
surprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but partially undressed,
was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had crumbled and dropped
away. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air; and in their light, and
in her face, and in her form, and in the grasp with which she held the
elbows of her chair as if about to start up, Florence saw such fierce
emotion that it terrified her.

‘Mama!’ she cried, ‘what is the matter?’

Edith started; looking at her with such a strange dread in her face,
that Florence was more frightened than before.

‘Mama!’ said Florence, hurriedly advancing. ‘Dear Mama! what is the
matter?’

‘I have not been well,’ said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her in
the same strange way. ‘I have had bad dreams, my love.’

‘And not yet been to bed, Mama?’

‘No,’ she returned. ‘Half-waking dreams.’

Her features gradually softened; and suffering Florence to come closer
to her, within her embrace, she said in a tender manner, ‘But what does
my bird do here? What does my bird do here?’

‘I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in not
knowing how Papa was; and I--’

Florence stopped there, and said no more.

‘Is it late?’ asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled
with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.

‘Very late. Near day.’

‘Near day!’ she repeated in surprise.

‘Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?’ said Florence.

Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with the
same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before;
but she presently said, ‘Nothing, nothing. A blow.’ And then she
said, ‘My Florence!’ and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping
passionately.

‘Mama!’ said Florence. ‘Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to
make us happier? Is there anything?’

‘Nothing,’ she replied.

‘Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,’ said Florence, ‘you will not
blame me, will you?’

‘It is useless,’ she replied, ‘useless. I have told you, dear, that I
have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming
back.’

‘I do not understand,’ said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
seemed to darken as she looked.

‘I have dreamed,’ said Edith in a low voice, ‘of a pride that is all
powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been
galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled
except upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the
consciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly
to resent it or avoid it, or to say, “This shall not be!” a pride that,
rightly guided, might have led perhaps to better things, but which,
misdirected and perverted, like all else belonging to the same
possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and ruin.’

She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she were
alone.

‘I have dreamed,’ she said, ‘of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable
pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar,
yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger,--oh mother, oh
mother!--while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for
once and for all, rather than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean,
poor thing!’

And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had
looked when Florence entered.

‘And I have dreamed,’ she said, ‘that in a first late effort to achieve
a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set
upon by dogs, but that it stands at bay, and will not yield; no, that it
cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate.’

Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and as
she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. ‘Oh
Florence!’ she said, ‘I think I have been nearly mad to-night!’ and
humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.

‘Don’t leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you!’ These words she
said a score of times.

Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence,
and for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now dawning, with
folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lying
down herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.

‘For you are weary, dearest, and unhappy, and should rest.’

‘I am indeed unhappy, dear Mama, tonight,’ said Florence. ‘But you are
weary and unhappy, too.’

‘Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet.’

They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into a
gentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it was
so sad to think upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew closer
to Edith for some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest it
should be deserting him. So, in her sleep, she tried to reconcile the
two together, and to show them that she loved them both, but could not
do it, and her waking grief was part of her dreams.

Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on the
flushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew the
truth. But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she still
sat watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and sometimes
whispered, as she looked at the hushed face, ‘Be near me, Florence. I
have no hope but in you!’

CHAPTER 44. A Separation

With the day, though not so early as the sun, uprose Miss Susan Nipper.
There was a heaviness in this young maiden’s exceedingly sharp black
eyes, that abated somewhat of their sparkling, and suggested--which
was not their usual character--the possibility of their being sometimes
shut. There was likewise a swollen look about them, as if they had been
crying over-night. But the Nipper, so far from being cast down, was
singularly brisk and bold, and all her energies appeared to be braced
up for some great feat. This was noticeable even in her dress, which was
much more tight and trim than usual; and in occasional twitches of her
head as she went about the house, which were mightily expressive of
determination.

In a word, she had formed a determination, and an aspiring one: it being
nothing less than this--to penetrate to Mr Dombey’s presence, and
have speech of that gentleman alone. ‘I have often said I would,’ she
remarked, in a threatening manner, to herself, that morning, with many
twitches of her head, ‘and now I will!’

Spurring herself on to the accomplishment of this desperate design, with
a sharpness that was peculiar to herself, Susan Nipper haunted the hall
and staircase during the whole forenoon, without finding a favourable
opportunity for the assault. Not at all baffled by this discomfiture,
which indeed had a stimulating effect, and put her on her mettle, she
diminished nothing of her vigilance; and at last discovered, towards
evening, that her sworn foe Mrs Pipchin, under pretence of having sat up
all night, was dozing in her own room, and that Mr Dombey was lying on
his sofa, unattended.

With a twitch--not of her head merely, this time, but of her whole
self--the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey’s door, and knocked. ‘Come
in!’ said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final twitch, and
went in.

Mr Dombey, who was eyeing the fire, gave an amazed look at his visitor,
and raised himself a little on his arm. The Nipper dropped a curtsey.

‘What do you want?’ said Mr Dombey.

‘If you please, Sir, I wish to speak to you,’ said Susan.

Mr Dombey moved his lips as if he were repeating the words, but he
seemed so lost in astonishment at the presumption of the young woman as
to be incapable of giving them utterance.

‘I have been in your service, Sir,’ said Susan Nipper, with her usual
rapidity, ‘now twelve ‘year a waiting on Miss Floy my own young lady who
couldn’t speak plain when I first come here and I was old in this house
when Mrs Richards was new, I may not be Meethosalem, but I am not a
child in arms.’

Mr Dombey, raised upon his arm and looking at her, offered no comment on
this preparatory statement of fact.

‘There never was a dearer or a blesseder young lady than is my young
lady, Sir,’ said Susan, ‘and I ought to know a great deal better than
some for I have seen her in her grief and I have seen her in her joy
(there’s not been much of it) and I have seen her with her brother and I
have seen her in her loneliness and some have never seen her, and I
say to some and all--I do!’ and here the black-eyed shook her head, and
slightly stamped her foot; ‘that she’s the blessedest and dearest angel
is Miss Floy that ever drew the breath of life, the more that I was torn
to pieces Sir the more I’d say it though I may not be a Fox’s Martyr.’

Mr Dombey turned yet paler than his fall had made him, with indignation
and astonishment; and kept his eyes upon the speaker as if he accused
them, and his ears too, of playing him false.

‘No one could be anything but true and faithful to Miss Floy, Sir,’
pursued Susan, ‘and I take no merit for my service of twelve year, for
I love her--yes, I say to some and all I do!’--and here the black-eyed
shook her head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked a
sob; ‘but true and faithful service gives me right to speak I hope, and
speak I must and will now, right or wrong.’

‘What do you mean, woman?’ said Mr Dombey, glaring at her. ‘How do you
dare?’

‘What I mean, Sir, is to speak respectful and without offence, but out,
and how I dare I know not but I do!’ said Susan. ‘Oh! you don’t know my
young lady Sir you don’t indeed, you’d never know so little of her, if
you did.’

Mr Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell-rope; but there was
no bell-rope on that side of the fire, and he could not rise and cross
to the other without assistance. The quick eye of the Nipper detected
his helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, she
felt she had got him.

‘Miss Floy,’ said Susan Nipper, ‘is the most devoted and most patient
and most dutiful and beautiful of daughters, there ain’t no gentleman,
no Sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest of
England put together, but might be proud of her and would and ought. If
he knew her value right, he’d rather lose his greatness and his fortune
piece by piece and beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to some
and all, he would!’ cried Susan Nipper, bursting into tears, ‘than
bring the sorrow on her tender heart that I have seen it suffer in this
house!’

‘Woman,’ cried Mr Dombey, ‘leave the room.’

‘Begging your pardon, not even if I am to leave the situation, Sir,’
replied the steadfast Nipper, ‘in which I have been so many years and
seen so much--although I hope you’d never have the heart to send me from
Miss Floy for such a cause--will I go now till I have said the rest, I
may not be a Indian widow Sir and I am not and I would not so become but
if I once made up my mind to burn myself alive, I’d do it! And I’ve made
my mind up to go on.’

Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper’s
countenance, than by her words.

‘There ain’t a person in your service, Sir,’ pursued the black-eyed,
‘that has always stood more in awe of you than me and you may think how
true it is when I make so bold as say that I have hundreds and hundreds
of times thought of speaking to you and never been able to make my mind
up to it till last night, but last night decided of me.’

Mr Dombey, in a paroxysm of rage, made another grasp at the bell-rope
that was not there, and, in its absence, pulled his hair rather than
nothing.

‘I have seen,’ said Susan Nipper, ‘Miss Floy strive and strive when
nothing but a child so sweet and patient that the best of women might
have copied from her, I’ve seen her sitting nights together half the
night through to help her delicate brother with his learning, I’ve
seen her helping him and watching him at other times--some well know
when--I’ve seen her, with no encouragement and no help, grow up to be a
lady, thank God! that is the grace and pride of every company she goes
in, and I’ve always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feeling
of it--I say to some and all, I have!--and never said one word, but
ordering one’s self lowly and reverently towards one’s betters, is not
to be a worshipper of graven images, and I will and must speak!’

‘Is there anybody there?’ cried Mr Dombey, calling out. ‘Where are the
men? where are the women? Is there no one there?’

‘I left my dear young lady out of bed late last night,’ said Susan,
nothing checked, ‘and I knew why, for you was ill Sir and she didn’t
know how ill and that was enough to make her wretched as I saw it did.
I may not be a Peacock; but I have my eyes--and I sat up a little in my
own room thinking she might be lonesome and might want me, and I saw her
steal downstairs and come to this door as if it was a guilty thing to
look at her own Pa, and then steal back again and go into them lonely
drawing-rooms, a-crying so, that I could hardly bear to hear it. I can
not bear to hear it,’ said Susan Nipper, wiping her black eyes, and
fixing them undauntingly on Mr Dombey’s infuriated face. ‘It’s not the
first time I have heard it, not by many and many a time you don’t know
your own daughter, Sir, you don’t know what you’re doing, Sir, I say to
some and all,’ cried Susan Nipper, in a final burst, ‘that it’s a sinful
shame!’

‘Why, hoity toity!’ cried the voice of Mrs Pipchin, as the black
bombazeen garments of that fair Peruvian Miner swept into the room.
‘What’s this, indeed?’

Susan favoured Mrs Pipchin with a look she had invented expressly for
her when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to Mr
Dombey.

‘What’s this?’ repeated Mr Dombey, almost foaming. ‘What’s this, Madam?
You who are at the head of this household, and bound to keep it in
order, have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman?’

‘I know very little good of her, Sir,’ croaked Mrs Pipchin. ‘How dare
you come here, you hussy? Go along with you!’

But the inflexible Nipper, merely honouring Mrs Pipchin with another
look, remained.

‘Do you call it managing this establishment, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey,
‘to leave a person like this at liberty to come and talk to me!
A gentleman--in his own house--in his own room--assailed with the
impertinences of women-servants!’

‘Well, Sir,’ returned Mrs Pipchin, with vengeance in her hard grey eye,
‘I exceedingly deplore it; nothing can be more irregular; nothing can be
more out of all bounds and reason; but I regret to say, Sir, that
this young woman is quite beyond control. She has been spoiled by
Miss Dombey, and is amenable to nobody. You know you’re not,’ said Mrs
Pipchin, sharply, and shaking her head at Susan Nipper. ‘For shame, you
hussy! Go along with you!’

‘If you find people in my service who are not to be controlled, Mrs
Pipchin,’ said Mr Dombey, turning back towards the fire, ‘you know what
to do with them, I presume. You know what you are here for? Take her
away!’

‘Sir, I know what to do,’ retorted Mrs Pipchin, ‘and of course shall
do it. Susan Nipper,’ snapping her up particularly short, ‘a month’s
warning from this hour.’

‘Oh indeed!’ cried Susan, loftily.

‘Yes,’ returned Mrs Pipchin, ‘and don’t smile at me, you minx, or I’ll
know the reason why! Go along with you this minute!’

‘I intend to go this minute, you may rely upon it,’ said the voluble
Nipper. ‘I have been in this house waiting on my young lady a dozen year
and I won’t stop in it one hour under notice from a person owning to the
name of Pipchin trust me, Mrs P.’

‘A good riddance of bad rubbish!’ said that wrathful old lady. ‘Get
along with you, or I’ll have you carried out!’

‘My comfort is,’ said Susan, looking back at Mr Dombey, ‘that I have
told a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told long
before and can’t be told too often or too plain and that no amount of
Pipchinses--I hope the number of ‘em mayn’t be great’ (here Mrs Pipchin
uttered a very sharp ‘Go along with you!’ and Miss Nipper repeated the
look) ‘can unsay what I have said, though they gave a whole year full of
warnings beginning at ten o’clock in the forenoon and never leaving
off till twelve at night and died of the exhaustion which would be a
Jubilee!’

With these words, Miss Nipper preceded her foe out of the room; and
walking upstairs to her own apartments in great state, to the choking
exasperation of the ireful Pipchin, sat down among her boxes and began
to cry.

From this soft mood she was soon aroused, with a very wholesome and
refreshing effect, by the voice of Mrs Pipchin outside the door.

‘Does that bold-faced slut,’ said the fell Pipchin, ‘intend to take her
warning, or does she not?’

Miss Nipper replied from within that the person described did not
inhabit that part of the house, but that her name was Pipchin, and she
was to be found in the housekeeper’s room.

‘You saucy baggage!’ retorted Mrs Pipchin, rattling at the handle of the
door. ‘Go along with you this minute. Pack up your things directly! How
dare you talk in this way to a gentle-woman who has seen better days?’

To which Miss Nipper rejoined from her castle, that she pitied the
better days that had seen Mrs Pipchin; and that for her part she
considered the worst days in the year to be about that lady’s mark,
except that they were much too good for her.

‘But you needn’t trouble yourself to make a noise at my door,’ said
Susan Nipper, ‘nor to contaminate the key-hole with your eye, I’m
packing up and going you may take your affidavit.’

The Dowager expressed her lively satisfaction at this intelligence, and
with some general opinions upon young hussies as a race, and especially
upon their demerits after being spoiled by Miss Dombey, withdrew to
prepare the Nipper’s wages. Susan then bestirred herself to get
her trunks in order, that she might take an immediate and dignified
departure; sobbing heartily all the time, as she thought of Florence.

The object of her regret was not long in coming to her, for the news
soon spread over the house that Susan Nipper had had a disturbance with
Mrs Pipchin, and that they had both appealed to Mr Dombey, and that
there had been an unprecedented piece of work in Mr Dombey’s room, and
that Susan was going. The latter part of this confused rumour, Florence
found to be so correct, that Susan had locked the last trunk and was
sitting upon it with her bonnet on, when she came into her room.

‘Susan!’ cried Florence. ‘Going to leave me! You!’

‘Oh for goodness gracious sake, Miss Floy,’ said Susan, sobbing, ‘don’t
speak a word to me or I shall demean myself before them Pi-i-pchinses,
and I wouldn’t have ‘em see me cry Miss Floy for worlds!’

‘Susan!’ said Florence. ‘My dear girl, my old friend! What shall I do
without you! Can you bear to go away so?’

‘No-n-o-o, my darling dear Miss Floy, I can’t indeed,’ sobbed Susan.
‘But it can’t be helped, I’ve done my duty, Miss, I have indeed. It’s no
fault of mine. I am quite resigned. I couldn’t stay my month or I could
never leave you then my darling and I must at last as well as at first,
don’t speak to me Miss Floy, for though I’m pretty firm I’m not a marble
doorpost, my own dear.’

‘What is it? Why is it?’ said Florence, ‘Won’t you tell me?’ For Susan
was shaking her head.

‘No-n-no, my darling,’ returned Susan. ‘Don’t ask me, for I mustn’t, and
whatever you do don’t put in a word for me to stop, for it couldn’t be
and you’d only wrong yourself, and so God bless you my own precious
and forgive me any harm I have done, or any temper I have showed in all
these many years!’

With which entreaty, very heartily delivered, Susan hugged her mistress
in her arms.

‘My darling there’s a many that may come to serve you and be glad to
serve you and who’ll serve you well and true,’ said Susan, ‘but there
can’t be one who’ll serve you so affectionate as me or love you half as
dearly, that’s my comfort. Go-ood-bye, sweet Miss Floy!’

‘Where will you go, Susan?’ asked her weeping mistress.

‘I’ve got a brother down in the country Miss--a farmer in Essex,’ said
the heart-broken Nipper, ‘that keeps ever so many co-o-ows and pigs and
I shall go down there by the coach and sto-op with him, and don’t mind
me, for I’ve got money in the Savings Banks my dear, and needn’t take
another service just yet, which I couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t do, my
heart’s own mistress!’ Susan finished with a burst of sorrow, which was
opportunely broken by the voice of Mrs Pipchin talking downstairs; on
hearing which, she dried her red and swollen eyes, and made a melancholy
feint of calling jauntily to Mr Towlinson to fetch a cab and carry down
her boxes.

Florence, pale and hurried and distressed, but withheld from useless
interference even here, by her dread of causing any new division between
her father and his wife (whose stern, indignant face had been a warning
to her a few moments since), and by her apprehension of being in some
way unconsciously connected already with the dismissal of her
old servant and friend, followed, weeping, downstairs to Edith’s
dressing-room, whither Susan betook herself to make her parting curtsey.

‘Now, here’s the cab, and here’s the boxes, get along with you, do!’
said Mrs Pipchin, presenting herself at the same moment. ‘I beg your
pardon, Ma’am, but Mr Dombey’s orders are imperative.’

Edith, sitting under the hands of her maid--she was going out to
dinner--preserved her haughty face, and took not the least notice.

‘There’s your money,’ said Mrs Pipchin, who in pursuance of her system,
and in recollection of the Mines, was accustomed to rout the servants
about, as she had routed her young Brighton boarders; to the everlasting
acidulation of Master Bitherstone, ‘and the sooner this house sees your
back the better.’

Susan had no spirits even for the look that belonged to Ma Pipchin by
right; so she dropped her curtsey to Mrs Dombey (who inclined her head
without one word, and whose eye avoided everyone but Florence), and gave
one last parting hug to her young mistress, and received her parting
embrace in return. Poor Susan’s face at this crisis, in the intensity of
her feelings and the determined suffocation of her sobs, lest one should
become audible and be a triumph to Mrs Pipchin, presented a series of
the most extraordinary physiognomical phenomena ever witnessed.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss, I’m sure,’ said Towlinson, outside the
door with the boxes, addressing Florence, ‘but Mr Toots is in the
drawing-room, and sends his compliments, and begs to know how Diogenes
and Master is.’

Quick as thought, Florence glided out and hastened downstairs, where
Mr Toots, in the most splendid vestments, was breathing very hard with
doubt and agitation on the subject of her coming.

‘Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, ‘God bless my soul!’

This last ejaculation was occasioned by Mr Toots’s deep concern at the
distress he saw in Florence’s face; which caused him to stop short in a
fit of chuckles, and become an image of despair.

‘Dear Mr Toots,’ said Florence, ‘you are so friendly to me, and so
honest, that I am sure I may ask a favour of you.’

‘Miss Dombey,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘if you’ll only name one,
you’ll--you’ll give me an appetite. To which,’ said Mr Toots, with some
sentiment, ‘I have long been a stranger.’

‘Susan, who is an old friend of mine, the oldest friend I have,’ said
Florence, ‘is about to leave here suddenly, and quite alone, poor girl.
She is going home, a little way into the country. Might I ask you to
take care of her until she is in the coach?’

‘Miss Dombey,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘you really do me an honour and a
kindness. This proof of your confidence, after the manner in which I was
Beast enough to conduct myself at Brighton--’

‘Yes,’ said Florence, hurriedly--‘no--don’t think of that. Then would
you have the kindness to--to go? and to be ready to meet her when she
comes out? Thank you a thousand times! You ease my mind so much. She
doesn’t seem so desolate. You cannot think how grateful I feel to
you, or what a good friend I am sure you are!’ and Florence in
her earnestness thanked him again and again; and Mr Toots, in his
earnestness, hurried away--but backwards, that he might lose no glimpse
of her.

Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in the
hall, with Mrs Pipchin driving her forth, and Diogenes jumping about
her, and terrifying Mrs Pipchin to the last degree by making snaps
at her bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of her
voice--for the good duenna was the dearest and most cherished aversion
of his breast. But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants all
round, and turn once to look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes bound
out after the cab, and want to follow it, and testify an impossibility
of conviction that he had no longer any property in the fare; and the
door was shut, and the hurry over, and her tears flowed fast for the
loss of an old friend, whom no one could replace. No one. No one.

Mr Toots, like the leal and trusty soul he was, stopped the cabriolet in
a twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission, at which she cried
more than before.

‘Upon my soul and body!’ said Mr Toots, taking his seat beside her. ‘I
feel for you. Upon my word and honour I think you can hardly know your
own feelings better than I imagine them. I can conceive nothing more
dreadful than to have to leave Miss Dombey.’

Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching to
see her.

‘I say,’ said Mr Toots, ‘now, don’t! at least I mean now do, you know!’

‘Do what, Mr Toots!’ cried Susan.

‘Why, come home to my place, and have some dinner before you start,’
said Mr Toots. ‘My cook’s a most respectable woman--one of the most
motherly people I ever saw--and she’ll be delighted to make you
comfortable. Her son,’ said Mr Toots, as an additional recommendation,
‘was educated in the Bluecoat School, and blown up in a powder-mill.’

Susan accepting this kind offer, Mr Toots conducted her to his dwelling,
where they were received by the Matron in question who fully justified
his character of her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, on
seeing a lady in the vehicle, that Mr Dombey had been doubled up, ably
to his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentleman
awakened in Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, having
been defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage was in a state of such great
dilapidation, as to be hardly presentable in society with comfort to the
beholders. The Chicken himself attributed this punishment to his having
had the misfortune to get into Chancery early in the proceedings, when
he was severely fibbed by the Larkey one, and heavily grassed. But
it appeared from the published records of that great contest that the
Larkey Boy had had it all his own way from the beginning, and that the
Chicken had been tapped, and bunged, and had received pepper, and had
been made groggy, and had come up piping, and had endured a complication
of similar strange inconveniences, until he had been gone into and
finished.

After a good repast, and much hospitality, Susan set out for the
coach-office in another cabriolet, with Mr Toots inside, as before, and
the Chicken on the box, who, whatever distinction he conferred on the
little party by the moral weight and heroism of his character, was
scarcely ornamental to it, physically speaking, on account of his
plasters; which were numerous. But the Chicken had registered a vow, in
secret, that he would never leave Mr Toots (who was secretly pining
to get rid of him), for any less consideration than the good-will and
fixtures of a public-house; and being ambitious to go into that line,
and drink himself to death as soon as possible, he felt it his cue to
make his company unacceptable.

The night-coach by which Susan was to go, was on the point of departure.
Mr Toots having put her inside, lingered by the window, irresolutely,
until the driver was about to mount; when, standing on the step,
and putting in a face that by the light of the lamp was anxious and
confused, he said abruptly:

‘I say, Susan! Miss Dombey, you know--’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Do you think she could--you know--eh?’

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Toots,’ said Susan, ‘but I don’t hear you.’

‘Do you think she could be brought, you know--not exactly at once, but
in time--in a long time--to--to love me, you know? There!’ said poor Mr
Toots.

‘Oh dear no!’ returned Susan, shaking her head. ‘I should say, never.
Never!’

‘Thank’ee!’ said Mr Toots. ‘It’s of no consequence. Good-night. It’s of
no consequence, thank’ee!’

CHAPTER 45. The Trusty Agent

Edith went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a few
minutes after ten o’clock, when her carriage rolled along the street in
which she lived.

There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had been
when she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the same
cold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen its
leaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, or
rendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewildered
brain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. So
obdurate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought that
nothing could soften such a woman’s nature, and that everything in life
had hardened it.

Arrived at her own door, she was alighting, when some one coming quietly
from the hall, and standing bareheaded, offered her his arm. The servant
being thrust aside, she had no choice but to touch it; and she then knew
whose arm it was.

‘How is your patient, Sir?’ she asked, with a curled lip.

‘He is better,’ returned Carker. ‘He is doing very well. I have left him
for the night.’

She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followed
and said, speaking at the bottom:

‘Madam! May I beg the favour of a minute’s audience?’

She stopped and turned her eyes back ‘It is an unseasonable time, Sir,
and I am fatigued. Is your business urgent?’

‘It is very urgent, returned Carker. ‘As I am so fortunate as to have
met you, let me press my petition.’

She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked up
at her, standing above him in her stately dress, and thought, again, how
beautiful she was.

‘Where is Miss Dombey?’ she asked the servant, aloud.

‘In the morning room, Ma’am.’

‘Show the way there!’ Turning her eyes again on the attentive gentleman
at the bottom of the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion of
her head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on.

‘I beg your pardon! Madam! Mrs Dombey!’ cried the soft and nimble
Carker, at her side in a moment. ‘May I be permitted to entreat that
Miss Dombey is not present?’

She confronted him, with a quick look, but with the same self-possession
and steadiness.

‘I would spare Miss Dombey,’ said Carker, in a low voice, ‘the knowledge
of what I have to say. At least, Madam, I would leave it to you to
decide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is my
bounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrous
in me if I did otherwise.’

She slowly withdrew her eyes from his face, and turning to the servant,
said, ‘Some other room.’ He led the way to a drawing-room, which he
speedily lighted up and then left them. While he remained, not a word
was spoken. Edith enthroned herself upon a couch by the fire; and Mr
Carker, with his hat in his hand and his eyes bent upon the carpet,
stood before her, at some little distance.

‘Before I hear you, Sir,’ said Edith, when the door was closed, ‘I wish
you to hear me.’

‘To be addressed by Mrs Dombey,’ he returned, ‘even in accents of
unmerited reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although I
were not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, most
readily.’

‘If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, Sir;’ Mr
Carker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise,
but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention; ‘with any
message to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receive
it. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I have
expected you some time.’

‘It is my misfortune,’ he replied, ‘to be here, wholly against my will,
for such a purpose. Allow me to say that I am here for two purposes.
That is one.’

‘That one, Sir,’ she returned, ‘is ended. Or, if you return to it--’

‘Can Mrs Dombey believe,’ said Carker, coming nearer, ‘that I would
return to it in the face of her prohibition? Is it possible that Mrs
Dombey, having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined to
consider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilful
injustice?’

‘Sir,’ returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speaking
with a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swelling
neck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrown
loosely over shoulders that could hear its snowy neighbourhood. ‘Why do
you present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of love
and duty to my husband, and pretend to think that I am happily married,
and that I honour him? How dare you venture so to affront me, when you
know--I do not know better, Sir: I have seen it in your every glance,
and heard it in your every word--that in place of affection between us
there is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less than
I despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to the
torment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you have
put upon me, I should have slain you!’

She had asked him why he did this. Had she not been blinded by her pride
and wrath, and self-humiliation,--which she was, fiercely as she bent
her gaze upon him,--she would have seen the answer in his face. To bring
her to this declaration.

She saw it not, and cared not whether it was there or no. She saw only
the indignities and struggles she had undergone and had to undergo, and
was writhing under them. As she sat looking fixedly at them, rather
than at him, she plucked the feathers from a pinion of some rare and
beautiful bird, which hung from her wrist by a golden thread, to serve
her as a fan, and rained them on the ground.

He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signs
of her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a man
who had his sufficient reply in reserve and would presently deliver it.
And he then spoke, looking straight into her kindling eyes.

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I know, and knew before to-day, that I have found
no favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken so
openly to me; I am so relieved by the possession of your confidence--’

‘Confidence!’ she repeated, with disdain.

He passed it over.

‘--that I will make no pretence of concealment. I did see from the
first, that there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey--how could
it possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen,
since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered in
your breast--how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstanced
as you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge to
you in so many words?’

‘Was it for you, Sir,’ she replied, ‘to feign that other belief, and
audaciously to thrust it on me day by day?’

‘Madam, it was,’ he eagerly retorted. ‘If I had done less, if I had
done anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and I
foresaw--who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience of
Mr Dombey than myself?--that unless your character should prove to be as
yielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I did
not believe--’

A haughty smile gave him reason to observe that he might repeat this.

‘I say, which I did not believe,--the time was likely to come, when such
an understanding as we have now arrived at, would be serviceable.’

‘Serviceable to whom, Sir?’ she demanded scornfully.

‘To you. I will not add to myself, as warning me to refrain even from
that limited commendation of Mr Dombey, in which I can honestly
indulge, in order that I may not have the misfortune of saying anything
distasteful to one whose aversion and contempt,’ with great expression,
‘are so keen.’

‘Is it honest in you, Sir,’ said Edith, ‘to confess to your “limited
commendation,” and to speak in that tone of disparagement, even of him:
being his chief counsellor and flatterer!’

‘Counsellor,--yes,’ said Carker. ‘Flatterer,--no. A little reservation I
fear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly oblige
many of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have partnerships
of interest and convenience, friendships of interest and convenience,
dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest and
convenience, every day.’

She bit her blood-red lip; but without wavering in the dark, stern watch
she kept upon him.

‘Madam,’ said Mr Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near her, with
an air of the most profound and most considerate respect, ‘why should
I hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speak
plainly? It was natural that a lady, endowed as you are, should think it
feasible to change her husband’s character in some respects, and mould
him to a better form.’

‘It was not natural to me, Sir,’ she rejoined. ‘I had never any
expectation or intention of that kind.’

The proud undaunted face showed him it was resolute to wear no mask he
offered, but was set upon a reckless disclosure of itself, indifferent
to any aspect in which it might present itself to such as he.

‘At least it was natural,’ he resumed, ‘that you should deem it quite
possible to live with Mr Dombey as his wife, at once without submitting
to him, and without coming into such violent collision with him. But,
Madam, you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), when
you thought that. You did not know how exacting and how proud he is,
or how he is, if I may say so, the slave of his own greatness, and goes
yoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea on
earth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, over everything
and through everything.’

His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as he
went on talking:

‘Mr Dombey is really capable of no more true consideration for you,
Madam, than for me. The comparison is an extreme one; I intend it to
be so; but quite just. Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, asked
me--I had it from his own lips yesterday morning--to be his go-between
to you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because he
intends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besides
that, because he really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am an
ambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity--not of the lady to whom
I have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind--but
of his wife, a part of himself, to receive. You may imagine how
regardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my having any
individual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly, that I
am so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings he
is, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you, of course, have
not forgotten that he did.’

She watched him still attentively. But he watched her too; and he saw
that this indication of a knowledge on his part, of something that
had passed between herself and her husband, rankled and smarted in her
haughty breast, like a poisoned arrow.

‘I do not recall all this to widen the breach between yourself and
Mr Dombey, Madam--Heaven forbid! what would it profit me?--but as an
example of the hopelessness of impressing Mr Dombey with a sense that
anybody is to be considered when he is in question. We who are about
him, have, in our various positions, done our part, I daresay, to
confirm him in his way of thinking; but if we had not done so, others
would--or they would not have been about him; and it has always been,
from the beginning, the very staple of his life. Mr Dombey has had to
deal, in short, with none but submissive and dependent persons, who have
bowed the knee, and bent the neck, before him. He has never known what
it is to have angry pride and strong resentment opposed to him.’

‘But he will know it now!’ she seemed to say; though her lips did not
part, nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft down tremble once again, and
he saw her lay the plumage of the beautiful bird against her bosom for
a moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into which he had
gathered himself.

‘Mr Dombey, though a most honourable gentleman,’ he said, ‘is so prone
to pervert even facts to his own view, when he is at all opposed,
in consequence of the warp in his mind, that he--can I give a better
instance than this!--he sincerely believes (you will excuse the folly of
what I am about to say; it not being mine) that his severe expression
of opinion to his present wife, on a certain special occasion she may
remember, before the lamented death of Mrs Skewton, produced a withering
effect, and for the moment quite subdued her!’

Edith laughed. How harshly and unmusically need not be described. It is
enough that he was glad to hear her.

‘Madam,’ he resumed, ‘I have done with this. Your own opinions are so
strong, and, I am persuaded, so unalterable,’ he repeated those words
slowly and with great emphasis, ‘that I am almost afraid to incur your
displeasure anew, when I say that in spite of these defects and my full
knowledge of them, I have become habituated to Mr Dombey, and esteem
him. But when I say so, it is not, believe me, for the mere sake of
vaunting a feeling that is so utterly at variance with your own, and
for which you can have no sympathy’--oh how distinct and plain and
emphasized this was!--‘but to give you an assurance of the zeal with
which, in this unhappy matter, I am yours, and the indignation with
which I regard the part I am to fill!’

She sat as if she were afraid to take her eyes from his face.

And now to unwind the last ring of the coil!

‘It is growing late,’ said Carker, after a pause, ‘and you are, as you
said, fatigued. But the second object of this interview, I must not
forget. I must recommend you, I must entreat you in the most earnest
manner, for sufficient reasons that I have, to be cautious in your
demonstrations of regard for Miss Dombey.’

‘Cautious! What do you mean?’

‘To be careful how you exhibit too much affection for that young lady.’

‘Too much affection, Sir!’ said Edith, knitting her broad brow and
rising. ‘Who judges my affection, or measures it out? You?’

‘It is not I who do so.’ He was, or feigned to be, perplexed.

‘Who then?’

‘Can you not guess who then?’

‘I do not choose to guess,’ she answered.

‘Madam,’ he said after a little hesitation; meantime they had been, and
still were, regarding each other as before; ‘I am in a difficulty here.
You have told me you will receive no message, and you have forbidden me
to return to that subject; but the two subjects are so closely entwined,
I find, that unless you will accept this vague caution from one who has
now the honour to possess your confidence, though the way to it has been
through your displeasure, I must violate the injunction you have laid
upon me.’

‘You know that you are free to do so, Sir,’ said Edith. ‘Do it.’

So pale, so trembling, so impassioned! He had not miscalculated the
effect then!

‘His instructions were,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘that I should inform
you that your demeanour towards Miss Dombey is not agreeable to him.
That it suggests comparisons to him which are not favourable to himself.
That he desires it may be wholly changed; and that if you are in
earnest, he is confident it will be; for your continued show of
affection will not benefit its object.’

‘That is a threat,’ she said.

‘That is a threat,’ he answered, in his voiceless manner of assent:
adding aloud, ‘but not directed against you.’

Proud, erect, and dignified, as she stood confronting him; and looking
through him as she did, with her full bright flashing eye; and smiling,
as she was, with scorn and bitterness; she sunk as if the ground had
dropped beneath her, and in an instant would have fallen on the floor,
but that he caught her in his arms. As instantaneously she threw him
off, the moment that he touched her, and, drawing back, confronted him
again, immoveable, with her hand stretched out.

‘Please to leave me. Say no more to-night.’

‘I feel the urgency of this,’ said Mr Carker, ‘because it is impossible
to say what unforeseen consequences might arise, or how soon, from your
being unacquainted with his state of mind. I understand Miss Dombey is
concerned, now, at the dismissal of her old servant, which is likely
to have been a minor consequence in itself. You don’t blame me for
requesting that Miss Dombey might not be present. May I hope so?’

‘I do not. Please to leave me, Sir.’

‘I knew that your regard for the young lady, which is very sincere and
strong, I am well persuaded, would render it a great unhappiness to you,
ever to be a prey to the reflection that you had injured her position
and ruined her future hopes,’ said Carker hurriedly, but eagerly.

‘No more to-night. Leave me, if you please.’

‘I shall be here constantly in my attendance upon him, and in the
transaction of business matters. You will allow me to see you again, and
to consult what should be done, and learn your wishes?’

She motioned him towards the door.

‘I cannot even decide whether to tell him I have spoken to you yet;
or to lead him to suppose that I have deferred doing so, for want of
opportunity, or for any other reason. It will be necessary that you
should enable me to consult with you very soon.’

‘At any time but now,’ she answered.

‘You will understand, when I wish to see you, that Miss Dombey is not to
be present; and that I seek an interview as one who has the happiness to
possess your confidence, and who comes to render you every assistance in
his power, and, perhaps, on many occasions, to ward off evil from her?’

Looking at him still with the same apparent dread of releasing him for
a moment from the influence of her steady gaze, whatever that might be,
she answered, ‘Yes!’ and once more bade him go.

He bowed, as if in compliance; but turning back, when he had nearly
reached the door, said:

‘I am forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I--for Miss Dombey’s
sake, and for my own--take your hand before I go?’

She gave him the gloved hand she had maimed last night. He took it in
one of his, and kissed it, and withdrew. And when he had closed the
door, he waved the hand with which he had taken hers, and thrust it in
his breast.

Edith saw no one that night, but locked her door, and kept herself
alone.

She did not weep; she showed no greater agitation, outwardly, than when
she was riding home. She laid as proud a head upon her pillow as she had
borne in her carriage; and her prayer ran thus:

‘May this man be a liar! For if he has spoken truth, she is lost to me,
and I have no hope left!’

This man, meanwhile, went home musing to bed, thinking, with a dainty
pleasure, how imperious her passion was, how she had sat before him in
her beauty, with the dark eyes that had never turned away but once; how
the white down had fluttered; how the bird’s feathers had been strewn
upon the ground.

CHAPTER 46. Recognizant and Reflective

Among sundry minor alterations in Mr Carker’s life and habits that
began to take place at this time, none was more remarkable than the
extraordinary diligence with which he applied himself to business, and
the closeness with which he investigated every detail that the affairs
of the House laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in such
matters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not only
did his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every day
presented to him in some new form, but in the midst of these engrossing
occupations he found leisure--that is, he made it--to review the past
transactions of the Firm, and his share in them, during a long series
of years. Frequently when the clerks were all gone, the offices dark and
empty, and all similar places of business shut up, Mr Carker, with the
whole anatomy of the iron room laid bare before him, would explore the
mysteries of books and papers, with the patient progress of a man who
was dissecting the minutest nerves and fibres of his subject. Perch, the
messenger, who usually remained on these occasions, to entertain himself
with the perusal of the Price Current by the light of one candle, or
to doze over the fire in the outer office, at the imminent risk every
moment of diving head foremost into the coal-box, could not withhold the
tribute of his admiration from this zealous conduct, although it much
contracted his domestic enjoyments; and again, and again, expatiated
to Mrs Perch (now nursing twins) on the industry and acuteness of their
managing gentleman in the City.

The same increased and sharp attention that Mr Carker bestowed on the
business of the House, he applied to his own personal affairs. Though
not a partner in the concern--a distinction hitherto reserved solely to
inheritors of the great name of Dombey--he was in the receipt of some
percentage on its dealings; and, participating in all its facilities
for the employment of money to advantage, was considered, by the minnows
among the tritons of the East, a rich man. It began to be said, among
these shrewd observers, that Jem Carker, of Dombey’s, was looking about
him to see what he was worth; and that he was calling in his money at
a good time, like the long-headed fellow he was; and bets were even
offered on the Stock Exchange that Jem was going to marry a rich widow.

Yet these cares did not in the least interfere with Mr Carker’s watching
of his chief, or with his cleanness, neatness, sleekness, or any
cat-like quality he possessed. It was not so much that there was a
change in him, in reference to any of his habits, as that the whole man
was intensified. Everything that had been observable in him before, was
observable now, but with a greater amount of concentration. He did each
single thing, as if he did nothing else--a pretty certain indication in
a man of that range of ability and purpose, that he is doing something
which sharpens and keeps alive his keenest powers.

The only decided alteration in him was, that as he rode to and fro along
the streets, he would fall into deep fits of musing, like that in
which he had come away from Mr Dombey’s house, on the morning of
that gentleman’s disaster. At such times, he would keep clear of the
obstacles in his way, mechanically; and would appear to see and hear
nothing until arrival at his destination, or some sudden chance or
effort roused him.

Walking his white-legged horse thus, to the counting-house of Dombey and
Son one day, he was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs of
women’s eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of Rob the Grinder, who, in
waiting a street’s length from the appointed place, as a demonstration
of punctuality, vainly touched and retouched his hat to attract
attention, and trotted along on foot, by his master’s side, prepared to
hold his stirrup when he should alight.

‘See where he goes!’ cried one of these two women, an old creature, who
stretched out her shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, a
young woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into a
gateway.

Mrs Brown’s daughter looked out, at this bidding on the part of Mrs
Brown; and there were wrath and vengeance in her face.

‘I never thought to look at him again,’ she said, in a low voice; ‘but
it’s well I should, perhaps. I see. I see!’

‘Not changed!’ said the old woman, with a look of eager malice.

‘He changed!’ returned the other. ‘What for? What has he suffered? There
is change enough for twenty in me. Isn’t that enough?’

‘See where he goes!’ muttered the old woman, watching her daughter with
her red eyes; ‘so easy and so trim a-horseback, while we are in the
mud.’

‘And of it,’ said her daughter impatiently. ‘We are mud, underneath his
horse’s feet. What should we be?’

In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made a
hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if her
view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not
him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew a
long breath, as if in the relief of his being gone.

‘Deary!’ said the old woman then. ‘Alice! Handsome gall Ally!’ She
gently shook her sleeve to arouse her attention. ‘Will you let him go
like that, when you can wring money from him? Why, it’s a wickedness, my
daughter.’

‘Haven’t I told you, that I will not have money from him?’ she returned.
‘And don’t you yet believe me? Did I take his sister’s money? Would
I touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his white
hands--unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it back
to him? Peace, mother, and come away.’

‘And him so rich?’ murmured the old woman. ‘And us so poor!’

‘Poor in not being able to pay him any of the harm we owe him,’ returned
her daughter. ‘Let him give me that sort of riches, and I’ll take them
from him, and use them. Come away. Its no good looking at his horse.
Come away, mother!’

But the old woman, for whom the spectacle of Rob the Grinder returning
down the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have some
extraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed that
young man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whatever
doubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at her
daughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, and
emerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him on
the shoulder.

‘Why, where’s my sprightly Rob been, all this time!’ she said, as he
turned round.

The sprightly Rob, whose sprightliness was very much diminished by the
salutation, looked exceedingly dismayed, and said, with the water rising
in his eyes:

‘Oh! why can’t you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he’s
getting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What do
you come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him in
the streets, when he’s taking his master’s horse to a honest stable--a
horse you’d go and sell for cats’ and dogs’ meat if you had your way!
Why, I thought,’ said the Grinder, producing his concluding remark as if
it were the climax of all his injuries, ‘that you was dead long ago!’

‘This is the way,’ cried the old woman, appealing to her daughter, ‘that
he talks to me, who knew him weeks and months together, my deary, and
have stood his friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancying
tramps and bird-catchers.’

‘Let the birds be, will you, Misses Brown?’ retorted Rob, in a tone of
the acutest anguish. ‘I think a cove had better have to do with lions
than them little creeturs, for they’re always flying back in your face
when you least expect it. Well, how d’ye do and what do you want?’ These
polite inquiries the Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and with
great exasperation and vindictiveness.

‘Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!’ said Mrs Brown, again
appealing to her daughter. ‘But there’s some of his old friends not so
patient as me. If I was to tell some that he knows, and has spotted and
cheated with, where to find him--’

‘Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?’ interrupted the miserable
Grinder, glancing quickly round, as though he expected to see his
master’s teeth shining at his elbow. ‘What do you take a pleasure in
ruining a cove for? At your time of life too! when you ought to be
thinking of a variety of things!’

‘What a gallant horse!’ said the old woman, patting the animal’s neck.

‘Let him alone, will you, Misses Brown?’ cried Rob, pushing away her
hand. ‘You’re enough to drive a penitent cove mad!’

‘Why, what hurt do I do him, child?’ returned the old woman.

‘Hurt?’ said Rob. ‘He’s got a master that would find it out if he was
touched with a straw.’ And he blew upon the place where the old woman’s
hand had rested for a moment, and smoothed it gently with his finger, as
if he seriously believed what he said.

The old woman looking back to mumble and mouth at her daughter, who
followed, kept close to Rob’s heels as he walked on with the bridle in
his hand; and pursued the conversation.

‘A good place, Rob, eh?’ said she. ‘You’re in luck, my child.’

‘Oh don’t talk about luck, Misses Brown,’ returned the wretched Grinder,
facing round and stopping. ‘If you’d never come, or if you’d go away,
then indeed a cove might be considered tolerable lucky. Can’t you go
along, Misses Brown, and not foller me!’ blubbered Rob, with sudden
defiance. ‘If the young woman’s a friend of yours, why don’t she take
you away, instead of letting you make yourself so disgraceful!’

‘What!’ croaked the old woman, putting her face close to his, with a
malevolent grin upon it that puckered up the loose skin down in her very
throat. ‘Do you deny your old chum! Have you lurked to my house fifty
times, and slept sound in a corner when you had no other bed but the
paving-stones, and do you talk to me like this! Have I bought and sold
with you, and helped you in my way of business, schoolboy, sneak, and
what not, and do you tell me to go along? Could I raise a crowd of old
company about you to-morrow morning, that would follow you to ruin like
copies of your own shadow, and do you turn on me with your bold looks!
I’ll go. Come, Alice.’

‘Stop, Misses Brown!’ cried the distracted Grinder. ‘What are you doing
of? Don’t put yourself in a passion! Don’t let her go, if you please. I
haven’t meant any offence. I said “how d’ye do,” at first, didn’t I?
But you wouldn’t answer. How you do? Besides,’ said Rob piteously, ‘look
here! How can a cove stand talking in the street with his master’s
prad a-wanting to be took to be rubbed down, and his master up to every
individgle thing that happens!’

The old woman made a show of being partially appeased, but shook her
head, and mouthed and muttered still.

‘Come along to the stables, and have a glass of something that’s good
for you, Misses Brown, can’t you?’ said Rob, ‘instead of going on, like
that, which is no good to you, nor anybody else. Come along with her,
will you be so kind?’ said Rob. ‘I’m sure I’m delighted to see her, if
it wasn’t for the horse!’

With this apology, Rob turned away, a rueful picture of despair, and
walked his charge down a bye street’ The old woman, mouthing at her
daughter, followed close upon him. The daughter followed.

Turning into a silent little square or court-yard that had a great
church tower rising above it, and a packer’s warehouse, and a
bottle-maker’s warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinder
delivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable at
the corner; and inviting Mrs Brown and her daughter to seat themselves
upon a stone bench at the gate of that establishment, soon reappeared
from a neighbouring public-house with a pewter measure and a glass.

‘Here’s master--Mr Carker, child!’ said the old woman, slowly, as her
sentiment before drinking. ‘Lord bless him!’

‘Why, I didn’t tell you who he was,’ observed Rob, with staring eyes.

‘We know him by sight,’ said Mrs Brown, whose working mouth and nodding
head stopped for the moment, in the fixedness of her attention. ‘We saw
him pass this morning, afore he got off his horse; when you were ready
to take it.’

‘Ay, ay,’ returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carried
him to any other place.--‘What’s the matter with her? Won’t she drink?’

This inquiry had reference to Alice, who, folded in her cloak, sat a
little apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenished
glass.

The old woman shook her head. ‘Don’t mind her,’ she said; ‘she’s a
strange creetur, if you know’d her, Rob. But Mr Carker--’

‘Hush!’ said Rob, glancing cautiously up at the packer’s, and at the
bottle-maker’s, as if, from any one of the tiers of warehouses, Mr
Carker might be looking down. ‘Softly.’

‘Why, he ain’t here!’ cried Mrs Brown.

‘I don’t know that,’ muttered Rob, whose glance even wandered to the
church tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power of
hearing.

‘Good master?’ inquired Mrs Brown.

Rob nodded; and added, in a low voice, ‘precious sharp.’

‘Lives out of town, don’t he, lovey?’ said the old woman.

‘When he’s at home,’ returned Rob; ‘but we don’t live at home just now.’

‘Where then?’ asked the old woman.

‘Lodgings; up near Mr Dombey’s,’ returned Rob.

The younger woman fixed her eyes so searchingly upon him, and so
suddenly, that Rob was quite confounded, and offered the glass again,
but with no more effect upon her than before.

‘Mr Dombey--you and I used to talk about him, sometimes, you know,’ said
Rob to Mrs Brown. ‘You used to get me to talk about him.’

The old woman nodded.

‘Well, Mr Dombey, he’s had a fall from his horse,’ said Rob,
unwillingly; ‘and my master has to be up there, more than usual, either
with him, or Mrs Dombey, or some of ‘em; and so we’ve come to town.’

‘Are they good friends, lovey?’ asked the old woman.

‘Who?’ retorted Rob.

‘He and she?’

‘What, Mr and Mrs Dombey?’ said Rob. ‘How should I know!’

‘Not them--Master and Mrs Dombey, chick,’ replied the old woman,
coaxingly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Rob, looking round him again. ‘I suppose so. How
curious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended.’

‘Why there’s no harm in it!’ exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, and
a clap of her hands. ‘Sprightly Rob, has grown tame since he has been
well off! There’s no harm in it.’

‘No, there’s no harm in it, I know,’ returned Rob, with the same
distrustful glance at the packer’s and the bottle-maker’s, and the
church; ‘but blabbing, if it’s only about the number of buttons on my
master’s coat, won’t do. I tell you it won’t do with him. A cove had
better drown himself. He says so. I shouldn’t have so much as told you
what his name was, if you hadn’t known it. Talk about somebody else.’

As Rob took another cautious survey of the yard, the old woman made a
secret motion to her daughter. It was momentary, but the daughter, with
a slight look of intelligence, withdrew her eyes from the boy’s face,
and sat folded in her cloak as before.

‘Rob, lovey!’ said the old woman, beckoning him to the other end of the
bench. ‘You were always a pet and favourite of mine. Now, weren’t you?
Don’t you know you were?’

‘Yes, Misses Brown,’ replied the Grinder, with a very bad grace.

‘And you could leave me!’ said the old woman, flinging her arms about
his neck. ‘You could go away, and grow almost out of knowledge, and
never come to tell your poor old friend how fortunate you were, proud
lad! Oho, Oho!’

‘Oh here’s a dreadful go for a cove that’s got a master wide awake in
the neighbourhood!’ exclaimed the wretched Grinder. ‘To be howled over
like this here!’

‘Won’t you come and see me, Robby?’ cried Mrs Brown. ‘Oho, won’t you
ever come and see me?’

‘Yes, I tell you! Yes, I will!’ returned the Grinder.

‘That’s my own Rob! That’s my lovey!’ said Mrs Brown, drying the tears
upon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze. ‘At the old
place, Rob?’

‘Yes,’ replied the Grinder.

‘Soon, Robby dear?’ cried Mrs Brown; ‘and often?’

‘Yes. Yes. Yes,’ replied Rob. ‘I will indeed, upon my soul and body.’

‘And then,’ said Mrs Brown, with her arms uplifted towards the sky, and
her head thrown back and shaking, ‘if he’s true to his word, I’ll never
come a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllable
about him! Never!’

This ejaculation seemed a drop of comfort to the miserable Grinder, who
shook Mrs Brown by the hand upon it, and implored her with tears in his
eyes, to leave a cove and not destroy his prospects. Mrs Brown,
with another fond embrace, assented; but in the act of following her
daughter, turned back, with her finger stealthily raised, and asked in a
hoarse whisper for some money.

‘A shilling, dear!’ she said, with her eager avaricious face, ‘or
sixpence! For old acquaintance sake. I’m so poor. And my handsome
gal’--looking over her shoulder--‘she’s my gal, Rob--half starves me.’

But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, coming
quietly back, caught the hand in hers, and twisted out the coin.

‘What,’ she said, ‘mother! always money! money from the first, and to
the last. Do you mind so little what I said but now? Here. Take it!’

The old woman uttered a moan as the money was restored, but without in
any other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter’s side
out of the yard, and along the by-street upon which it opened. The
astonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped,
and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once observed
a darkly threatening action of the younger woman’s hand (obviously
having reference to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feeble
imitation of it on the part of Mrs Brown, that made him earnestly hope
he might not be the subject of their discourse.

With the present consolation that they were gone, and with the
prospective comfort that Mrs Brown could not live for ever, and was
not likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not otherwise
regretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with such
disagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features to
a more serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which he
had disposed of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to put
him in a flow of spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House to
receive his master’s orders.

There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked before
him, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs Brown, gave him the
usual morning’s box of papers for Mr Dombey, and a note for Mrs Dombey:
merely nodding his head as an enjoinder to be careful, and to use
dispatch--a mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder’s imagination
with dismal warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than any
words.

Alone again, in his own room, Mr Carker applied himself to work, and
worked all day. He saw many visitors; overlooked a number of documents;
went in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort; and
indulged in no more abstraction until the day’s business was done. But,
when the usual clearance of papers from his table was made at last, he
fell into his thoughtful mood once more.

He was standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyes
intently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring back
some letters that had been taken out in the course of the day. He put
them quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr Carker the
Manager, whose eyes had rested on him, on his entrance, as if they had
all this time had him for the subject of their contemplation, instead of
the office-floor, said:

‘Well, John Carker, and what brings you here?’

His brother pointed to the letters, and was again withdrawing.

‘I wonder,’ said the Manager, ‘that you can come and go, without
inquiring how our master is’.

‘We had word this morning in the Counting House, that Mr Dombey was
doing well,’ replied his brother.

‘You are such a meek fellow,’ said the Manager, with a smile,--‘but you
have grown so, in the course of years--that if any harm came to him,
you’d be miserable, I dare swear now.’

‘I should be truly sorry, James,’ returned the other.

‘He would be sorry!’ said the Manager, pointing at him, as if there were
some other person present to whom he was appealing. ‘He would be truly
sorry! This brother of mine! This junior of the place, this slighted
piece of lumber, pushed aside with his face to the wall, like a rotten
picture, and left so, for Heaven knows how many years he’s all gratitude
and respect, and devotion too, he would have me believe!’

‘I would have you believe nothing, James,’ returned the other. ‘Be as
just to me as you would to any other man below you. You ask a question,
and I answer it.’

‘And have you nothing, Spaniel,’ said the Manager, with unusual
irascibility, ‘to complain of in him? No proud treatment to resent, no
insolence, no foolery of state, no exaction of any sort! What the devil!
are you man or mouse?’

‘It would be strange if any two persons could be together for so
many years, especially as superior and inferior, without each having
something to complain of in the other--as he thought, at all events,’
replied John Carker. ‘But apart from my history here--’

‘His history here!’ exclaimed the Manager. ‘Why, there it is. The very
fact that makes him an extreme case, puts him out of the whole chapter!
Well?’

‘Apart from that, which, as you hint, gives me a reason to be thankful
that I alone (happily for all the rest) possess, surely there is no one
in the House who would not say and feel at least as much. You do
not think that anybody here would be indifferent to a mischance or
misfortune happening to the head of the House, or anything than truly
sorry for it?’

‘You have good reason to be bound to him too!’ said the Manager,
contemptuously. ‘Why, don’t you believe that you are kept here, as a
cheap example, and a famous instance of the clemency of Dombey and Son,
redounding to the credit of the illustrious House?’

‘No,’ replied his brother, mildly, ‘I have long believed that I am kept
here for more kind and disinterested reasons.’

‘But you were going,’ said the Manager, with the snarl of a tiger-cat,
‘to recite some Christian precept, I observed.’

‘Nay, James,’ returned the other, ‘though the tie of brotherhood between
us has been long broken and thrown away--’

‘Who broke it, good Sir?’ said the Manager.

‘I, by my misconduct. I do not charge it upon you.’

The Manager replied, with that mute action of his bristling mouth, ‘Oh,
you don’t charge it upon me!’ and bade him go on.

‘I say, though there is not that tie between us, do not, I entreat,
assail me with unnecessary taunts, or misinterpret what I say, or would
say. I was only going to suggest to you that it would be a mistake to
suppose that it is only you, who have been selected here, above all
others, for advancement, confidence and distinction (selected, in the
beginning, I know, for your great ability and trustfulness), and who
communicate more freely with Mr Dombey than anyone, and stand, it may
be said, on equal terms with him, and have been favoured and enriched by
him--that it would be a mistake to suppose that it is only you who are
tender of his welfare and reputation. There is no one in the House,
from yourself down to the lowest, I sincerely believe, who does not
participate in that feeling.’

‘You lie!’ said the Manager, red with sudden anger. ‘You’re a hypocrite,
John Carker, and you lie.’

‘James!’ cried the other, flushing in his turn. ‘What do you mean by
these insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked?’

‘I tell you,’ said the Manager, ‘that your hypocrisy and meekness--that
all the hypocrisy and meekness of this place--is not worth that to me,’
snapping his thumb and finger, ‘and that I see through it as if it were
air! There is not a man employed here, standing between myself and the
lowest in place (of whom you are very considerate, and with reason,
for he is not far off), who wouldn’t be glad at heart to see his master
humbled: who does not hate him, secretly: who does not wish him evil
rather than good: and who would not turn upon him, if he had the power
and boldness. The nearer to his favour, the nearer to his insolence; the
closer to him, the farther from him. That’s the creed here!’

‘I don’t know,’ said his brother, whose roused feelings had soon yielded
to surprise, ‘who may have abused your ear with such representations;
or why you have chosen to try me, rather than another. But that you
have been trying me, and tampering with me, I am now sure. You have a
different manner and a different aspect from any that I ever saw in you.
I will only say to you, once more, you are deceived.’

‘I know I am,’ said the Manager. ‘I have told you so.’

‘Not by me,’ returned his brother. ‘By your informant, if you have one.
If not, by your own thoughts and suspicions.’

‘I have no suspicions,’ said the Manager. ‘Mine are certainties. You
pusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, all
canting the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouring
the same transparent secret.’

His brother withdrew, without saying more, and shut the door as he
concluded. Mr Carker the Manager drew a chair close before the fire, and
fell to beating the coals softly with the poker.

‘The faint-hearted, fawning knaves,’ he muttered, with his two shining
rows of teeth laid bare. ‘There’s not one among them, who wouldn’t feign
to be so shocked and outraged--! Bah! There’s not one among them, but
if he had at once the power, and the wit and daring to use it, would
scatter Dombey’s pride and lay it low, as ruthlessly as I rake out these
ashes.’

As he broke them up and strewed them in the grate, he looked on with a
thoughtful smile at what he was doing. ‘Without the same queen
beckoner too!’ he added presently; ‘and there is pride there, not to
be forgotten--witness our own acquaintance!’ With that he fell into a
deeper reverie, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he
rose up like a man who had been absorbed in a book, and looking round
him took his hat and gloves, went to where his horse was waiting,
mounted, and rode away through the lighted streets, for it was evening.

He rode near Mr Dombey’s house; and falling into a walk as he approached
it, looked up at the windows The window where he had once seen Florence
sitting with her dog attracted his attention first, though there was no
light in it; but he smiled as he carried his eyes up the tall front of
the house, and seemed to leave that object superciliously behind.

‘Time was,’ he said, ‘when it was well to watch even your rising little
star, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow you if
needful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light.’

He turned the white-legged horse round the street corner, and sought
one shining window from among those at the back of the house. Associated
with it was a certain stately presence, a gloved hand, the remembrance
how the feathers of a beautiful bird’s wing had been showered down upon
the floor, and how the light white down upon a robe had stirred and
rustled, as in the rising of a distant storm. These were the things he
carried with him as he turned away again, and rode through the darkening
and deserted Parks at a quick rate.

In fatal truth, these were associated with a woman, a proud woman,
who hated him, but who by slow and sure degrees had been led on by his
craft, and her pride and resentment, to endure his company, and little
by little to receive him as one who had the privilege to talk to her
of her own defiant disregard of her own husband, and her abandonment of
high consideration for herself. They were associated with a woman who
hated him deeply, and who knew him, and who mistrusted him because she
knew him, and because he knew her; but who fed her fierce resentment by
suffering him to draw nearer and yet nearer to her every day, in spite
of the hate she cherished for him. In spite of it! For that very reason;
since in its depths, too far down for her threatening eye to pierce,
though she could see into them dimly, lay the dark retaliation, whose
faintest shadow seen once and shuddered at, and never seen again, would
have been sufficient stain upon her soul.

Did the phantom of such a woman flit about him on his ride; true to the
reality, and obvious to him?

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him company
with her pride, resentment, hatred, all as plain to him as her beauty;
with nothing plainer to him than her hatred of him. He saw her sometimes
haughty and repellent at his side, and some times down among his horse’s
feet, fallen and in the dust. But he always saw her as she was, without
disguise, and watched her on the dangerous way that she was going.

And when his ride was over, and he was newly dressed, and came into the
light of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothing
smile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of the
gloved hand, and held it all the longer in his own for that suspicion.
Upon the dangerous way that she was going, he was, still; and not a
footprint did she mark upon it, but he set his own there, straight.

CHAPTER 47. The Thunderbolt

The barrier between Mr Dombey and his wife was not weakened by time.
Ill-assorted couple, unhappy in themselves and in each other, bound
together by no tie but the manacle that joined their fettered hands, and
straining that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore and
chafed to the bone, Time, consoler of affliction and softener of anger,
could do nothing to help them. Their pride, however different in kind
and object, was equal in degree; and, in their flinty opposition,
struck out fire between them which might smoulder or might blaze, as
circumstances were, but burned up everything within their mutual reach,
and made their marriage way a road of ashes.

Let us be just to him. In the monstrous delusion of his life, swelling
with every grain of sand that shifted in its glass, he urged her on, he
little thought to what, or considered how; but still his feeling towards
her, such as it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit of
unaccountably putting herself in opposition to the recognition of his
vast importance, and to the acknowledgment of her complete submission to
it, and so far it was necessary to correct and reduce her; but otherwise
he still considered her, in his cold way, a lady capable of doing
honour, if she would, to his choice and name, and of reflecting credit
on his proprietorship.

Now, she, with all her might of passionate and proud resentment, bent
her dark glance from day to day, and hour to hour--from that night in
her own chamber, when she had sat gazing at the shadows on the wall,
to the deeper night fast coming--upon one figure directing a crowd of
humiliations and exasperations against her; and that figure, still her
husband’s.

Was Mr Dombey’s master-vice, that ruled him so inexorably, an unnatural
characteristic? It might be worthwhile, sometimes, to inquire what
Nature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced
distortions so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any
son or daughter of our mighty mother within narrow range, and bind the
prisoner to one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it on the part
of the few timid or designing people standing round, and what is Nature
to the willing captive who has never risen up upon the wings of a free
mind--drooping and useless soon--to see her in her comprehensive truth!

Alas! are there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural,
and yet most natural in being so? Hear the magistrate or judge admonish
the unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural
in want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions
between good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness,
in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But follow the good
clergyman or doctor, who, with his life imperilled at every breath
he draws, goes down into their dens, lying within the echoes of our
carriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement stones. Look round
upon the world of odious sights--millions of immortal creatures have no
other world on earth--at the lightest mention of which humanity revolts,
and dainty delicacy living in the next street, stops her ears, and lisps
‘I don’t believe it!’ Breathe the polluted air, foul with every impurity
that is poisonous to health and life; and have every sense, conferred
upon our race for its delight and happiness, offended, sickened and
disgusted, and made a channel by which misery and death alone can enter.
Vainly attempt to think of any simple plant, or flower, or wholesome
weed, that, set in this foetid bed, could have its natural growth,
or put its little leaves off to the sun as GOD designed it. And then,
calling up some ghastly child, with stunted form and wicked face, hold
forth on its unnatural sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, far
away from Heaven--but think a little of its having been conceived, and
born and bred, in Hell!

Those who study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon the
health of Man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise from
vitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering in
a dense black cloud above such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corrupt
the better portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that rises
with them, and in the eternal laws of our Nature, is inseparable from
them, could be made discernible too, how terrible the revelation! Then
should we see depravity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a long
train of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions of
mankind, overhanging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight the
innocent and spread contagion among the pure. Then should we see how the
same poisoned fountains that flow into our hospitals and lazar-houses,
inundate the jails, and make the convict-ships swim deep, and roll
across the seas, and over-run vast continents with crime. Then should
we stand appalled to know, that where we generate disease to strike our
children down and entail itself on unborn generations, there also we
breed, by the same certain process, infancy that knows no innocence,
youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in nothing but
in suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form we
bear, unnatural humanity! When we shall gather grapes from thorns, and
figs from thistles; when fields of grain shall spring up from the
offal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fat
churchyards that they cherish; then we may look for natural humanity,
and find it growing from such seed.

Oh for a good spirit who would take the house-tops off, with a more
potent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and show
a Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes, to
swell the retinue of the Destroying Angel as he moves forth among them!
For only one night’s view of the pale phantoms rising from the scenes of
our too-long neglect; and from the thick and sullen air where Vice and
Fever propagate together, raining the tremendous social retributions
which are ever pouring down, and ever coming thicker! Bright and blest
the morning that should rise on such a night: for men, delayed no more
by stumbling-blocks of their own making, which are but specks of dust
upon the path between them and eternity, would then apply themselves,
like creatures of one common origin, owing one duty to the Father of one
family, and tending to one common end, to make the world a better place!

Not the less bright and blest would that day be for rousing some who
never have looked out upon the world of human life around them, to a
knowledge of their own relation to it, and for making them acquainted
with a perversion of nature in their own contracted sympathies and
estimates; as great, and yet as natural in its development when once
begun, as the lowest degradation known.

But no such day had ever dawned on Mr Dombey, or his wife; and the
course of each was taken.

Through six months that ensued upon his accident, they held the same
relations one towards the other. A marble rock could not have stood more
obdurately in his way than she; and no chilled spring, lying uncheered
by any ray of light in the depths of a deep cave, could be more sullen
or more cold than he.

The hope that had fluttered within her when the promise of her new home
dawned, was quite gone from the heart of Florence now. That home was
nearly two years old; and even the patient trust that was in her,
could not survive the daily blight of such experience. If she had any
lingering fancy in the nature of hope left, that Edith and her father
might be happier together, in some distant time, she had none, now, that
her father would ever love her. The little interval in which she had
imagined that she saw some small relenting in him, was forgotten in the
long remembrance of his coldness since and before, or only remembered as
a sorrowful delusion.

Florence loved him still, but, by degrees, had come to love him rather
as some dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as the hard
reality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with which
she loved the memory of little Paul, or of her mother, seemed to enter
now into her thoughts of him, and to make them, as it were, a dear
remembrance. Whether it was that he was dead to her, and that partly for
this reason, partly for his share in those old objects of her affection,
and partly for the long association of him with hopes that were withered
and tendernesses he had frozen, she could not have told; but the father
whom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to her: hardly more
substantially connected with her real life, than the image she would
sometimes conjure up, of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to be a
man, who would protect and cherish her.

The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the change
from childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almost
seventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of these
thoughts.

She was often alone now, for the old association between her and her
Mama was greatly changed. At the time of her father’s accident, and when
he was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had first observed that
Edith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile this
with her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her own room at
night, once more.

‘Mama,’ said Florence, stealing softly to her side, ‘have I offended
you?’

Edith answered ‘No.’

‘I must have done something,’ said Florence. ‘Tell me what it is. You
have changed your manner to me, dear Mama. I cannot say how instantly I
feel the least change; for I love you with my whole heart.’

‘As I do you,’ said Edith. ‘Ah, Florence, believe me never more than
now!’

‘Why do you go away from me so often, and keep away?’ asked Florence.
‘And why do you sometimes look so strangely on me, dear Mama? You do so,
do you not?’

Edith signified assent with her dark eyes.

‘Why?’ returned Florence imploringly. ‘Tell me why, that I may know how
to please you better; and tell me this shall not be so any more.’

‘My Florence,’ answered Edith, taking the hand that embraced her neck,
and looking into the eyes that looked into hers so lovingly, as Florence
knelt upon the ground before her; ‘why it is, I cannot tell you. It is
neither for me to say, nor you to hear; but that it is, and that it must
be, I know. Should I do it if I did not?’

‘Are we to be estranged, Mama?’ asked Florence, gazing at her like one
frightened.

Edith’s silent lips formed ‘Yes.’

Florence looked at her with increasing fear and wonder, until she could
see her no more through the blinding tears that ran down her face.

‘Florence! my life!’ said Edith, hurriedly, ‘listen to me. I cannot
bear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is it
nothing to me?’

She resumed her steady voice and manner as she said the latter words,
and added presently:

‘Not wholly estranged. Partially: and only that, in appearance,
Florence, for in my own breast I am still the same to you, and ever will
be. But what I do is not done for myself.’

‘Is it for me, Mama?’ asked Florence.

‘It is enough,’ said Edith, after a pause, ‘to know what it is; why,
matters little. Dear Florence, it is better--it is necessary--it must
be--that our association should be less frequent. The confidence there
has been between us must be broken off.’

‘When?’ cried Florence. ‘Oh, Mama, when?’

‘Now,’ said Edith.

‘For all time to come?’ asked Florence.

‘I do not say that,’ answered Edith. ‘I do not know that. Nor will I
say that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-assorted and
unholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My way
here has been through paths that you will never tread, and my way
henceforth may lie--God knows--I do not see it--’

Her voice died away into silence; and she sat, looking at Florence,
and almost shrinking from her, with the same strange dread and wild
avoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark pride and
rage succeeded, sweeping over her form and features like an angry chord
across the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility ensued on
that. She did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say that she
had no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she were a beautiful
Medusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead. Yes, and she
would have done it, if she had had the charm.

‘Mama,’ said Florence, anxiously, ‘there is a change in you, in more
than what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you a
little.’

‘No,’ said Edith, ‘no, dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do best
to keep apart from you, of all else. Ask me no questions, but believe
that what I am when I seem fickle or capricious to you, I am not of my
own will, or for myself. Believe, though we are stranger to each other
than we have been, that I am unchanged to you within. Forgive me
for having ever darkened your dark home--I am a shadow on it, I know
well--and let us never speak of this again.’

‘Mama,’ sobbed Florence, ‘we are not to part?’

‘We do this that we may not part,’ said Edith. ‘Ask no more. Go,
Florence! My love and my remorse go with you!’

She embraced her, and dismissed her; and as Florence passed out of her
room, Edith looked on the retiring figure, as if her good angel went out
in that form, and left her to the haughty and indignant passions that
now claimed her for their own, and set their seal upon her brow.

From that hour, Florence and she were, as they had been, no more. For
days together, they would seldom meet, except at table, and when Mr
Dombey was present. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent, never
looked at her. Whenever Mr Carker was of the party, as he often was,
during the progress of Mr Dombey’s recovery, and afterwards, Edith held
herself more removed from her, and was more distant towards her, than at
other times. Yet she and Florence never encountered, when there was no
one by, but she would embrace her as affectionately as of old, though
not with the same relenting of her proud aspect; and often, when she had
been out late, she would steal up to Florence’s room, as she had been
used to do, in the dark, and whisper ‘Good-night,’ on her pillow. When
unconscious, in her slumber, of such visits, Florence would sometimes
awake, as from a dream of those words, softly spoken, and would seem
to feel the touch of lips upon her face. But less and less often as the
months went on.

And now the void in Florence’s own heart began again, indeed, to make
a solitude around her. As the image of the father whom she loved had
insensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following the fate of
all the rest about whom her affections had entwined themselves, was
fleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day. Little by
little, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what she
had been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemed
deeper; little by little, all the power of earnestness and tenderness
she had shown, was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which she
stood, upon the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring to
look down.

There was but one consideration to set against the heavy loss of Edith,
and though it was slight comfort to her burdened heart, she tried to
think it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and duty
to the two, Florence could love both and do no injustice to either. As
shadows of her fond imagination, she could give them equal place in her
own bosom, and wrong them with no doubts.

So she tried to do. At times, and often too, wondering speculations on
the cause of this change in Edith, would obtrude themselves upon her
mind and frighten her; but in the calm of its abandonment once more to
silent grief and loneliness, it was not a curious mind. Florence had
only to remember that her star of promise was clouded in the general
gloom that hung upon the house, and to weep and be resigned.

Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her young
heart expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she had
experienced little but the rolling back of that strong tide upon itself,
Florence grew to be seventeen. Timid and retiring as her solitary life
had made her, it had not embittered her sweet temper, or her
earnest nature. A child in innocent simplicity; a woman in her modest
self-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling; both child and woman
seemed at once expressed in her face and fragile delicacy of shape, and
gracefully to mingle there;--as if the spring should be unwilling to
depart when summer came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties of the
flowers with their bloom. But in her thrilling voice, in her calm eyes,
sometimes in a sage ethereal light that seemed to rest upon her head,
and always in a certain pensive air upon her beauty, there was an
expression, such as had been seen in the dead boy; and the council in
the Servants’ Hall whispered so among themselves, and shook their heads,
and ate and drank the more, in a closer bond of good-fellowship.

This observant body had plenty to say of Mr and Mrs Dombey, and of Mr
Carker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came and
went as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They all
deplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that Mrs
Pipchin (whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand in
it; but, upon the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subject
for a rallying point, and they made a great deal of it, and enjoyed
themselves very much.

The general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr and
Mrs Dombey visited, thought it a pretty equal match, as to haughtiness,
at all events, and thought nothing more about it. The young lady
with the back did not appear for some time after Mrs Skewton’s death;
observing to some particular friends, with her usual engaging little
scream, that she couldn’t separate the family from a notion of
tombstones, and horrors of that sort; but when she did come, she saw
nothing wrong, except Mr Dombey’s wearing a bunch of gold seals to his
watch, which shocked her very much, as an exploded superstition. This
youthful fascinator considered a daughter-in-law objectionable in
principle; otherwise, she had nothing to say against Florence, but that
she sadly wanted ‘style’--which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who only
came to the house on state occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, and
said, going home, ‘Indeed, was that Miss Dombey, in the corner? Very
pretty, but a little delicate and thoughtful in appearance!’

None the less so, certainly, for her life of the last six months.
Florence took her seat at the dinner-table, on the day before the second
anniversary of her father’s marriage to Edith (Mrs Skewton had been
lying stricken with paralysis when the first came round), with an
uneasiness, amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it, than
the occasion, the expression of her father’s face, in the hasty
glance she caught of it, and the presence of Mr Carker, which, always
unpleasant to her, was more so on this day, than she had ever felt it
before.

Edith was richly dressed, for she and Mr Dombey were engaged in the
evening to some large assembly, and the dinner-hour that day was late.
She did not appear until they were seated at table, when Mr Carker rose
and led her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she was, there was
that in her face and air which seemed to separate her hopelessly from
Florence, and from everyone, for ever more. And yet, for an instant,
Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turned
on her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself, a
greater cause of sorrow and regret than ever.

There was very little said at dinner. Florence heard her father speak to
Mr Carker sometimes on business matters, and heard him softly reply, but
she paid little attention to what they said, and only wished the dinner
at an end. When the dessert was placed upon the table, and they were
left alone, with no servant in attendance, Mr Dombey, who had been
several times clearing his throat in a manner that augured no good,
said:

‘Mrs Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the housekeeper
that there will be some company to dinner here to-morrow.’

‘I do not dine at home,’ she answered.

‘Not a large party,’ pursued Mr Dombey, with an indifferent assumption
of not having heard her; ‘merely some twelve or fourteen. My sister,
Major Bagstock, and some others whom you know but slightly.’

‘I do not dine at home,’ she repeated.

‘However doubtful reason I may have, Mrs Dombey,’ said Mr Dombey, still
going majestically on, as if she had not spoken, ‘to hold the occasion
in very pleasant remembrance just now, there are appearances in these
things which must be maintained before the world. If you have no respect
for yourself, Mrs Dombey--’

‘I have none,’ she said.

‘Madam,’ cried Mr Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, ‘hear me if
you please. I say, if you have no respect for yourself--’

‘And I say I have none,’ she answered.

He looked at her; but the face she showed him in return would not have
changed, if death itself had looked.

‘Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, turning more quietly to that gentleman, ‘as
you have been my medium of communication with Mrs Dombey on former
occasions, and as I choose to preserve the decencies of life, so far as
I am individually concerned, I will trouble you to have the goodness to
inform Mrs Dombey that if she has no respect for herself, I have
some respect for myself, and therefore insist on my arrangements for
to-morrow.’

‘Tell your sovereign master, Sir,’ said Edith, ‘that I will take leave
to speak to him on this subject by-and-bye, and that I will speak to him
alone.’

‘Mr Carker, Madam,’ said her husband, ‘being in possession of the reason
which obliges me to refuse you that privilege, shall be absolved from
the delivery of any such message.’ He saw her eyes move, while he spoke,
and followed them with his own.

‘Your daughter is present, Sir,’ said Edith.

‘My daughter will remain present,’ said Mr Dombey.

Florence, who had risen, sat down again, hiding her face in her hands,
and trembling.

‘My daughter, Madam’--began Mr Dombey.

But Edith stopped him, in a voice which, although not raised in the
least, was so clear, emphatic, and distinct, that it might have been
heard in a whirlwind.

‘I tell you I will speak to you alone,’ she said. ‘If you are not mad,
heed what I say.’

‘I have authority to speak to you, Madam,’ returned her husband, ‘when
and where I please; and it is my pleasure to speak here and now.’

She rose up as if to leave the room; but sat down again, and looking at
him with all outward composure, said, in the same voice:

‘You shall!’

‘I must tell you first, that there is a threatening appearance in your
manner, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey, ‘which does not become you.’

She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled. There
are fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer being
in danger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light would
have taken flight that moment, and they would have been as dull as lead.

Carker listened, with his eyes cast down.

‘As to my daughter, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey, resuming the thread of his
discourse, ‘it is by no means inconsistent with her duty to me, that
she should know what conduct to avoid. At present you are a very strong
example to her of this kind, and I hope she may profit by it.’

‘I would not stop you now,’ returned his wife, immoveable in eye, and
voice, and attitude; ‘I would not rise and go away, and save you the
utterance of one word, if the room were burning.’

Mr Dombey moved his head, as if in a sarcastic acknowledgment of the
attention, and resumed. But not with so much self-possession as before;
for Edith’s quick uneasiness in reference to Florence, and Edith’s
indifference to him and his censure, chafed and galled him like a
stiffening wound.

‘Mrs Dombey,’ said he, ‘it may not be inconsistent with my daughter’s
improvement to know how very much to be lamented, and how necessary to
be corrected, a stubborn disposition is, especially when it is indulged
in--unthankfully indulged in, I will add--after the gratification of
ambition and interest. Both of which, I believe, had some share in
inducing you to occupy your present station at this board.’

‘No! I would not rise, and go away, and save you the utterance of one
word,’ she repeated, exactly as before, ‘if the room were burning.’

‘It may be natural enough, Mrs Dombey,’ he pursued, ‘that you should
be uneasy in the presence of any auditors of these disagreeable truths;
though why’--he could not hide his real feeling here, or keep his eyes
from glancing gloomily at Florence--‘why anyone can give them greater
force and point than myself, whom they so nearly concern, I do not
pretend to understand. It may be natural enough that you should object
to hear, in anybody’s presence, that there is a rebellious principle
within you which you cannot curb too soon; which you must curb,
Mrs Dombey; and which, I regret to say, I remember to have seen
manifested--with some doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasion
before our marriage--towards your deceased mother. But you have the
remedy in your own hands. I by no means forgot, when I began, that my
daughter was present, Mrs Dombey. I beg you will not forget, to-morrow,
that there are several persons present; and that, with some regard to
appearances, you will receive your company in a becoming manner.’

‘So it is not enough,’ said Edith, ‘that you know what has passed
between yourself and me; it is not enough that you can look here,’
pointing at Carker, who still listened, with his eyes cast down, ‘and be
reminded of the affronts you have put upon me; it is not enough that you
can look here,’ pointing to Florence with a hand that slightly trembled
for the first and only time, ‘and think of what you have done, and of
the ingenious agony, daily, hourly, constant, you have made me feel in
doing it; it is not enough that this day, of all others in the year, is
memorable to me for a struggle (well-deserved, but not conceivable by
such as you) in which I wish I had died! You add to all this, do you,
the last crowning meanness of making her a witness of the depth to which
I have fallen; when you know that you have made me sacrifice to her
peace, the only gentle feeling and interest of my life, when you know
that for her sake, I would now if I could--but I can not, my soul
recoils from you too much--submit myself wholly to your will, and be the
meekest vassal that you have!’

This was not the way to minister to Mr Dombey’s greatness. The old
feeling was roused by what she said, into a stronger and fiercer
existence than it had ever had. Again, his neglected child, at this
rough passage of his life, put forth by even this rebellious woman, as
powerful where he was powerless, and everything where he was nothing!

He turned on Florence, as if it were she who had spoken, and bade her
leave the room. Florence with her covered face obeyed, trembling and
weeping as she went.

‘I understand, Madam,’ said Mr Dombey, with an angry flush of triumph,
‘the spirit of opposition that turned your affections in that channel,
but they have been met, Mrs Dombey; they have been met, and turned
back!’

‘The worse for you!’ she answered, with her voice and manner still
unchanged. ‘Ay!’ for he turned sharply when she said so, ‘what is the
worse for me, is twenty million times the worse for you. Heed that, if
you heed nothing else.’

The arch of diamonds spanning her dark hair, flashed and glittered like
a starry bridge. There was no warning in them, or they would have turned
as dull and dim as tarnished honour. Carker still sat and listened, with
his eyes cast down.

‘Mrs Dombey,’ said Mr Dombey, resuming as much as he could of his
arrogant composure, ‘you will not conciliate me, or turn me from any
purpose, by this course of conduct.’

‘It is the only true although it is a faint expression of what is within
me,’ she replied. ‘But if I thought it would conciliate you, I would
repress it, if it were repressible by any human effort. I will do
nothing that you ask.’

‘I am not accustomed to ask, Mrs Dombey,’ he observed; ‘I direct.’

‘I will hold no place in your house to-morrow, or on any recurrence of
to-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave you
purchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage day, I would keep it as a
day of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world! what are these
to me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, and they
are nothing.’

‘Carker,’ said Mr Dombey, speaking with knitted brows, and after a
moment’s consideration, ‘Mrs Dombey is so forgetful of herself and me in
all this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, that
I must bring this state of matters to a close.’

‘Release me, then,’ said Edith, immoveable in voice, in look, and
bearing, as she had been throughout, ‘from the chain by which I am
bound. Let me go.’

‘Madam?’ exclaimed Mr Dombey.

‘Loose me. Set me free!’

‘Madam?’ he repeated, ‘Mrs Dombey?’

‘Tell him,’ said Edith, addressing her proud face to Carker, ‘that I
wish for a separation between us, That there had better be one. That I
recommend it to him, Tell him it may take place on his own terms--his
wealth is nothing to me--but that it cannot be too soon.’

‘Good Heaven, Mrs Dombey!’ said her husband, with supreme amazement, ‘do
you imagine it possible that I could ever listen to such a proposition?
Do you know who I am, Madam? Do you know what I represent? Did you ever
hear of Dombey and Son? People to say that Mr Dombey--Mr Dombey!--was
separated from his wife! Common people to talk of Mr Dombey and his
domestic affairs! Do you seriously think, Mrs Dombey, that I would
permit my name to be banded about in such connexion? Pooh, pooh, Madam!
Fie for shame! You’re absurd.’ Mr Dombey absolutely laughed.

But not as she did. She had better have been dead than laugh as she did,
in reply, with her intent look fixed upon him. He had better have been
dead, than sitting there, in his magnificence, to hear her.

‘No, Mrs Dombey,’ he resumed. ‘No, Madam. There is no possibility of
separation between you and me, and therefore I the more advise you to be
awakened to a sense of duty. And, Carker, as I was about to say to you--’

Mr Carker, who had sat and listened all this time, now raised his eyes,
in which there was a bright unusual light.

‘--As I was about to say to you,’ resumed Mr Dombey, ‘I must beg you, now
that matters have come to this, to inform Mrs Dombey, that it is not
the rule of my life to allow myself to be thwarted by anybody--anybody,
Carker--or to suffer anybody to be paraded as a stronger motive for
obedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am my self. The
mention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made of
my daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatural. Whether my daughter is
in actual concert with Mrs Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; but
after what Mrs Dombey has said today, and my daughter has heard to-day,
I beg you to make known to Mrs Dombey, that if she continues to make
this house the scene of contention it has become, I shall consider my
daughter responsible in some degree, on that lady’s own avowal, and
shall visit her with my severe displeasure. Mrs Dombey has asked
“whether it is not enough,” that she had done this and that. You will
please to answer no, it is not enough.’

‘A moment!’ cried Carker, interposing, ‘permit me! painful as my
position is, at the best, and unusually painful in seeming to entertain
a different opinion from you,’ addressing Mr Dombey, ‘I must ask, had
you not better reconsider the question of a separation. I know how
incompatible it appears with your high public position, and I know how
determined you are when you give Mrs Dombey to understand’--the light
in his eyes fell upon her as he separated his words each from each, with
the distinctness of so many bells--‘that nothing but death can ever part
you. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs Dombey, by living in
this house, and making it as you have said, a scene of contention, not
only has her part in that contention, but compromises Miss Dombey every
day (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from a
continual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjust
to another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like--I do not say
it is--sacrificing Mrs Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent and
unassailable position?’

Again the light in his eyes fell upon her, as she stood looking at her
husband: now with an extraordinary and awful smile upon her face.

‘Carker,’ returned Mr Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tone
that was intended to be final, ‘you mistake your position in offering
advice to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised to
find) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt in
his air, ‘you mistook my position, when you honoured me with the
negotiations in which I have been engaged here’--with a motion of his
hand towards Mrs Dombey.

‘Not at all, Sir, not at all,’ returned the other haughtily. ‘You were
employed--’

‘Being an inferior person, for the humiliation of Mrs Dombey. I forgot.
Oh, yes, it was expressly understood!’ said Carker. ‘I beg your pardon!’

As he bent his head to Mr Dombey, with an air of deference that accorded
ill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it round
towards her, and kept his watching eyes that way.

She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood up
with such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit’s majesty of
scorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewels
radiant on her head, and, plucking it off with a force that dragged
and strained her rich black hair with heedless cruelty, and brought it
tumbling wildly on her shoulders, cast the gems upon the ground. From
each arm, she unclasped a diamond bracelet, flung it down, and trod upon
the glittering heap. Without a word, without a shadow on the fire of
her bright eye, without abatement of her awful smile, she looked on Mr
Dombey to the last, in moving to the door; and left him.

Florence had heard enough before quitting the room, to know that Edith
loved her yet; that she had suffered for her sake; and that she had kept
her sacrifices quiet, lest they should trouble her peace. She did not
want to speak to her of this--she could not, remembering to whom she
was opposed--but she wished, in one silent and affectionate embrace, to
assure her that she felt it all, and thanked her.

Her father went out alone, that evening, and Florence issuing from her
own chamber soon afterwards, went about the house in search of Edith,
but unavailingly. She was in her own rooms, where Florence had
long ceased to go, and did not dare to venture now, lest she should
unconsciously engender new trouble. Still Florence hoping to meet her
before going to bed, changed from room to room, and wandered through the
house so splendid and so dreary, without remaining anywhere.

She was crossing a gallery of communication that opened at some little
distance on the staircase, and was only lighted on great occasions, when
she saw, through the opening, which was an arch, the figure of a man
coming down some few stairs opposite. Instinctively apprehensive of
her father, whom she supposed it was, she stopped, in the dark, gazing
through the arch into the light. But it was Mr Carker coming down alone,
and looking over the railing into the hall. No bell was rung to announce
his departure, and no servant was in attendance. He went down quietly,
opened the door for himself, glided out, and shut it softly after him.

Her invincible repugnance to this man, and perhaps the stealthy act of
watching anyone, which, even under such innocent circumstances, is in a
manner guilty and oppressive, made Florence shake from head to foot. Her
blood seemed to run cold. As soon as she could--for at first she felt
an insurmountable dread of moving--she went quickly to her own room and
locked her door; but even then, shut in with her dog beside her, felt
a chill sensation of horror, as if there were danger brooding somewhere
near her.

It invaded her dreams and disturbed the whole night. Rising in the
morning, unrefreshed, and with a heavy recollection of the domestic
unhappiness of the preceding day, she sought Edith again in all the
rooms, and did so, from time to time, all the morning. But she remained
in her own chamber, and Florence saw nothing of her. Learning, however,
that the projected dinner at home was put off, Florence thought it
likely that she would go out in the evening to fulfil the engagement
she had spoken of; and resolved to try and meet her, then, upon the
staircase.

When the evening had set in, she heard, from the room in which she sat
on purpose, a footstep on the stairs that she thought to be Edith’s.
Hurrying out, and up towards her room, Florence met her immediately,
coming down alone.

What was Florence’s affright and wonder when, at sight of her, with her
tearful face, and outstretched arms, Edith recoiled and shrieked!

‘Don’t come near me!’ she cried. ‘Keep away! Let me go by!’

‘Mama!’ said Florence.

‘Don’t call me by that name! Don’t speak to me! Don’t look at
me!--Florence!’ shrinking back, as Florence moved a step towards her,
‘don’t touch me!’

As Florence stood transfixed before the haggard face and staring eyes,
she noted, as in a dream, that Edith spread her hands over them, and
shuddering through all her form, and crouching down against the wall,
crawled by her like some lower animal, sprang up, and fled away.

Florence dropped upon the stairs in a swoon; and was found there by Mrs
Pipchin, she supposed. She knew nothing more, until she found herself
lying on her own bed, with Mrs Pipchin and some servants standing round
her.

‘Where is Mama?’ was her first question.

‘Gone out to dinner,’ said Mrs Pipchin.

‘And Papa?’

‘Mr Dombey is in his own room, Miss Dombey,’ said Mrs Pipchin, ‘and the
best thing you can do, is to take off your things and go to bed this
minute.’ This was the sagacious woman’s remedy for all complaints,
particularly lowness of spirits, and inability to sleep; for which
offences, many young victims in the days of the Brighton Castle had been
committed to bed at ten o’clock in the morning.

Without promising obedience, but on the plea of desiring to be very
quiet, Florence disengaged herself, as soon as she could, from the
ministration of Mrs Pipchin and her attendants. Left alone, she thought
of what had happened on the staircase, at first in doubt of its reality;
then with tears; then with an indescribable and terrible alarm, like
that she had felt the night before.

She determined not to go to bed until Edith returned, and if she could
not speak to her, at least to be sure that she was safe at home. What
indistinct and shadowy dread moved Florence to this resolution, she did
not know, and did not dare to think. She only knew that until Edith came
back, there was no repose for her aching head or throbbing heart.

The evening deepened into night; midnight came; no Edith.

Florence could not read, or rest a moment. She paced her own room,
opened the door and paced the staircase-gallery outside, looked out of
window on the night, listened to the wind blowing and the rain falling,
sat down and watched the faces in the fire, got up and watched the moon
flying like a storm-driven ship through the sea of clouds.

All the house was gone to bed, except two servants who were waiting the
return of their mistress, downstairs.

One o’clock. The carriages that rumbled in the distance, turned away,
or stopped short, or went past; the silence gradually deepened, and was
more and more rarely broken, save by a rush of wind or sweep of rain.
Two o’clock. No Edith!

Florence, more agitated, paced her room; and paced the gallery outside;
and looked out at the night, blurred and wavy with the raindrops on the
glass, and the tears in her own eyes; and looked up at the hurry in
the sky, so different from the repose below, and yet so tranquil and
solitary. Three o’clock! There was a terror in every ash that dropped
out of the fire. No Edith yet.

More and more agitated, Florence paced her room, and paced the gallery,
and looked out at the moon with a new fancy of her likeness to a pale
fugitive hurrying away and hiding her guilty face. Four struck! Five! No
Edith yet.

But now there was some cautious stir in the house; and Florence found
that Mrs Pipchin had been awakened by one of those who sat up, had risen
and had gone down to her father’s door. Stealing lower down the stairs,
and observing what passed, she saw her father come out in his morning
gown, and start when he was told his wife had not come home. He
dispatched a messenger to the stables to inquire whether the coachman
was there; and while the man was gone, dressed himself very hurriedly.

The man came back, in great haste, bringing the coachman with him, who
said he had been at home and in bed, since ten o’clock. He had driven
his mistress to her old house in Brook Street, where she had been met by
Mr Carker--

Florence stood upon the very spot where she had seen him coming down.
Again she shivered with the nameless terror of that sight, and had
hardly steadiness enough to hear and understand what followed.

--Who had told him, the man went on to say, that his mistress would not
want the carriage to go home in; and had dismissed him.

She saw her father turn white in the face, and heard him ask in a quick,
trembling voice, for Mrs Dombey’s maid. The whole house was roused; for
she was there, in a moment, very pale too, and speaking incoherently.

She said she had dressed her mistress early--full two hours before she
went out--and had been told, as she often was, that she would not be
wanted at night. She had just come from her mistress’s rooms, but--

‘But what! what was it?’ Florence heard her father demand like a madman.

‘But the inner dressing-room was locked and the key gone.’

Her father seized a candle that was flaming on the ground--someone had
put it down there, and forgotten it--and came running upstairs with such
fury, that Florence, in her fear, had hardly time to fly before him.
She heard him striking in the door, as she ran on, with her hands widely
spread, and her hair streaming, and her face like a distracted person’s,
back to her own room.

When the door yielded, and he rushed in, what did he see there? No
one knew. But thrown down in a costly mass upon the ground, was every
ornament she had had, since she had been his wife; every dress she had
worn; and everything she had possessed. This was the room in which he
had seen, in yonder mirror, the proud face discard him. This was the
room in which he had wondered, idly, how these things would look when he
should see them next!

Heaping them back into the drawers, and locking them up in a rage of
haste, he saw some papers on the table. The deed of settlement he had
executed on their marriage, and a letter. He read that she was gone.
He read that he was dishonoured. He read that she had fled, upon
her shameful wedding-day, with the man whom he had chosen for her
humiliation; and he tore out of the room, and out of the house, with
a frantic idea of finding her yet, at the place to which she had been
taken, and beating all trace of beauty out of the triumphant face with
his bare hand.

Florence, not knowing what she did, put on a shawl and bonnet, in a
dream of running through the streets until she found Edith, and then
clasping her in her arms, to save and bring her back. But when she
hurried out upon the staircase, and saw the frightened servants going up
and down with lights, and whispering together, and falling away from her
father as he passed down, she awoke to a sense of her own powerlessness;
and hiding in one of the great rooms that had been made gorgeous for
this, felt as if her heart would burst with grief.

Compassion for her father was the first distinct emotion that made head
against the flood of sorrow which overwhelmed her. Her constant nature
turned to him in his distress, as fervently and faithfully, as if,
in his prosperity, he had been the embodiment of that idea which had
gradually become so faint and dim. Although she did not know, otherwise
than through the suggestions of a shapeless fear, the full extent of
his calamity, he stood before her, wronged and deserted; and again her
yearning love impelled her to his side.

He was not long away; for Florence was yet weeping in the great room and
nourishing these thoughts, when she heard him come back. He ordered the
servants to set about their ordinary occupations, and went into his own
apartment, where he trod so heavily that she could hear him walking up
and down from end to end.

Yielding at once to the impulse of her affection, timid at all other
times, but bold in its truth to him in his adversity, and undaunted by
past repulse, Florence, dressed as she was, hurried downstairs. As she
set her light foot in the hall, he came out of his room. She hastened
towards him unchecked, with her arms stretched out, and crying ‘Oh dear,
dear Papa!’ as if she would have clasped him round the neck.

And so she would have done. But in his frenzy, he lifted up his cruel
arm, and struck her, crosswise, with that heaviness, that she tottered
on the marble floor; and as he dealt the blow, he told her what Edith
was, and bade her follow her, since they had always been in league.

She did not sink down at his feet; she did not shut out the sight of him
with her trembling hands; she did not weep; she did not utter one word
of reproach. But she looked at him, and a cry of desolation issued from
her heart. For as she looked, she saw him murdering that fond idea to
which she had held in spite of him. She saw his cruelty, neglect, and
hatred dominant above it, and stamping it down. She saw she had no
father upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from his house.

Ran out of his house. A moment, and her hand was on the lock, the cry
was on her lips, his face was there, made paler by the yellow candles
hastily put down and guttering away, and by the daylight coming in above
the door. Another moment, and the close darkness of the shut-up house
(forgotten to be opened, though it was long since day) yielded to the
unexpected glare and freedom of the morning; and Florence, with her head
bent down to hide her agony of tears, was in the streets.

CHAPTER 48. The Flight of Florence

In the wildness of her sorrow, shame, and terror, the forlorn girl
hurried through the sunshine of a bright morning, as if it were the
darkness of a winter night. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly,
insensible to everything but the deep wound in her breast, stunned by
the loss of all she loved, left like the sole survivor on a lonely shore
from the wreck of a great vessel, she fled without a thought, without a
hope, without a purpose, but to fly somewhere anywhere.

The cheerful vista of the long street, burnished by the morning light,
the sight of the blue sky and airy clouds, the vigorous freshness of
the day, so flushed and rosy in its conquest of the night, awakened no
responsive feelings in her so hurt bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hide
her head! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never more to look upon the
place from which she fled!

But there were people going to and fro; there were opening shops, and
servants at the doors of houses; there was the rising clash and roar
of the day’s struggle. Florence saw surprise and curiosity in the faces
flitting past her; saw long shadows coming back upon the pavement; and
heard voices that were strange to her asking her where she went, and
what the matter was; and though these frightened her the more at first,
and made her hurry on the faster, they did her the good service of
recalling her in some degree to herself, and reminding her of the
necessity of greater composure.

Where to go? Still somewhere, anywhere! still going on; but where! She
thought of the only other time she had been lost in the wild wilderness
of London--though not lost as now--and went that way. To the home of
Walter’s Uncle.

Checking her sobs, and drying her swollen eyes, and endeavouring to calm
the agitation of her manner, so as to avoid attracting notice, Florence,
resolving to keep to the more quiet streets as long as she could, was
going on more quietly herself, when a familiar little shadow darted past
upon the sunny pavement, stopped short, wheeled about, came close to
her, made off again, bounded round and round her, and Diogenes, panting
for breath, and yet making the street ring with his glad bark, was at
her feet.

‘Oh, Di! oh, dear, true, faithful Di, how did you come here? How could I
ever leave you, Di, who would never leave me?’

Florence bent down on the pavement, and laid his rough, old, loving,
foolish head against her breast, and they got up together, and went on
together; Di more off the ground than on it, endeavouring to kiss his
mistress flying, tumbling over and getting up again without the least
concern, dashing at big dogs in a jocose defiance of his species,
terrifying with touches of his nose young housemaids who were cleaning
doorsteps, and continually stopping, in the midst of a thousand
extravagances, to look back at Florence, and bark until all the dogs
within hearing answered, and all the dogs who could come out, came out
to stare at him.

With this last adherent, Florence hurried away in the advancing morning,
and the strengthening sunshine, to the City. The roar soon grew more
loud, the passengers more numerous, the shops more busy, until she
was carried onward in a stream of life setting that way, and
flowing, indifferently, past marts and mansions, prisons, churches,
market-places, wealth, poverty, good, and evil, like the broad river
side by side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, and
green moss, and rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works and
cares of men, to the deep sea.

At length the quarters of the little Midshipman arose in view. Nearer
yet, and the little Midshipman himself was seen upon his post, intent as
ever on his observations. Nearer yet, and the door stood open, inviting
her to enter. Florence, who had again quickened her pace, as she
approached the end of her journey, ran across the road (closely followed
by Diogenes, whom the bustle had somewhat confused), ran in, and sank
upon the threshold of the well-remembered little parlour.

The Captain, in his glazed hat, was standing over the fire, making
his morning’s cocoa, with that elegant trifle, his watch, upon the
chimney-piece, for easy reference during the progress of the cookery.
Hearing a footstep and the rustle of a dress, the Captain turned with a
palpitating remembrance of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger, at the instant
when Florence made a motion with her hand towards him, reeled, and fell
upon the floor.

The Captain, pale as Florence, pale in the very knobs upon his face
raised her like a baby, and laid her on the same old sofa upon which she
had slumbered long ago.

‘It’s Heart’s Delight!’ said the Captain, looking intently in her face.
‘It’s the sweet creetur grow’d a woman!’

Captain Cuttle was so respectful of her, and had such a reverence for
her, in this new character, that he would not have held her in his arms,
while she was unconscious, for a thousand pounds.

‘My Heart’s Delight!’ said the Captain, withdrawing to a little
distance, with the greatest alarm and sympathy depicted on his
countenance. ‘If you can hail Ned Cuttle with a finger, do it!’

But Florence did not stir.

‘My Heart’s Delight!’ said the trembling Captain. ‘For the sake of Wal’r
drownded in the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something or another,
if able!’

Finding her insensible to this impressive adjuration also, Captain
Cuttle snatched from his breakfast-table a basin of cold water, and
sprinkled some upon her face. Yielding to the urgency of the case, the
Captain then, using his immense hand with extraordinary gentleness,
relieved her of her bonnet, moistened her lips and forehead, put back
her hair, covered her feet with his own coat which he pulled off for
the purpose, patted her hand--so small in his, that he was struck with
wonder when he touched it--and seeing that her eyelids quivered, and
that her lips began to move, continued these restorative applications
with a better heart.

‘Cheerily,’ said the Captain. ‘Cheerily! Stand by, my pretty one, stand
by! There! You’re better now. Steady’s the word, and steady it is. Keep
her so! Drink a little drop o’ this here,’ said the Captain. ‘There you
are! What cheer now, my pretty, what cheer now?’

At this stage of her recovery, Captain Cuttle, with an imperfect
association of a Watch with a Physician’s treatment of a patient, took
his own down from the mantel-shelf, and holding it out on his hook, and
taking Florence’s hand in his, looked steadily from one to the other, as
expecting the dial to do something.

‘What cheer, my pretty?’ said the Captain. ‘What cheer now? You’ve done
her some good, my lad, I believe,’ said the Captain, under his
breath, and throwing an approving glance upon his watch. ‘Put you
back half-an-hour every morning, and about another quarter towards the
arternoon, and you’re a watch as can be ekalled by few and excelled by
none. What cheer, my lady lass!’

‘Captain Cuttle! Is it you?’ exclaimed Florence, raising herself a
little.

‘Yes, yes, my lady lass,’ said the Captain, hastily deciding in his own
mind upon the superior elegance of that form of address, as the most
courtly he could think of.

‘Is Walter’s Uncle here?’ asked Florence.

‘Here, pretty?’ returned the Captain. ‘He ain’t been here this many a
long day. He ain’t been heerd on, since he sheered off arter poor Wal’r.
But,’ said the Captain, as a quotation, ‘Though lost to sight, to memory
dear, and England, Home, and Beauty!’

‘Do you live here?’ asked Florence.

‘Yes, my lady lass,’ returned the Captain.

‘Oh, Captain Cuttle!’ cried Florence, putting her hands together, and
speaking wildly. ‘Save me! keep me here! Let no one know where I am!
I’ll tell you what has happened by-and-by, when I can. I have no one in
the world to go to. Do not send me away!’

‘Send you away, my lady lass!’ exclaimed the Captain. ‘You, my Heart’s
Delight! Stay a bit! We’ll put up this here deadlight, and take a double
turn on the key!’

With these words, the Captain, using his one hand and his hook with the
greatest dexterity, got out the shutter of the door, put it up, made it
all fast, and locked the door itself.

When he came back to the side of Florence, she took his hand, and kissed
it. The helplessness of the action, the appeal it made to him, the
confidence it expressed, the unspeakable sorrow in her face, the pain of
mind she had too plainly suffered, and was suffering then, his
knowledge of her past history, her present lonely, worn, and unprotected
appearance, all so rushed upon the good Captain together, that he fairly
overflowed with compassion and gentleness.

‘My lady lass,’ said the Captain, polishing the bridge of his nose with
his arm until it shone like burnished copper, ‘don’t you say a word to
Ed’ard Cuttle, until such times as you finds yourself a riding smooth
and easy; which won’t be to-day, nor yet to-morrow. And as to giving of
you up, or reporting where you are, yes verily, and by God’s help, so I
won’t, Church catechism, make a note on!’

This the Captain said, reference and all, in one breath, and with much
solemnity; taking off his hat at ‘yes verily,’ and putting it on again,
when he had quite concluded.

Florence could do but one thing more to thank him, and to show him how
she trusted in him; and she did it. Clinging to this rough creature as
the last asylum of her bleeding heart, she laid her head upon his honest
shoulder, and clasped him round his neck, and would have kneeled down to
bless him, but that he divined her purpose, and held her up like a true
man.

‘Steady!’ said the Captain. ‘Steady! You’re too weak to stand, you
see, my pretty, and must lie down here again. There, there!’ To see the
Captain lift her on the sofa, and cover her with his coat, would have
been worth a hundred state sights. ‘And now,’ said the Captain, ‘you
must take some breakfast, lady lass, and the dog shall have some too.
And arter that you shall go aloft to old Sol Gills’s room, and fall
asleep there, like a angel.’

Captain Cuttle patted Diogenes when he made allusion to him,
and Diogenes met that overture graciously, half-way. During the
administration of the restoratives he had clearly been in two minds
whether to fly at the Captain or to offer him his friendship; and he had
expressed that conflict of feeling by alternate waggings of his tail,
and displays of his teeth, with now and then a growl or so. But by this
time, his doubts were all removed. It was plain that he considered the
Captain one of the most amiable of men, and a man whom it was an honour
to a dog to know.

In evidence of these convictions, Diogenes attended on the Captain
while he made some tea and toast, and showed a lively interest in his
housekeeping. But it was in vain for the kind Captain to make such
preparations for Florence, who sorely tried to do some honour to them,
but could touch nothing, and could only weep and weep again.

‘Well, well!’ said the compassionate Captain, ‘arter turning in, my
Heart’s Delight, you’ll get more way upon you. Now, I’ll serve out
your allowance, my lad.’ To Diogenes. ‘And you shall keep guard on your
mistress aloft.’

Diogenes, however, although he had been eyeing his intended breakfast
with a watering mouth and glistening eyes, instead of falling to,
ravenously, when it was put before him, pricked up his ears, darted to
the shop-door, and barked there furiously: burrowing with his head at
the bottom, as if he were bent on mining his way out.

‘Can there be anybody there!’ asked Florence, in alarm.

‘No, my lady lass,’ returned the Captain. ‘Who’d stay there, without
making any noise! Keep up a good heart, pretty. It’s only people going
by.’

But for all that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed and burrowed,
with pertinacious fury; and whenever he stopped to listen, appeared to
receive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking and
burrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return to
his breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very doubtful air; and
was off again, in another paroxysm, before touching a morsel.

‘If there should be someone listening and watching,’ whispered Florence.
‘Someone who saw me come--who followed me, perhaps.’

‘It ain’t the young woman, lady lass, is it?’ said the Captain, taken
with a bright idea.

‘Susan?’ said Florence, shaking her head. ‘Ah no! Susan has been gone
from me a long time.’

‘Not deserted, I hope?’ said the Captain. ‘Don’t say that that there
young woman’s run, my pretty!’

‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Florence. ‘She is one of the truest hearts in the
world!’

The Captain was greatly relieved by this reply, and expressed his
satisfaction by taking off his hard glazed hat, and dabbing his head
all over with his handkerchief, rolled up like a ball, observing several
times, with infinite complacency, and with a beaming countenance, that
he know’d it.

‘So you’re quiet now, are you, brother?’ said the Captain to Diogenes.
‘There warn’t nobody there, my lady lass, bless you!’

Diogenes was not so sure of that. The door still had an attraction
for him at intervals; and he went snuffing about it, and growling to
himself, unable to forget the subject. This incident, coupled with the
Captain’s observation of Florence’s fatigue and faintness, decided
him to prepare Sol Gills’s chamber as a place of retirement for her
immediately. He therefore hastily betook himself to the top of the
house, and made the best arrangement of it that his imagination and his
means suggested.

It was very clean already; and the Captain being an orderly man, and
accustomed to make things ship-shape, converted the bed into a couch,
by covering it all over with a clean white drapery. By a similar
contrivance, the Captain converted the little dressing-table into
a species of altar, on which he set forth two silver teaspoons, a
flower-pot, a telescope, his celebrated watch, a pocket-comb, and
a song-book, as a small collection of rarities, that made a choice
appearance. Having darkened the window, and straightened the pieces of
carpet on the floor, the Captain surveyed these preparations with great
delight, and descended to the little parlour again, to bring Florence to
her bower.

Nothing would induce the Captain to believe that it was possible for
Florence to walk upstairs. If he could have got the idea into his head,
he would have considered it an outrageous breach of hospitality to
allow her to do so. Florence was too weak to dispute the point, and the
Captain carried her up out of hand, laid her down, and covered her with
a great watch-coat.

‘My lady lass!’ said the Captain, ‘you’re as safe here as if you was at
the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, with the ladder cast off. Sleep is what
you want, afore all other things, and may you be able to show yourself
smart with that there balsam for the still small woice of a wounded
mind! When there’s anything you want, my Heart’s Delight, as this here
humble house or town can offer, pass the word to Ed’ard Cuttle, as’ll
stand off and on outside that door, and that there man will wibrate with
joy.’ The Captain concluded by kissing the hand that Florence stretched
out to him, with the chivalry of any old knight-errant, and walking on
tiptoe out of the room.

Descending to the little parlour, Captain Cuttle, after holding a hasty
council with himself, decided to open the shop-door for a few minutes,
and satisfy himself that now, at all events, there was no one loitering
about it. Accordingly he set it open, and stood upon the threshold,
keeping a bright look-out, and sweeping the whole street with his
spectacles.

‘How de do, Captain Gills?’ said a voice beside him. The Captain,
looking down, found that he had been boarded by Mr Toots while sweeping
the horizon.

‘How are, you, my lad?’ replied the Captain.

‘Well, I’m pretty well, thank’ee, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots. ‘You
know I’m never quite what I could wish to be, now. I don’t expect that I
ever shall be any more.’

Mr Toots never approached any nearer than this to the great theme of
his life, when in conversation with Captain Cuttle, on account of the
agreement between them.

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘if I could have the pleasure of a word
with you, it’s--it’s rather particular.’

‘Why, you see, my lad,’ replied the Captain, leading the way into the
parlour, ‘I ain’t what you may call exactly free this morning; and
therefore if you can clap on a bit, I should take it kindly.’

‘Certainly, Captain Gills,’ replied Mr Toots, who seldom had any notion
of the Captain’s meaning. ‘To clap on, is exactly what I could wish to
do. Naturally.’

‘If so be, my lad,’ returned the Captain. ‘Do it!’

The Captain was so impressed by the possession of his tremendous
secret--by the fact of Miss Dombey being at that moment under his roof,
while the innocent and unconscious Toots sat opposite to him--that a
perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he found it impossible,
while slowly drying the same, glazed hat in hand, to keep his eyes off
Mr Toots’s face. Mr Toots, who himself appeared to have some secret
reasons for being in a nervous state, was so unspeakably disconcerted by
the Captain’s stare, that after looking at him vacantly for some time in
silence, and shifting uneasily on his chair, he said:

‘I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you don’t happen to see anything
particular in me, do you?’

‘No, my lad,’ returned the Captain. ‘No.’

‘Because you know,’ said Mr Toots with a chuckle, ‘I know I’m wasting
away. You needn’t at all mind alluding to that. I--I should like it.
Burgess and Co. have altered my measure, I’m in that state of thinness.
It’s a gratification to me. I--I’m glad of it. I--I’d a great deal
rather go into a decline, if I could. I’m a mere brute you know, grazing
upon the surface of the earth, Captain Gills.’

The more Mr Toots went on in this way, the more the Captain was
weighed down by his secret, and stared at him. What with this cause of
uneasiness, and his desire to get rid of Mr Toots, the Captain was in
such a scared and strange condition, indeed, that if he had been
in conversation with a ghost, he could hardly have evinced greater
discomposure.

‘But I was going to say, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots. ‘Happening to
be this way early this morning--to tell you the truth, I was coming to
breakfast with you. As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might be
a Watchman, except that I don’t get any pay, and he’s got nothing on his
mind.’

‘Carry on, my lad!’ said the Captain, in an admonitory voice.

‘Certainly, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots. ‘Perfectly true! Happening to
be this way early this morning (an hour or so ago), and finding the door
shut--’

‘What! were you waiting there, brother?’ demanded the Captain.

‘Not at all, Captain Gills,’ returned Mr Toots. ‘I didn’t stop a moment.
I thought you were out. But the person said--by the bye, you don’t keep
a dog, you, Captain Gills?’

The Captain shook his head.

‘To be sure,’ said Mr Toots, ‘that’s exactly what I said. I knew you
didn’t. There is a dog, Captain Gills, connected with--but excuse me.
That’s forbidden ground.’

The Captain stared at Mr Toots until he seemed to swell to twice his
natural size; and again the perspiration broke out on the Captain’s
forehead, when he thought of Diogenes taking it into his head to come
down and make a third in the parlour.

‘The person said,’ continued Mr Toots, ‘that he had heard a dog barking
in the shop: which I knew couldn’t be, and I told him so. But he was as
positive as if he had seen the dog.’

‘What person, my lad?’ inquired the Captain.

‘Why, you see there it is, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, with a
perceptible increase in the nervousness of his manner. ‘It’s not for
me to say what may have taken place, or what may not have taken place.
Indeed, I don’t know. I get mixed up with all sorts of things that I
don’t quite understand, and I think there’s something rather weak in
my--in my head, in short.’

The Captain nodded his own, as a mark of assent.

‘But the person said, as we were walking away,’ continued Mr Toots,
‘that you knew what, under existing circumstances, might occur--he
said “might,” very strongly--and that if you were requested to prepare
yourself, you would, no doubt, come prepared.’

‘Person, my lad’ the Captain repeated.

‘I don’t know what person, I’m sure, Captain Gills,’ replied Mr Toots,
‘I haven’t the least idea. But coming to the door, I found him waiting
there; and he said was I coming back again, and I said yes; and he
said did I know you, and I said, yes, I had the pleasure of your
acquaintance--you had given me the pleasure of your acquaintance, after
some persuasion; and he said, if that was the case, would I say to you
what I have said, about existing circumstances and coming prepared, and
as soon as ever I saw you, would I ask you to step round the corner, if
it was only for one minute, on most important business, to Mr Brogley’s
the Broker’s. Now, I tell you what, Captain Gills--whatever it is, I am
convinced it’s very important; and if you like to step round, now, I’ll
wait here till you come back.’

The Captain, divided between his fear of compromising Florence in some
way by not going, and his horror of leaving Mr Toots in possession of
the house with a chance of finding out the secret, was a spectacle of
mental disturbance that even Mr Toots could not be blind to. But that
young gentleman, considering his nautical friend as merely in a state of
preparation for the interview he was going to have, was quite satisfied,
and did not review his own discreet conduct without chuckle.

At length the Captain decided, as the lesser of two evils, to run round
to Brogley’s the Broker’s: previously locking the door that communicated
with the upper part of the house, and putting the key in his pocket.
‘If so be,’ said the Captain to Mr Toots, with not a little shame and
hesitation, ‘as you’ll excuse my doing of it, brother.’

‘Captain Gills,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘whatever you do, is satisfactory to
me.’

The Captain thanked him heartily, and promising to come back in less
than five minutes, went out in quest of the person who had entrusted Mr
Toots with this mysterious message. Poor Mr Toots, left to himself, lay
down upon the sofa, little thinking who had reclined there last, and,
gazing up at the skylight and resigning himself to visions of Miss
Dombey, lost all heed of time and place.

It was as well that he did so; for although the Captain was not gone
long, he was gone much longer than he had proposed. When he came back,
he was very pale indeed, and greatly agitated, and even looked as if he
had been shedding tears. He seemed to have lost the faculty of speech,
until he had been to the cupboard and taken a dram of rum from the
case-bottle, when he fetched a deep breath, and sat down in a chair with
his hand before his face.

‘Captain Gills,’ said Toots, kindly, ‘I hope and trust there’s nothing
wrong?’

‘Thank’ee, my lad, not a bit,’ said the Captain. ‘Quite contrairy.’

‘You have the appearance of being overcome, Captain Gills,’ observed Mr
Toots.

‘Why, my lad, I am took aback,’ the Captain admitted. ‘I am.’

‘Is there anything I can do, Captain Gills?’ inquired Mr Toots. ‘If
there is, make use of me.’

The Captain removed his hand from his face, looked at him with a
remarkable expression of pity and tenderness, and took him by the hand,
and shook it hard.

‘No, thank’ee,’ said the Captain. ‘Nothing. Only I’ll take it as a
favour if you’ll part company for the present. I believe, brother,’
wringing his hand again, ‘that, after Wal’r, and on a different model,
you’re as good a lad as ever stepped.’

‘Upon my word and honour, Captain Gills,’ returned Mr Toots, giving
the Captain’s hand a preliminary slap before shaking it again, ‘it’s
delightful to me to possess your good opinion. Thank’ee.’

‘And bear a hand and cheer up,’ said the Captain, patting him on the
back. ‘What! There’s more than one sweet creetur in the world!’

‘Not to me, Captain Gills,’ replied Mr Toots gravely. ‘Not to me, I
assure you. The state of my feelings towards Miss Dombey is of that
unspeakable description, that my heart is a desert island, and she lives
in it alone. I’m getting more used up every day, and I’m proud to be so.
If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you’d form some idea
of what unrequited affection is. I have been prescribed bark, but I
don’t take it, for I don’t wish to have any tone whatever given to
my constitution. I’d rather not. This, however, is forbidden ground.
Captain Gills, goodbye!’

Captain Cuttle cordially reciprocating the warmth of Mr Toots’s
farewell, locked the door behind him, and shaking his head with the same
remarkable expression of pity and tenderness as he had regarded him with
before, went up to see if Florence wanted him.

There was an entire change in the Captain’s face as he went upstairs. He
wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, and he polished the bridge of his
nose with his sleeve as he had done already that morning, but his face
was absolutely changed. Now, he might have been thought supremely happy;
now, he might have been thought sad; but the kind of gravity that sat
upon his features was quite new to them, and was as great an improvement
to them as if they had undergone some sublimating process.

He knocked softly, with his hook, at Florence’s door, twice or thrice;
but, receiving no answer, ventured first to peep in, and then to enter:
emboldened to take the latter step, perhaps, by the familiar recognition
of Diogenes, who, stretched upon the ground by the side of her couch,
wagged his tail, and winked his eyes at the Captain, without being at
the trouble of getting up.

She was sleeping heavily, and moaning in her sleep; and Captain Cuttle,
with a perfect awe of her youth, and beauty, and her sorrow, raised her
head, and adjusted the coat that covered her, where it had fallen off,
and darkened the window a little more that she might sleep on, and crept
out again, and took his post of watch upon the stairs. All this, with a
touch and tread as light as Florence’s own.

Long may it remain in this mixed world a point not easy of decision,
which is the more beautiful evidence of the Almighty’s goodness--the
delicate fingers that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy of
touch, and made to minister to pain and grief, or the rough hard Captain
Cuttle hand, that the heart teaches, guides, and softens in a moment!

Florence slept upon her couch, forgetful of her homelessness and
orphanage, and Captain Cuttle watched upon the stairs. A louder sob or
moan than usual, brought him sometimes to her door; but by degrees she
slept more peacefully, and the Captain’s watch was undisturbed.

CHAPTER 49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery

It was long before Florence awoke. The day was in its prime, the day
was in its wane, and still, uneasy in mind and body, she slept on;
unconscious of her strange bed, of the noise and turmoil in the
street, and of the light that shone outside the shaded window. Perfect
unconsciousness of what had happened in the home that existed no more,
even the deep slumber of exhaustion could not produce. Some undefined
and mournful recollection of it, dozing uneasily but never sleeping,
pervaded all her rest. A dull sorrow, like a half-lulled sense of pain,
was always present to her; and her pale cheek was oftener wet with tears
than the honest Captain, softly putting in his head from time to time at
the half-closed door, could have desired to see it.

The sun was getting low in the west, and, glancing out of a red mist,
pierced with its rays opposite loopholes and pieces of fretwork in the
spires of city churches, as if with golden arrows that struck through
and through them--and far away athwart the river and its flat banks,
it was gleaming like a path of fire--and out at sea it was irradiating
sails of ships--and, looked towards, from quiet churchyards, upon
hill-tops in the country, it was steeping distant prospects in a flush
and glow that seemed to mingle earth and sky together in one glorious
suffusion--when Florence, opening her heavy eyes, lay at first, looking
without interest or recognition at the unfamiliar walls around her, and
listening in the same regardless manner to the noises in the street. But
presently she started up upon her couch, gazed round with a surprised
and vacant look, and recollected all.

‘My pretty,’ said the Captain, knocking at the door, ‘what cheer?’

‘Dear friend,’ cried Florence, hurrying to him, ‘is it you?’

The Captain felt so much pride in the name, and was so pleased by the
gleam of pleasure in her face, when she saw him, that he kissed his
hook, by way of reply, in speechless gratification.

‘What cheer, bright di’mond?’ said the Captain.

‘I have surely slept very long,’ returned Florence. ‘When did I come
here? Yesterday?’

‘This here blessed day, my lady lass,’ replied the Captain.

‘Has there been no night? Is it still day?’ asked Florence.

‘Getting on for evening now, my pretty,’ said the Captain, drawing back
the curtain of the window. ‘See!’

Florence, with her hand upon the Captain’s arm, so sorrowful and
timid, and the Captain with his rough face and burly figure, so quietly
protective of her, stood in the rosy light of the bright evening sky,
without saying a word. However strange the form of speech into which he
might have fashioned the feeling, if he had had to give it utterance,
the Captain felt, as sensibly as the most eloquent of men could have
done, that there was something in the tranquil time and in its softened
beauty that would make the wounded heart of Florence overflow; and that
it was better that such tears should have their way. So not a word spake
Captain Cuttle. But when he felt his arm clasped closer, and when he
felt the lonely head come nearer to it, and lay itself against his
homely coarse blue sleeve, he pressed it gently with his rugged hand,
and understood it, and was understood.

‘Better now, my pretty!’ said the Captain. ‘Cheerily, cheerily, I’ll go
down below, and get some dinner ready. Will you come down of your own
self, arterwards, pretty, or shall Ed’ard Cuttle come and fetch you?’

As Florence assured him that she was quite able to walk downstairs, the
Captain, though evidently doubtful of his own hospitality in permitting
it, left her to do so, and immediately set about roasting a fowl at
the fire in the little parlour. To achieve his cookery with the greater
skill, he pulled off his coat, tucked up his wristbands, and put on his
glazed hat, without which assistant he never applied himself to any nice
or difficult undertaking.

After cooling her aching head and burning face in the fresh water which
the Captain’s care had provided for her while she slept, Florence went
to the little mirror to bind up her disordered hair. Then she knew--in
a moment, for she shunned it instantly, that on her breast there was the
darkening mark of an angry hand.

Her tears burst forth afresh at the sight; she was ashamed and afraid of
it; but it moved her to no anger against him. Homeless and fatherless,
she forgave him everything; hardly thought that she had need to forgive
him, or that she did; but she fled from the idea of him as she had fled
from the reality, and he was utterly gone and lost. There was no such
Being in the world.

What to do, or where to live, Florence--poor, inexperienced girl!--could
not yet consider. She had indistinct dreams of finding, a long way off,
some little sisters to instruct, who would be gentle with her, and to
whom, under some feigned name, she might attach herself, and who
would grow up in their happy home, and marry, and be good to their old
governess, and perhaps entrust her, in time, with the education of their
own daughters. And she thought how strange and sorrowful it would be,
thus to become a grey-haired woman, carrying her secret to the grave,
when Florence Dombey was forgotten. But it was all dim and clouded to
her now. She only knew that she had no Father upon earth, and she said
so, many times, with her suppliant head hidden from all, but her Father
who was in Heaven.

Her little stock of money amounted to but a few guineas. With a part of
this, it would be necessary to buy some clothes, for she had none but
those she wore. She was too desolate to think how soon her money would
be gone--too much a child in worldly matters to be greatly troubled on
that score yet, even if her other trouble had been less. She tried
to calm her thoughts and stay her tears; to quiet the hurry in her
throbbing head, and bring herself to believe that what had happened were
but the events of a few hours ago, instead of weeks or months, as they
appeared; and went down to her kind protector.

The Captain had spread the cloth with great care, and was making some
egg-sauce in a little saucepan: basting the fowl from time to time
during the process with a strong interest, as it turned and browned on a
string before the fire. Having propped Florence up with cushions on
the sofa, which was already wheeled into a warm corner for her greater
comfort, the Captain pursued his cooking with extraordinary skill,
making hot gravy in a second little saucepan, boiling a handful of
potatoes in a third, never forgetting the egg-sauce in the first, and
making an impartial round of basting and stirring with the most useful
of spoons every minute. Besides these cares, the Captain had to keep his
eye on a diminutive frying-pan, in which some sausages were hissing and
bubbling in a most musical manner; and there was never such a radiant
cook as the Captain looked, in the height and heat of these functions:
it being impossible to say whether his face or his glazed hat shone the
brighter.

The dinner being at length quite ready, Captain Cuttle dished and served
it up, with no less dexterity than he had cooked it. He then dressed for
dinner, by taking off his glazed hat and putting on his coat. That done,
he wheeled the table close against Florence on the sofa, said grace,
unscrewed his hook, screwed his fork into its place, and did the honours
of the table.

‘My lady lass,’ said the Captain, ‘cheer up, and try to eat a deal.
Stand by, my deary! Liver wing it is. Sarse it is. Sassage it is. And
potato!’ all which the Captain ranged symmetrically on a plate, and
pouring hot gravy on the whole with the useful spoon, set before his
cherished guest.

‘The whole row o’ dead lights is up, for’ard, lady lass,’ observed the
Captain, encouragingly, ‘and everythink is made snug. Try and pick a
bit, my pretty. If Wal’r was here--’

‘Ah! If I had him for my brother now!’ cried Florence.

‘Don’t! don’t take on, my pretty!’ said the Captain, ‘awast, to obleege
me! He was your nat’ral born friend like, warn’t he, Pet?’

Florence had no words to answer with. She only said, ‘Oh, dear, dear
Paul! oh, Walter!’

‘The wery planks she walked on,’ murmured the Captain, looking at her
drooping face, ‘was as high esteemed by Wal’r, as the water brooks is
by the hart which never rejices! I see him now, the wery day as he was
rated on them Dombey books, a speaking of her with his face a glistening
with doo--leastways with his modest sentiments--like a new blowed rose,
at dinner. Well, well! If our poor Wal’r was here, my lady lass--or if
he could be--for he’s drownded, ain’t he?’

Florence shook her head.

‘Yes, yes; drownded,’ said the Captain, soothingly; ‘as I was saying, if
he could be here he’d beg and pray of you, my precious, to pick a leetle
bit, with a look-out for your own sweet health. Whereby, hold your own,
my lady lass, as if it was for Wal’r’s sake, and lay your pretty head to
the wind.’

Florence essayed to eat a morsel, for the Captain’s pleasure. The
Captain, meanwhile, who seemed to have quite forgotten his own dinner,
laid down his knife and fork, and drew his chair to the sofa.

‘Wal’r was a trim lad, warn’t he, precious?’ said the Captain, after
sitting for some time silently rubbing his chin, with his eyes fixed
upon her, ‘and a brave lad, and a good lad?’

Florence tearfully assented.

‘And he’s drownded, Beauty, ain’t he?’ said the Captain, in a soothing
voice.

Florence could not but assent again.

‘He was older than you, my lady lass,’ pursued the Captain, ‘but you was
like two children together, at first; wam’t you?’

Florence answered ‘Yes.’

‘And Wal’r’s drownded,’ said the Captain. ‘Ain’t he?’

The repetition of this inquiry was a curious source of consolation, but
it seemed to be one to Captain Cuttle, for he came back to it again and
again. Florence, fain to push from her her untasted dinner, and to lie
back on her sofa, gave him her hand, feeling that she had disappointed
him, though truly wishing to have pleased him after all his trouble, but
he held it in his own (which shook as he held it), and appearing to have
quite forgotten all about the dinner and her want of appetite, went on
growling at intervals, in a ruminating tone of sympathy, ‘Poor Wal’r.
Ay, ay! Drownded. Ain’t he?’ And always waited for her answer, in which
the great point of these singular reflections appeared to consist.

The fowl and sausages were cold, and the gravy and the egg-sauce
stagnant, before the Captain remembered that they were on the board, and
fell to with the assistance of Diogenes, whose united efforts quickly
dispatched the banquet. The Captain’s delight and wonder at the quiet
housewifery of Florence in assisting to clear the table, arrange the
parlour, and sweep up the hearth--only to be equalled by the fervency of
his protest when she began to assist him--were gradually raised to that
degree, that at last he could not choose but do nothing himself, and
stand looking at her as if she were some Fairy, daintily performing
these offices for him; the red rim on his forehead glowing again, in his
unspeakable admiration.

But when Florence, taking down his pipe from the mantel-shelf gave it
into his hand, and entreated him to smoke it, the good Captain was so
bewildered by her attention that he held it as if he had never held a
pipe, in all his life. Likewise, when Florence, looking into the little
cupboard, took out the case-bottle and mixed a perfect glass of grog for
him, unasked, and set it at his elbow, his ruddy nose turned pale, he
felt himself so graced and honoured. When he had filled his pipe in
an absolute reverie of satisfaction, Florence lighted it for him--the
Captain having no power to object, or to prevent her--and resuming
her place on the old sofa, looked at him with a smile so loving and
so grateful, a smile that showed him so plainly how her forlorn heart
turned to him, as her face did, through grief, that the smoke of the
pipe got into the Captain’s throat and made him cough, and got into the
Captain’s eyes, and made them blink and water.

The manner in which the Captain tried to make believe that the cause
of these effects lay hidden in the pipe itself, and the way in which he
looked into the bowl for it, and not finding it there, pretended to blow
it out of the stem, was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon getting
into better condition, he fell into that state of repose becoming a good
smoker; but sat with his eyes fixed on Florence, and, with a beaming
placidity not to be described, and stopping every now and then to
discharge a little cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as if it
were a scroll coming out of his mouth, bearing the legend ‘Poor Wal’r,
ay, ay. Drownded, ain’t he?’ after which he would resume his smoking
with infinite gentleness.

Unlike as they were externally--and there could scarcely be a more
decided contrast than between Florence in her delicate youth and beauty,
and Captain Cuttle with his knobby face, his great broad weather-beaten
person, and his gruff voice--in simple innocence of the world’s ways and
the world’s perplexities and dangers, they were nearly on a level. No
child could have surpassed Captain Cuttle in inexperience of
everything but wind and weather; in simplicity, credulity, and generous
trustfulness. Faith, hope, and charity, shared his whole nature among
them. An odd sort of romance, perfectly unimaginative, yet perfectly
unreal, and subject to no considerations of worldly prudence or
practicability, was the only partner they had in his character. As
the Captain sat, and smoked, and looked at Florence, God knows what
impossible pictures, in which she was the principal figure, presented
themselves to his mind. Equally vague and uncertain, though not so
sanguine, were her own thoughts of the life before her; and even as her
tears made prismatic colours in the light she gazed at, so, through her
new and heavy grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining in the
far-off sky. A wandering princess and a good monster in a storybook
might have sat by the fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and poor
Florence talked--and not have looked very much unlike them.

The Captain was not troubled with the faintest idea of any difficulty
in retaining Florence, or of any responsibility thereby incurred. Having
put up the shutters and locked the door, he was quite satisfied on
this head. If she had been a Ward in Chancery, it would have made no
difference at all to Captain Cuttle. He was the last man in the world to
be troubled by any such considerations.

So the Captain smoked his pipe very comfortably, and Florence and he
meditated after their own manner. When the pipe was out, they had some
tea; and then Florence entreated him to take her to some neighbouring
shop, where she could buy the few necessaries she immediately wanted. It
being quite dark, the Captain consented: peeping carefully out first,
as he had been wont to do in his time of hiding from Mrs MacStinger; and
arming himself with his large stick, in case of an appeal to arms being
rendered necessary by any unforeseen circumstance.

The pride Captain Cuttle had, in giving his arm to Florence, and
escorting her some two or three hundred yards, keeping a bright look-out
all the time, and attracting the attention of everyone who passed them,
by his great vigilance and numerous precautions, was extreme. Arrived at
the shop, the Captain felt it a point of delicacy to retire during the
making of the purchases, as they were to consist of wearing apparel; but
he previously deposited his tin canister on the counter, and informing
the young lady of the establishment that it contained fourteen pound
two, requested her, in case that amount of property should not be
sufficient to defray the expenses of his niece’s little outfit--at
the word ‘niece,’ he bestowed a most significant look on Florence,
accompanied with pantomime, expressive of sagacity and mystery--to have
the goodness to ‘sing out,’ and he would make up the difference from his
pocket. Casually consulting his big watch, as a deep means of dazzling
the establishment, and impressing it with a sense of property, the
Captain then kissed his hook to his niece, and retired outside the
window, where it was a choice sight to see his great face looking
in from time to time, among the silks and ribbons, with an obvious
misgiving that Florence had been spirited away by a back door.

‘Dear Captain Cuttle,’ said Florence, when she came out with a parcel,
the size of which greatly disappointed the Captain, who had expected to
see a porter following with a bale of goods, ‘I don’t want this money,
indeed. I have not spent any of it. I have money of my own.’

‘My lady lass,’ returned the baffled Captain, looking straight down the
street before them, ‘take care on it for me, will you be so good, till
such time as I ask ye for it?’

‘May I put it back in its usual place,’ said Florence, ‘and keep it
there?’

The Captain was not at all gratified by this proposal, but he answered,
‘Ay, ay, put it anywheres, my lady lass, so long as you know where to
find it again. It ain’t o’ no use to me,’ said the Captain. ‘I wonder I
haven’t chucked it away afore now.

The Captain was quite disheartened for the moment, but he revived at
the first touch of Florence’s arm, and they returned with the same
precautions as they had come; the Captain opening the door of the little
Midshipman’s berth, and diving in, with a suddenness which his great
practice only could have taught him. During Florence’s slumber in the
morning, he had engaged the daughter of an elderly lady who usually sat
under a blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, selling poultry, to come and
put her room in order, and render her any little services she required;
and this damsel now appearing, Florence found everything about her as
convenient and orderly, if not as handsome, as in the terrible dream she
had once called Home.

When they were alone again, the Captain insisted on her eating a slice
of dry toast, and drinking a glass of spiced negus (which he made
to perfection); and, encouraging her with every kind word and
inconsequential quotation he could possibly think of, led her upstairs
to her bedroom. But he too had something on his mind, and was not easy
in his manner.

‘Good-night, dear heart,’ said Captain Cuttle to her at her
chamber-door.

Florence raised her lips to his face, and kissed him.

At any other time the Captain would have been overbalanced by such a
token of her affection and gratitude; but now, although he was very
sensible of it, he looked in her face with even more uneasiness than he
had testified before, and seemed unwilling to leave her.

‘Poor Wal’r!’ said the Captain.

‘Poor, poor Walter!’ sighed Florence.

‘Drownded, ain’t he?’ said the Captain.

Florence shook her head, and sighed.

‘Good-night, my lady lass!’ said Captain Cuttle, putting out his hand.

‘God bless you, dear, kind friend!’

But the Captain lingered still.

‘Is anything the matter, dear Captain Cuttle?’ said Florence, easily
alarmed in her then state of mind. ‘Have you anything to tell me?’

‘To tell you, lady lass!’ replied the Captain, meeting her eyes in
confusion. ‘No, no; what should I have to tell you, pretty! You don’t
expect as I’ve got anything good to tell you, sure?’

‘No!’ said Florence, shaking her head.

The Captain looked at her wistfully, and repeated ‘No,’-- still
lingering, and still showing embarrassment.

‘Poor Wal’r!’ said the Captain. ‘My Wal’r, as I used to call you! Old
Sol Gills’s nevy! Welcome to all as knowed you, as the flowers in May!
Where are you got to, brave boy? Drownded, ain’t he?’

Concluding his apostrophe with this abrupt appeal to Florence, the
Captain bade her good-night, and descended the stairs, while Florence
remained at the top, holding the candle out to light him down. He was
lost in the obscurity, and, judging from the sound of his receding
footsteps, was in the act of turning into the little parlour, when
his head and shoulders unexpectedly emerged again, as from the deep,
apparently for no other purpose than to repeat, ‘Drownded, ain’t he,
pretty?’ For when he had said that in a tone of tender condolence, he
disappeared.

Florence was very sorry that she should unwittingly, though naturally,
have awakened these associations in the mind of her protector, by taking
refuge there; and sitting down before the little table where the Captain
had arranged the telescope and song-book, and those other rarities,
thought of Walter, and of all that was connected with him in the past,
until she could have almost wished to lie down on her bed and fade away.
But in her lonely yearning to the dead whom she had loved, no thought
of home--no possibility of going back--no presentation of it as yet
existing, or as sheltering her father--once entered her thoughts. She
had seen the murder done. In the last lingering natural aspect in which
she had cherished him through so much, he had been torn out of her
heart, defaced, and slain. The thought of it was so appalling to
her, that she covered her eyes, and shrunk trembling from the least
remembrance of the deed, or of the cruel hand that did it. If her fond
heart could have held his image after that, it must have broken; but it
could not; and the void was filled with a wild dread that fled from all
confronting with its shattered fragments--with such a dread as could
have risen out of nothing but the depths of such a love, so wronged.

She dared not look into the glass; for the sight of the darkening mark
upon her bosom made her afraid of herself, as if she bore about her
something wicked. She covered it up, with a hasty, faltering hand, and
in the dark; and laid her weary head down, weeping.

The Captain did not go to bed for a long time. He walked to and fro in
the shop and in the little parlour, for a full hour, and, appearing
to have composed himself by that exercise, sat down with a grave and
thoughtful face, and read out of a Prayer-book the forms of prayer
appointed to be used at sea. These were not easily disposed of; the good
Captain being a mighty slow, gruff reader, and frequently stopping at
a hard word to give himself such encouragement as ‘Now, my lad! With a
will!’ or, ‘Steady, Ed’ard Cuttle, steady!’ which had a great effect
in helping him out of any difficulty. Moreover, his spectacles greatly
interfered with his powers of vision. But notwithstanding these
drawbacks, the Captain, being heartily in earnest, read the service to
the very last line, and with genuine feeling too; and approving of it
very much when he had done, turned in, under the counter (but not before
he had been upstairs, and listened at Florence’s door), with a serene
breast, and a most benevolent visage.

The Captain turned out several times in the course of the night,
to assure himself that his charge was resting quietly; and once, at
daybreak, found that she was awake: for she called to know if it were
he, on hearing footsteps near her door.

‘Yes, my lady lass,’ replied the Captain, in a growling whisper. ‘Are
you all right, di’mond?’

Florence thanked him, and said ‘Yes.’

The Captain could not lose so favourable an opportunity of applying
his mouth to the keyhole, and calling through it, like a hoarse breeze,
‘Poor Wal’r! Drownded, ain’t he?’ after which he withdrew, and turning
in again, slept till seven o’clock.

Nor was he free from his uneasy and embarrassed manner all that day;
though Florence, being busy with her needle in the little parlour, was
more calm and tranquil than she had been on the day preceding. Almost
always when she raised her eyes from her work, she observed the captain
looking at her, and thoughtfully stroking his chin; and he so often
hitched his arm-chair close to her, as if he were going to say something
very confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able to
make up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruised
completely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once went
ashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a very distressed
condition.

It was not until the twilight that Captain Cuttle, fairly dropping
anchor, at last, by the side of Florence, began to talk at all
connectedly. But when the light of the fire was shining on the walls
and ceiling of the little room, and on the tea-board and the cups and
saucers that were ranged upon the table, and on her calm face turned
towards the flame, and reflecting it in the tears that filled her eyes,
the Captain broke a long silence thus:

‘You never was at sea, my own?’

‘No,’ replied Florence.

‘Ay,’ said the Captain, reverentially; ‘it’s a almighty element. There’s
wonders in the deep, my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roaring
and the waves is rowling. Think on it when the stormy nights is so pitch
dark,’ said the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, ‘as you can’t
see your hand afore you, excepting when the wiwid lightning reweals the
same; and when you drive, drive, drive through the storm and dark, as
if you was a driving, head on, to the world without end, evermore, amen,
and when found making a note of. Them’s the times, my beauty, when a man
may say to his messmate (previously a overhauling of the wollume), “A
stiff nor’wester’s blowing, Bill; hark, don’t you hear it roar now! Lord
help ‘em, how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now!”’ Which quotation,
as particularly applicable to the terrors of the ocean, the Captain
delivered in a most impressive manner, concluding with a sonorous ‘Stand
by!’

‘Were you ever in a dreadful storm?’ asked Florence.

‘Why ay, my lady lass, I’ve seen my share of bad weather,’ said the
Captain, tremulously wiping his head, ‘and I’ve had my share of knocking
about; but--but it ain’t of myself as I was a meaning to speak. Our dear
boy,’ drawing closer to her, ‘Wal’r, darling, as was drownded.’

The Captain spoke in such a trembling voice, and looked at Florence with
a face so pale and agitated, that she clung to his hand in affright.

‘Your face is changed,’ cried Florence. ‘You are altered in a moment.
What is it? Dear Captain Cuttle, it turns me cold to see you!’

‘What! Lady lass,’ returned the Captain, supporting her with his hand,
‘don’t be took aback. No, no! All’s well, all’s well, my dear. As I was
a saying--Wal’r--he’s--he’s drownded. Ain’t he?’

Florence looked at him intently; her colour came and went; and she laid
her hand upon her breast.

‘There’s perils and dangers on the deep, my beauty,’ said the Captain;
‘and over many a brave ship, and many and many a bould heart, the secret
waters has closed up, and never told no tales. But there’s escapes upon
the deep, too, and sometimes one man out of a score,--ah! maybe out of
a hundred, pretty,--has been saved by the mercy of God, and come home
after being given over for dead, and told of all hands lost. I--I know
a story, Heart’s Delight,’ stammered the Captain, ‘o’ this natur, as
was told to me once; and being on this here tack, and you and me sitting
alone by the fire, maybe you’d like to hear me tell it. Would you,
deary?’

Florence, trembling with an agitation which she could not control or
understand, involuntarily followed his glance, which went behind her
into the shop, where a lamp was burning. The instant that she turned her
head, the Captain sprung out of his chair, and interposed his hand.

‘There’s nothing there, my beauty,’ said the Captain. ‘Don’t look
there.’

‘Why not?’ asked Florence.

The Captain murmured something about its being dull that way, and about
the fire being cheerful. He drew the door ajar, which had been standing
open until now, and resumed his seat. Florence followed him with her
eyes, and looked intently in his face.

‘The story was about a ship, my lady lass,’ began the Captain, ‘as
sailed out of the Port of London, with a fair wind and in fair weather,
bound for--don’t be took aback, my lady lass, she was only out’ard
bound, pretty, only out’ard bound!’

The expression on Florence’s face alarmed the Captain, who was himself
very hot and flurried, and showed scarcely less agitation than she did.

‘Shall I go on, Beauty?’ said the Captain.

‘Yes, yes, pray!’ cried Florence.

The Captain made a gulp as if to get down something that was sticking in
his throat, and nervously proceeded:

‘That there unfort’nate ship met with such foul weather, out at sea, as
don’t blow once in twenty year, my darling. There was hurricanes ashore
as tore up forests and blowed down towns, and there was gales at sea in
them latitudes, as not the stoutest wessel ever launched could live in.
Day arter day that there unfort’nate ship behaved noble, I’m told, and
did her duty brave, my pretty, but at one blow a’most her bulwarks
was stove in, her masts and rudder carved away, her best man swept
overboard, and she left to the mercy of the storm as had no mercy but
blowed harder and harder yet, while the waves dashed over her, and beat
her in, and every time they come a thundering at her, broke her like a
shell. Every black spot in every mountain of water that rolled away was
a bit o’ the ship’s life or a living man, and so she went to pieces,
Beauty, and no grass will never grow upon the graves of them as manned
that ship.’

‘They were not all lost!’ cried Florence. ‘Some were saved!--Was one?’

‘Aboard o’ that there unfort’nate wessel,’ said the Captain, rising from
his chair, and clenching his hand with prodigious energy and exultation,
‘was a lad, a gallant lad--as I’ve heerd tell--that had loved, when
he was a boy, to read and talk about brave actions in shipwrecks--I’ve
heerd him! I’ve heerd him!--and he remembered of ‘em in his hour of
need; for when the stoutest and oldest hands was hove down, he was firm
and cheery. It warn’t the want of objects to like and love ashore that
gave him courage, it was his nat’ral mind. I’ve seen it in his face,
when he was no more than a child--ay, many a time!--and when I thought
it nothing but his good looks, bless him!’

‘And was he saved!’ cried Florence. ‘Was he saved!’

‘That brave lad,’ said the Captain,--‘look at me, pretty! Don’t look
round--’

Florence had hardly power to repeat, ‘Why not?’

‘Because there’s nothing there, my deary,’ said the Captain. ‘Don’t be
took aback, pretty creetur! Don’t, for the sake of Wal’r, as was dear
to all on us! That there lad,’ said the Captain, ‘arter working with the
best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no complaint
nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that made
‘em honour him as if he’d been a admiral--that lad, along with the
second-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin’ hearts that
went aboard that ship, the only living creeturs--lashed to a fragment of
the wreck, and driftin’ on the stormy sea.’

‘Were they saved?’ cried Florence.

‘Days and nights they drifted on them endless waters,’ said the Captain,
‘until at last--No! Don’t look that way, pretty!--a sail bore down upon
‘em, and they was, by the Lord’s mercy, took aboard: two living and one
dead.’

‘Which of them was dead?’ cried Florence.

‘Not the lad I speak on,’ said the Captain.

‘Thank God! oh thank God!’

‘Amen!’ returned the Captain hurriedly. ‘Don’t be took aback! A minute
more, my lady lass! with a good heart!--aboard that ship, they went a
long voyage, right away across the chart (for there warn’t no touching
nowhere), and on that voyage the seaman as was picked up with him died.
But he was spared, and--’

The Captain, without knowing what he did, had cut a slice of bread from
the loaf, and put it on his hook (which was his usual toasting-fork),
on which he now held it to the fire; looking behind Florence with great
emotion in his face, and suffering the bread to blaze and burn like
fuel.

‘Was spared,’ repeated Florence, ‘and--?’

‘And come home in that ship,’ said the Captain, still looking in the
same direction, ‘and--don’t be frightened, pretty--and landed; and one
morning come cautiously to his own door to take a obserwation, knowing
that his friends would think him drownded, when he sheered off at the
unexpected--’

‘At the unexpected barking of a dog?’ cried Florence, quickly.

‘Yes,’ roared the Captain. ‘Steady, darling! courage! Don’t look round
yet. See there! upon the wall!’

There was the shadow of a man upon the wall close to her. She started
up, looked round, and with a piercing cry, saw Walter Gay behind her!

She had no thought of him but as a brother, a brother rescued from the
grave; a shipwrecked brother saved and at her side; and rushed into his
arms. In all the world, he seemed to be her hope, her comfort, refuge,
natural protector. ‘Take care of Walter, I was fond of Walter!’ The dear
remembrance of the plaintive voice that said so, rushed upon her soul,
like music in the night. ‘Oh welcome home, dear Walter! Welcome to this
stricken breast!’ She felt the words, although she could not utter them,
and held him in her pure embrace.

Captain Cuttle, in a fit of delirium, attempted to wipe his head
with the blackened toast upon his hook: and finding it an uncongenial
substance for the purpose, put it into the crown of his glazed hat,
put the glazed hat on with some difficulty, essayed to sing a verse of
Lovely Peg, broke down at the first word, and retired into the shop,
whence he presently came back express, with a face all flushed and
besmeared, and the starch completely taken out of his shirt-collar, to
say these words:

‘Wal’r, my lad, here is a little bit of property as I should wish to
make over, jintly!’

The Captain hastily produced the big watch, the teaspoons, the
sugar-tongs, and the canister, and laying them on the table, swept them
with his great hand into Walter’s hat; but in handing that singular
strong box to Walter, he was so overcome again, that he was fain to make
another retreat into the shop, and absent himself for a longer space of
time than on his first retirement.

But Walter sought him out, and brought him back; and then the Captain’s
great apprehension was, that Florence would suffer from this new shock.
He felt it so earnestly, that he turned quite rational, and positively
interdicted any further allusion to Walter’s adventures for some days
to come. Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relieve
himself of the toast in his hat, and to take his place at the tea-board;
but finding Walter’s grasp upon his shoulder, on one side, and Florence
whispering her tearful congratulations on the other, the Captain
suddenly bolted again, and was missing for a good ten minutes.

But never in all his life had the Captain’s face so shone and glistened,
as when, at last, he sat stationary at the tea-board, looking from
Florence to Walter, and from Walter to Florence. Nor was this effect
produced or at all heightened by the immense quantity of polishing
he had administered to his face with his coat-sleeve during the last
half-hour. It was solely the effect of his internal emotions. There was
a glory and delight within the Captain that spread itself over his whole
visage, and made a perfect illumination there.

The pride with which the Captain looked upon the bronzed cheek and the
courageous eyes of his recovered boy; with which he saw the generous
fervour of his youth, and all its frank and hopeful qualities, shining
once more, in the fresh, wholesome manner, and the ardent face, would
have kindled something of this light in his countenance. The admiration
and sympathy with which he turned his eyes on Florence, whose beauty,
grace, and innocence could have won no truer or more zealous champion
than himself, would have had an equal influence upon him. But the
fulness of the glow he shed around him could only have been engendered
in his contemplation of the two together, and in all the fancies
springing out of that association, that came sparkling and beaming into
his head, and danced about it.

How they talked of poor old Uncle Sol, and dwelt on every little
circumstance relating to his disappearance; how their joy was moderated
by the old man’s absence and by the misfortunes of Florence; how they
released Diogenes, whom the Captain had decoyed upstairs some time
before, lest he should bark again; the Captain, though he was in one
continual flutter, and made many more short plunges into the shop, fully
comprehended. But he no more dreamed that Walter looked on Florence, as
it were, from a new and far-off place; that while his eyes often sought
the lovely face, they seldom met its open glance of sisterly affection,
but withdrew themselves when hers were raised towards him; than he
believed that it was Walter’s ghost who sat beside him. He saw them
together in their youth and beauty, and he knew the story of their
younger days, and he had no inch of room beneath his great blue
waistcoat for anything save admiration of such a pair, and gratitude for
their being reunited.

They sat thus, until it grew late. The Captain would have been content
to sit so for a week. But Walter rose, to take leave for the night.

‘Going, Walter!’ said Florence. ‘Where?’

‘He slings his hammock for the present, lady lass,’ said Captain Cuttle,
‘round at Brogley’s. Within hail, Heart’s Delight.’

‘I am the cause of your going away, Walter,’ said Florence. ‘There is a
houseless sister in your place.’

‘Dear Miss Dombey,’ replied Walter, hesitating--‘if it is not too bold
to call you so!--’

‘Walter!’ she exclaimed, surprised.

‘--If anything could make me happier in being allowed to see and speak
to you, would it not be the discovery that I had any means on earth of
doing you a moment’s service! Where would I not go, what would I not do,
for your sake?’

She smiled, and called him brother.

‘You are so changed,’ said Walter--

‘I changed!’ she interrupted.

‘--To me,’ said Walter, softly, as if he were thinking aloud, ‘changed to
me. I left you such a child, and find you--oh! something so different--’

‘But your sister, Walter. You have not forgotten what we promised to
each other, when we parted?’

‘Forgotten!’ But he said no more.

‘And if you had--if suffering and danger had driven it from your
thoughts--which it has not--you would remember it now, Walter, when you
find me poor and abandoned, with no home but this, and no friends but
the two who hear me speak!’

‘I would! Heaven knows I would!’ said Walter.

‘Oh, Walter,’ exclaimed Florence, through her sobs and tears. ‘Dear
brother! Show me some way through the world--some humble path that I may
take alone, and labour in, and sometimes think of you as one who will
protect and care for me as for a sister! Oh, help me, Walter, for I need
help so much!’

‘Miss Dombey! Florence! I would die to help you. But your friends are
proud and rich. Your father--’

‘No, no! Walter!’ She shrieked, and put her hands up to her head, in an
attitude of terror that transfixed him where he stood. ‘Don’t say that
word!’

He never, from that hour, forgot the voice and look with which she
stopped him at the name. He felt that if he were to live a hundred
years, he never could forget it.

Somewhere--anywhere--but never home! All past, all gone, all lost, and
broken up! The whole history of her untold slight and suffering was in
the cry and look; and he felt he never could forget it, and he never
did.

She laid her gentle face upon the Captain’s shoulder, and related how
and why she had fled. If every sorrowing tear she shed in doing so, had
been a curse upon the head of him she never named or blamed, it would
have been better for him, Walter thought, with awe, than to be renounced
out of such a strength and might of love.

‘There, precious!’ said the Captain, when she ceased; and deep attention
the Captain had paid to her while she spoke; listening, with his glazed
hat all awry and his mouth wide open. ‘Awast, awast, my eyes! Wal’r,
dear lad, sheer off for to-night, and leave the pretty one to me!’

Walter took her hand in both of his, and put it to his lips, and kissed
it. He knew now that she was, indeed, a homeless wandering fugitive;
but, richer to him so, than in all the wealth and pride of her right
station, she seemed farther off than even on the height that had made
him giddy in his boyish dreams.

Captain Cuttle, perplexed by no such meditations, guarded Florence to
her room, and watched at intervals upon the charmed ground outside her
door--for such it truly was to him--until he felt sufficiently easy
in his mind about her, to turn in under the counter. On abandoning his
watch for that purpose, he could not help calling once, rapturously,
through the keyhole, ‘Drownded. Ain’t he, pretty?’--or, when he got
downstairs, making another trial at that verse of Lovely Peg. But it
stuck in his throat somehow, and he could make nothing of it; so he went
to bed, and dreamed that old Sol Gills was married to Mrs MacStinger,
and kept prisoner by that lady in a secret chamber on a short allowance
of victuals.

CHAPTER 50. Mr Toots’s Complaint

There was an empty room above-stairs at the wooden Midshipman’s, which,
in days of yore, had been Walter’s bedroom. Walter, rousing up the
Captain betimes in the morning, proposed that they should carry thither
such furniture out of the little parlour as would grace it best, so that
Florence might take possession of it when she rose. As nothing could be
more agreeable to Captain Cuttle than making himself very red and short
of breath in such a cause, he turned to (as he himself said) with a
will; and, in a couple of hours, this garret was transformed into a
species of land-cabin, adorned with all the choicest moveables out of
the parlour, inclusive even of the Tartar frigate, which the Captain
hung up over the chimney-piece with such extreme delight, that he could
do nothing for half-an-hour afterwards but walk backward from it, lost
in admiration.

The Captain could be induced by no persuasion of Walter’s to wind up the
big watch, or to take back the canister, or to touch the sugar-tongs and
teaspoons. ‘No, no, my lad;’ was the Captain’s invariable reply to any
solicitation of the kind, ‘I’ve made that there little property over,
jintly.’ These words he repeated with great unction and gravity,
evidently believing that they had the virtue of an Act of Parliament,
and that unless he committed himself by some new admission of ownership,
no flaw could be found in such a form of conveyance.

It was an advantage of the new arrangement, that besides the greater
seclusion it afforded Florence, it admitted of the Midshipman being
restored to his usual post of observation, and also of the shop shutters
being taken down. The latter ceremony, however little importance the
unconscious Captain attached to it, was not wholly superfluous; for,
on the previous day, so much excitement had been occasioned in
the neighbourhood, by the shutters remaining unopened, that the
Instrument-maker’s house had been honoured with an unusual share of
public observation, and had been intently stared at from the opposite
side of the way, by groups of hungry gazers, at any time between sunrise
and sunset. The idlers and vagabonds had been particularly interested in
the Captain’s fate; constantly grovelling in the mud to apply their
eyes to the cellar-grating, under the shop-window, and delighting their
imaginations with the fancy that they could see a piece of his coat as
he hung in a corner; though this settlement of him was stoutly disputed
by an opposite faction, who were of opinion that he lay murdered with
a hammer, on the stairs. It was not without exciting some discontent,
therefore, that the subject of these rumours was seen early in the
morning standing at his shop-door as hale and hearty as if nothing
had happened; and the beadle of that quarter, a man of an ambitious
character, who had expected to have the distinction of being present at
the breaking open of the door, and of giving evidence in full uniform
before the coroner, went so far as to say to an opposite neighbour, that
the chap in the glazed hat had better not try it on there--without more
particularly mentioning what--and further, that he, the beadle, would
keep his eye upon him.

‘Captain Cuttle,’ said Walter, musing, when they stood resting from
their labours at the shop-door, looking down the old familiar street; it
being still early in the morning; ‘nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in all
that time!’

‘Nothing at all, my lad,’ replied the Captain, shaking his head.

‘Gone in search of me, dear, kind old man,’ said Walter: ‘yet never
write to you! But why not? He says, in effect, in this packet that you
gave me,’ taking the paper from his pocket, which had been opened in
the presence of the enlightened Bunsby, ‘that if you never hear from
him before opening it, you may believe him dead. Heaven forbid! But
you would have heard of him, even if he were dead! Someone would have
written, surely, by his desire, if he could not; and have said, “on such
a day, there died in my house,” or “under my care,” or so forth, “Mr
Solomon Gills of London, who left this last remembrance and this last
request to you”.’

The Captain, who had never climbed to such a clear height of probability
before, was greatly impressed by the wide prospect it opened, and
answered, with a thoughtful shake of his head, ‘Well said, my lad; wery
well said.’

‘I have been thinking of this, or, at least,’ said Walter, colouring,
‘I have been thinking of one thing and another, all through a sleepless
night, and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol (Lord
bless him!) is alive, and will return. I don’t so much wonder at his
going away, because, leaving out of consideration that spice of the
marvellous which was always in his character, and his great affection
for me, before which every other consideration of his life became
nothing, as no one ought to know so well as I who had the best of
fathers in him,’--Walter’s voice was indistinct and husky here, and he
looked away, along the street,--‘leaving that out of consideration, I
say, I have often read and heard of people who, having some near and
dear relative, who was supposed to be shipwrecked at sea, have gone down
to live on that part of the sea-shore where any tidings of the missing
ship might be expected to arrive, though only an hour or two sooner than
elsewhere, or have even gone upon her track to the place whither she was
bound, as if their going would create intelligence. I think I should do
such a thing myself, as soon as another, or sooner than many, perhaps.
But why my Uncle shouldn’t write to you, when he so clearly intended
to do so, or how he should die abroad, and you not know it through some
other hand, I cannot make out.’

Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsby
himself hadn’t made it out, and that he was a man as could give a pretty
taut opinion too.

‘If my Uncle had been a heedless young man, likely to be entrapped by
jovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid of for
the sake of what money he might have about him,’ said Walter; ‘or if he
had been a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three months’ pay
in his pocket, I could understand his disappearing, and leaving no trace
behind. But, being what he was--and is, I hope--I can’t believe it.’

‘Wal’r, my lad,’ inquired the Captain, wistfully eyeing him as he
pondered and pondered, ‘what do you make of it, then?’

‘Captain Cuttle,’ returned Walter, ‘I don’t know what to make of it. I
suppose he never has written! There is no doubt about that?’

‘If so be as Sol Gills wrote, my lad,’ replied the Captain,
argumentatively, ‘where’s his dispatch?’

‘Say that he entrusted it to some private hand,’ suggested Walter, ‘and
that it has been forgotten, or carelessly thrown aside, or lost. Even
that is more probable to me, than the other event. In short, I not
only cannot bear to contemplate that other event, Captain Cuttle, but I
can’t, and won’t.’

‘Hope, you see, Wal’r,’ said the Captain, sagely, ‘Hope. It’s that
as animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little
Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, it
only floats; it can’t be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head of
Hope,’ said the Captain, ‘there’s a anchor; but what’s the good of my
having a anchor, if I can’t find no bottom to let it go in?’

Captain Cuttle said this rather in his character of a sagacious citizen
and householder, bound to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom to
an inexperienced youth, than in his own proper person. Indeed, his face
was quite luminous as he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter; and
he appropriately concluded by slapping him on the back; and saying,
with enthusiasm, ‘Hooroar, my lad! Indiwidually, I’m o’ your opinion.’

Walter, with his cheerful laugh, returned the salutation, and said:

‘Only one word more about my Uncle at present, Captain Cuttle. I suppose
it is impossible that he can have written in the ordinary course--by
mail packet, or ship letter, you understand--’

‘Ay, ay, my lad,’ said the Captain approvingly.

‘--And that you have missed the letter, anyhow?’

‘Why, Wal’r,’ said the Captain, turning his eyes upon him with a faint
approach to a severe expression, ‘ain’t I been on the look-out for
any tidings of that man o’ science, old Sol Gills, your Uncle, day and
night, ever since I lost him? Ain’t my heart been heavy and watchful
always, along of him and you? Sleeping and waking, ain’t I been upon my
post, and wouldn’t I scorn to quit it while this here Midshipman held
together!’

‘Yes, Captain Cuttle,’ replied Walter, grasping his hand, ‘I know you
would, and I know how faithful and earnest all you say and feel is. I am
sure of it. You don’t doubt that I am as sure of it as I am that my foot
is again upon this door-step, or that I again have hold of this true
hand. Do you?’

‘No, no, Wal’r,’ returned the Captain, with his beaming

‘I’ll hazard no more conjectures,’ said Walter, fervently shaking the
hard hand of the Captain, who shook his with no less goodwill. ‘All I
will add is, Heaven forbid that I should touch my Uncle’s possessions,
Captain Cuttle! Everything that he left here, shall remain in the care
of the truest of stewards and kindest of men--and if his name is not
Cuttle, he has no name! Now, best of friends, about--Miss Dombey.’

There was a change in Walter’s manner, as he came to these two words;
and when he uttered them, all his confidence and cheerfulness appeared
to have deserted him.

‘I thought, before Miss Dombey stopped me when I spoke of her father
last night,’ said Walter, ‘--you remember how?’

The Captain well remembered, and shook his head.

‘I thought,’ said Walter, ‘before that, that we had but one hard duty
to perform, and that it was, to prevail upon her to communicate with her
friends, and to return home.’

The Captain muttered a feeble ‘Awast!’ or a ‘Stand by!’ or something
or other, equally pertinent to the occasion; but it was rendered so
extremely feeble by the total discomfiture with which he received this
announcement, that what it was, is mere matter of conjecture.

‘But,’ said Walter, ‘that is over. I think so, no longer. I would sooner
be put back again upon that piece of wreck, on which I have so often
floated, since my preservation, in my dreams, and there left to drift,
and drive, and die!’

‘Hooroar, my lad!’ exclaimed the Captain, in a burst of uncontrollable
satisfaction. ‘Hooroar! hooroar! hooroar!’

‘To think that she, so young, so good, and beautiful,’ said Walter,
‘so delicately brought up, and born to such a different fortune, should
strive with the rough world! But we have seen the gulf that cuts off all
behind her, though no one but herself can know how deep it is; and there
is no return.’

Captain Cuttle, without quite understanding this, greatly approved of
it, and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind was
quite abaft.

‘She ought not to be alone here; ought she, Captain Cuttle?’ said
Walter, anxiously.

‘Well, my lad,’ replied the Captain, after a little sagacious
consideration. ‘I don’t know. You being here to keep her company, you
see, and you two being jintly--’

‘Dear Captain Cuttle!’ remonstrated Walter. ‘I being here! Miss Dombey,
in her guileless innocent heart, regards me as her adopted brother; but
what would the guile and guilt of my heart be, if I pretended to believe
that I had any right to approach her, familiarly, in that character--if
I pretended to forget that I am bound, in honour, not to do it?’

‘Wal’r, my lad,’ hinted the Captain, with some revival of his
discomfiture, ‘ain’t there no other character as--’

‘Oh!’ returned Walter, ‘would you have me die in her esteem--in such
esteem as hers--and put a veil between myself and her angel’s face for
ever, by taking advantage of her being here for refuge, so trusting and
so unprotected, to endeavour to exalt myself into her lover? What do I
say? There is no one in the world who would be more opposed to me if I
could do so, than you.’

‘Wal’r, my lad,’ said the Captain, drooping more and more, ‘prowiding
as there is any just cause or impediment why two persons should not be
jined together in the house of bondage, for which you’ll overhaul the
place and make a note, I hope I should declare it as promised and wowed
in the banns. So there ain’t no other character; ain’t there, my lad?’

Walter briskly waved his hand in the negative.

‘Well, my lad,’ growled the Captain slowly, ‘I won’t deny but what I
find myself wery much down by the head, along o’ this here, or but
what I’ve gone clean about. But as to Lady lass, Wal’r, mind you, wot’s
respect and duty to her, is respect and duty in my articles, howsumever
disapinting; and therefore I follows in your wake, my lad, and feel
as you are, no doubt, acting up to yourself. And there ain’t no other
character, ain’t there?’ said the Captain, musing over the ruins of his
fallen castle, with a very despondent face.

‘Now, Captain Cuttle,’ said Walter, starting a fresh point with a gayer
air, to cheer the Captain up--but nothing could do that; he was too much
concerned--‘I think we should exert ourselves to find someone who would
be a proper attendant for Miss Dombey while she remains here, and who
may be trusted. None of her relations may. It’s clear Miss Dombey feels
that they are all subservient to her father. What has become of Susan?’

‘The young woman?’ returned the Captain. ‘It’s my belief as she was sent
away again the will of Heart’s Delight. I made a signal for her when
Lady lass first come, and she rated of her wery high, and said she had
been gone a long time.’

‘Then,’ said Walter, ‘do you ask Miss Dombey where she’s gone, and we’ll
try to find her. The morning’s getting on, and Miss Dombey will soon be
rising. You are her best friend. Wait for her upstairs, and leave me to
take care of all down here.’

The Captain, very crest-fallen indeed, echoed the sigh with which Walter
said this, and complied. Florence was delighted with her new room,
anxious to see Walter, and overjoyed at the prospect of greeting her old
friend Susan. But Florence could not say where Susan was gone, except
that it was in Essex, and no one could say, she remembered, unless it
were Mr Toots.

With this information the melancholy Captain returned to Walter, and
gave him to understand that Mr Toots was the young gentleman whom he had
encountered on the door-step, and that he was a friend of his, and that
he was a young gentleman of property, and that he hopelessly adored
Miss Dombey. The Captain also related how the intelligence of Walter’s
supposed fate had first made him acquainted with Mr Toots, and how there
was solemn treaty and compact between them, that Mr Toots should be mute
upon the subject of his love.

The question then was, whether Florence could trust Mr Toots; and
Florence saying, with a smile, ‘Oh, yes, with her whole heart!’ it
became important to find out where Mr Toots lived. This, Florence didn’t
know, and the Captain had forgotten; and the Captain was telling Walter,
in the little parlour, that Mr Toots was sure to be there soon, when in
came Mr Toots himself.

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, rushing into the parlour without any
ceremony, ‘I’m in a state of mind bordering on distraction!’

Mr Toots had discharged those words, as from a mortar, before he
observed Walter, whom he recognised with what may be described as a
chuckle of misery.

‘You’ll excuse me, Sir,’ said Mr Toots, holding his forehead, ‘but
I’m at present in that state that my brain is going, if not gone, and
anything approaching to politeness in an individual so situated would
be a hollow mockery. Captain Gills, I beg to request the favour of a
private interview.’

‘Why, Brother,’ returned the Captain, taking him by the hand, ‘you are
the man as we was on the look-out for.’

‘Oh, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘what a look-out that must be, of
which I am the object! I haven’t dared to shave, I’m in that rash state.
I haven’t had my clothes brushed. My hair is matted together. I told the
Chicken that if he offered to clean my boots, I’d stretch him a Corpse
before me!’

All these indications of a disordered mind were verified in Mr Toots’s
appearance, which was wild and savage.

‘See here, Brother,’ said the Captain. ‘This here’s old Sol Gills’s nevy
Wal’r. Him as was supposed to have perished at sea.’

Mr Toots took his hand from his forehead, and stared at Walter.

‘Good gracious me!’ stammered Mr Toots. ‘What a complication of misery!
How-de-do? I--I--I’m afraid you must have got very wet. Captain Gills,
will you allow me a word in the shop?’

He took the Captain by the coat, and going out with him whispered:

‘That then, Captain Gills, is the party you spoke of, when you said that
he and Miss Dombey were made for one another?’

‘Why, ay, my lad,’ replied the disconsolate Captain; ‘I was of that mind
once.’

‘And at this time!’ exclaimed Mr Toots, with his hand to his forehead
again. ‘Of all others!--a hated rival! At least, he ain’t a hated
rival,’ said Mr Toots, stopping short, on second thoughts, and taking
away his hand; ‘what should I hate him for? No. If my affection has been
truly disinterested, Captain Gills, let me prove it now!’

Mr Toots shot back abruptly into the parlour, and said, wringing Walter
by the hand:

‘How-de-do? I hope you didn’t take any cold. I--I shall be very glad if
you’ll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I wish you many happy
returns of the day. Upon my word and honour,’ said Mr Toots, warming
as he became better acquainted with Walter’s face and figure, ‘I’m very
glad to see you!’

‘Thank you, heartily,’ said Walter. ‘I couldn’t desire a more genuine
and genial welcome.’

‘Couldn’t you, though?’ said Mr Toots, still shaking his hand. ‘It’s
very kind of you. I’m much obliged to you. How-de-do? I hope you left
everybody quite well over the--that is, upon the--I mean wherever you
came from last, you know.’

All these good wishes, and better intentions, Walter responded to
manfully.

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘I should wish to be strictly
honourable; but I trust I may be allowed now, to allude to a certain
subject that--’

‘Ay, ay, my lad,’ returned the Captain. ‘Freely, freely.’

‘Then, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘and Lieutenant Walters--are you
aware that the most dreadful circumstances have been happening at Mr
Dombey’s house, and that Miss Dombey herself has left her father, who,
in my opinion,’ said Mr Toots, with great excitement, ‘is a Brute,
that it would be a flattery to call a--a marble monument, or a bird
of prey,--and that she is not to be found, and has gone no one knows
where?’

‘May I ask how you heard this?’ inquired Walter.

‘Lieutenant Walters,’ said Mr Toots, who had arrived at that appellation
by a process peculiar to himself; probably by jumbling up his Christian
name with the seafaring profession, and supposing some relationship
between him and the Captain, which would extend, as a matter of course,
to their titles; ‘Lieutenant Walters, I can have no objection to make a
straightforward reply. The fact is, that feeling extremely interested
in everything that relates to Miss Dombey--not for any selfish reason,
Lieutenant Walters, for I am well aware that the most able thing I could
do for all parties would be to put an end to my existence, which can
only be regarded as an inconvenience--I have been in the habit of
bestowing a trifle now and then upon a footman; a most respectable young
man, of the name of Towlinson, who has lived in the family some time;
and Towlinson informed me, yesterday evening, that this was the state of
things. Since which, Captain Gills--and Lieutenant Walters--I have been
perfectly frantic, and have been lying down on the sofa all night, the
Ruin you behold.’

‘Mr Toots,’ said Walter, ‘I am happy to be able to relieve your mind.
Pray calm yourself. Miss Dombey is safe and well.’

‘Sir!’ cried Mr Toots, starting from his chair and shaking hands with
him anew, ‘the relief is so excessive, and unspeakable, that if you were
to tell me now that Miss Dombey was married even, I could smile. Yes,
Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, appealing to him, ‘upon my soul and body,
I really think, whatever I might do to myself immediately afterwards,
that I could smile, I am so relieved.’

‘It will be a greater relief and delight still, to such a generous mind
as yours,’ said Walter, not at all slow in returning his greeting, ‘to
find that you can render service to Miss Dombey. Captain Cuttle, will
you have the kindness to take Mr Toots upstairs?’

The Captain beckoned to Mr Toots, who followed him with a bewildered
countenance, and, ascending to the top of the house, was introduced,
without a word of preparation from his conductor, into Florence’s new
retreat.

Poor Mr Toots’s amazement and pleasure at sight of her were such, that
they could find a vent in nothing but extravagance. He ran up to her,
seized her hand, kissed it, dropped it, seized it again, fell upon one
knee, shed tears, chuckled, and was quite regardless of his danger of
being pinned by Diogenes, who, inspired by the belief that there was
something hostile to his mistress in these demonstrations, worked round
and round him, as if only undecided at what particular point to go in
for the assault, but quite resolved to do him a fearful mischief.

‘Oh Di, you bad, forgetful dog! Dear Mr Toots, I am so rejoiced to see
you!’

‘Thankee,’ said Mr Toots, ‘I am pretty well, I’m much obliged to you,
Miss Dombey. I hope all the family are the same.’

Mr Toots said this without the least notion of what he was talking
about, and sat down on a chair, staring at Florence with the liveliest
contention of delight and despair going on in his face that any face
could exhibit.

‘Captain Gills and Lieutenant Walters have mentioned, Miss Dombey,’
gasped Mr Toots, ‘that I can do you some service. If I could by any
means wash out the remembrance of that day at Brighton, when I conducted
myself--much more like a Parricide than a person of independent
property,’ said Mr Toots, with severe self-accusation, ‘I should sink
into the silent tomb with a gleam of joy.’

‘Pray, Mr Toots,’ said Florence, ‘do not wish me to forget anything in
our acquaintance. I never can, believe me. You have been far too kind
and good to me always.’

‘Miss Dombey,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘your consideration for my feelings is
a part of your angelic character. Thank you a thousand times. It’s of no
consequence at all.’

‘What we thought of asking you,’ said Florence, ‘is, whether you
remember where Susan, whom you were so kind as to accompany to the
coach-office when she left me, is to be found.’

‘Why I do not certainly, Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, after a little
consideration, ‘remember the exact name of the place that was on the
coach; and I do recollect that she said she was not going to stop there,
but was going farther on. But, Miss Dombey, if your object is to find
her, and to have her here, myself and the Chicken will produce her with
every dispatch that devotion on my part, and great intelligence on the
Chicken’s, can ensure.’

Mr Toots was so manifestly delighted and revived by the prospect of
being useful, and the disinterested sincerity of his devotion was so
unquestionable, that it would have been cruel to refuse him. Florence,
with an instinctive delicacy, forbore to urge the least obstacle, though
she did not forbear to overpower him with thanks; and Mr Toots proudly
took the commission upon himself for immediate execution.

‘Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, touching her proffered hand, with a pang
of hopeless love visibly shooting through him, and flashing out in
his face, ‘Good-bye! Allow me to take the liberty of saying, that your
misfortunes make me perfectly wretched, and that you may trust me,
next to Captain Gills himself. I am quite aware, Miss Dombey, of my own
deficiencies--they’re not of the least consequence, thank you--but I am
entirely to be relied upon, I do assure you, Miss Dombey.’

With that Mr Toots came out of the room, again accompanied by the
Captain, who, standing at a little distance, holding his hat under his
arm and arranging his scattered locks with his hook, had been a not
uninterested witness of what passed. And when the door closed behind
them, the light of Mr Toots’s life was darkly clouded again.

‘Captain Gills,’ said that gentleman, stopping near the bottom of the
stairs, and turning round, ‘to tell you the truth, I am not in a frame
of mind at the present moment, in which I could see Lieutenant Walters
with that entirely friendly feeling towards him that I should wish to
harbour in my breast. We cannot always command our feelings, Captain
Gills, and I should take it as a particular favour if you’d let me out
at the private door.’

‘Brother,’ returned the Captain, ‘you shall shape your own course.
Wotever course you take, is plain and seamanlike, I’m wery sure.’

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘you’re extremely kind. Your good
opinion is a consolation to me. There is one thing,’ said Mr Toots,
standing in the passage, behind the half-opened door, ‘that I hope
you’ll bear in mind, Captain Gills, and that I should wish Lieutenant
Walters to be made acquainted with. I have quite come into my property
now, you know, and--and I don’t know what to do with it. If I could
be at all useful in a pecuniary point of view, I should glide into the
silent tomb with ease and smoothness.’

Mr Toots said no more, but slipped out quietly and shut the door upon
himself, to cut the Captain off from any reply.

Florence thought of this good creature, long after he had left her,
with mingled emotions of pain and pleasure. He was so honest and
warm-hearted, that to see him again and be assured of his truth to her
in her distress, was a joy and comfort beyond all price; but for that
very reason, it was so affecting to think that she caused him a moment’s
unhappiness, or ruffled, by a breath, the harmless current of his life,
that her eyes filled with tears, and her bosom overflowed with pity.
Captain Cuttle, in his different way, thought much of Mr Toots too;
and so did Walter; and when the evening came, and they were all
sitting together in Florence’s new room, Walter praised him in a most
impassioned manner, and told Florence what he had said on leaving
the house, with every graceful setting-off in the way of comment and
appreciation that his own honesty and sympathy could surround it with.

Mr Toots did not return upon the next day, or the next, or for several
days; and in the meanwhile Florence, without any new alarm, lived like
a quiet bird in a cage, at the top of the old Instrument-maker’s house.
But Florence drooped and hung her head more and more plainly, as the
days went on; and the expression that had been seen in the face of the
dead child, was often turned to the sky from her high window, as if it
sought his angel out, on the bright shore of which he had spoken: lying
on his little bed.

Florence had been weak and delicate of late, and the agitation she had
undergone was not without its influences on her health. But it was no
bodily illness that affected her now. She was distressed in mind; and
the cause of her distress was Walter.

Interested in her, anxious for her, proud and glad to serve her, and
showing all this with the enthusiasm and ardour of his character,
Florence saw that he avoided her. All the long day through, he seldom
approached her room. If she asked for him, he came, again for the moment
as earnest and as bright as she remembered him when she was a lost
child in the staring streets; but he soon became constrained--her quick
affection was too watchful not to know it--and uneasy, and soon left
her. Unsought, he never came, all day, between the morning and the
night. When the evening closed in, he was always there, and that was
her happiest time, for then she half believed that the old Walter of her
childhood was not changed. But, even then, some trivial word, look,
or circumstance would show her that there was an indefinable division
between them which could not be passed.

And she could not but see that these revealings of a great alteration
in Walter manifested themselves in despite of his utmost efforts to hide
them. In his consideration for her, she thought, and in the earnestness
of his desire to spare her any wound from his kind hand, he resorted
to innumerable little artifices and disguises. So much the more did
Florence feel the greatness of the alteration in him; so much the
oftener did she weep at this estrangement of her brother.

The good Captain--her untiring, tender, ever zealous friend--saw it,
too, Florence thought, and it pained him. He was less cheerful and
hopeful than he had been at first, and would steal looks at her and
Walter, by turns, when they were all three together of an evening, with
quite a sad face.

Florence resolved, at last, to speak to Walter. She believed she knew
now what the cause of his estrangement was, and she thought it would be
a relief to her full heart, and would set him more at ease, if she
told him she had found it out, and quite submitted to it, and did not
reproach him.

It was on a certain Sunday afternoon, that Florence took this
resolution. The faithful Captain, in an amazing shirt-collar, was
sitting by her, reading with his spectacles on, and she asked him where
Walter was.

‘I think he’s down below, my lady lass,’ returned the Captain.

‘I should like to speak to him,’ said Florence, rising hurriedly as if
to go downstairs.

‘I’ll rouse him up here, Beauty,’ said the Captain, ‘in a trice.’

Thereupon the Captain, with much alacrity, shouldered his book--for he
made it a point of duty to read none but very large books on a Sunday,
as having a more staid appearance: and had bargained, years ago, for
a prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterly
confounded him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained of
what subject it treated--and withdrew. Walter soon appeared.

‘Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey,’ he eagerly began on coming
in--but stopped when he saw her face.

‘You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have been
weeping.’

He spoke so kindly, and with such a fervent tremor in his voice, that
the tears gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words.

‘Walter,’ said Florence, gently, ‘I am not quite well, and I have been
weeping. I want to speak to you.’

He sat down opposite to her, looking at her beautiful and innocent face;
and his own turned pale, and his lips trembled.

‘You said, upon the night when I knew that you were saved--and oh! dear
Walter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped!--’

He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and sat looking
at her.

‘--that I was changed. I was surprised to hear you say so, but I
understand, now, that I am. Don’t be angry with me, Walter. I was too
much overjoyed to think of it, then.’

She seemed a child to him again. It was the ingenuous, confiding, loving
child he saw and heard. Not the dear woman, at whose feet he would have
laid the riches of the earth.

‘You remember the last time I saw you, Walter, before you went away?’

He put his hand into his breast, and took out a little purse.

‘I have always worn it round my neck! If I had gone down in the deep, it
would have been with me at the bottom of the sea.’

‘And you will wear it still, Walter, for my old sake?’

‘Until I die!’

She laid her hand on his, as fearlessly and simply, as if not a day had
intervened since she gave him the little token of remembrance.

‘I am glad of that. I shall be always glad to think so, Walter. Do you
recollect that a thought of this change seemed to come into our minds at
the same time that evening, when we were talking together?’

‘No!’ he answered, in a wondering tone.

‘Yes, Walter. I had been the means of injuring your hopes and prospects
even then. I feared to think so, then, but I know it now. If you were
able, then, in your generosity, to hide from me that you knew it too,
you cannot do so now, although you try as generously as before. You do.
I thank you for it, Walter, deeply, truly; but you cannot succeed.
You have suffered too much in your own hardships, and in those of your
dearest relation, quite to overlook the innocent cause of all the peril
and affliction that has befallen you. You cannot quite forget me in that
character, and we can be brother and sister no longer. But, dear
Walter, do not think that I complain of you in this. I might have known
it--ought to have known it--but forgot it in my joy. All I hope is that
you may think of me less irksomely when this feeling is no more a secret
one; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name of the poor child who was
your sister once, that you will not struggle with yourself, and pain
yourself, for my sake, now that I know all!’

Walter had looked upon her while she said this, with a face so full of
wonder and amazement, that it had room for nothing else. Now he caught
up the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between his
own.

‘Oh, Miss Dombey,’ he said, ‘is it possible that while I have been
suffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, and
must be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words disclose
to me? Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as the
single, bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth.
Never have I from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard your
part in my life, but as something sacred, never to be lightly thought
of, never to be esteemed enough, never, until death, to be forgotten.
Again to see you look, and hear you speak, as you did on that night when
we parted, is happiness to me that there are no words to utter; and to
be loved and trusted as your brother, is the next gift I could receive
and prize!’

‘Walter,’ said Florence, looking at him earnestly, but with a changing
face, ‘what is that which is due to me, and must be rendered to me, at
the sacrifice of all this?’

‘Respect,’ said Walter, in a low tone. ‘Reverence.’

The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully withdrew
her hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness.

‘I have not a brother’s right,’ said Walter. ‘I have not a brother’s
claim. I left a child. I find a woman.’

The colour overspread her face. She made a gesture as if of entreaty
that he would say no more, and her face dropped upon her hands.

They were both silent for a time; she weeping.

‘I owe it to a heart so trusting, pure, and good,’ said Walter, ‘even
to tear myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is my
sister’s!’

She was weeping still.

‘If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by loving and
admiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born to
enviable,’ said Walter; ‘and if you had called me brother, then, in your
affectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the name
from my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged your
spotless truth by doing so. But here--and now!’

‘Oh thank you, thank you, Walter! Forgive my having wronged you so much.
I had no one to advise me. I am quite alone.’

‘Florence!’ said Walter, passionately. ‘I am hurried on to say, what I
thought, but a few moments ago, nothing could have forced from my lips.
If I had been prosperous; if I had any means or hope of being one day
able to restore you to a station near your own; I would have told you
that there was one name you might bestow upon--me--a right above all
others, to protect and cherish you--that I was worthy of in nothing but
the love and honour that I bore you, and in my whole heart being yours.
I would have told you that it was the only claim that you could give me
to defend and guard you, which I dare accept and dare assert; but that
if I had that right, I would regard it as a trust so precious and so
priceless, that the undivided truth and fervour of my life would poorly
acknowledge its worth.’

The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosom
swelling with its sobs.

‘Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts before
I could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let me
call you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token of
your sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said.’

She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness in
her eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him through
her tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; that
the innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim as
he listened.

‘No, Walter, I cannot forget it. I would not forget it, for the world.
Are you--are you very poor?’

‘I am but a wanderer,’ said Walter, ‘making voyages to live, across the
sea. That is my calling now.’

‘Are you soon going away again, Walter?’

‘Very soon.’

She sat looking at him for a moment; then timidly put her trembling hand
in his.

‘If you will take me for your wife, Walter, I will love you dearly.
If you will let me go with you, Walter, I will go to the world’s end
without fear. I can give up nothing for you--I have nothing to resign,
and no one to forsake; but all my love and life shall be devoted to you,
and with my last breath I will breathe your name to God if I have sense
and memory left.’

He caught her to his heart, and laid her cheek against his own, and now,
no more repulsed, no more forlorn, she wept indeed, upon the breast of
her dear lover.

Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and happy
ears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness in
their souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight stealing
on, and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls asleep, like
a hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!

Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, look
down on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in all
the wide wide world they seek but thee now--only thee!

The Captain remained in the little parlour until it was quite dark. He
took the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked up at the
skylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the stars
peeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, and
wondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn’t call
him to tea.

Florence came to his side while he was in the height of his wonderment.

‘Ay! lady lass!’ cried the Captain. ‘Why, you and Wal’r have had a long
spell o’ talk, my beauty.’

Florence put her little hand round one of the great buttons of his coat,
and said, looking down into his face:

‘Dear Captain, I want to tell you something, if you please.

The Captain raised his head pretty smartly, to hear what it was.
Catching by this means a more distinct view of Florence, he pushed back
his chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go.

‘What! Heart’s Delight!’ cried the Captain, suddenly elated, ‘Is it
that?’

‘Yes!’ said Florence, eagerly.

‘Wal’r! Husband! THAT?’ roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hat
into the skylight.

‘Yes!’ cried Florence, laughing and crying together.

The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hat
and putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her upstairs
again; where he felt that the great joke of his life was now to be made.

‘What, Wal’r my lad!’ said the Captain, looking in at the door, with his
face like an amiable warming-pan. ‘So there ain’t NO other character,
ain’t there?’

He had like to have suffocated himself with this pleasantry, which he
repeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant face
with the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with his
pocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graver
source of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he was
repeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffable
delight at Walter and Florence:

‘Ed’ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better course in your life,
than when you made that there little property over, jintly!’

CHAPTER 51. Mr Dombey and the World

What is the proud man doing, while the days go by? Does he ever think of
his daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has come
home, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answer
for him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread him
too much to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and the
only person who dares question him, he silences immediately.

‘My dear Paul!’ murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the day
of Florence’s departure, ‘your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possible
that what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return for
your unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to the
sacrifice of your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? My
poor brother!’

With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked to
dinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use of
her pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey’s neck. But Mr Dombey
frigidly lifts her off, and hands her to a chair.

‘I thank you, Louisa,’ he says, ‘for this mark of your affection; but
desire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. When
I bewail my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want of
consolation, you can offer it, if you will have the goodness.’

‘My dear Paul,’ rejoins his sister, with her handkerchief to her face,
and shaking her head, ‘I know your great spirit, and will say no more
upon a theme so painful and revolting;’ on the heads of which two
adjectives, Mrs Chick visits scathing indignation; ‘but pray let me
ask you--though I dread to hear something that will shock and distress
me--that unfortunate child Florence--’

‘Louisa!’ says her brother, sternly, ‘silence! Not another word of
this!’

Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moan
over degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence has
been inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has done
too much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the least
idea.

He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings close
within his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no search
for his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that she
is under his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may never
think about her. It is all one for any sign he makes.

But this is sure; he does not think that he has lost her. He has no
suspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his towering
supremacy, seeing her, a patient gentle creature, in the path below it,
to have any fear of that. Shaken as he is by his disgrace, he is not
yet humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in the
course of years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment from
everything around it. The tree is struck, but not down.

Though he hide the world within him from the world without--which
he believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch him
eagerly wherever he goes--he cannot hide those rebel traces of it,
which escape in hollow eyes and cheeks, a haggard forehead, and a moody,
brooding air. Impenetrable as before, he is still an altered man; and,
proud as ever, he is humbled, or those marks would not be there.

The world. What the world thinks of him, how it looks at him, what it
sees in him, and what it says--this is the haunting demon of his mind.
It is everywhere where he is; and, worse than that, it is everywhere
where he is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yet
he leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in the
street; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers over
the shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning and
babbling among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; and
is always busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shut
up in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible in
footsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming to
and fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, with
nothing else but him.

It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in other
people’s minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes from
Baden-Baden, purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, who
accompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly mission.

Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in his
old attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking at
him out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That Mr
Pitt, upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its own
map, hanging on the wall.

‘An unusually cold spring,’ says Mr Dombey--to deceive the world.

‘Damme, Sir,’ says the Major, in the warmth of friendship, ‘Joseph
Bagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold your
friends off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. is not
the man for your purpose. Joe is rough and tough, Sir; blunt, Sir,
blunt, is Joe. His Royal Highness the late Duke of York did me the
honour to say, deservedly or undeservedly--never mind that--“If there is
a man in the service on whom I can depend for coming to the point, that
man is Joe--Joe Bagstock.”’

Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence.

‘Now, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘I am a man of the world. Our friend
Feenix--if I may presume to--’

‘Honoured, I am sure,’ says Cousin Feenix.

‘--is,’ proceeds the Major, with a wag of his head, ‘also a man of the
world. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of the
world meet together, and are friends--as I believe--’ again appealing to
Cousin Feenix.

‘I am sure,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘most friendly.’

‘--and are friends,’ resumes the Major, ‘Old Joe’s opinion is (I may be
wrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is very
easily got at.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ says Cousin Feenix. ‘In point of fact, it’s quite a
self-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that my
friend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment and
regret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed of
every qualification to make a man happy, should have so far forgotten
what was due to--in point of fact, to the world--as to commit herself
in such a very extraordinary manner. I have been in a devilish state of
depression ever since; and said indeed to Long Saxby last night--man of
six foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably acquainted--that it
had upset me in a confounded way, and made me bilious. It induces a man
to reflect, this kind of fatal catastrophe,’ says Cousin Feenix, ‘that
events do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had been
living at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman like
herself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, in
point of fact, a victim.’

‘Now, Dombey!--’ says the Major, resuming his discourse with great
energy.

‘I beg your pardon,’ interposes Cousin Feenix. ‘Allow me another word.
My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance could
have added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myself
on this occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at my
lovely and accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to call
her) being supposed to have so committed herself with a person--man with
white teeth, in point of fact--of very inferior station to her husband.
But while I must, rather peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not to
criminate my lovely and accomplished relative until her criminality is
perfectly established, I beg to assure my friend Dombey that the family
I represent, and which is now almost extinct (devilish sad reflection
for a man), will interpose no obstacle in his way, and will be happy
to assent to any honourable course of proceeding, with a view to the
future, that he may point out. I trust my friend Dombey will give me
credit for the intentions by which I am animated in this very melancholy
affair, and--a--in point of fact, I am not aware that I need trouble my
friend Dombey with any further observations.’

Mr Dombey bows, without raising his eyes, and is silent.

‘Now, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘our friend Feenix having, with an amount
of eloquence that Old Joe B. has never heard surpassed--no, by the Lord,
Sir! never!’--says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his cane
in the middle--‘stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presume
upon our friendship, Dombey, to offer a word on another aspect of it.
Sir,’ says the Major, with the horse’s cough, ‘the world in these things
has opinions, which must be satisfied.’

‘I know it,’ rejoins Mr Dombey.

‘Of course you know it, Dombey,’ says the Major, ‘Damme, Sir, I know you
know it. A man of your calibre is not likely to be ignorant of it.’

‘I hope not,’ replies Mr Dombey.

‘Dombey!’ says the Major, ‘you will guess the rest. I speak
out--prematurely, perhaps--because the Bagstock breed have always
spoke out. Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it’s in the
Bagstock blood. A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. at
your elbow. He claims the name of friend. God bless you!’

‘Major,’ returns Mr Dombey, ‘I am obliged. I shall put myself in your
hands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne to
speak to you.’

‘Where is the fellow, Dombey?’ inquires the Major, after gasping and
looking at him, for a minute.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Any intelligence of him?’ asks the Major.

‘Yes.’

‘Dombey, I am rejoiced to hear it,’ says the Major. ‘I congratulate
you.’

‘You will excuse--even you, Major,’ replies Mr Dombey, ‘my entering into
any further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind,
and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turn
out to be true; I cannot say at present. My explanation must stop here.’

Although this is but a dry reply to the Major’s purple enthusiasm, the
Major receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the world
has such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix is
then presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of his
lovely and accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstock
retire, leaving that husband to the world again, and to ponder at
leisure on their representation of its state of mind concerning his
affairs, and on its just and reasonable expectations.

But who sits in the housekeeper’s room, shedding tears, and talking to
Mrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with her
face concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belong
to her. It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant,
and comes from Princess’s Place, thus secretly, to revive her old
acquaintance with Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information of
the state of Mr Dombey.

‘How does he bear it, my dear creature?’ asks Miss Tox.

‘Well,’ says Mrs Pipchin, in her snappish way, ‘he’s pretty much as
usual.’

‘Externally,’ suggests Miss Tox ‘But what he feels within!’

Mrs Pipchin’s hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in three
distinct jerks, ‘Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so.’

‘To tell you my mind, Lucretia,’ says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls Miss
Tox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in the
child-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate and
weazen little girl of tender years; ‘to tell you my mind, Lucretia, I
think it’s a good riddance. I don’t want any of your brazen faces here,
myself!’

‘Brazen indeed! Well may you say brazen, Mrs Pipchin!’ returned Miss
Tox. ‘To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!’ And here Miss Tox is
overcome.

‘I don’t know about noble, I’m sure,’ observes Mrs Pipchin; irascibly
rubbing her nose. ‘But I know this--that when people meet with trials,
they must bear ‘em. Hoity, toity! I have had enough to bear myself, in
my time! What a fuss there is! She’s gone, and well got rid of. Nobody
wants her back, I should think!’

This hint of the Peruvian Mines, causes Miss Tox to rise to go away; when
Mrs Pipchin rings the bell for Towlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson,
not having seen Miss Tox for ages, grins, and hopes she’s well; observing
that he didn’t know her at first, in that bonnet.

‘Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you,’ says Miss Tox. ‘I beg you’ll
have the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. My
visits are merely to Mrs Pipchin.’

‘Very good, Miss,’ says Towlinson.

‘Shocking circumstances occur, Towlinson,’ says Miss Tox.

‘Very much so indeed, Miss,’ rejoins Towlinson.

‘I hope, Towlinson,’ says Miss Tox, who, in her instruction of the
Toodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit of
improving passing occasions, ‘that what has happened here, will be a
warning to you, Towlinson.’

‘Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,’ says Towlinson.

He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in which
this warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegary
Mrs Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a ‘What are you doing? Why
don’t you show the lady to the door?’ he ushers Miss Tox forth. As she
passes Mr Dombey’s room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the black
bonnet, and walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in the
world which haunts him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude about
him, as Miss Tox takes out under the black bonnet into the street, and
tries to carry home shadowed it from the newly-lighted lamps.

But Miss Tox is not a part of Mr Dombey’s world. She comes back every
evening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wet
nights; and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffs
of Mrs Pipchin, and all to ask how he does, and how he bears his
misfortune: but she has nothing to do with Mr Dombey’s world. Exacting
and harassing as ever, it goes on without her; and she, a by no means
bright or particular star, moves in her little orbit in the corner of
another system, and knows it quite well, and comes, and cries, and goes
away, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox is easier of satisfaction than
the world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!

At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all its
lights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker’s place.
They are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some of
its emoluments, and made uncomfortable by newly-devised checks and
restrictions; and those who are beyond all hope of it are quite sure
they would rather not have it, and don’t at all envy the person for whom
it may prove to be reserved. Nothing like the prevailing sensation has
existed in the Counting House since Mr Dombey’s little son died; but all
such excitements there take a social, not to say a jovial turn, and lead
to the cultivation of good fellowship. A reconciliation is established
on this propitious occasion between the acknowledged wit of the Counting
House and an aspiring rival, with whom he has been at deadly feud for
months; and a little dinner being proposed, in commemoration of their
happily restored amity, takes place at a neighbouring tavern; the wit
in the chair; the rival acting as Vice-President. The orations following
the removal of the cloth are opened by the Chair, who says, Gentlemen,
he can’t disguise from himself that this is not a time for private
dissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need not more particularly
allude, but which have not been altogether without notice in some Sunday
Papers, and in a daily paper which he need not name (here every other
member of the company names it in an audible murmur), have caused him
to reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any personal
differences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that good
feeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hope
that the gentlemen in Dombey’s House have always been distinguished.
Robinson replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman who
has been in the office three years, under continual notice to quit on
account of lapses in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light,
suddenly bursting out with a thrilling speech, in which he says, May
their respected chief never again know the desolation which has fallen
on his hearth! and says a great variety of things, beginning with ‘May
he never again,’ which are received with thunders of applause. In short,
a most delightful evening is passed, only interrupted by a difference
between two juniors, who, quarrelling about the probable amount of Mr
Carker’s late receipts per annum, defy each other with decanters, and
are taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general request at the
office next day, and most of the party deem the bill an imposition.

As to Perch, the messenger, he is in a fair way of being ruined for
life. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, being
treated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concerned
in the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, ‘Sir,’ or
‘Madam,’ as the case was, ‘why do you look so pale?’ at which each
shuddered from head to foot, and said, ‘Oh, Perch!’ and ran away. Either
the consciousness of these enormities, or the reaction consequent on
liquor, reduces Mr Perch to an extreme state of low spirits at that hour
of the evening when he usually seeks consolation in the society of Mrs
Perch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch frets a good deal, for she fears his
confidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on coming
home at night to find her gone off with some Viscount--‘which,’ as she
observes to an intimate female friend, ‘is what these wretches in the
form of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain’t the harm they do
themselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma’am; and I see it in
Perch’s eye.’

Mr Dombey’s servants are becoming, at the same time, quite dissipated,
and unfit for other service. They have hot suppers every night, and
‘talk it over’ with smoking drinks upon the board. Mr Towlinson is
always maudlin after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whether
he didn’t say that no good would ever come of living in a corner house?
They whisper about Miss Florence, and wonder where she is; but agree
that if Mr Dombey don’t know, Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to the
latter, of whom Cook says, She had a stately way though, hadn’t she?
But she was too high! They all agree that she was too high, and Mr
Towlinson’s old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreats
that you will never talk to her any more about people who hold their
heads up, as if the ground wasn’t good enough for ‘em.

Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is done
in chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together.

CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence

Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, in
their own dwelling. It was early in the evening, and late in the spring.
But a few days had elapsed since Mr Dombey had told Major Bagstock of
his singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn out
to be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was not
satisfied yet.

The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging a
word: almost without motion. The old woman’s face was shrewdly anxious
and expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in a
less sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gathering
disappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding these
changes in its expression, though her eyes were often turned towards it,
sat mumbling and munching, and listening confidently.

Their abode, though poor and miserable, was not so utterly wretched as
in the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts at
cleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsy
way, that might have connected them, at a glance, with the younger
woman. The shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two kept
silence, until the blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailing
gloom.

Then Alice broke the silence which had lasted so long, and said:

‘You may give him up, mother. He’ll not come here.’

‘Death give him up!’ returned the old woman, impatiently. ‘He will come
here.’

‘We shall see,’ said Alice.

‘We shall see him,’ returned her mother.

‘And doomsday,’ said the daughter.

‘You think I’m in my second childhood, I know!’ croaked the old woman.
‘That’s the respect and duty that I get from my own gal, but I’m wiser
than you take me for. He’ll come. T’other day when I touched his coat
in the street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see him
when I said their names, and asked him if he’d like to find out where
they was!’

‘Was it so angry?’ asked her daughter, roused to interest in a moment.

‘Angry? ask if it was bloody. That’s more like the word. Angry? Ha, ha!
To call that only angry!’ said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard,
and lighting a candle, which displayed the workings of her mouth to ugly
advantage, as she brought it to the table. ‘I might as well call your
face only angry, when you think or talk about ‘em.’

It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as a
crouched tigress, with her kindling eyes.

‘Hark!’ said the old woman, triumphantly. ‘I hear a step coming. It’s
not the tread of anyone that lives about here, or comes this way often.
We don’t walk like that. We should grow proud on such neighbours! Do you
hear him?’

‘I believe you are right, mother,’ replied Alice, in a low voice.
‘Peace! open the door.’

As she drew herself within her shawl, and gathered it about her, the
old woman complied; and peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to Mr
Dombey, who stopped when he had set his foot within the door, and looked
distrustfully around.

‘It’s a poor place for a great gentleman like your worship,’ said the
old woman, curtseying and chattering. ‘I told you so, but there’s no
harm in it.’

‘Who is that?’ asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion.

‘That’s my handsome daughter,’ said the old woman. ‘Your worship won’t
mind her. She knows all about it.’

A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had groaned
aloud, ‘Who does not know all about it!’ but he looked at her steadily,
and she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him. The
shadow on his face was darker when he turned his glance away from her;
and even then it wandered back again, furtively, as if he were haunted
by her bold eyes, and some remembrance they inspired.

‘Woman,’ said Mr Dombey to the old witch who was chuckling and leering
close at his elbow, and who, when he turned to address her, pointed
stealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again,
‘Woman! I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in coming
here, but you know why I come, and what you offered when you stopped
me in the street the other day. What is it that you have to tell me
concerning what I want to know; and how does it happen that I can find
voluntary intelligence in a hovel like this,’ with a disdainful glance
about him, ‘when I have exerted my power and means to obtain it in vain?
I do not think,’ he said, after a moment’s pause, during which he had
observed her, sternly, ‘that you are so audacious as to mean to trifle
with me, or endeavour to impose upon me. But if you have that purpose,
you had better stop on the threshold of your scheme. My humour is not a
trifling one, and my acknowledgment will be severe.’

‘Oh a proud, hard gentleman!’ chuckled the old woman, shaking her head,
and rubbing her shrivelled hands, ‘oh hard, hard, hard! But your worship
shall see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears; not with
ours--and if your worship’s put upon their track, you won’t mind paying
something for it, will you, honourable deary?’

‘Money,’ returned Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by this
inquiry, ‘will bring about unlikely things, I know. It may turn even
means as unexpected and unpromising as these, to account. Yes. For
any reliable information I receive, I will pay. But I must have the
information first, and judge for myself of its value.’

‘Do you know nothing more powerful than money?’ asked the younger woman,
without rising, or altering her attitude.

‘Not here, I should imagine,’ said Mr Dombey.

‘You should know of something that is more powerful elsewhere, as I
judge,’ she returned. ‘Do you know nothing of a woman’s anger?’

‘You have a saucy tongue, Jade,’ said Mr Dombey.

‘Not usually,’ she answered, without any show of emotion: ‘I speak
to you now, that you may understand us better, and rely more on us. A
woman’s anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine house. I am
angry. I have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger as
you have for yours, and its object is the same man.’

He started, in spite of himself, and looked at her with astonishment.

‘Yes,’ she said, with a kind of laugh. ‘Wide as the distance may seem
between us, it is so. How it is so, is no matter; that is my story, and
I keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, because
I have a rage against him. My mother there, is avaricious and poor; and
she would sell any tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, for
money. It is fair enough, perhaps, that you should pay her some, if she
can help you to what you want to know. But that is not my motive. I have
told you what mine is, and it would be as strong and all-sufficient with
me if you haggled and bargained with her for a sixpence. I have done. My
saucy tongue says no more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow.’

The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, which
had a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softly
by the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at them
both, by turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice than
was usual with him:

‘Go on--what do you know?’

‘Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone,’ answered the
old woman. ‘It’s to be got from someone else--wormed out--screwed and
twisted from him.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mr Dombey.

‘Patience,’ she croaked, laying her hand, like a claw, upon his arm.
‘Patience. I’ll get at it. I know I can! If he was to hold it back from
me,’ said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, ‘I’d tear it out of
him!’

Mr Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, and
looked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but she
remained impassive, silent, and regardless of him.

‘Do you tell me, woman,’ he said, when the bent figure of Mrs Brown came
back, shaking its head and chattering to itself, ‘that there is another
person expected here?’

‘Yes!’ said the old woman, looking up into his face, and nodding.

‘From whom you are to exact the intelligence that is to be useful to
me?’

‘Yes,’ said the old woman, nodding again.

‘A stranger?’

‘Chut!’ said the old woman, with a shrill laugh. ‘What signifies! Well,
well; no. No stranger to your worship. But he won’t see you. He’d be
afraid of you, and wouldn’t talk. You’ll stand behind that door, and
judge him for yourself. We don’t ask to be believed on trust What! Your
worship doubts the room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you rich
gentlefolks! Look at it, then.’

Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feeling
on his part, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances. In
satisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she spoke of. Mr
Dombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy room; and
signed to her to put the light back in its place.

‘How long,’ he asked, ‘before this person comes?’

‘Not long,’ she answered. ‘Would your worship sit down for a few odd
minutes?’

He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, as
if he were undecided whether to remain or depart, and as if he had some
quarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grew
slower and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful; as the object
with which he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated there
again.

While he thus walked up and down with his eyes on the ground, Mrs Brown,
in the chair from which she had risen to receive him, sat listening
anew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her so
slow of hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter’s
ears for some moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her mother
of its approach, before the old woman was roused by it. But then she
started from her seat, and whispering ‘Here he is!’ hurried her visitor
to his place of observation, and put a bottle and glass upon the table,
with such alacrity, as to be ready to fling her arms round the neck of
Rob the Grinder on his appearance at the door.

‘And here’s my bonny boy,’ cried Mrs Brown, ‘at last!--oho, oho! You’re
like my own son, Robby!’

‘Oh! Misses Brown!’ remonstrated the Grinder. ‘Don’t! Can’t you be fond
of a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take care of the
birdcage in my hand, will you?’

‘Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!’ cried the old woman, apostrophizing
the ceiling. ‘Me that feels more than a mother for him!’

‘Well, I’m sure I’m very much obliged to you, Misses Brown,’ said the
unfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; ‘but you’re so jealous of a
cove. I’m very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don’t
smother you, do I, Misses Brown?’

He looked and spoke as if he would have been far from objecting to do
so, however, on a favourable occasion.

‘And to talk about birdcages, too!’ whimpered the Grinder. ‘As if that
was a crime! Why, look’ee here! Do you know who this belongs to?’

‘To Master, dear?’ said the old woman with a grin.

‘Ah!’ replied the Grinder, lifting a large cage tied up in a wrapper,
on the table, and untying it with his teeth and hands. ‘It’s our parrot,
this is.’

‘Mr Carker’s parrot, Rob?’

‘Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?’ returned the goaded Grinder.
‘What do you go naming names for? I’m blest,’ said Rob, pulling his
hair with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, ‘if she ain’t
enough to make a cove run wild!’

‘What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!’ cried the old woman, with ready
vehemence.

‘Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!’ returned the Grinder, with tears
in his eyes. ‘Was there ever such a--! Don’t I dote upon you, Misses
Brown?’

‘Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?’ With that, Mrs Brown
held him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him until
he had made several violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, and
his hair was standing on end all over his head.

‘Oh!’ returned the Grinder, ‘what a thing it is to be perfectly pitched
into with affection like this here. I wish she was--How have you been,
Misses Brown?’

‘Ah! Not here since this night week!’ said the old woman, contemplating
him with a look of reproach.

‘Good gracious, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder, ‘I said tonight’s a
week, that I’d come tonight, didn’t I? And here I am. How you do go on!
I wish you’d be a little rational, Misses Brown. I’m hoarse with saying
things in my defence, and my very face is shiny with being hugged!’ He
rubbed it hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish in
question.

‘Drink a little drop to comfort you, my Robin,’ said the old woman,
filling the glass from the bottle and giving it to him.

‘Thank’ee, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder. ‘Here’s your health. And
long may you--et ceterer.’ Which, to judge from the expression of
his face, did not include any very choice blessings. ‘And here’s her
health,’ said the Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyes
fixed, as it seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on Mr
Dombey’s face at the door, ‘and wishing her the same and many of ‘em!’

He drained the glass to these two sentiments, and set it down.

‘Well, I say, Misses Brown!’ he proceeded. ‘To go on a little rational
now. You’re a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to my
cost.’

‘Cost!’ repeated Mrs Brown.

‘Satisfaction, I mean,’ returned the Grinder. ‘How you do take up a
cove, Misses Brown! You’ve put it all out of my head again.’

‘Judge of birds, Robby,’ suggested the old woman.

‘Ah!’ said the Grinder. ‘Well, I’ve got to take care of this
parrot--certain things being sold, and a certain establishment broke
up--and as I don’t want no notice took at present, I wish you’d attend
to her for a week or so, and give her board and lodging, will you? If
I must come backwards and forwards,’ mused the Grinder with a dejected
face, ‘I may as well have something to come for.’

‘Something to come for?’ screamed the old woman.

‘Besides you, I mean, Misses Brown,’ returned the craven Rob. ‘Not that
I want any inducement but yourself, Misses Brown, I’m sure. Don’t begin
again, for goodness’ sake.’

‘He don’t care for me! He don’t care for me, as I care for him!’ cried
Mrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. ‘But I’ll take care of his
bird.’

‘Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown,’ said Rob, shaking his
head. ‘If you was so much as to stroke its feathers once the wrong way,
I believe it would be found out.’

‘Ah, so sharp as that, Rob?’ said Mrs Brown, quickly.

‘Sharp, Misses Brown!’ repeated Rob. ‘But this is not to be talked
about.’

Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across the
room, Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shook
his head, and began to draw his fingers across and across the wires of
the parrot’s cage by way of a diversion from the dangerous theme that
had just been broached.

The old woman eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, and
looking in at the parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at her
call, said:

‘Out of place now, Robby?’

‘Never you mind, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder, shortly.

‘Board wages, perhaps, Rob?’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Pretty Polly!’ said the Grinder.

The old woman darted a glance at him that might have warned him to
consider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at the
parrot now, and however expressive his imagination may have made her
angry scowl, it was unseen by his bodily eyes.

‘I wonder Master didn’t take you with him, Rob,’ said the old woman, in
a wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect.

Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling his
forefinger on the wires, that he made no answer.

The old woman had her clutch within a hair’s breadth of his shock of
hair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, and
said, in a voice that choked with its efforts to be coaxing:

‘Robby, my child.’

‘Well, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder.

‘I say I wonder Master didn’t take you with him, dear.’

‘Never you mind, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder.

Mrs Brown instantly directed the clutch of her right hand at his hair,
and the clutch of her left hand at his throat, and held on to the object
of her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face began
to blacken in a moment.

‘Misses Brown!’ exclaimed the Grinder, ‘let go, will you? What are you
doing of? Help, young woman! Misses Brow--Brow--!’

The young woman, however, equally unmoved by his direct appeal to her,
and by his inarticulate utterance, remained quite neutral, until, after
struggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob disengaged himself,
and stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows, while the old
woman, panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness, appeared to be
collecting her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Alice
interposed her voice, but not in the Grinder’s favour, by saying,

‘Well done, mother. Tear him to pieces!’

‘What, young woman!’ blubbered Rob; ‘are you against me too? What have
I been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like to
know? Why do you take and choke a cove who has never done you any harm,
neither of you? Call yourselves females, too!’ said the frightened and
afflicted Grinder, with his coat-cuff at his eye. ‘I’m surprised at you!
Where’s your feminine tenderness?’

‘You thankless dog!’ gasped Mrs Brown. ‘You impudent insulting dog!’

‘What have I been and done to go and give you offence, Misses Brown?’
retorted the fearful Rob. ‘You was very much attached to me a minute
ago.’

‘To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words,’ said the
old woman. ‘Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit of
gossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose with
me! But I’ll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!’

‘I’m sure, Misses Brown,’ returned the abject Grinder, ‘I never
insiniwated that I wished to go. Don’t talk like that, Misses Brown, if
you please.’

‘I won’t talk at all,’ said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crooked
fingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in the
corner. ‘Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He’s an
ungrateful hound. I cast him off. Now let him go! And I’ll slip those
after him that shall talk too much; that won’t be shook away; that’ll
hang to him like leeches, and slink arter him like foxes. What! He knows
‘em. He knows his old games and his old ways. If he’s forgotten ‘em,
they’ll soon remind him. Now let him go, and see how he’ll do Master’s
business, and keep Master’s secrets, with such company always following
him up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He’ll find ‘em a different sort from you
and me, Ally; Close as he is with you and me. Now let him go, now let
him go!’

The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked her
twisted figure round and round, in a ring of some four feet in diameter,
constantly repeating these words, and shaking her fist above her head,
and working her mouth about.

‘Misses Brown,’ pleaded Rob, coming a little out of his corner, ‘I’m
sure you wouldn’t injure a cove, on second thoughts, and in cold blood,
would you?’

‘Don’t talk to me,’ said Mrs Brown, still wrathfully pursuing her
circle. ‘Now let him go, now let him go!’

‘Misses Brown,’ urged the tormented Grinder, ‘I didn’t mean to--Oh, what
a thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this!--I was only
careful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of his
being up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn’t have gone any
further. I’m sure I’m quite agreeable,’ with a wretched face, ‘for
any little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don’t go on like this, if
you please. Oh, couldn’t you have the goodness to put in a word for a
miserable cove, here?’ said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to the
daughter.

‘Come, mother, you hear what he says,’ she interposed, in her stern
voice, and with an impatient action of her head; ‘try him once more,
and if you fall out with him again, ruin him, if you like, and have done
with him.’

Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation, presently
began to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic Grinder to
her arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and like
a victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side of
his venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrained
sweetness of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomical
revelations of an opposite character to draw his arm through hers, and
keep it there.

‘And how’s Master, deary dear?’ said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in this
amicable posture, they had pledged each other.

‘Hush! If you’d be so good, Misses Brown, as to speak a little lower,’
Rob implored. ‘Why, he’s pretty well, thank’ee, I suppose.’

‘You’re not out of place, Robby?’ said Mrs Brown, in a wheedling tone.

‘Why, I’m not exactly out of place, nor in,’ faltered Rob. ‘I--I’m still
in pay, Misses Brown.’

‘And nothing to do, Rob?’

‘Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to--keep my eyes
open,’ said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way.

‘Master abroad, Rob?’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Misses Brown, couldn’t you gossip with a cove
about anything else?’ cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair.

The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detained
her, stammering ‘Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he’s abroad. What’s
she staring at?’ he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes were
fixed upon the face that now again looked out behind.

‘Don’t mind her, lad,’ said the old woman, holding him closer to prevent
his turning round. ‘It’s her way--her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you ever
see the lady, deary?’

‘Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?’ cried the Grinder in a tone of piteous
supplication.

‘What lady?’ she retorted. ‘The lady; Mrs Dombey.’

‘Yes, I believe I see her once,’ replied Rob.

‘The night she went away, Robby, eh?’ said the old woman in his ear,
and taking note of every change in his face. ‘Aha! I know it was that
night.’

‘Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown,’ replied
Rob, ‘it’s no use putting pinchers into a cove to make him say so.

‘Where did they go that night, Rob? Straight away? How did they go?
Where did you see her? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Tell me all about
it,’ cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand that
was drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching every
line in his face with her bleared eyes. ‘Come! Begin! I want to be told
all about it. What, Rob, boy! You and me can keep a secret together, eh?
We’ve done so before now. Where did they go first, Rob?’

The wretched Grinder made a gasp, and a pause.

‘Are you dumb?’ said the old woman, angrily.

‘Lord, Misses Brown, no! You expect a cove to be a flash of lightning. I
wish I was the electric fluency,’ muttered the bewildered Grinder. ‘I’d
have a shock at somebody, that would settle their business.’

‘What do you say?’ asked the old woman, with a grin.

‘I’m wishing my love to you, Misses Brown,’ returned the false Rob,
seeking consolation in the glass. ‘Where did they go to first was it?
Him and her, do you mean?’

‘Ah!’ said the old woman, eagerly. ‘Them two.’

‘Why, they didn’t go nowhere--not together, I mean,’ answered Rob.

The old woman looked at him, as though she had a strong impulse upon her
to make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by a
certain dogged mystery in his face.

‘That was the art of it,’ said the reluctant Grinder; ‘that’s the way
nobody saw ‘em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They went
different ways, I tell you Misses Brown.’

‘Ay, ay, ay! To meet at an appointed place,’ chuckled the old woman,
after a moment’s silent and keen scrutiny of his face.

‘Why, if they weren’t a going to meet somewhere, I suppose they might as
well have stayed at home, mightn’t they, Brown?’ returned the unwilling
Grinder.

‘Well, Rob? Well?’ said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighter
through her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of his
slipping away.

‘What, haven’t we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?’ returned the
Grinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and his
sense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almost
every answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, and
uttered an unavailing whine of remonstrance. ‘Did she laugh that night,
was it? Didn’t you ask if she laughed, Misses Brown?’

‘Or cried?’ added the old woman, nodding assent.

‘Neither,’ said the Grinder. ‘She kept as steady when she and me--oh, I
see you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oath
now, that you’ll never tell anybody.’

This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and having
no other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor should
hear for himself.

‘She kept as steady, then, when she and me went down to Southampton,’
said the Grinder, ‘as a image. In the morning she was just the same,
Misses Brown. And when she went away in the packet before daylight,
by herself--me pretending to be her servant, and seeing her safe
aboard--she was just the same. Now, are you contented, Misses Brown?’

‘No, Rob. Not yet,’ answered Mrs Brown, decisively.

‘Oh, here’s a woman for you!’ cried the unfortunate Rob, in an outburst
of feeble lamentation over his own helplessness. ‘What did you wish to
know next, Misses Brown?’

‘What became of Master? Where did he go?’ she inquired, still holding
him tight, and looking close into his face, with her sharp eyes.

‘Upon my soul, I don’t know, Misses Brown,’ answered Rob. ‘Upon my soul
I don’t know what he did, nor where he went, nor anything about him I
only know what he said to me as a caution to hold my tongue, when we
parted; and I tell you this, Misses Brown, as a friend, that sooner than
ever repeat a word of what we’re saying now, you had better take and
shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set it a-fire, for
there’s nothing he wouldn’t do, to be revenged upon you. You don’t know
him half as well as I do, Misses Brown. You’re never safe from him, I
tell you.’

‘Haven’t I taken an oath,’ retorted the old woman, ‘and won’t I keep
it?’

‘Well, I’m sure I hope you will, Misses Brown,’ returned Rob, somewhat
doubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. ‘For
your own sake, quite as much as mine.’

He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasized
it with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounter
the yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes with
their keen old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasily
and sat skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring himself
to a sullen declaration that he would answer no more questions. The old
woman, still holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising the
forefinger of her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to the
concealed observer to give particular attention to what was about to
follow.

‘Rob,’ she said, in her most coaxing tone.

‘Good gracious, Misses Brown, what’s the matter now?’ returned the
exasperated Grinder.

‘Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?’

Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bit
his thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing his
tormentor askance, ‘How should I know, Misses Brown?’

The old woman held up her finger again, as before, and replying, ‘Come,
lad! It’s no use leading me to that, and there leaving me. I want to
know’ waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenly
broke out with, ‘How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, Mrs
Brown? What an unreasonable woman you are!’

‘But you have heard it said, Robby,’ she retorted firmly, ‘and you know
what it sounded like. Come!’

‘I never heard it said, Misses Brown,’ returned the Grinder.

‘Then,’ retorted the old woman quickly, ‘you have seen it written, and
you can spell it.’

Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying--for he
was penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown’s cunning, even through
this persecution--after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman’s eyes sparkled
when she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing a
space on the deal table, that he might write the word there, she once
more made her signal with a shaking hand.

‘Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown,’ said Rob, ‘it’s no
use asking me anything else. I won’t answer anything else; I can’t. How
long it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was to
go away alone, I don’t know no more than you do. I don’t know any more
about it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you’d believe
that. Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?’

‘Yes, Rob.’

‘Well then, Misses Brown. The way--now you won’t ask any more, you
know?’ said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsy
and stupid, upon her.

‘Not another word,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady with
me, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady’s
hand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn’t afraid of
forgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, and
when I put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces--she
sprinkled the rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was none
there afterwards, though I looked for ‘em. There was only one word on
it, and that was this, if you must and will know. But remember! You’re
upon your oath, Misses Brown!’

Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began to
chalk, slowly and laboriously, on the table.

‘“D,”’ the old woman read aloud, when he had formed the letter.

‘Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?’ he exclaimed, covering it
with his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. ‘I won’t have it read
out. Be quiet, will you!’

‘Then write large, Rob,’ she returned, repeating her secret signal; ‘for
my eyes are not good, even at print.’

Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Rob
went on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whose
information he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind him
to within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards the
creeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, from
her opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, and
repeated each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating it
aloud. At the end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey’s met, as if
each of them sought to be confirmed by the other; and thus they both
spelt D.I.J.O.N.

‘There!’ said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, to
obliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing and
planing all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colour
of the chalk was gone from the table. ‘Now, I hope you’re contented,
Misses Brown!’

The old woman, in token of her being so, released his arm and patted his
back; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination,
and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, and
fell asleep.

Not until he had been heavily asleep some time, and was snoring roundly,
did the old woman turn towards the door where Mr Dombey stood concealed,
and beckon him to come through the room, and pass out. Even then, she
hovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his head
down, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to the
door. But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it was
sharp too for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, and
in spite of all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was as
bright and greedy as a raven’s.

The daughter’s dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well how
pale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delay
was an insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to be
active and away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round at
her mother. The old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show what
was within; and, tightly closing it again in her jealousy and avarice,
whispered:

‘What will he do, Ally?’

‘Mischief,’ said the daughter.

‘Murder?’ asked the old woman.

‘He’s a madman, in his wounded pride, and may do that, for anything we
can say, or he either.’

Her glance was brighter than her mother’s, and the fire that shone in it
was fiercer; but her face was colourless, even to her lips.

They said no more, but sat apart; the mother communing with her money;
the daughter with her thoughts; the glance of each, shining in the gloom
of the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrot
only was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, with
its crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof like
a fly, and down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled at
every slender bar, as if it knew its master’s danger, and was wild to
force a passage out, and fly away to warn him of it.

CHAPTER 53. More Intelligence

There were two of the traitor’s own blood--his renounced brother and
sister--on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, at
this time, than on the man whom he had so deeply injured. Prying and
tormenting as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving him
to pursuit and revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twisted
the one idea of his life into a new shape, and made some gratification
of his wrath, the object into which his whole intellectual existence
resolved itself. All the stubbornness and implacability of his nature,
all its hard impenetrable quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all its
exaggerated sense of personal importance, all its jealous disposition
to resent the least flaw in the ample recognition of his importance by
others, set this way like many streams united into one, and bore him on
upon their tide. The most impetuously passionate and violently impulsive
of mankind would have been a milder enemy to encounter than the sullen
Mr Dombey wrought to this. A wild beast would have been easier turned
or soothed than the grave gentleman without a wrinkle in his starched
cravat.

But the very intensity of his purpose became almost a substitute for
action in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor’s retreat, it
served to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain it
with another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite had
no such relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave his
delinquency a more afflicting meaning to them.

The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remained
with him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might have
escaped the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, it
was still without regret for what she had done, without the least doubt
of her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion.
But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentant
brother, as it sometimes did, it smote upon his heart with such a keen,
reproachful touch as he could hardly bear. No idea of retort upon his
cruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, fresh
inward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which it
was at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not stand
alone, were the sole kind of reflections to which the discovery gave
rise in him.

It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter, and
when Mr Dombey’s world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, that
the window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at their
early breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man coming
to the little porch: which man was Perch the Messenger.

‘I’ve stepped over from Balls Pond at a early hour,’ said Mr Perch,
confidentially looking in at the room door, and stopping on the mat to
wipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, ‘agreeable to my
instructions last night. They was, to be sure and bring a note to you,
Mr Carker, before you went out in the morning. I should have been here a
good hour and a half ago,’ said Mr Perch, meekly, ‘but for the state of
health of Mrs P., who I thought I should have lost in the night, I do
assure you, five distinct times.’

‘Is your wife so ill?’ asked Harriet.

‘Why, you see,’ said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the door
carefully, ‘she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart,
Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Not
but what the strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I’m sure. You
feel it very much yourself, no doubts.’

Harriet repressed a sigh, and glanced at her brother.

‘I’m sure I feel it myself, in my humble way,’ Mr Perch went on to say,
with a shake of his head, ‘in a manner I couldn’t have believed if I
hadn’t been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drink
upon me. I literally feels every morning as if I had been taking more
than was good for me over-night.’

Mr Perch’s appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. There
was an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable to
drams; and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to those
numerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, being
treated and questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making.

‘Therefore I can judge,’ said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speaking
in a silvery murmur, ‘of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarly
sitiwated in this most painful rewelation.’

Here Mr Perch waited to be confided in; and receiving no confidence,
coughed behind his hand. This leading to nothing, he coughed behind
his hat; and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground and
sought in his breast pocket for the letter.

‘If I rightly recollect, there was no answer,’ said Mr Perch, with an
affable smile; ‘but perhaps you’ll be so good as cast your eye over it,
Sir.’

John Carker broke the seal, which was Mr Dombey’s, and possessing
himself of the contents, which were very brief, replied, ‘No. No answer
is expected.’

‘Then I shall wish you good morning, Miss,’ said Perch, taking a step
toward the door, and hoping, I’m sure, that you’ll not permit yourself
to be more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painful
rewelation. The Papers,’ said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again, and
comprehensively addressing both the brother and sister in a whisper
of increased mystery, ‘is more eager for news of it than you’d suppose
possible. One of the Sunday ones, in a blue cloak and a white hat,
that had previously offered for to bribe me--need I say with what
success?--was dodging about our court last night as late as twenty
minutes after eight o’clock. I see him myself, with his eye at the
counting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one,’
said Mr Perch, ‘with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King’s
Arms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a little
obserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see it
worked up in print, in a most surprising manner.’

Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraph
but receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked up
his hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch had
related to several select audiences at the King’s Arms and elsewhere,
how Miss Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, and
said, ‘Oh! dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I have
left!’ and how Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, ‘Perch, I
disown him. Never let me hear him mentioned as a brother more!’

‘Dear John,’ said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remained
silent for some few moments. ‘There are bad tidings in that letter.’

‘Yes. But nothing unexpected,’ he replied. ‘I saw the writer yesterday.’

‘The writer?’

‘Mr Dombey. He passed twice through the Counting House while I was
there. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could not
hope to do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard my
presence as something offensive; I felt it must be so, myself.’

‘He did not say so?’

‘No; he said nothing: but I saw that his glance rested on me for a
moment, and I was prepared for what would happen--for what has happened.
I am dismissed!’

She looked as little shocked and as hopeful as she could, but it was
distressing news, for many reasons.

‘“I need not tell you,”’ said John Carker, reading the letter, ‘“why
your name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remote
a connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bears
it, would be unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of all
engagements between us, from this date, and to request that no renewal
of any communication with me, or my establishment, be ever attempted by
you.”--Enclosed is an equivalent in money to a generously long notice,
and this is my discharge. Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient and
considerate one, when we remember all!’

‘If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for the
misdeed of another,’ she replied gently, ‘yes.’

‘We have been an ill-omened race to him,’ said John Carker. ‘He has
reason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there is
something cursed and wicked in our blood. I should almost think it too,
Harriet, but for you.’

‘Brother, don’t speak like this. If you have any special reason, as you
say you have, and think you have--though I say, No!--to love me, spare
me the hearing of such wild mad words!’

He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, coming
near him, to take one in her own.

‘After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know,’ said
his sister, ‘and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have to
live, too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can do
so, undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, and
to strive together!’

A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated him
to be of of good cheer.

‘Oh, dearest sister! Tied, of your own noble will, to a ruined man!
whose reputation is blighted; who has no friend himself, and has driven
every friend of yours away!’

‘John!’ she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, ‘for my sake! In
remembrance of our long companionship!’ He was silent ‘Now, let me tell
you, dear,’ quietly sitting by his side, ‘I have, as you have, expected
this; and when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it would
happen, and preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolved
to tell you, if it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, and
that we have a friend.’

‘What’s our friend’s name, Harriet?’ he answered with a sorrowful smile.

‘Indeed, I don’t know, but he once made a very earnest protestation to
me of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe
him.’

‘Harriet!’ exclaimed her wondering brother, ‘where does this friend
live?’

‘Neither do I know that,’ she returned. ‘But he knows us both, and our
history--all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at his
own suggestion, I have kept the secret of his coming, here, from you,
lest his acquaintance with it should distress you.’

‘Here! Has he been here, Harriet?’

‘Here, in this room. Once.’

‘What kind of man?’

‘Not young. “Grey-headed,” as he said, “and fast growing greyer.” But
generous, and frank, and good, I am sure.’

‘And only seen once, Harriet?’

‘In this room only once,’ said his sister, with the slightest and most
transient glow upon her cheek; ‘but when here, he entreated me to suffer
him to see me once a week as he passed by, in token of our being well,
and continuing to need nothing at his hands. For I told him, when he
proffered us any service he could render--which was the object of his
visit--that we needed nothing.’

‘And once a week--’

‘Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at the
same hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the same
direction--towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me,
and wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made that
promise when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it so
faithfully and pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasiness
about them in the beginning (which I don’t think I did, John; his manner
was so plain and true) it very soon vanished, and left me quite glad
when the day was coming. Last Monday--the first since this terrible
event--he did not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence can
have been in any way connected with what has happened.’

‘How?’ inquired her brother.

‘I don’t know how. I have only speculated on the coincidence; I have not
tried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does, dear
John, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let me
bring you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood. His
entreaty was that he might do something to smooth my life and yours; and
I gave him my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would remember
him. Then his name was to be no secret.’

‘Harriet,’ said her brother, who had listened with close attention,
‘describe this gentleman to me. I surely ought to know one who knows me
so well.’

His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, and
dress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledge
of the original, or from some fault in her description, or from some
abstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, could
not recognise the portrait she presented to him.

However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original when
he next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with a
less anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-haired
man, late Junior of Dombey’s, devoted the first day of his unwonted
liberty to working in the garden.

It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud while the
sister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at the
door. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered about
them in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusual
there, became almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sister
sat and listened timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied and
seemed surprised; and after a few words, the two approached together.

‘Harriet,’ said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, and
speaking in a low voice, ‘Mr Morfin--the gentleman so long in Dombey’s
House with James.’

His sister started back, as if a ghost had entered. In the doorway stood
the unknown friend, with the dark hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddy
face, the broad clear brow, and hazel eyes, whose secret she had kept so
long!

‘John!’ she said, half-breathless. ‘It is the gentleman I told you of,
today!’

‘The gentleman, Miss Harriet,’ said the visitor, coming in--for he had
stopped a moment in the doorway--‘is greatly relieved to hear you
say that: he has been devising ways and means, all the way here, of
explaining himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr John, I am not
quite a stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when you saw
me at your door just now. I observe you are more astonished at present.
Well! That’s reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we were
not such creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn’t have reason to be
astonished half so often.’

By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able mingling of
cordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat down
near her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon the
table.

‘There’s nothing astonishing,’ he said, ‘in my having conceived a desire
to see your sister, Mr John, or in my having gratified it in my own way.
As to the regularity of my visits since (which she may have mentioned
to you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into a
habit; and we are creatures of habit--creatures of habit!’

Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, he
looked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him to
see them together; and went on to say, with a kind of irritable
thoughtfulness: ‘It’s this same habit that confirms some of us, who are
capable of better things, in Lucifer’s own pride and stubbornness--that
confirms and deepens others of us in villainy--more of us in indifference
--that hardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay,
like images, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions
and convictions. You shall judge of its influence on me, John. For more
years than I need name, I had my small, and exactly defined share, in the
management of Dombey’s House, and saw your brother (who has proved
himself a scoundrel! Your sister will forgive my being obliged to mention
it) extending and extending his influence, until the business and its
owner were his football; and saw you toiling at your obscure desk every
day; and was quite content to be as little troubled as I might be, out of
my own strip of duty, and to let everything about me go on, day by day,
unquestioned, like a great machine--that was its habit and mine--and to
take it all for granted, and consider it all right. My Wednesday nights
came regularly round, our quartette parties came regularly off, my
violoncello was in good tune, and there was nothing wrong in my world--or
if anything not much--or little or much, it was no affair of mine.’

‘I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all that
time than anybody in the House, Sir,’ said John Carker.

‘Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay,’ returned the other, ‘a
habit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: it
suited me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made no
court to either of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which none
was required. So I should have gone on till now, but that my room had
a thin wall. You can tell your sister that it was divided from the
Manager’s room by a wainscot partition.’

‘They were adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and were
separated, as Mr Morfin says,’ said her brother, looking back to him for
the resumption of his explanation.

‘I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole of
Beethoven’s Sonata in B, to let him know that I was within hearing,’
said Mr Morfin; ‘but he never heeded me. It happened seldom enough that
I was within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. But
when I was, and couldn’t otherwise avoid knowing something of it, I
walked out. I walked out once, John, during a conversation between two
brothers, to which, in the beginning, young Walter Gay was a party.
But I overheard some of it before I left the room. You remember it
sufficiently, perhaps, to tell your sister what its nature was?’

‘It referred, Harriet,’ said her brother in a low voice, ‘to the past,
and to our relative positions in the House.’

‘Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect.
It shook me in my habit--the habit of nine-tenths of the world--of
believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it,’
said their visitor; ‘and induced me to recall the history of the two
brothers, and to ponder on it. I think it was almost the first time in
my life when I fell into this train of reflection--how will many things
that are familiar, and quite matters of course to us now, look, when we
come to see them from that new and distant point of view which we must
all take up, one day or other? I was something less good-natured, as the
phrase goes, after that morning, less easy and complacent altogether.’

He sat for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; and
resumed in a hurry, as if he were anxious to get rid of his confession.

‘Before I knew what to do, or whether I could do anything, there was a
second conversation between the same two brothers, in which their sister
was mentioned. I had no scruples of conscience in suffering all the
waifs and strays of that conversation to float to me as freely as they
would. I considered them mine by right. After that, I came here to see
the sister for myself. The first time I stopped at the garden gate, I
made a pretext of inquiring into the character of a poor neighbour; but
I wandered out of that tract, and I think Miss Harriet mistrusted me.
The second time I asked leave to come in; came in; and said what I
wished to say. Your sister showed me reasons which I dared not dispute,
for receiving no assistance from me then; but I established a means of
communication between us, which remained unbroken until within these
few days, when I was prevented, by important matters that have lately
devolved upon me, from maintaining them.’

‘How little I have suspected this,’ said John Carker, ‘when I have seen
you every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name--’

‘Why, to tell you the truth, John,’ interposed the visitor, ‘I kept it
to myself for two reasons. I don’t know that the first might have
been binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for good
intentions, and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myself
until I should be able to do you some real service or other. My
second reason was, that I always hoped there might be some lingering
possibility of your brother’s relenting towards you both; and in that
case, I felt that where there was the chance of a man of his suspicious,
watchful character, discovering that you had been secretly befriended
by me, there was the chance of a new and fatal cause of division. I
resolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his displeasure against
myself--which would have been no matter--to watch my opportunity of
serving you with the head of the House; but the distractions of death,
courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no head but
your brother for this long, long time. And it would have been better
for us,’ said the visitor, dropping his voice, ‘to have been a lifeless
trunk.’

He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped him against
his will, and stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to the
sister, continued:

‘All I could desire to say, and more, I have now said. All I mean goes
beyond words, as I hope you understand and believe. The time has come,
John--though most unfortunately and unhappily come--when I may help you
without interfering with that redeeming struggle, which has lasted
through so many years; since you were discharged from it today by no act
of your own. It is late; I need say no more to-night. You will guard the
treasure you have here, without advice or reminder from me.’

With these words he rose to go.

‘But go you first, John,’ he said goodhumouredly, ‘with a light, without
saying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;’ John Carker’s heart
was full, and he would have relieved it in speech, if he could; ‘and
let me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and in
this room too; though it looks more natural with you here.’

Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and said
in a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:

‘You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is your
misfortune to be.’

‘I dread to ask,’ said Harriet.

‘You have looked so earnestly at me more than once,’ rejoined the
visitor, ‘that I think I can divine your question. Has he taken money?
Is it that?’

‘Yes.’

‘He has not.’

‘I thank Heaven!’ said Harriet. ‘For the sake of John.’

‘That he has abused his trust in many ways,’ said Mr Morfin; ‘that he
has oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than for
the House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigious
ventures, often resulting in enormous losses; that he has always
pampered the vanity and ambition of his employer, when it was his duty
to have held them in check, and shown, as it was in his power to do,
to what they tended here or there; will not, perhaps, surprise you now.
Undertakings have been entered on, to swell the reputation of the House
for vast resources, and to exhibit it in magnificent contrast to other
merchants’ Houses, of which it requires a steady head to contemplate
the possibly--a few disastrous changes of affairs might render them the
probably--ruinous consequences. In the midst of the many transactions of
the House, in most parts of the world: a great labyrinth of which only
he has held the clue: he has had the opportunity, and he seems to have
used it, of keeping the various results afloat, when ascertained, and
substituting estimates and generalities for facts. But latterly--you
follow me, Miss Harriet?’

‘Perfectly, perfectly,’ she answered, with her frightened face fixed on
his. ‘Pray tell me all the worst at once.’

‘Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making these
results so plain and clear, that reference to the private books enables
one to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with extraordinary
ease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad view what
has been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling passion! That it
has been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely, and
to flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as it
is connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists.’

‘One other word before you leave me, dear Sir,’ said Harriet. ‘There is
no danger in all this?’

‘How danger?’ he returned, with a little hesitation.

‘To the credit of the House?’

‘I cannot help answering you plainly, and trusting you completely,’ said
Mr Morfin, after a moment’s survey of her face.

‘You may. Indeed you may!’

‘I am sure I may. Danger to the House’s credit? No; none There may be
difficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless--unless,
indeed--the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reduction
of its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is,
or can be, in any position but the position in which he has always
represented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then it
would totter.’

‘But there is no apprehension of that?’ said Harriet.

‘There shall be no half-confidence,’ he replied, shaking her hand,
‘between us. Mr Dombey is unapproachable by anyone, and his state of
mind is haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he is
disturbed and agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it may
pass. You now know all, both worst and best. No more to-night, and
good-night!’

With that he kissed her hand, and, passing out to the door where her
brother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when he
essayed to speak; told him that, as they would see each other soon and
often, he might speak at another time, if he would, but there was no
leisure for it then; and went away at a round pace, in order that no
word of gratitude might follow him.

The brother and sister sat conversing by the fireside, until it was
almost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that opened
before them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon a
solitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old in
resignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another and
different kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out of
which this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow of
their guilty brother was in the house where his foot had never trod.

Nor was it to be driven out, nor did it fade before the sun. Next
morning it was there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct at
night, as is now to be told.

John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment from
their friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had been
alone some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, were
not favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The idea
of this brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightful
shapes. He was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning on
her. The pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as the
twilight deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the dark
corners of the room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excited
imagination, should be waiting there, to startle her. Once she had such
a fancy of his being in the next room, hiding--though she knew quite
well what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it--that she
forced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. The
room resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had no
more power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, than
if they had been stone giants, rooted in the solid earth.

It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her head
upon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in the
gloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntary
cry. Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for an
instant, as searching for an object; then the eyes rested on herself,
and lighted up.

‘Let me in! Let me in! I want to speak to you!’ and the hand rattled on
the glass.

She recognised immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whom
she had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraid
of her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a little
from the window, stood undecided and alarmed.

‘Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful--quiet--humble--anything
you like. But let me speak to you.’

The vehement manner of the entreaty, the earnest expression of the face,
the trembling of the two hands that were raised imploringly, a certain
dread and terror in the voice akin to her own condition at the moment,
prevailed with Harriet. She hastened to the door and opened it.

‘May I come in, or shall I speak here?’ said the woman, catching at her
hand.

‘What is it that you want? What is it that you have to say?’

‘Not much, but let me say it out, or I shall never say it. I am tempted
now to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let me
come in, if you can trust me for this once!’

Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the firelight of
the little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried her
clothes.

‘Sit there,’ said Alice, kneeling down beside her, ‘and look at me. You
remember me?’

‘I do.’

‘You remember what I told you I had been, and where I came from, ragged
and lame, with the fierce wind and weather beating on my head?’

‘Yes.’

‘You know how I came back that night, and threw your money in the
dirt, and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am I less
earnest now, than I was then?’

‘If what you ask,’ said Harriet, gently, ‘is forgiveness--’

‘But it’s not!’ returned the other, with a proud, fierce look ‘What I
ask is to be believed. Now you shall judge if I am worthy of belief,
both as I was, and as I am.’

Still upon her knees, and with her eyes upon the fire, and the fire
shining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tress
of which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, and
thoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:

‘When I was young and pretty, and this,’ plucking contemptuously at
the hair she held, ‘was only handled delicately, and couldn’t be admired
enough, my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, found
out my merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous and
poor, and thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady ever
thought that of a daughter yet, I’m sure, or acted as if she did--it’s
never done, we all know--and that shows that the only instances of
mothers bringing up their daughters wrong, and evil coming of it, are
among such miserable folks as us.’

Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of having
any auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long tress
of hair tight round and round her hand.

‘What came of that, I needn’t say. Wretched marriages don’t come of such
things, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and ruin
came on me--came on me.’

Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, to
Harriet’s face, she said:

‘I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn’t thought
of all, I shouldn’t be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, I
say. I was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly and
carelessly than even such things are. By whose hand do you think?’

‘Why do you ask me?’ said Harriet.

‘Why do you tremble?’ rejoined Alice, with an eager look. ‘His usage
made a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower and
lower yet. I was concerned in a robbery--in every part of it but the
gains--and was found out, and sent to be tried, without a friend,
without a penny. Though I was but a girl, I would have gone to Death,
sooner than ask him for a word, if a word of his could have saved me.
I would! To any death that could have been invented. But my mother,
covetous always, sent to him in my name, told the true story of my case,
and humbly prayed and petitioned for a small last gift--for not so many
pounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, who
snapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at his
feet, and left me without even this poor sign of remembrance; well
satisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of farther
trouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do you
think?’

‘Why do you ask me?’ repeated Harriet.

‘Why do you tremble?’ said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm, and
looking in her face, ‘but that the answer is on your lips! It was your
brother James.’

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from the
eager look that rested on them.

‘When I knew you were his sister--which was on that night--I came back,
weary and lame, to spurn your gift. I felt that night as if I could have
travelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I could
have found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that I
was earnest in all that?’

‘I do! Good Heaven, why are you come again?’

‘Since then,’ said Alice, with the same grasp of her arm, and the same
look in her face, ‘I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, In
the broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, it
sprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he has
wronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had given
information of him to that man?’

‘Information!’ repeated Harriet.

‘What if I had found out one who knew your brother’s secret; who knew
the manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of his
flight were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, word
by word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by at
the time, looking into this enemy’s face, and seeing it change till it
was scarcely human? What if I had seen him rush away, mad, in pursuit?
What if I knew, now, that he was on his road, more fiend than man, and
must, in so many hours, come up with him?’

‘Remove your hand!’ said Harriet, recoiling. ‘Go away! Your touch is
dreadful to me!’

‘I have done this,’ pursued the other, with her eager look, regardless
of the interruption. ‘Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do you
believe what I am saying?’

‘I fear I must. Let my arm go!’

‘Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose must
have been, to last so long, and urge me to do this?’

‘Dreadful!’ said Harriet.

‘Then when you see me now,’ said Alice hoarsely, ‘here again, kneeling
quietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes upon
your face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in what
I say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. I
am ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I have
fought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards him
without reason, and wish to repair what I have done, if it is possible.
I wouldn’t have them come together while his pursuer is so blind and
headlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would know
the danger better.’

‘How can it be prevented? What can I do?’ cried Harriet.

‘All night long,’ pursued the other, hurriedly, ‘I had dreams of
him--and yet I didn’t sleep--in his blood. All day, I have had him near
me.’

‘What can I do?’ cried Harriet, shuddering at these words.

‘If there is anyone who’ll write, or send, or go to him, let them lose
no time. He is at Dijon. Do you know the name, and where it is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Warn him that the man he has made his enemy is in a frenzy, and that he
doesn’t know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he is
on the road--I know he is!--and hurrying on. Urge him to get away while
there is time--if there is time--and not to meet him yet. A month or
so will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me.
Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, and
find him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my head
without.’

The fire ceased to be reflected in her jet black hair, uplifted face,
and eager eyes; her hand was gone from Harriet’s arm; and the place
where she had been was empty.

CHAPTER 54. The Fugitives

Tea-time, an hour short of midnight; the place, a French apartment,
comprising some half-dozen rooms;--a dull cold hall or corridor, a
dining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, or
boudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in by
one large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room provided
with two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several means
of communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or with
certain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual in
such houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The whole
situated on the first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorb
one entire row of windows upon one side of the square court-yard in the
centre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked.

An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, and
sufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with a
show of state, reigned in these rooms The walls and ceilings were gilded
and painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hung
in festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled and
intertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuck
out from the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when the
lattice-blinds (now closely shut) were opened, and the light let in,
traces were discernible among this finery, of wear and tear and dust,
of sun and damp and smoke, and lengthened intervals of want of use and
habitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life,
and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters of
burning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the general
glitter threw them in the shade.

The glitter of bright tapers, and their reflection in looking-glasses,
scraps of gilding and gay colours, were confined, on this night, to one
room--that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen from
the hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspective
of open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heart
of its radiance sat a beautiful woman--Edith.

She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek a
little worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous,
but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no late
repentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, and
yet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat with her dark eyes
cast down, waiting for someone.

No book, no work, no occupation of any kind but her own thought,
beguiled the tardy time. Some purpose, strong enough to fill up any
pause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quivering
if for a moment she released them from her control; with her nostril
inflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling in
her breast; she sat, and waited.

At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall, she
started up, and cried ‘Who’s that?’ The answer was in French, and two
men came in with jingling trays, to make preparation for supper.

‘Who had bade them to do so?’ she asked.

‘Monsieur had commanded it, when it was his pleasure to take the
apartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there for an hour, en
route, and left the letter for Madame--Madame had received it surely?’

‘Yes.’

‘A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have been
forgotten had struck him;’ a bald man, with a large beard from a
neighbouring restaurant; ‘with despair! Monsieur had said that supper
was to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of the
commands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Head
the honour to request that the supper should be choice and delicate.
Monsieur would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was not
misplaced.’

Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared the
table for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before they
had finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and into
the drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all the
doors; particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage in
the wall. From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side. She
then came back.

The men--the second of whom was a dark, bilious subject, in a jacket,
close shaved, and with a black head of hair close cropped--had completed
their preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. He
who had spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be long
before Monsieur arrived?

‘She couldn’t say. It was all one.’

‘Pardon! There was the supper! It should be eaten on the instant.
Monsieur (who spoke French like an Angel--or a Frenchman--it was all the
same) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the English
nation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! Great
Heaven, here was Monsieur. Behold him!’

In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with his
gleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving in
that sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embraced
Madame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife.

‘My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!’ The
bald man with the beard observed it, and cried out.

Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, she
was standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; her
figure drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable.

‘Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies on
these occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is in
his room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment.’ These
facts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently the
supper came.

The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, with
the change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with this
arrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Let
them set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove the
dishes with his own hands.

‘Pardon!’ said the bald man, politely. ‘It was impossible!’

Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance that
night.

‘But Madame--’ the bald man hinted.

‘Madame,’ replied Monsieur, ‘had her own maid. It was enough.’

‘A million pardons! No! Madame had no maid!’

‘I came here alone,’ said Edith ‘It was my choice to do so. I am well
used to travelling; I want no attendance. They need send nobody to me.

Monsieur accordingly, persevering in his first proposed impossibility,
proceeded to follow the two attendants to the outer door, and secure it
after them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he went
out, observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvet
back of the great chair, and that her face was quite regardless of him,
though she was looking straight before her.

As the sound of Carker’s fastening the door resounded through the
intermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that last
distant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingled
with it, in Edith’s ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it too
and listened; and then came back towards her, laying a long train of
footsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors behind him as
he came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring a
knife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stood
before.

‘How strange to come here by yourself, my love!’ he said as he entered.

‘What?’ she returned.

Her tone was so harsh; the quick turn of her head so fierce; her
attitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with the
lamp in his hand, looking at her, as if she had struck him motionless.

‘I say,’ he at length repeated, putting down the lamp, and smiling his
most courtly smile, ‘how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessary
caution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engaged
an attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for the
purpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as you
are the most beautiful, my love) of women.’

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand resting
on the chair, and said not a word.

‘I have never,’ resumed Carker, ‘seen you look so handsome, as you do
to-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruel
probation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded by
the reality.’

Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their drooping
lashes, but her head held up.

‘Hard, unrelenting terms they were!’ said Carker, with a smile, ‘but
they are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more delicious
and more safe. Sicily shall be the place of our retreat. In the idlest
and easiest part of the world, my soul, we’ll both seek compensation for
old slavery.’

He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught the
knife up from the table, and started one pace back.

‘Stand still!’ she said, ‘or I shall murder you!’

The sudden change in her, the towering fury and intense abhorrence
sparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if a
fire had stopped him.

‘Stand still!’ she said, ‘come no nearer me, upon your life!’

They both stood looking at each other. Rage and astonishment were in his
face, but he controlled them, and said lightly,

‘Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody’s sight and
hearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?’

‘Do you think to frighten me,’ she answered fiercely, ‘from any purpose
that I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of the
solitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am here
alone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If I
feared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to your
face what I am going to tell?’

‘And what is that,’ he said, ‘you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than any
other woman in her best humour?’

‘I tell you nothing,’ she returned, until you go back to that
chair--except this, once again--Don’t come near me! Not a step nearer. I
tell you, if you do, as Heaven sees us, I shall murder you!’

‘Do you mistake me for your husband?’ he retorted, with a grin.

Disdaining to reply, she stretched her arm out, pointing to the chair.
He bit his lip, frowned, laughed, and sat down in it, with a baffled,
irresolute, impatient air, he was unable to conceal; and biting his nail
nervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, even
while he feigned to be amused by her caprice.

She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom with her
hand, said:

‘I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner than
endure your touch once more, I would use it on you--and you know it,
while I speak--with less reluctance than I would on any other creeping
thing that lives.’

He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play out
quickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with which
he regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his foot
once upon the floor with a muttered oath.

‘How many times,’ said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him, ‘has
your bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many times
in your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twitted
with my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare my
wound of love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How often
have you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; and
tempted me to take a desperate revenge, when it has most tortured me?’

‘I have no doubt, Ma’am,’ he replied, ‘that you have kept a good
account, and that it’s pretty accurate. Come, Edith. To your husband,
poor wretch, this was well enough--’

‘Why, if,’ she said, surveying him with a haughty contempt and disgust,
that he shrunk under, let him brave it as he would, ‘if all my other
reasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers,
his having you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost been
enough to hold their place.’

‘Is that a reason why you have run away with me?’ he asked her,
tauntingly.

‘Yes, and why we are face to face for the last time. Wretch! We meet
tonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased to
speak, will I stay here!’

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with his
hand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her.

‘I am a woman,’ she said, confronting him steadfastly, ‘who from her
childhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected,
put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not had
an accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but it
has been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crier
had called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have looked
on and approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in my
breast. There is not one of them for whom I care, as I could care for
a pet dog. I stand alone in the world, remembering well what a hollow
world it has been to me, and what a hollow part of it I have been
myself. You know this, and you know that my fame with it is worthless to
me.’

‘Yes; I imagined that,’ he said.

‘And calculated on it,’ she rejoined, ‘and so pursued me. Grown too
indifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily working
of the hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriage
would at least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I suffered
myself to be sold, as infamously as any woman with a halter round her
neck is sold in any market-place. You know that.’

‘Yes,’ he said, showing all his teeth ‘I know that.’

‘And calculated on it,’ she rejoined once more, ‘and so pursued me.
From my marriage day, I found myself exposed to such new shame--to such
solicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been written
in the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn) from one
mean villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation till
that time. This shame my husband fixed upon me; hemmed me round with,
himself; steeped me in, with his own hands, and of his own act, repeated
hundreds of times. And thus--forced by the two from every point of
rest I had--forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of love
and gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocent
object--driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped the
other--my anger rose almost to distraction against both. I do not know
against which it rose higher--the master or the man!’

He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph of
her indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with no
more fear of him than of a worm.

‘What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!’ she went on. ‘What
meaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But if
I tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold with
antipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to now,
when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute’s knowledge
of you I have since had, you have been a loathsome creature to me which
has not its like on earth; how then?’

He answered with a faint laugh, ‘Ay! How then, my queen?’

‘On that night, when, emboldened by the scene you had assisted at, you
dared come to my room and speak to me,’ she said, ‘what passed?’

He shrugged his shoulders, and laughed

‘What passed?’ she said.

‘Your memory is so distinct,’ he said, ‘that I have no doubt you can
recall it.’

‘I can,’ she said. ‘Hear it! Proposing then, this flight--not this
flight, but the flight you thought it--you told me that in the having
given you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if you
so thought fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me many
times before,--and having made the opportunities, you said,--and in the
having openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband but
aversion, and no care for myself--I was lost; I had given you the power
to traduce my name; and I lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasure
of your breath.’

‘All stratagems in love---’ he interrupted, smiling. ‘The old adage--’

‘On that night,’ said Edith, ‘and then, the struggle that I long had had
with something that was not respect for my good fame--that was I know
not what--perhaps the clinging to that last retreat--was ended. On that
night, and then, I turned from everything but passion and resentment.
I struck a blow that laid your lofty master in the dust, and set you
there, before me, looking at me now, and knowing what I mean.’

He sprung up from his chair with a great oath. She put her hand into her
bosom, and not a finger trembled, not a hair upon her head was stirred.
He stood still: she too: the table and chair between them.

‘When I forget that this man put his lips to mine that night, and held
me in his arms as he has done again to-night,’ said Edith, pointing at
him; ‘when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek--the cheek that
Florence would have laid her guiltless face against--when I forget my
meeting with her, while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a flood
the knowledge rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing her
from the persecution I had caused by my love, I brought a shame and
degradation on her name through mine, and in all time to come should be
the solitary figure representing in her mind her first avoidance of a
guilty creature--then, Husband, from whom I stand divorced henceforth,
I will forget these last two years, and undo what I have done, and
undeceive you!’

Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, and
she held some letters out in her left hand.

‘See these!’ she said, contemptuously. ‘You have addressed these to me
in the false name you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. The
seals are unbroken. Take them back!’

She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as she
looked upon him now, a smile was on her face.

‘We meet and part to-night,’ she said. ‘You have fallen on Sicilian
days and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned,
and played your traitor’s part, a little longer, and grown richer. You
purchase your voluptuous retirement dear!’

‘Edith!’ he retorted, menacing her with his hand. ‘Sit down! Have done
with this! What devil possesses you?’

‘Their name is Legion,’ she replied, uprearing her proud form as if
she would have crushed him; ‘you and your master have raised them in a
fruitful house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to his
innocent child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast of
me, and gnash your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!’

He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as if
for something that would help him to conquer her; but with the same
indomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering.

‘In every vaunt you make,’ she said, ‘I have my triumph. I single out in
you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant,
that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and
revenge me on him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how you
stand cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable,
if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revenge
me on yourself.’

The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she would
have faltered once for only one half-moment, he would have pinioned her;
but she was as firm as rock, and her searching eyes never left him.

‘We don’t part so,’ he said. ‘Do you think I am drivelling, to let you
go in your mad temper?’

‘Do you think,’ she answered, ‘that I am to be stayed?’

‘I’ll try, my dear,’ he said with a ferocious gesture of his head.

‘God’s mercy on you, if you try by coming near me!’ she replied.

‘And what,’ he said, ‘if there are none of these same boasts and vaunts
on my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!’ and his teeth fairly
shone again. ‘We must make a treaty of this, or I may take some
unexpected course. Sit down, sit down!’

‘Too late!’ she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. ‘I have
thrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bear
the shame that will attach to me--resolved to know that it attaches
falsely--that you know it too--and that he does not, never can, and
never shall. I’ll die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone with
you, at the dead of night. For this, I have met you here, in a false
name, as your wife. For this, I have been seen here by those men, and
left here. Nothing can save you now.’

He would have sold his soul to root her, in her beauty, to the floor,
and make her arms drop at her sides, and have her at his mercy. But
he could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strength
within her that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and that
her unquenchable hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followed
the hand that was put with such rugged uncongenial purpose into her
white bosom, and he thought that if it struck at him, and failed, it
would strike there, just as soon.

He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door by
which he had entered was behind him, and he stepped back to lock it.

‘Lastly, take my warning! Look to yourself!’ she said, and smiled again.
‘You have been betrayed, as all betrayers are. It has been made known
that you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, I
saw my husband in a carriage in the street to-night!’

‘Strumpet, it’s false!’ cried Carker.

At the moment, the bell rang loudly in the hall. He turned white, as she
held her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound had
come.

‘Hark! do you hear it?’

He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, and
fancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gone
through the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and they
shut upon her.

Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he felt
that he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasioned
by this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for her
overwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almost
instantly.

But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, he
was fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round,
everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but the
room was empty. So, into the drawing-room and dining-room he went,
in succession, with the uncertain steps of a man in a strange place;
looking fearfully about, and prying behind screens and couches; but she
was not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could see
that, at a glance.

All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and those
without were beating at the door. He put his lamp down at a distance,
and going near it, listened. There were several voices talking together:
at least two of them in English; and though the door was thick, and
there was great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whose
voice it was.

He took up his lamp again, and came back quickly through all the rooms,
stopping as he quitted each, and looking round for her, with the light
raised above his head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when the
door, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He went
to it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had dropped a
veil in going through, and shut it in the door.

All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, and
knocking with their hands and feet.

He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; the
strangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his return
from the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, he
would have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonable
time; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal for
any friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even his
heart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged,
and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise and
challenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic through
him. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn’t force
it. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice of
the blind, into the court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stones
were pitiless.

The ringing and knocking still continuing--his panic too--he went back
to the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each more
stubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircase
not far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for his
hat and coat, made the door as secure after him as he could, crept down
lamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it in
a corner, went out where the stars were shining.

CHAPTER 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place

The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street,
had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no
doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase.
Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling
gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off.

In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that
had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height
that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than
meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless.
His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice;
their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved
out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put
as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his
mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood
and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked;
turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had
slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere
creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox’s
hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid.

Some other terror came upon him quite removed from this of being
pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through
the streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable,
associated with a trembling of the ground,--a rush and sweep of
something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to
let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet what
a startling horror it had left behind.

He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where
the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when
he first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should
do. The dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws
might not protect him--the novelty of the feeling that it was strange
and remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the
ruins of his plans--his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or
in Sicily, where men might be hired to assassinate him, he thought, at
any dark street corner--the waywardness of guilt and fear--perhaps some
sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemes--impelled
him to turn back too, and go to England.

‘I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,’ he thought,
‘to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than
abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least
I shall not be alone, without a soul to speak to, or advise with, or
stand by me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.’

He muttered Edith’s name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along,
in the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered
dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as
if in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The
people were a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with
a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house,
bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton, to Paris.

The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving
word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away
again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road,
which seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream.

Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some
such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the
slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came
rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing
but a horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its
remotest verge.

There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the
night; there was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and
there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and
roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely
distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking
two.

He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often
stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses’ bells greeted his
anxious ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing
very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with
a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postillion muffled to the eyes,
checked his four struggling horses at his side.

‘Who goes there! Monsieur?’

‘Yes.’

‘Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.’

‘No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered at
the Post-house?’

‘A thousand devils!--and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.’

‘Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can
travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go
then! Quick!’

‘Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!’ Away, at a gallop, over the black
landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!

The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the
fugitive’s ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within.
Objects flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried,
confusedly lost sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and
cottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting
images that rose up in his mind and vanished as they showed themselves,
a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villainy. Occasionally, a
sigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading along the
plain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible, again
came sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill upon his
blood.

The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses’ heads, jumbled with
the shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand
indistinct shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar
people, stooping at their desks and books, in their remembered
attitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom he was flying from, or
of Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling wheels, of words
that had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making last night
a month ago, a month ago last night--home now distant beyond hope, now
instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and confusion
in his mind, and all around him.--Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop over the
black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking horses
snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon, away in
a frantic triumph on the dark road--whither?

Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells
ring in his ears ‘whither?’ The wheels roar in his ears ‘whither?’ All
the noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows
dance upon the horses’ heads like imps. No stopping now: no slackening!
On, on! Away with him upon the dark road wildly!

He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of
reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for
a minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a
voluptuous compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his
treachery to one who had been true and generous to him, but whose least
proud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for years--for
false and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the object
upon which they fawn and always resent the payment and receipt of homage
that they know to be worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his
mind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so entrapped him and
avenged herself was always there; crude and misshapen schemes of
retaliation upon her, floated in his brain; but nothing was distinct. A
hurry and contradiction pervaded all his thoughts. Even while he was so
busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking, his one constant idea was,
that he would postpone reflection until some indefinite time.

Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his
remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous
he had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a
distance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should
cross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like
a scared thief, from only the poor dupe?

He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the
very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have
his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow--to be within
his own knowledge such a miserable tool--was like being paralysed. With
an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated
himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else.

Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and
again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so
persuaded of this, that he cried out, ‘Stop’ preferring even the loss of
ground to such uncertainty.

The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together,
across the road.

‘The devil!’ cried the driver, looking over his shoulder, ‘what’s the
matter?’

‘Hark! What’s that?’

‘What?’

‘That noise?’

‘Ah Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!’ to a horse who shook his bells
‘What noise?’

‘Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what’s that?’

‘Miscreant with a Pig’s head, stand still!’ to another horse, who bit
another, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. ‘There is
nothing coming.’

‘Nothing.’

‘No, nothing but the day yonder.’

‘You are right, I think. I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!’

The entangled equipage, half hidden in the reeking cloud from the
horses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver, checked unnecessarily
in his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and puts a new lash
to his whip. Then ‘Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!’ Away once more, savagely.

And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in the
carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had
come, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all the
heavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine
on cornfields and vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from little
temporary huts by heaps of stones upon the road, were, here and there,
at work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there were
peasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at the
doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then there
was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast
outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense,
old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded,
and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to
the taper tips of the extinguishers upon the turrets.

Gathered up moodily in a corner of the carriage, and only intent on
going fast--except when he stood up, for a mile together, and looked
back; which he would do whenever there was a piece of open country--he
went on, still postponing thought indefinitely, and still always
tormented with thinking to no purpose.

Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant
apprehension of being overtaken, or met--for he was groundlessly
afraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was
going--oppressed him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread that
had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The
monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony
of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret,
and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a
vision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment.

It was a vision of long roads, that stretched away to an horizon, always
receding and never gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, where
faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed windows, and where rows of
mudbespattered cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long narrow
streets, butting and lowing, and receiving blows on their blunt heads
from bludgeons that might have beaten them in; of bridges, crosses,
churches, postyards, new horses being put in against their wills, and
the horses of the last stage reeking, panting, and laying their drooping
heads together dolefully at stable doors; of little cemeteries with
black crosses settled sideways in the graves, and withered wreaths upon
them dropping away; again of long, long roads, dragging themselves out,
up hill and down, to the treacherous horizon.

Of morning, noon, and sunset; night, and the rising of an early moon.
Of long roads temporarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached; of
battering and clattering over it, and looking up, among house-roofs, at
a great church-tower; of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking
draughts of wine that had no cheering influence; of coming forth afoot,
among a host of beggars--blind men with quivering eyelids, led by
old women holding candles to their faces; idiot girls; the lame, the
epileptic, and the palsied--of passing through the clamour, and looking
from his seat at the upturned countenances and outstretched hands,
with a hurried dread of recognising some pursuer pressing forward--of
galloping away again, upon the long, long road, gathered up, dull and
stunned, in his corner, or rising to see where the moon shone faintly on
a patch of the same endless road miles away, or looking back to see who
followed.

Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with unclosed eyes, and
springing up with a start, and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice. Of
cursing himself for being there, for having fled, for having let her
go, for not having confronted and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrel
with the whole world, but chiefly with himself. Of blighting everything
with his black mood as he was carried on and away.

It was a fevered vision of things past and present all confounded
together; of his life and journey blended into one. Of being madly
hurried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old scenes starting up among
the novelties through which he travelled. Of musing and brooding over
what was past and distant, and seeming to take no notice of the actual
objects he encountered, but with a wearisome exhausting consciousness of
being bewildered by them, and having their images all crowded in his hot
brain after they were gone.

A vision of change upon change, and still the same monotony of bells and
wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest. Of town and country, postyards,
horses, drivers, hill and valley, light and darkness, road and pavement,
height and hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same monotony of
bells and wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest. A vision of tending
on at last, towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and sweeping
round, by old cathedrals, and dashing through small towns and villages,
less thinly scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting shrouded in
his corner, with his cloak up to his face, as people passing by looked
at him.

Of rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with
thinking; of being unable to reckon up the hours he had been upon the
road, or to comprehend the points of time and place in his journey. Of
being parched and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on, in spite of all,
as if he could not stop, and coming into Paris, where the turbid river
held its swift course undisturbed, between two brawling streams of life
and motion.

A troubled vision, then, of bridges, quays, interminable streets; of
wine-shops, water-carriers, great crowds of people, soldiers, coaches,
military drums, arcades. Of the monotony of bells and wheels and horses’
feet being at length lost in the universal din and uproar. Of the
gradual subsidence of that noise as he passed out in another carriage
by a different barrier from that by which he had entered. Of the
restoration, as he travelled on towards the seacoast, of the monotony of
bells and wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest.

Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long roads again, and dead of
night, and feeble lights in windows by the roadside; and still the old
monotony of bells and wheels, and horses’ feet, and no rest. Of dawn,
and daybreak, and the rising of the sun. Of tolling slowly up a hill,
and feeling on its top the fresh sea-breeze; and seeing the morning
light upon the edges of the distant waves. Of coming down into a harbour
when the tide was at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float on, and
glad women and children waiting for them. Of nets and seamen’s clothes
spread out to dry upon the shore; of busy sailors, and their voices high
among ships’ masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of the
water, and the universal sparkling.

Of receding from the coast, and looking back upon it from the deck when
it was a haze upon the water, with here and there a little opening of
bright land where the Sun struck. Of the swell, and flash, and murmur of
the calm sea. Of another grey line on the ocean, on the vessel’s
track, fast growing clearer and higher. Of cliffs and buildings, and
a windmill, and a church, becoming more and more visible upon it. Of
steaming on at last into smooth water, and mooring to a pier
whence groups of people looked down, greeting friends on board. Of
disembarking, passing among them quickly, shunning every one; and of
being at last again in England.

He had thought, in his dream, of going down into a remote country-place
he knew, and lying quiet there, while he secretly informed himself of
what transpired, and determined how to act, Still in the same stunned
condition, he remembered a certain station on the railway, where he
would have to branch off to his place of destination, and where there
was a quiet Inn. Here, he indistinctly resolved to tarry and rest.

With this purpose he slunk into a railway carriage as quickly as he
could, and lying there wrapped in his cloak as if he were asleep,
was soon borne far away from the sea, and deep into the inland green.
Arrived at his destination he looked out, and surveyed it carefully. He
was not mistaken in his impression of the place. It was a retired spot,
on the borders of a little wood. Only one house, newly-built or altered
for the purpose, stood there, surrounded by its neat garden; the small
town that was nearest, was some miles away. Here he alighted then; and
going straight into the tavern, unobserved by anyone, secured two rooms
upstairs communicating with each other, and sufficiently retired.

His object was to rest, and recover the command of himself, and the
balance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and rage--so that, as he
walked about his room, he ground his teeth--had complete possession of
him. His thoughts, not to be stopped or directed, still wandered where
they would, and dragged him after them. He was stupefied, and he was
wearied to death.

But, as if there were a curse upon him that he should never rest again,
his drowsy senses would not lose their consciousness. He had no more
influence with them, in this regard, than if they had been another
man’s. It was not that they forced him to take note of present sounds
and objects, but that they would not be diverted from the whole hurried
vision of his journey. It was constantly before him all at once. She
stood there, with her dark disdainful eyes again upon him; and he was
riding on nevertheless, through town and country, light and darkness,
wet weather and dry, over road and pavement, hill and valley, height
and hollow, jaded and scared by the monotony of bells and wheels, and
horses’ feet, and no rest.

‘What day is this?’ he asked of the waiter, who was making preparations
for his dinner.

‘Day, Sir?’

‘Is it Wednesday?’

‘Wednesday, Sir? No, Sir. Thursday, Sir.’

‘I forgot. How goes the time? My watch is unwound.’

‘Wants a few minutes of five o’clock, Sir. Been travelling a long time,
Sir, perhaps?’

‘Yes’

‘By rail, Sir?’

‘Yes’

‘Very confusing, Sir. Not much in the habit of travelling by rail
myself, Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so.’

‘Do many gentlemen come here?

‘Pretty well, Sir, in general. Nobody here at present. Rather slack just
now, Sir. Everything is slack, Sir.’

He made no answer; but had risen into a sitting posture on the sofa
where he had been lying, and leaned forward with an arm on each knee,
staring at the ground. He could not master his own attention for a
minute together. It rushed away where it would, but it never, for an
instant, lost itself in sleep.

He drank a quantity of wine after dinner, in vain. No such artificial
means would bring sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoherent,
dragged him more unmercifully after them--as if a wretch, condemned to
such expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion, and
no rest.

How long he sat, drinking and brooding, and being dragged in imagination
hither and thither, no one could have told less correctly than he. But
he knew that he had been sitting a long time by candle-light, when he
started up and listened, in a sudden terror.

For now, indeed, it was no fancy. The ground shook, the house rattled,
the fierce impetuous rush was in the air! He felt it come up, and go
darting by; and even when he had hurried to the window, and saw what it
was, he stood, shrinking from it, as if it were not safe to look.

A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering along so smoothly, tracked
through the distant valley by a glare of light and lurid smoke, and
gone! He felt as if he had been plucked out of its path, and saved from
being torn asunder. It made him shrink and shudder even now, when its
faintest hum was hushed, and when the lines of iron road he could trace
in the moonlight, running to a point, were as empty and as silent as a
desert.

Unable to rest, and irresistibly attracted--or he thought so--to this
road, he went out, and lounged on the brink of it, marking the way the
train had gone, by the yet smoking cinders that were lying in its
track. After a lounge of some half hour in the direction by which it had
disappeared, he turned and walked the other way--still keeping to the
brink of the road--past the inn garden, and a long way down; looking
curiously at the bridges, signals, lamps, and wondering when another
Devil would come by.

A trembling of the ground, and quick vibration in his ears; a distant
shriek; a dull light advancing, quickly changed to two red eyes, and
a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an irresistible bearing on of a
great roaring and dilating mass; a high wind, and a rattle--another come
and gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save himself!

He waited for another, and for another. He walked back to his former
point, and back again to that, and still, through the wearisome vision
of his journey, looked for these approaching monsters. He loitered about
the station, waiting until one should stay to call there; and when one
did, and was detached for water, he stood parallel with it, watching its
heavy wheels and brazen front, and thinking what a cruel power and might
it had. Ugh! To see the great wheels slowly turning, and to think of
being run down and crushed!

Disordered with wine and want of rest--that want which nothing, although
he was so weary, would appease--these ideas and objects assumed a
diseased importance in his thoughts. When he went back to his room,
which was not until near midnight, they still haunted him, and he sat
listening for the coming of another.

So in his bed, whither he repaired with no hope of sleep. He still lay
listening; and when he felt the trembling and vibration, got up and went
to the window, to watch (as he could from its position) the dull light
changing to the two red eyes, and the fierce fire dropping glowing
coals, and the rush of the giant as it fled past, and the track of glare
and smoke along the valley. Then he would glance in the direction by
which he intended to depart at sunrise, as there was no rest for him
there; and would lie down again, to be troubled by the vision of his
journey, and the old monotony of bells and wheels and horses’ feet,
until another came. This lasted all night. So far from resuming the
mastery of himself, he seemed, if possible, to lose it more and more, as
the night crept on. When the dawn appeared, he was still tormented with
thinking, still postponing thought until he should be in a better state;
the past, present, and future all floated confusedly before him, and he
had lost all power of looking steadily at any one of them.

‘At what time,’ he asked the man who had waited on him over-night, now
entering with a candle, ‘do I leave here, did you say?’

‘About a quarter after four, Sir. Express comes through at four,
Sir.--It don’t stop.’

He passed his hand across his throbbing head, and looked at his watch.
Nearly half-past three.

‘Nobody going with you, Sir, probably,’ observed the man. ‘Two gentlemen
here, Sir, but they’re waiting for the train to London.’

‘I thought you said there was nobody here,’ said Carker, turning upon
him with the ghost of his old smile, when he was angry or suspicious.

‘Not then, sir. Two gentlemen came in the night by the short train that
stops here, Sir. Warm water, Sir?’

‘No; and take away the candle. There’s day enough for me.’

Having thrown himself upon the bed, half-dressed he was at the window as
the man left the room. The cold light of morning had succeeded to night
and there was already, in the sky, the red suffusion of the coming sun.
He bathed his head and face with water--there was no cooling influence
in it for him--hurriedly put on his clothes, paid what he owed, and went
out.

The air struck chill and comfortless as it breathed upon him. There was
a heavy dew; and, hot as he was, it made him shiver. After a glance
at the place where he had walked last night, and at the signal-lights
burning in the morning, and bereft of their significance, he turned to
where the sun was rising, and beheld it, in its glory, as it broke upon
the scene.

So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so divinely solemn. As he cast
his faded eyes upon it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved
by all the wrong and wickedness on which its beams had shone since the
beginning of the world, who shall say that some weak sense of virtue
upon Earth, and its in Heaven, did not manifest itself, even to him?
If ever he remembered sister or brother with a touch of tenderness and
remorse, who shall say it was not then?

He needed some such touch then. Death was on him. He was marked off--the
living world, and going down into his grave.

He paid the money for his journey to the country-place he had thought
of; and was walking to and fro, alone, looking along the lines of iron,
across the valley in one direction, and towards a dark bridge near at
hand in the other; when, turning in his walk, where it was bounded by
one end of the wooden stage on which he paced up and down, he saw the
man from whom he had fled, emerging from the door by which he himself
had entered. And their eyes met.

In the quick unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped on
to the road below him. But recovering his feet immediately, he stepped
back a pace or two upon that road, to interpose some wider space between
them, and looked at his pursuer, breathing short and quick.

He heard a shout--another--saw the face change from its vindictive
passion to a faint sickness and terror--felt the earth tremble--knew in
a moment that the rush was come--uttered a shriek--looked round--saw the
red eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon him--was beaten
down, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that spun him
round and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his stream
of life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the
air.

When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, he
saw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and
still, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some
dogs away that sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up, with a
train of ashes.

CHAPTER 56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted

The Midshipman was all alive. Mr Toots and Susan had arrived at last.
Susan had run upstairs like a young woman bereft of her senses, and Mr
Toots and the Chicken had gone into the Parlour.

‘Oh my own pretty darling sweet Miss Floy!’ cried the Nipper, running
into Florence’s room, ‘to think that it should come to this and I should
find you here my own dear dove with nobody to wait upon you and no home
to call your own but never never will I go away again Miss Floy for
though I may not gather moss I’m not a rolling stone nor is my heart a
stone or else it wouldn’t bust as it is busting now oh dear oh dear!’

Pouring out these words, without the faintest indication of a stop,
of any sort, Miss Nipper, on her knees beside her mistress, hugged her
close.

‘Oh love!’ cried Susan, ‘I know all that’s past I know it all my tender
pet and I’m a choking give me air!’

‘Susan, dear good Susan!’ said Florence.

‘Oh bless her! I that was her little maid when she was a little child!
and is she really, really truly going to be married?’ exclaimed Susan,
in a burst of pain and pleasure, pride and grief, and Heaven knows how
many other conflicting feelings.

‘Who told you so?’ said Florence.

‘Oh gracious me! that innocentest creetur Toots,’ returned Susan
hysterically. ‘I knew he must be right my dear, because he took on so.
He’s the devotedest and innocentest infant! And is my darling,’ pursued
Susan, with another close embrace and burst of tears, ‘really really
going to be married!’

The mixture of compassion, pleasure, tenderness, protection, and regret
with which the Nipper constantly recurred to this subject, and at every
such once, raised her head to look in the young face and kiss it, and
then laid her head again upon her mistress’s shoulder, caressing her and
sobbing, was as womanly and good a thing, in its way, as ever was seen
in the world.

‘There, there!’ said the soothing voice of Florence presently. ‘Now
you’re quite yourself, dear Susan!’

Miss Nipper, sitting down upon the floor, at her mistress’s feet,
laughing and sobbing, holding her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes with
one hand, and patting Diogenes with the other as he licked her face,
confessed to being more composed, and laughed and cried a little more in
proof of it.

‘I-I-I never did see such a creetur as that Toots,’ said Susan, ‘in all
my born days never!’

‘So kind,’ suggested Florence.

‘And so comic!’ Susan sobbed. ‘The way he’s been going on inside with me
with that disrespectable Chicken on the box!’

‘About what, Susan?’ inquired Florence, timidly.

‘Oh about Lieutenant Walters, and Captain Gills, and you my dear Miss
Floy, and the silent tomb,’ said Susan.

‘The silent tomb!’ repeated Florence.

‘He says,’ here Susan burst into a violent hysterical laugh, ‘that he’ll
go down into it now immediately and quite comfortable, but bless your
heart my dear Miss Floy he won’t, he’s a great deal too happy in seeing
other people happy for that, he may not be a Solomon,’ pursued the
Nipper, with her usual volubility, ‘nor do I say he is but this I do
say a less selfish human creature human nature never knew!’

Miss Nipper being still hysterical, laughed immoderately after making
this energetic declaration, and then informed Florence that he was
waiting below to see her; which would be a rich repayment for the
trouble he had had in his late expedition.

Florence entreated Susan to beg of Mr Toots as a favour that she might
have the pleasure of thanking him for his kindness; and Susan, in a few
moments, produced that young gentleman, still very much dishevelled in
appearance, and stammering exceedingly.

‘Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots. ‘To be again permitted to--to--gaze--at
least, not to gaze, but--I don’t exactly know what I was going to say,
but it’s of no consequence.’

‘I have to thank you so often,’ returned Florence, giving him both her
hands, with all her innocent gratitude beaming in her face, ‘that I have
no words left, and don’t know how to do it.’

‘Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, in an awful voice, ‘if it was possible
that you could, consistently with your angelic nature, Curse me, you
would--if I may be allowed to say so--floor me infinitely less, than by
these undeserved expressions of kindness Their effect upon me--is--but,’
said Mr Toots, abruptly, ‘this is a digression, and of no consequence at
all.’

As there seemed to be no means of replying to this, but by thanking him
again, Florence thanked him again.

‘I could wish,’ said Mr Toots, ‘to take this opportunity, Miss Dombey,
if I might, of entering into a word of explanation. I should have had
the pleasure of--of returning with Susan at an earlier period; but, in
the first place, we didn’t know the name of the relation to whose house
she had gone, and, in the second, as she had left that relation’s and
gone to another at a distance, I think that scarcely anything short of
the sagacity of the Chicken, would have found her out in the time.’

Florence was sure of it.

‘This, however,’ said Mr Toots, ‘is not the point. The company of Susan
has been, I assure you, Miss Dombey, a consolation and satisfaction
to me, in my state of mind, more easily conceived than described. The
journey has been its own reward. That, however, still, is not the
point. Miss Dombey, I have before observed that I know I am not what is
considered a quick person. I am perfectly aware of that. I don’t think
anybody could be better acquainted with his own--if it was not too
strong an expression, I should say with the thickness of his own
head--than myself. But, Miss Dombey, I do, notwithstanding, perceive the
state of--of things--with Lieutenant Walters. Whatever agony that state
of things may have caused me (which is of no consequence at all), I
am bound to say, that Lieutenant Walters is a person who appears to be
worthy of the blessing that has fallen on his--on his brow. May he
wear it long, and appreciate it, as a very different, and very unworthy
individual, that it is of no consequence to name, would have done! That,
however, still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, Captain Gills is a friend
of mine; and during the interval that is now elapsing, I believe it
would afford Captain Gills pleasure to see me occasionally coming
backwards and forwards here. It would afford me pleasure so to come. But
I cannot forget that I once committed myself, fatally, at the corner of
the Square at Brighton; and if my presence will be, in the least degree,
unpleasant to you, I only ask you to name it to me now, and assure you
that I shall perfectly understand you. I shall not consider it at all
unkind, and shall only be too delighted and happy to be honoured with
your confidence.’

‘Mr Toots,’ returned Florence, ‘if you, who are so old and true a friend
of mine, were to stay away from this house now, you would make me very
unhappy. It can never, never, give me any feeling but pleasure to see
you.

‘Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, taking out his pocket-handkerchief, ‘if I
shed a tear, it is a tear of joy. It is of no consequence, and I am very
much obliged to you. I may be allowed to remark, after what you have
so kindly said, that it is not my intention to neglect my person any
longer.’

Florence received this intimation with the prettiest expression of
perplexity possible.

‘I mean,’ said Mr Toots, ‘that I shall consider it my duty as a
fellow-creature generally, until I am claimed by the silent tomb, to
make the best of myself, and to--to have my boots as brightly polished,
as--as--circumstances will admit of. This is the last time, Miss Dombey,
of my intruding any observation of a private and personal nature. I
thank you very much indeed. If I am not, in a general way, as sensible
as my friends could wish me to be, or as I could wish myself, I
really am, upon my word and honour, particularly sensible of what is
considerate and kind. I feel,’ said Mr Toots, in an impassioned tone,
‘as if I could express my feelings, at the present moment, in a most
remarkable manner, if--if--I could only get a start.’

Appearing not to get it, after waiting a minute or two to see if it
would come, Mr Toots took a hasty leave, and went below to seek the
Captain, whom he found in the shop.

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘what is now to take place between
us, takes place under the sacred seal of confidence. It is the sequel,
Captain Gills, of what has taken place between myself and Miss Dombey,
upstairs.’

‘Alow and aloft, eh, my lad?’ murmured the Captain.

‘Exactly so, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, whose fervour of
acquiescence was greatly heightened by his entire ignorance of the
Captain’s meaning. ‘Miss Dombey, I believe, Captain Gills, is to be
shortly united to Lieutenant Walters?’

‘Why, ay, my lad. We’re all shipmets here,--Wal’r and sweet--heart will
be jined together in the house of bondage, as soon as the askings is
over,’ whispered Captain Cuttle, in his ear.

‘The askings, Captain Gills!’ repeated Mr Toots.

‘In the church, down yonder,’ said the Captain, pointing his thumb over
his shoulder.

‘Oh! Yes!’ returned Mr Toots.

‘And then,’ said the Captain, in his hoarse whisper, and tapping Mr
Toots on the chest with the back of his hand, and falling from him with
a look of infinite admiration, ‘what follers? That there pretty creetur,
as delicately brought up as a foreign bird, goes away upon the roaring
main with Wal’r on a woyage to China!’

‘Lord, Captain Gills!’ said Mr Toots.

‘Ay!’ nodded the Captain. ‘The ship as took him up, when he was wrecked
in the hurricane that had drove her clean out of her course, was a
China trader, and Wal’r made the woyage, and got into favour, aboard
and ashore--being as smart and good a lad as ever stepped--and so, the
supercargo dying at Canton, he got made (having acted as clerk afore),
and now he’s supercargo aboard another ship, same owners. And so, you
see,’ repeated the Captain, thoughtfully, ‘the pretty creetur goes away
upon the roaring main with Wal’r, on a woyage to China.’

Mr Toots and Captain Cuttle heaved a sigh in concert. ‘What then?’ said
the Captain. ‘She loves him true. He loves her true. Them as should have
loved and tended of her, treated of her like the beasts as perish. When
she, cast out of home, come here to me, and dropped upon them planks,
her wownded heart was broke. I know it. I, Ed’ard Cuttle, see it.
There’s nowt but true, kind, steady love, as can ever piece it up again.
If so be I didn’t know that, and didn’t know as Wal’r was her true love,
brother, and she his, I’d have these here blue arms and legs chopped
off, afore I’d let her go. But I know it, and what then! Why, then, I
say, Heaven go with ‘em both, and so it will! Amen!’

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘let me have the pleasure of shaking
hands You’ve a way of saying things, that gives me an agreeable warmth,
all up my back. I say Amen. You are aware, Captain Gills, that I, too,
have adored Miss Dombey.’

‘Cheer up!’ said the Captain, laying his hand on Mr Toots’s shoulder.
‘Stand by, boy!’

‘It is my intention, Captain Gills,’ returned the spirited Mr Toots,
‘to cheer up. Also to standby, as much as possible. When the silent tomb
shall yawn, Captain Gills, I shall be ready for burial; not before. But
not being certain, just at present, of my power over myself, what I wish
to say to you, and what I shall take it as a particular favour if you
will mention to Lieutenant Walters, is as follows.’

‘Is as follers,’ echoed the Captain. ‘Steady!’

‘Miss Dombey being so inexpressably kind,’ continued Mr Toots with
watery eyes, ‘as to say that my presence is the reverse of disagreeable
to her, and you and everybody here being no less forbearing and
tolerant towards one who--who certainly,’ said Mr Toots, with momentary
dejection, ‘would appear to have been born by mistake, I shall come
backwards and forwards of an evening, during the short time we can all
be together. But what I ask is this. If, at any moment, I find that
I cannot endure the contemplation of Lieutenant Walters’s bliss, and
should rush out, I hope, Captain Gills, that you and he will both
consider it as my misfortune and not my fault, or the want of inward
conflict. That you’ll feel convinced I bear no malice to any living
creature-least of all to Lieutenant Walters himself--and that you’ll
casually remark that I have gone out for a walk, or probably to see what
o’clock it is by the Royal Exchange. Captain Gills, if you could enter
into this arrangement, and could answer for Lieutenant Walters, it would
be a relief to my feelings that I should think cheap at the sacrifice of
a considerable portion of my property.’

‘My lad,’ returned the Captain, ‘say no more. There ain’t a colour you
can run up, as won’t be made out, and answered to, by Wal’r and self.’

‘Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots, ‘my mind is greatly relieved. I wish to
preserve the good opinion of all here. I--I--mean well, upon my honour,
however badly I may show it. You know,’ said Mr Toots, ‘it’s as exactly
as Burgess and Co. wished to oblige a customer with a most extraordinary
pair of trousers, and could not cut out what they had in their minds.’

With this apposite illustration, of which he seemed a little Proud, Mr
Toots gave Captain Cuttle his blessing and departed.

The honest Captain, with his Heart’s Delight in the house, and Susan
tending her, was a beaming and a happy man. As the days flew by, he
grew more beaming and more happy, every day. After some conferences with
Susan (for whose wisdom the Captain had a profound respect, and whose
valiant precipitation of herself on Mrs MacStinger he could never
forget), he proposed to Florence that the daughter of the elderly lady
who usually sat under the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, should,
for prudential reasons and considerations of privacy, be superseded in
the temporary discharge of the household duties, by someone who was not
unknown to them, and in whom they could safely confide. Susan, being
present, then named, in furtherance of a suggestion she had previously
offered to the Captain, Mrs Richards. Florence brightened at the name.
And Susan, setting off that very afternoon to the Toodle domicile, to
sound Mrs Richards, returned in triumph the same evening, accompanied by
the identical rosy-cheeked apple-faced Polly, whose demonstrations, when
brought into Florence’s presence, were hardly less affectionate than
those of Susan Nipper herself.

This piece of generalship accomplished; from which the Captain derived
uncommon satisfaction, as he did, indeed, from everything else that was
done, whatever it happened to be; Florence had next to prepare Susan for
their approaching separation. This was a much more difficult task, as
Miss Nipper was of a resolute disposition, and had fully made up her
mind that she had come back never to be parted from her old mistress any
more.

‘As to wages dear Miss Floy,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t hint and wrong me
so as think of naming them, for I’ve put money by and wouldn’t sell my
love and duty at a time like this even if the Savings’ Banks and me were
total strangers or the Banks were broke to pieces, but you’ve never been
without me darling from the time your poor dear Ma was took away, and
though I’m nothing to be boasted of you’re used to me and oh my own dear
mistress through so many years don’t think of going anywhere without me,
for it mustn’t and can’t be!’

‘Dear Susan, I am going on a long, long voyage.’

‘Well Miss Floy, and what of that? the more you’ll want me. Lengths of
voyages ain’t an object in my eyes, thank God!’ said the impetuous Susan
Nipper.

‘But, Susan, I am going with Walter, and I would go with Walter
anywhere--everywhere! Walter is poor, and I am very poor, and I must
learn, now, both to help myself, and help him.’

‘Dear Miss Floy!’ cried Susan, bursting out afresh, and shaking her head
violently, ‘it’s nothing new to you to help yourself and others too
and be the patientest and truest of noble hearts, but let me talk to Mr
Walter Gay and settle it with him, for suffer you to go away across the
world alone I cannot, and I won’t.’

‘Alone, Susan?’ returned Florence. ‘Alone? and Walter taking me with
him!’ Ah, what a bright, amazed, enraptured smile was on her face!--He
should have seen it. ‘I am sure you will not speak to Walter if I ask
you not,’ she added tenderly; ‘and pray don’t, dear.’

Susan sobbed ‘Why not, Miss Floy?’

‘Because,’ said Florence, ‘I am going to be his wife, to give him up my
whole heart, and to live with him and die with him. He might think, if
you said to him what you have said to me, that I am afraid of what is
before me, or that you have some cause to be afraid for me. Why, Susan,
dear, I love him!’

Miss Nipper was so much affected by the quiet fervour of these words,
and the simple, heartfelt, all-pervading earnestness expressed in them,
and making the speaker’s face more beautiful and pure than ever, that
she could only cling to her again, crying. Was her little mistress
really, really going to be married, and pitying, caressing, and
protecting her, as she had done before.

But the Nipper, though susceptible of womanly weaknesses, was almost as
capable of putting constraint upon herself as of attacking the
redoubtable MacStinger. From that time, she never returned to the
subject, but was always cheerful, active, bustling, and hopeful. She did,
indeed, inform Mr Toots privately, that she was only ‘keeping up’ for the
time, and that when it was all over, and Miss Dombey was gone, she might
be expected to become a spectacle distressful; and Mr Toots did also
express that it was his case too, and that they would mingle their tears
together; but she never otherwise indulged her private feelings in the
presence of Florence or within the precincts of the Midshipman.

Limited and plain as Florence’s wardrobe was--what a contrast to that
prepared for the last marriage in which she had taken part!--there was a
good deal to do in getting it ready, and Susan Nipper worked away at
her side, all day, with the concentrated zeal of fifty sempstresses. The
wonderful contributions Captain Cuttle would have made to this branch
of the outfit, if he had been permitted--as pink parasols, tinted
silk stockings, blue shoes, and other articles no less necessary on
shipboard--would occupy some space in the recital. He was induced,
however, by various fraudulent representations, to limit his
contributions to a work-box and dressing case, of each of which he
purchased the very largest specimen that could be got for money. For
ten days or a fortnight afterwards, he generally sat, during the
greater part of the day, gazing at these boxes; divided between extreme
admiration of them, and dejected misgivings that they were not gorgeous
enough, and frequently diving out into the street to purchase some
wild article that he deemed necessary to their completeness. But his
master-stroke was, the bearing of them both off, suddenly, one morning,
and getting the two words FLORENCE GAY engraved upon a brass heart
inlaid over the lid of each. After this, he smoked four pipes
successively in the little parlour by himself, and was discovered
chuckling, at the expiration of as many hours.

Walter was busy and away all day, but came there every morning early
to see Florence, and always passed the evening with her. Florence never
left her high rooms but to steal downstairs to wait for him when it was
his time to come, or, sheltered by his proud, encircling arm, to bear
him company to the door again, and sometimes peep into the street. In
the twilight they were always together. Oh blessed time! Oh wandering
heart at rest! Oh deep, exhaustless, mighty well of love, in which so
much was sunk!

The cruel mark was on her bosom yet. It rose against her father with the
breath she drew, it lay between her and her lover when he pressed her to
his heart. But she forgot it. In the beating of that heart for her, and
in the beating of her own for him, all harsher music was unheard, all
stern unloving hearts forgotten. Fragile and delicate she was, but with
a might of love within her that could, and did, create a world to fly
to, and to rest in, out of his one image.

How often did the great house, and the old days, come before her in the
twilight time, when she was sheltered by the arm, so proud, so fond,
and, creeping closer to him, shrunk within it at the recollection! How
often, from remembering the night when she went down to that room and
met the never-to-be forgotten look, did she raise her eyes to those that
watched her with such loving earnestness, and weep with happiness in
such a refuge! The more she clung to it, the more the dear dead child
was in her thoughts: but as if the last time she had seen her father,
had been when he was sleeping and she kissed his face, she always left
him so, and never, in her fancy, passed that hour.

‘Walter, dear,’ said Florence, one evening, when it was almost dark. ‘Do
you know what I have been thinking to-day?’

‘Thinking how the time is flying on, and how soon we shall be upon the
sea, sweet Florence?’

‘I don’t mean that, Walter, though I think of that too. I have been
thinking what a charge I am to you.’

‘A precious, sacred charge, dear heart! Why, I think that sometimes.’

‘You are laughing, Walter. I know that’s much more in your thoughts than
mine. But I mean a cost.

‘A cost, my own?’

‘In money, dear. All these preparations that Susan and I are so busy
with--I have been able to purchase very little for myself. You were poor
before. But how much poorer I shall make you, Walter!’

‘And how much richer, Florence!’

Florence laughed, and shook her head.

‘Besides,’ said Walter, ‘long ago--before I went to sea--I had a little
purse presented to me, dearest, which had money in it.’

‘Ah!’ returned Florence, laughing sorrowfully, ‘very little! very
little, Walter! But, you must not think,’ and here she laid her light
hand on his shoulder, and looked into his face, ‘that I regret to be
this burden on you. No, dear love, I am glad of it. I am happy in it. I
wouldn’t have it otherwise for all the world!’

‘Nor I, indeed, dear Florence.’

‘Ay! but, Walter, you can never feel it as I do. I am so proud of you!
It makes my heart swell with such delight to know that those who speak
of you must say you married a poor disowned girl, who had taken shelter
here; who had no other home, no other friends; who had nothing--nothing!
Oh, Walter, if I could have brought you millions, I never could have
been so happy for your sake, as I am!’

‘And you, dear Florence? are you nothing?’ he returned.

‘No, nothing, Walter. Nothing but your wife.’ The light hand stole about
his neck, and the voice came nearer--nearer. ‘I am nothing any more,
that is not you. I have no earthly hope any more, that is not you. I
have nothing dear to me any more, that is not you.’

Oh! well might Mr Toots leave the little company that evening, and twice
go out to correct his watch by the Royal Exchange, and once to keep an
appointment with a banker which he suddenly remembered, and once to take
a little turn to Aldgate Pump and back!

But before he went upon these expeditions, or indeed before he came, and
before lights were brought, Walter said:

‘Florence, love, the lading of our ship is nearly finished, and probably
on the very day of our marriage she will drop down the river. Shall we
go away that morning, and stay in Kent until we go on board at Gravesend
within a week?’

‘If you please, Walter. I shall be happy anywhere. But--’

‘Yes, my life?’

‘You know,’ said Florence, ‘that we shall have no marriage party, and
that nobody will distinguish us by our dress from other people. As we
leave the same day, will you--will you take me somewhere that morning,
Walter--early--before we go to church?’

Walter seemed to understand her, as so true a lover so truly loved
should, and confirmed his ready promise with a kiss--with more than one
perhaps, or two or three, or five or six; and in the grave, peaceful
evening, Florence was very happy.

Then into the quiet room came Susan Nipper and the candles; shortly
afterwards, the tea, the Captain, and the excursive Mr Toots, who, as
above mentioned, was frequently on the move afterwards, and passed but a
restless evening. This, however, was not his habit: for he generally got
on very well, by dint of playing at cribbage with the Captain under the
advice and guidance of Miss Nipper, and distracting his mind with
the calculations incidental to the game; which he found to be a very
effectual means of utterly confounding himself.

The Captain’s visage on these occasions presented one of the finest
examples of combination and succession of expression ever observed. His
instinctive delicacy and his chivalrous feeling towards Florence,
taught him that it was not a time for any boisterous jollity, or violent
display of satisfaction; floating reminiscences of Lovely Peg, on
the other hand, were constantly struggling for a vent, and urging the
Captain to commit himself by some irreparable demonstration. Anon, his
admiration of Florence and Walter--well-matched, truly, and full of
grace and interest in their youth, and love, and good looks, as they
sat apart--would take such complete possession of him, that he would lay
down his cards, and beam upon them, dabbing his head all over with his
pocket-handkerchief; until warned, perhaps, by the sudden rushing forth
of Mr Toots, that he had unconsciously been very instrumental, indeed,
in making that gentleman miserable. This reflection would make the
Captain profoundly melancholy, until the return of Mr Toots; when he
would fall to his cards again, with many side winks and nods, and polite
waves of his hook at Miss Nipper, importing that he wasn’t going to do
so any more. The state that ensued on this, was, perhaps, his best; for
then, endeavouring to discharge all expression from his face, he would
sit staring round the room, with all these expressions conveyed into
it at once, and each wrestling with the other. Delighted admiration of
Florence and Walter always overthrew the rest, and remained victorious
and undisguised, unless Mr Toots made another rush into the air, and
then the Captain would sit, like a remorseful culprit, until he came
back again, occasionally calling upon himself, in a low reproachful
voice, to ‘Stand by!’ or growling some remonstrance to ‘Ed’ard Cuttle,
my lad,’ on the want of caution observable in his behaviour.

One of Mr Toots’s hardest trials, however, was of his own seeking.
On the approach of the Sunday which was to witness the last of those
askings in church of which the Captain had spoken, Mr Toots thus stated
his feelings to Susan Nipper.

‘Susan,’ said Mr Toots, ‘I am drawn towards the building. The words
which cut me off from Miss Dombey for ever, will strike upon my ears
like a knell you know, but upon my word and honour, I feel that I must
hear them. Therefore,’ said Mr Toots, ‘will you accompany me to-morrow,
to the sacred edifice?’

Miss Nipper expressed her readiness to do so, if that would be any
satisfaction to Mr Toots, but besought him to abandon his idea of going.

‘Susan,’ returned Mr Toots, with much solemnity, ‘before my whiskers
began to be observed by anybody but myself, I adored Miss Dombey. While
yet a victim to the thraldom of Blimber, I adored Miss Dombey. When I
could no longer be kept out of my property, in a legal point of view,
and--and accordingly came into it--I adored Miss Dombey. The banns which
consign her to Lieutenant Walters, and me to--to Gloom, you know,’ said
Mr Toots, after hesitating for a strong expression, ‘may be dreadful,
will be dreadful; but I feel that I should wish to hear them spoken. I
feel that I should wish to know that the ground was certainly cut from
under me, and that I hadn’t a hope to cherish, or a--or a leg, in short,
to--to go upon.’

Susan Nipper could only commiserate Mr Toots’s unfortunate condition,
and agree, under these circumstances, to accompany him; which she did
next morning.

The church Walter had chosen for the purpose, was a mouldy old church
in a yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets and courts, with a
little burying-ground round it, and itself buried in a kind of vault,
formed by the neighbouring houses, and paved with echoing stones. It was
a great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken pews, among which about
a score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while the clergyman’s
voice drowsily resounded through the emptiness, and the organ
rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the colic, for want of a
congregation to keep the wind and damp out. But so far was this city
church from languishing for the company of other churches, that spires
were clustered round it, as the masts of shipping cluster on the river.
It would have been hard to count them from its steeple-top, they were so
many. In almost every yard and blind-place near, there was a church. The
confusion of bells when Susan and Mr Toots betook themselves towards it
on the Sunday morning, was deafening. There were twenty churches close
together, clamouring for people to come in.

The two stray sheep in question were penned by a beadle in a commodious
pew, and, being early, sat for some time counting the congregation,
listening to the disappointed bell high up in the tower, or looking at
a shabby little old man in the porch behind the screen, who was ringing
the same, like the Bull in Cock Robin, with his foot in a stirrup. Mr
Toots, after a lengthened survey of the large books on the reading-desk,
whispered Miss Nipper that he wondered where the banns were kept, but
that young lady merely shook her head and frowned; repelling for the
time all approaches of a temporal nature.

Mr Toots, however, appearing unable to keep his thoughts from the banns,
was evidently looking out for them during the whole preliminary portion
of the service. As the time for reading them approached, the poor
young gentleman manifested great anxiety and trepidation, which was not
diminished by the unexpected apparition of the Captain in the front row
of the gallery. When the clerk handed up a list to the clergyman, Mr
Toots, being then seated, held on by the seat of the pew; but when the
names of Walter Gay and Florence Dombey were read aloud as being in the
third and last stage of that association, he was so entirley conquered
by his feelings as to rush from the church without his hat, followed by
the beadle and pew-opener, and two gentlemen of the medical profeesion,
who happened to be present; of whom the first-named presently returned
for that article, informing Miss Nipper in a whisper that she was not
to make herself uneasy about the gentleman, as the gentleman said his
indisposition was of no consequence.

Miss Nipper, feeling that the eyes of that integral portion of Europe
which lost itself weekly among the high-backed pews, were upon her,
would have been sufficient embarrassed by this incident, though it had
terminated here; the more so, as the Captain in the front row of the
gallery, was in a state of unmitigated consciousness which could
hardly fail to express to the congregation that he had some mysterious
connection with it. But the extreme restlessness of Mr Toots painfully
increased and protracted the delicacy of her situation. That young
gentleman, incapable, in his state of mind, of remaining alone in the
churchyard, a prey to solitary meditation, and also desirous, no
doubt, of testifying his respect for the offices he had in some
measure interrupted, suddenly returned--not coming back to the pew,
but stationing himself on a free seat in the aisle, between two elderly
females who were in the habit of receiving their portion of a
weekly dole of bread then set forth on a shelf in the porch. In this
conjunction Mr Toots remained, greatly disturbing the congregation, who
felt it impossible to avoid looking at him, until his feelings overcame
him again, when he departed silently and suddenly. Not venturing to
trust himself in the church any more, and yet wishing to have some
social participation in what was going on there, Mr Toots was, after
this, seen from time to time, looking in, with a lorn aspect, at one or
other of the windows; and as there were several windows accessible to
him from without, and as his restlessness was very great, it not only
became difficult to conceive at which window he would appear next, but
likewise became necessary, as it were, for the whole congregation
to speculate upon the chances of the different windows, during the
comparative leisure afforded them by the sermon. Mr Toots’s movements in
the churchyard were so eccentric, that he seemed generally to defeat
all calculation, and to appear, like the conjuror’s figure, where he
was least expected; and the effect of these mysterious presentations
was much increased by its being difficult to him to see in, and easy to
everybody else to see out: which occasioned his remaining, every time,
longer than might have been expected, with his face close to the glass,
until he all at once became aware that all eyes were upon him, and
vanished.

These proceedings on the part of Mr Toots, and the strong individual
consciousness of them that was exhibited by the Captain, rendered Miss
Nipper’s position so responsible a one, that she was mightily relieved
by the conclusion of the service; and was hardly so affable to Mr Toots
as usual, when he informed her and the Captain, on the way back, that
now he was sure he had no hope, you know, he felt more comfortable--at
least not exactly more comfortable, but more comfortably and completely
miserable.

Swiftly now, indeed, the time flew by until it was the evening before
the day appointed for the marriage. They were all assembled in the upper
room at the Midshipman’s, and had no fear of interruption; for there
were no lodgers in the house now, and the Midshipman had it all to
himself. They were grave and quiet in the prospect of to-morrow, but
moderately cheerful too. Florence, with Walter close beside her, was
finishing a little piece of work intended as a parting gift to the
Captain. The Captain was playing cribbage with Mr Toots. Mr Toots was
taking counsel as to his hand, of Susan Nipper. Miss Nipper was giving
it, with all due secrecy and circumspection. Diogenes was listening,
and occasionally breaking out into a gruff half-smothered fragment of
a bark, of which he afterwards seemed half-ashamed, as if he doubted
having any reason for it.

‘Steady, steady!’ said the Captain to Diogenes, ‘what’s amiss with you?
You don’t seem easy in your mind to-night, my boy!’

Diogenes wagged his tail, but pricked up his ears immediately
afterwards, and gave utterance to another fragment of a bark; for which
he apologised to the Captain, by again wagging his tail.

‘It’s my opinion, Di,’ said the Captain, looking thoughtfully at his
cards, and stroking his chin with his hook, ‘as you have your doubts of
Mrs Richards; but if you’re the animal I take you to be, you’ll think
better o’ that; for her looks is her commission. Now, Brother:’ to Mr
Toots: ‘if so be as you’re ready, heave ahead.’

The Captain spoke with all composure and attention to the game, but
suddenly his cards dropped out of his hand, his mouth and eyes opened
wide, his legs drew themselves up and stuck out in front of his chair,
and he sat staring at the door with blank amazement. Looking round upon
the company, and seeing that none of them observed him or the cause
of his astonishment, the Captain recovered himself with a great gasp,
struck the table a tremendous blow, cried in a stentorian roar, ‘Sol
Gills ahoy!’ and tumbled into the arms of a weather-beaten pea-coat that
had come with Polly into the room.

In another moment, Walter was in the arms of the weather-beaten
pea-coat. In another moment, Florence was in the arms of the
weather-beaten pea-coat. In another moment, Captain Cuttle had embraced
Mrs Richards and Miss Nipper, and was violently shaking hands with Mr
Toots, exclaiming, as he waved his hook above his head, ‘Hooroar, my
lad, hooroar!’ To which Mr Toots, wholly at a loss to account for these
proceedings, replied with great politeness, ‘Certainly, Captain Gills,
whatever you think proper!’

The weather-beaten pea-coat, and a no less weather-beaten cap and
comforter belonging to it, turned from the Captain and from Florence
back to Walter, and sounds came from the weather-beaten pea-coat, cap,
and comforter, as of an old man sobbing underneath them; while the
shaggy sleeves clasped Walter tight. During this pause, there was
an universal silence, and the Captain polished his nose with great
diligence. But when the pea-coat, cap, and comforter lifted themselves
up again, Florence gently moved towards them; and she and Walter taking
them off, disclosed the old Instrument-maker, a little thinner and more
careworn than of old, in his old Welsh wig and his old coffee-coloured
coat and basket buttons, with his old infallible chronometer ticking
away in his pocket.

‘Chock full o’ science,’ said the radiant Captain, ‘as ever he was! Sol
Gills, Sol Gills, what have you been up to, for this many a long day, my
ould boy?’

‘I’m half blind, Ned,’ said the old man, ‘and almost deaf and dumb with
joy.’

‘His wery woice,’ said the Captain, looking round with an exultation
to which even his face could hardly render justice--‘his wery woice as
chock full o’ science as ever it was! Sol Gills, lay to, my lad, upon
your own wines and fig-trees like a taut ould patriark as you are, and
overhaul them there adwentures o’ yourn, in your own formilior woice.
‘Tis the woice,’ said the Captain, impressively, and announcing a
quotation with his hook, ‘of the sluggard, I heerd him complain, you
have woke me too soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene-mies, and
make ‘em fall!’

The Captain sat down with the air of a man who had happily expressed the
feeling of everybody present, and immediately rose again to present Mr
Toots, who was much disconcerted by the arrival of anybody, appearing to
prefer a claim to the name of Gills.

‘Although,’ stammered Mr Toots, ‘I had not the pleasure of your
acquaintance, Sir, before you were--you were--’

‘Lost to sight, to memory dear,’ suggested the Captain, in a low voice.

‘Exactly so, Captain Gills!’ assented Mr Toots. ‘Although I had not the
pleasure of your acquaintance, Mr--Mr Sols,’ said Toots, hitting on that
name in the inspiration of a bright idea, ‘before that happened, I have
the greatest pleasure, I assure you, in--you know, in knowing you. I
hope,’ said Mr Toots, ‘that you’re as well as can be expected.’

With these courteous words, Mr Toots sat down blushing and chuckling.

The old Instrument-maker, seated in a corner between Walter and
Florence, and nodding at Polly, who was looking on, all smiles and
delight, answered the Captain thus:

‘Ned Cuttle, my dear boy, although I have heard something of the changes
of events here, from my pleasant friend there--what a pleasant face she
has to be sure, to welcome a wanderer home!’ said the old man, breaking
off, and rubbing his hands in his old dreamy way.

‘Hear him!’ cried the Captain gravely. ‘’Tis woman as seduces all
mankind. For which,’ aside to Mr Toots, ‘you’ll overhaul your Adam and
Eve, brother.’

‘I shall make a point of doing so, Captain Gills,’ said Mr Toots.

‘Although I have heard something of the changes of events, from her,’
resumed the Instrument-maker, taking his old spectacles from his pocket,
and putting them on his forehead in his old manner, ‘they are so great
and unexpected, and I am so overpowered by the sight of my dear boy, and
by the,’--glancing at the downcast eyes of Florence, and not attempting
to finish the sentence--‘that I--I can’t say much to-night. But my dear
Ned Cuttle, why didn’t you write?’

The astonishment depicted in the Captain’s features positively
frightened Mr Toots, whose eyes were quite fixed by it, so that he could
not withdraw them from his face.

‘Write!’ echoed the Captain. ‘Write, Sol Gills?’

‘Ay,’ said the old man, ‘either to Barbados, or Jamaica, or Demerara,
that was what I asked.’

‘What you asked, Sol Gills?’ repeated the Captain.

‘Ay,’ said the old man. ‘Don’t you know, Ned? Sure you have not
forgotten? Every time I wrote to you.’

The Captain took off his glazed hat, hung it on his hook, and smoothing
his hair from behind with his hand, sat gazing at the group around him:
a perfect image of wondering resignation.

‘You don’t appear to understand me, Ned!’ observed old Sol.

‘Sol Gills,’ returned the Captain, after staring at him and the rest
for a long time, without speaking, ‘I’m gone about and adrift. Pay out
a word or two respecting them adwenturs, will you! Can’t I bring up,
nohows? Nohows?’ said the Captain, ruminating, and staring all round.

‘You know, Ned,’ said Sol Gills, ‘why I left here. Did you open my
packet, Ned?’

‘Why, ay, ay,’ said the Captain. ‘To be sure, I opened the packet.’

‘And read it?’ said the old man.

‘And read it,’ answered the Captain, eyeing him attentively, and
proceeding to quote it from memory. ‘“My dear Ned Cuttle, when I left
home for the West Indies in forlorn search of intelligence of my dear-”
There he sits! There’s Wal’r!’ said the Captain, as if he were relieved
by getting hold of anything that was real and indisputable.

‘Well, Ned. Now attend a moment!’ said the old man. ‘When I wrote
first--that was from Barbados--I said that though you would receive that
letter long before the year was out, I should be glad if you would open
the packet, as it explained the reason of my going away. Very good, Ned.
When I wrote the second, third, and perhaps the fourth times--that was
from Jamaica--I said I was in just the same state, couldn’t rest, and
couldn’t come away from that part of the world, without knowing that
my boy was lost or saved. When I wrote next--that, I think, was from
Demerara, wasn’t it?’

‘That he thinks was from Demerara, warn’t it!’ said the Captain, looking
hopelessly round.

‘--I said,’ proceeded old Sol, ‘that still there was no certain
information got yet. That I found many captains and others, in that part
of the world, who had known me for years, and who assisted me with a
passage here and there, and for whom I was able, now and then, to do a
little in return, in my own craft. That everyone was sorry for me, and
seemed to take a sort of interest in my wanderings; and that I began
to think it would be my fate to cruise about in search of tidings of my
boy, until I died.’

‘Began to think as how he was a scientific Flying Dutchman!’ said the
Captain, as before, and with great seriousness.

‘But when the news come one day, Ned,--that was to Barbados, after I got
back there,--that a China trader home’ard bound had been spoke, that had
my boy aboard, then, Ned, I took passage in the next ship and came home;
arrived at home to-night to find it true, thank God!’ said the old man,
devoutly.

The Captain, after bowing his head with great reverence, stared
all round the circle, beginning with Mr Toots, and ending with the
Instrument-maker; then gravely said:

‘Sol Gills! The observation as I’m a-going to make is calc’lated to blow
every stitch of sail as you can carry, clean out of the bolt-ropes, and
bring you on your beam ends with a lurch. Not one of them letters was
ever delivered to Ed’ard Cuttle. Not one o’ them letters,’ repeated the
Captain, to make his declaration the more solemn and impressive, ‘was
ever delivered unto Ed’ard Cuttle, Mariner, of England, as lives at home
at ease, and doth improve each shining hour!’

‘And posted by my own hand! And directed by my own hand, Number nine
Brig Place!’ exclaimed old Sol.

The colour all went out of the Captain’s face and all came back again in
a glow.

‘What do you mean, Sol Gills, my friend, by Number nine Brig Place?’
inquired the Captain.

‘Mean? Your lodgings, Ned,’ returned the old man. ‘Mrs What’s-her-name!
I shall forget my own name next, but I am behind the present time--I
always was, you recollect--and very much confused. Mrs--’

‘Sol Gills!’ said the Captain, as if he were putting the most improbable
case in the world, ‘it ain’t the name of MacStinger as you’re a trying
to remember?’

‘Of course it is!’ exclaimed the Instrument-maker. ‘To be sure Ned. Mrs
MacStinger!’

Captain Cuttle, whose eyes were now as wide open as they would be, and
the knobs upon whose face were perfectly luminous, gave a long shrill
whistle of a most melancholy sound, and stood gazing at everybody in a
state of speechlessness.

‘Overhaul that there again, Sol Gills, will you be so kind?’ he said at
last.

‘All these letters,’ returned Uncle Sol, beating time with the
forefinger of his right hand upon the palm of his left, with a
steadiness and distinctness that might have done honour, even to the
infallible chronometer in his pocket, ‘I posted with my own hand, and
directed with my own hand, to Captain Cuttle, at Mrs MacStinger’s,
Number nine Brig Place.’

The Captain took his glazed hat off his hook, looked into it, put it on,
and sat down.

‘Why, friends all,’ said the Captain, staring round in the last state of
discomfiture, ‘I cut and run from there!’

‘And no one knew where you were gone, Captain Cuttle?’ cried Walter
hastily.

‘Bless your heart, Wal’r,’ said the Captain, shaking his head, ‘she’d
never have allowed o’ my coming to take charge o’ this here property.
Nothing could be done but cut and run. Lord love you, Wal’r!’ said the
Captain, ‘you’ve only seen her in a calm! But see her when her angry
passions rise--and make a note on!’

‘I’d give it her!’ remarked the Nipper, softly.

‘Would you, do you think, my dear?’ returned the Captain, with feeble
admiration. ‘Well, my dear, it does you credit. But there ain’t no wild
animal I wouldn’t sooner face myself. I only got my chest away by means
of a friend as nobody’s a match for. It was no good sending any letter
there. She wouldn’t take in any letter, bless you,’ said the Captain,
‘under them circumstances! Why, you could hardly make it worth a man’s
while to be the postman!’

‘Then it’s pretty clear, Captain Cuttle, that all of us, and you and
Uncle Sol especially,’ said Walter, ‘may thank Mrs MacStinger for no
small anxiety.’

The general obligation in this wise to the determined relict of the late
Mr MacStinger, was so apparent, that the Captain did not contest the
point; but being in some measure ashamed of his position, though nobody
dwelt upon the subject, and Walter especially avoided it, remembering
the last conversation he and the Captain had held together respecting
it, he remained under a cloud for nearly five minutes--an extraordinary
period for him when that sun, his face, broke out once more, shining on
all beholders with extraordinary brilliancy; and he fell into a fit of
shaking hands with everybody over and over again.

At an early hour, but not before Uncle Sol and Walter had questioned
each other at some length about their voyages and dangers, they all,
except Walter, vacated Florence’s room, and went down to the parlour.
Here they were soon afterwards joined by Walter, who told them Florence
was a little sorrowful and heavy-hearted, and had gone to bed. Though
they could not have disturbed her with their voices down there, they all
spoke in a whisper after this: and each, in his different way, felt
very lovingly and gently towards Walter’s fair young bride: and a
long explanation there was of everything relating to her, for the
satisfaction of Uncle Sol; and very sensible Mr Toots was of the
delicacy with which Walter made his name and services important, and his
presence necessary to their little council.

‘Mr Toots,’ said Walter, on parting with him at the house door, ‘we
shall see each other to-morrow morning?’

‘Lieutenant Walters,’ returned Mr Toots, grasping his hand fervently, ‘I
shall certainly be present.’

‘This is the last night we shall meet for a long time--the last night we
may ever meet,’ said Walter. ‘Such a noble heart as yours, must feel, I
think, when another heart is bound to it. I hope you know that I am very
grateful to you?’

‘Walters,’ replied Mr Toots, quite touched, ‘I should be glad to feel
that you had reason to be so.’

‘Florence,’ said Walter, ‘on this last night of her bearing her own
name, has made me promise--it was only just now, when you left us
together--that I would tell you--with her dear love--’

Mr Toots laid his hand upon the doorpost, and his eyes upon his
hand.

‘--With her dear love,’ said Walter, ‘that she can never have a friend
whom she will value above you. That the recollection of your true
consideration for her always, can never be forgotten by her. That she
remembers you in her prayers to-night, and hopes that you will think of
her when she is far away. Shall I say anything for you?’

‘Say, Walter,’ replied Mr Toots indistinctly, ‘that I shall think of her
every day, but never without feeling happy to know that she is married
to the man she loves, and who loves her. Say, if you please, that I
am sure her husband deserves her--even her!--and that I am glad of her
choice.’

Mr Toots got more distinct as he came to these last words, and raising
his eyes from the doorpost, said them stoutly. He then shook Walter’s
hand again with a fervour that Walter was not slow to return and started
homeward.

Mr Toots was accompanied by the Chicken, whom he had of late brought
with him every evening, and left in the shop, with an idea that
unforeseen circumstances might arise from without, in which the prowess
of that distinguished character would be of service to the Midshipman.
The Chicken did not appear to be in a particularly good humour on this
occasion. Either the gas-lamps were treacherous, or he cocked his eye
in a hideous manner, and likewise distorted his nose, when Mr Toots,
crossing the road, looked back over his shoulder at the room where
Florence slept. On the road home, he was more demonstrative of
aggressive intentions against the other foot-passengers, than comported
with a professor of the peaceful art of self-defence. Arrived at home,
instead of leaving Mr Toots in his apartments when he had escorted him
thither, he remained before him weighing his white hat in both hands by
the brim, and twitching his head and nose (both of which had been many
times broken, and but indifferently repaired), with an air of decided
disrespect.

His patron being much engaged with his own thoughts, did not observe
this for some time, nor indeed until the Chicken, determined not to be
overlooked, had made divers clicking sounds with his tongue and teeth,
to attract attention.

‘Now, Master,’ said the Chicken, doggedly, when he, at length, caught Mr
Toots’s eye, ‘I want to know whether this here gammon is to finish it,
or whether you’re a going in to win?’

‘Chicken,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘explain yourself.’

‘Why then, here’s all about it, Master,’ said the Chicken. ‘I ain’t
a cove to chuck a word away. Here’s wot it is. Are any on ‘em to be
doubled up?’

When the Chicken put this question he dropped his hat, made a dodge and
a feint with his left hand, hit a supposed enemy a violent blow with his
right, shook his head smartly, and recovered himself.

‘Come, Master,’ said the Chicken. ‘Is it to be gammon or pluck? Which?’

‘Chicken,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘your expressions are coarse, and your
meaning is obscure.’

‘Why, then, I tell you what, Master,’ said the Chicken. ‘This is where
it is. It’s mean.’

‘What is mean, Chicken?’ asked Mr Toots.

‘It is,’ said the Chicken, with a frightful corrugation of his broken
nose. ‘There! Now, Master! Wot! When you could go and blow on this here
match to the stiff’un;’ by which depreciatory appellation it has been
since supposed that the Game One intended to signify Mr Dombey; ‘and
when you could knock the winner and all the kit of ‘em dead out o’ wind
and time, are you going to give in? To give in?’ said the Chicken, with
contemptuous emphasis. ‘Wy, it’s mean!’

‘Chicken,’ said Mr Toots, severely, ‘you’re a perfect Vulture! Your
sentiments are atrocious.’

‘My sentiments is Game and Fancy, Master,’ returned the Chicken. ‘That’s
wot my sentiments is. I can’t abear a meanness. I’m afore the public,
I’m to be heerd on at the bar of the Little Helephant, and no Gov’ner
o’ mine mustn’t go and do what’s mean. Wy, it’s mean,’ said the Chicken,
with increased expression. ‘That’s where it is. It’s mean.’

‘Chicken,’ said Mr Toots, ‘you disgust me.’

‘Master,’ returned the Chicken, putting on his hat, ‘there’s a pair on
us, then. Come! Here’s a offer! You’ve spoke to me more than once’t
or twice’t about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi’typunnote
to-morrow, and let me go.’

‘Chicken,’ returned Mr Toots, ‘after the odious sentiments you have
expressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms.’

‘Done then,’ said the Chicken. ‘It’s a bargain. This here conduct of
yourn won’t suit my book, Master. Wy, it’s mean,’ said the Chicken; who
seemed equally unable to get beyond that point, and to stop short of it.
‘That’s where it is; it’s mean!’

So Mr Toots and the Chicken agreed to part on this incompatibility of
moral perception; and Mr Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily of
Florence, who had thought of him as her friend upon the last night of
her maiden life, and who had sent him her dear love.

CHAPTER 57. Another Wedding

Mr Sownds the beadle, and Mrs Miff the pew-opener, are early at their
posts in the fine church where Mr Dombey was married. A yellow-faced old
gentleman from India, is going to take unto himself a young wife this
morning, and six carriages full of company are expected, and Mrs Miff
has been informed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pave
the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them.

The nuptial benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very
reverend, a dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary
present, by somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.

Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she
generally is; and she has always strong opinions on that subject, for it
is associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of political
economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; ‘Baptists
or Wesleyans, or some o’ them,’ she says), but she can never understand
what business your common folks have to be married. ‘Drat ‘em,’ says Mrs
Miff ‘you read the same things over ‘em and instead of sovereigns get
sixpences!’

Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff--but then he is not
a pew-opener. ‘It must be done, Ma’am,’ he says. ‘We must marry ‘em. We
must have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must have
our standing armies. We must marry ‘em, Ma’am,’ says Mr Sownds, ‘and
keep the country going.’

Mr Sownds is sitting on the steps and Mrs Miff is dusting in the church,
when a young couple, plainly dressed, come in. The mortified bonnet of
Mrs Miff is sharply turned towards them, for she espies in this
early visit indications of a runaway match. But they don’t want to be
married--‘Only,’ says the gentleman, ‘to walk round the church.’ And as
he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her vinegary
face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip and
crackle.

Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions--for the
yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees--but keeps
her glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking round
the church. ‘Ahem,’ coughs Mrs Miff whose cough is drier than the hay in
any hassock in her charge, ‘you’ll come to us one of these mornings, my
dears, unless I’m much mistaken!’

They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the memory of
someone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs Miff, but Mrs Miff can
see with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head is
bent down over her. ‘Well, well,’ says Mrs Miff, ‘you might do worse.
For you’re a tidy pair!’

There is nothing personal in Mrs Miff’s remark. She merely speaks of
stock-in-trade. She is hardly more curious in couples than in coffins.
She is such a spare, straight, dry old lady--such a pew of a woman--that
you should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr Sownds,
now, who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a different
temperament. He says, as they stand upon the steps watching the young
couple away, that she has a pretty figure, hasn’t she, and as well as
he could see (for she held her head down coming out), an uncommon pretty
face. ‘Altogether, Mrs Miff,’ says Mr Sownds with a relish, ‘she is what
you may call a rose-bud.’

Mrs Miff assents with a spare nod of her mortified bonnet; but approves
of this so little, that she inwardly resolves she wouldn’t be the wife
of Mr Sownds for any money he could give her, Beadle as he is.

And what are the young couple saying as they leave the church, and go
out at the gate?

‘Dear Walter, thank you! I can go away, now, happy.’

‘And when we come back, Florence, we will come and see his grave again.’

Florence lifts her eyes, so bright with tears, to his kind face; and
clasps her disengaged hand on that other modest little hand which clasps
his arm.

‘It is very early, Walter, and the streets are almost empty yet. Let us
walk.’

‘But you will be so tired, my love.’

‘Oh no! I was very tired the first time that we ever walked together,
but I shall not be so to-day.’

And thus--not much changed--she, as innocent and earnest-hearted--he, as
frank, as hopeful, and more proud of her--Florence and Walter, on their
bridal morning, walk through the streets together.

Not even in that childish walk of long ago, were they so far removed
from all the world about them as to-day. The childish feet of long ago,
did not tread such enchanted ground as theirs do now. The confidence
and love of children may be given many times, and will spring up in many
places; but the woman’s heart of Florence, with its undivided treasure,
can be yielded only once, and under slight or change, can only droop and
die.

They take the streets that are the quietest, and do not go near that in
which her old home stands. It is a fair, warm summer morning, and
the sun shines on them, as they walk towards the darkening mist that
overspreads the City. Riches are uncovering in shops; jewels, gold, and
silver flash in the goldsmith’s sunny windows; and great houses cast a
stately shade upon them as they pass. But through the light, and through
the shade, they go on lovingly together, lost to everything around;
thinking of no other riches, and no prouder home, than they have now in
one another.

Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun,
now yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at street
corners, and in small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of the
innumerable churches, or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a curious
little patch of garden, or a burying-ground, where the few tombs and
tombstones are almost black. Lovingly and trustfully, through all the
narrow yards and alleys and the shady streets, Florence goes, clinging
to his arm, to be his wife.

Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells her that their church is
very near. They pass a few great stacks of warehouses, with waggons at
the doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way--but Florence does not
see or hear them--and then the air is quiet, and the day is darkened,
and she is trembling in a church which has a strange smell like a
cellar.

The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standing
in the porch, and has put his hat in the font--for he is quite at home
there, being sexton. He ushers them into an old brown, panelled, dusty
vestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out; where the
wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set the
tearful Nipper sneezing.

Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks, in this old dusty
place, with no kindred object near her but her husband. There is a
dusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop underneath an
archway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There is a
dusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite enough
to do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr Toots’s beadle and
pew-opener of last Sunday), who has something to do with a Worshipful
Company who have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained-glass
window in it that no mortal ever saw. There are dusty wooden ledges and
cornices poked in and out over the altar, and over the screen and round
the gallery, and over the inscription about what the Master and
Wardens of the Worshipful Company did in one thousand six hundred and
ninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit and
reading-desk, looking like lids to be let down on the officiating
ministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possible
provision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, where
the facilities in that respect are very limited.

The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr Toots are come; the clergyman is putting
on his surplice in the vestry, while the clerk walks round him, blowing
the dust off it; and the bride and bridegroom stand before the altar.
There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better father
than Captain Cuttle. A man with a wooden leg, chewing a faint apple and
carrying a blue bag in has hand, looks in to see what is going on; but
finding it nothing entertaining, stumps off again, and pegs his way among
the echoes out of doors.

No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at the
altar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is built
out, and don’t shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, where
the sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in an
eyelet-hole of sun in a dyer’s garret, over against the window, who
whistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the man
with the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear,
like Macbeth’s, to stick in his throat a little; but Captain Cuttle
helps him out, and does it with so much goodwill that he interpolates
three entirely new responses of that word, never introduced into the
service before.

They are married, and have signed their names in one of the old sneezy
registers, and the clergyman’s surplice is restored to the dust, and the
clergyman is gone home. In a dark corner of the dark church, Florence
has turned to Susan Nipper, and is weeping in her arms. Mr Toots’s eyes
are red. The Captain lubricates his nose. Uncle Sol has pulled down his
spectacles from his forehead, and walked out to the door.

‘God bless you, Susan; dearest Susan! If you ever can bear witness to
the love I have for Walter, and the reason that I have to love him, do
it for his sake. Good-bye! Good-bye!’

They have thought it better not to go back to the Midshipman, but to
part so; a coach is waiting for them, near at hand.

Miss Nipper cannot speak; she only sobs and chokes, and hugs her
mistress. Mr Toots advances, urges her to cheer up, and takes charge
of her. Florence gives him her hand--gives him, in the fulness of her
heart, her lips--kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne away
by her young husband.

But Susan cannot bear that Florence should go away with a mournful
recollection of her. She had meant to be so different, that she
reproaches herself bitterly. Intent on making one last effort to redeem
her character, she breaks from Mr Toots and runs away to find the coach,
and show a parting smile. The Captain, divining her object, sets off
after her; for he feels it his duty also to dismiss them with a cheer,
if possible. Uncle Sol and Mr Toots are left behind together, outside
the church, to wait for them.

The coach is gone, but the street is steep, and narrow, and blocked
up, and Susan can see it at a stand-still in the distance, she is sure.
Captain Cuttle follows her as she flies down the hill, and waves his
glazed hat as a general signal, which may attract the right coach and
which may not.

Susan outstrips the Captain, and comes up with it. She looks in at the
window, sees Walter, with the gentle face beside him, and claps her
hands and screams:

‘Miss Floy, my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! One
more good-bye, my precious, one more!’

How Susan does it, she don’t know, but she reaches to the window, kisses
her, and has her arms about her neck, in a moment.

‘We are all so--so happy now, my dear Miss Floy!’ says Susan, with a
suspicious catching in her breath. ‘You, you won’t be angry with me now.
Now will you?’

‘Angry, Susan!’

‘No, no; I am sure you won’t. I say you won’t, my pet, my dearest!’
exclaims Susan; ‘and here’s the Captain too--your friend the Captain,
you know--to say good-bye once more!’

‘Hooroar, my Heart’s Delight!’ vociferates the Captain, with a
countenance of strong emotion. ‘Hooroar, Wal’r my lad. Hooroar!
Hooroar!’

What with the young husband at one window, and the young wife at the
other; the Captain hanging on at this door, and Susan Nipper holding
fast by that; the coach obliged to go on whether it will or no, and all
the other carts and coaches turbulent because it hesitates; there
never was so much confusion on four wheels. But Susan Nipper gallantly
maintains her point. She keeps a smiling face upon her mistress, smiling
through her tears, until the last. Even when she is left behind, the
Captain continues to appear and disappear at the door, crying ‘Hooroar,
my lad! Hooroar, my Heart’s Delight!’ with his shirt-collar in a violent
state of agitation, until it is hopeless to attempt to keep up with the
coach any longer. Finally, when the coach is gone, Susan Nipper, being
rejoined by the Captain, falls into a state of insensibility, and is
taken into a baker’s shop to recover.

Uncle Sol and Mr Toots wait patiently in the churchyard, sitting on the
coping-stone of the railings, until Captain Cuttle and Susan come back.
Neither being at all desirous to speak, or to be spoken to, they are
excellent company, and quite satisfied. When they all arrive again at
the little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch a
morsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast, but
gives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after breakfast, he will come
back in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day, with a
vague sensation upon him as if he hadn’t been to bed for a fortnight.

There is a strange charm in the house, and in the room, in which they
have been used to be together, and out of which so much is gone. It
aggravates, and yet it soothes, the sorrow of the separation. Mr Toots
tells Susan Nipper when he comes at night, that he hasn’t been so
wretched all day long, and yet he likes it. He confides in Susan Nipper,
being alone with her, and tells her what his feelings were when she
gave him that candid opinion as to the probability of Miss Dombey’s
ever loving him. In the vein of confidence engendered by these common
recollections, and their tears, Mr Toots proposes that they shall go out
together, and buy something for supper. Miss Nipper assenting, they buy
a good many little things; and, with the aid of Mrs Richards, set the
supper out quite showily before the Captain and old Sol came home.

The Captain and old Sol have been on board the ship, and have
established Di there, and have seen the chests put aboard. They have
much to tell about the popularity of Walter, and the comforts he will
have about him, and the quiet way in which it seems he has been working
early and late, to make his cabin what the Captain calls ‘a picter,’
to surprise his little wife. ‘A admiral’s cabin, mind you,’ says the
Captain, ‘ain’t more trim.’

But one of the Captain’s chief delights is, that he knows the big watch,
and the sugar-tongs, and tea-spoons, are on board: and again and again
he murmurs to himself, ‘Ed’ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a better
course in your life than when you made that there little property over
jintly. You see how the land bore, Ed’ard,’ says the Captain, ‘and it
does you credit, my lad.’

The old Instrument-maker is more distraught and misty than he used to
be, and takes the marriage and the parting very much to heart. But he is
greatly comforted by having his old ally, Ned Cuttle, at his side; and
he sits down to supper with a grateful and contented face.

‘My boy has been preserved and thrives,’ says old Sol Gills, rubbing his
hands. ‘What right have I to be otherwise than thankful and happy!’

The Captain, who has not yet taken his seat at the table, but who has
been fidgeting about for some time, and now stands hesitating in his
place, looks doubtfully at Mr Gills, and says:

‘Sol! There’s the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would you
wish to have it up to-night, my boy, and drink to Wal’r and his wife?’

The Instrument-maker, looking wistfully at the Captain, puts his hand
into the breast-pocket of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth his
pocket-book, and takes a letter out.

‘To Mr Dombey,’ says the old man. ‘From Walter. To be sent in three
weeks’ time. I’ll read it.’

‘“Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone with me upon a distant
voyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her or you, but God
knows that I am.

‘“Why, loving her beyond all earthly things, I have yet, without
remorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my life, I will
not say to you. You know why, and you are her father.

‘“Do not reproach her. She has never reproached you.

‘“I do not think or hope that you will ever forgive me. There is nothing
I expect less. But if an hour should come when it will comfort you to
believe that Florence has someone ever near her, the great charge of
whose life is to cancel her remembrance of past sorrow, I solemnly
assure you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief.”’

Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts back
his pocket-book in his coat.

‘We won’t drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned,’ says the
old man thoughtfully. ‘Not yet.

‘Not yet,’ assents the Captain. ‘No. Not yet.’

Susan and Mr Toots are of the same opinion. After a silence they all
sit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife in something
else; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains among its
dust and cobwebs, undisturbed.

A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading its
white wings to the favouring wind.

Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something that
is graceful, beautiful, and harmless--something that it is good and
pleasant to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous--is
Florence. It is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the solemn
path of light upon the sea between them and the moon.

At length she cannot see it plainly, for the tears that fill her eyes;
and then she lays her head down on his breast, and puts her arms around
his neck, saying, ‘Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!’

Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and the
stately ship goes on serenely.

‘As I hear the sea,’ says Florence, ‘and sit watching it, it brings so
many days into my mind. It makes me think so much--’

‘Of Paul, my love. I know it does.’

Of Paul and Walter. And the voices in the waves are always whispering
to Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love--of love, eternal and
illimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the end
of time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the
invisible country far away!

CHAPTER 58. After a Lapse

The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a whole
year, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of Time
had been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year, the
tides of human chance and change had set in their allotted courses.
Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought a
fight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessful
ventures, unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuation
of its head, who would not contract its enterprises by a hair’s breadth,
and would not listen to a word of warning that the ship he strained so
hard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it.

The year was out, and the great House was down.

One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriage
in the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon ‘Change of a great
failure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, nor
was he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey and
Son had stopped, and next night there was a List of Bankrupts published,
headed by that name.

The world was very busy now, in sooth, and had a deal to say. It was an
innocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world in
which there was no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There were
no conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banks
of religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worth
mentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived pretty
handsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects.
There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The world
was very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse world,
might have been supposed to be apt traders themselves in shows and
pretences, were observed to be mightily indignant.

Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport of
circumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate of
Mr Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He had
but yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from the
celebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now he
was made a more important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding from
his bracket in the outer office where he now sat, watching the strange
faces of accountants and others, who quickly superseded nearly all the
old clerks, Mr Perch had but to show himself in the court outside, or,
at farthest, in the bar of the King’s Arms, to be asked a multitude of
questions, almost certain to include that interesting question, what
would he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant upon the hours of
acute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at Balls Pond, when
they first suspected ‘things was going wrong.’ Then would Mr Perch
relate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of the
deceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch had
first come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch)
moaning in his sleep, ‘twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve and
ninepence in the pound!’ Which act of somnambulism he supposed to have
originated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey’s
face. Then would he inform them how he had once said, ‘Might I make so
bold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?’ and how Mr Dombey had
replied, ‘My faithful Perch--but no, it cannot be!’ and with that had
struck his hand upon his forehead, and said, ‘Leave me, Perch!’ Then,
in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his position, tell all manner of
lies; affecting himself to tears by those that were of a moving
nature, and really believing that the inventions of yesterday had, on
repetition, a sort of truth about them to-day.

Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, That, of
course, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he had ever had
any!) it wasn’t for him to betray his trust, was it? Which sentiment
(there never being any creditors present) was received as doing great
honour to his feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothed
conscience and left an agreeable impression behind him, when he
returned to his bracket: again to sit watching the strange faces of the
accountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, the
Books; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey’s empty room, and
stir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little more
doleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, with
various small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr Perch had
expectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs of
the House should be wound up.

To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major was
not a sympathetic character--his attention being wholly concentrated
on J. B.--nor was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in the
physical regards of gasping and choking. But he had so paraded his
friend Dombey at the club; had so flourished him at the heads of the
members in general, and so put them down by continual assertion of his
riches; that the club, being but human, was delighted to retort upon
the Major, by asking him, with a show of great concern, whether this
tremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his friend Dombey
bore it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would reply
that it was a bad world, Sir, altogether; that Joey knew a thing or two,
but had been done, Sir, done like an infant; that if you had foretold
this, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and was
chasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would have
pooh-pooh’d you--would have pooh-pooh’d you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joe
had been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broad
awake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe’s father were to
rise up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn’t trust the old blade with a
penny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldier
to be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky,
used-up, J. B. infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with the
dignity of a rough and tough old Major, of the old school, who had had
the honour of being personally known to, and commended by, their late
Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and live
in it, by Gad! Sir, he’d have a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show his
contempt for mankind!

Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major would
deliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of his
head, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that the
younger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friend
Dombey’s House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs,
who knew Joe better, wouldn’t hear of such a thing. The unfortunate
Native, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in his
moral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hour
in the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness to
bodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. For
six entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived in
a rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes.

Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. The
first was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brother
had not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited to
dinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened; and
that she had said so, at the time.

Nobody’s opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made it
heavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were to
be wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resigned
everything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That any
resumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listen
to no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he had
relinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a man
respected among merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that he
was going melancholy mad, according to others; that he was a broken man,
according to all.

The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolence
among themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went off
admirably. Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses at
home; some looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenly
remembered they had a particular affection; and some advertised for
employment in the newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the late
establishment, sitting on his bracket looking at the accountants, or
starting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who was to get
him into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty and
neglected. The principal slipper and dogs’ collar seller, at the corner
of the court, would have doubted the propriety of throwing up his
forefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey had appeared
there now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his white apron,
moralised good sound morality about ambition, which (he observed) was
not, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing.

Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers sprinkled
with grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of the
House--its head, of course, excepted--who was heartily and deeply
affected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombey
with due respect and deference through many years, but he had never
disguised his natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pampered
his master passion for the advancement of his own purposes. He had,
therefore, no self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springs
to release with a quick recoil. He worked early and late to unravel
whatever was complicated or difficult in the records of the transactions
of the House; was always in attendance to explain whatever required
explanation; sat in his old room sometimes very late at night, studying
points by his mastery of which he could spare Mr Dombey the pain of
being personally referred to; and then would go home to Islington, and
calm his mind by producing the most dismal and forlorn sounds out of his
violoncello before going to bed.

He was solacing himself with this melodious grumbler one evening, and,
having been much dispirited by the proceedings of the day, was scraping
consolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who was
fortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performances
than a sensation of something rumbling in her bones) announced a lady.

‘In mourning,’ she said.

The violoncello stopped immediately; and the performer, laying it on the
sofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was to
come in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the stair.

‘Alone!’ he said, ‘and John here this morning! Is there anything the
matter, my dear? But no,’ he added, ‘your face tells quite another
story.’

‘I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then,’ she
answered.

‘It is a very pleasant one,’ said he; ‘and, if selfish, a novelty too,
worth seeing in you. But I don’t believe that.’

He had placed a chair for her by this time, and sat down opposite; the
violoncello lying snugly on the sofa between them.

‘You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John’s not having
told you I was coming,’ said Harriet; ‘and you will believe that, when I
tell you why I have come. May I do so now?’

‘You can do nothing better.’

‘You were not busy?’

He pointed to the violoncello lying on the sofa, and said ‘I have been,
all day. Here’s my witness. I have been confiding all my cares to it. I
wish I had none but my own to tell.’

‘Is the House at an end?’ said Harriet, earnestly.

‘Completely at an end.’

‘Will it never be resumed?’

‘Never.’

The bright expression of her face was not overshadowed as her lips
silently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some little
involuntary surprise: and said again:

‘Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along, impossible
to convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes, impossible
even to approach him. The worst has happened; and the House has fallen,
never to be built up any more.’

‘And Mr Dombey, is he personally ruined?’

‘Ruined.’

‘Will he have no private fortune left? Nothing?’

A certain eagerness in her voice, and something that was almost joyful
in her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to disappoint him
too, and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed with the
fingers of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and shaking
his head, said, after a pause:

‘The extent of Mr Dombey’s resources is not accurately within my
knowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations are
enormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man in
his position could, and many a man in his position would, have saved
himself, by making terms which would have very slightly, almost
insensibly, increased the losses of those who had had dealings with him,
and left him a remnant to live upon. But he is resolved on payment to
the last farthing of his means. His own words are, that they will clear,
or nearly clear, the House, and that no one can lose much. Ah, Miss
Harriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, that
vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! His pride shows well
in this.’

She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and with a
divided attention that showed her to be busy with something in her own
mind. When he was silent, she asked him hurriedly:

‘Have you seen him lately?’

‘No one sees him. When this crisis of his affairs renders it necessary
for him to come out of his house, he comes out for the occasion, and
again goes home, and shuts himself up, and will see no one. He has
written me a letter, acknowledging our past connexion in higher terms
than it deserved, and parting from me. I am delicate of obtruding myself
upon him now, never having had much intercourse with him in better
times; but I have tried to do so. I have written, gone there, entreated.
Quite in vain.’

He watched her, as in the hope that she would testify some greater
concern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and feelingly, as if
to impress her the more; but there was no change in her.

‘Well, well, Miss Harriet,’ he said, with a disappointed air, ‘this is
not to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other and
pleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shall
talk upon more equal terms. Come!’

‘No, it is the same theme,’ returned Harriet, with frank and quick
surprise. ‘Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural that
John and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late of
these great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years--you know
upon what terms--reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!’

Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had been
to him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he had
ever looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with a
ray of exultation, than it had ever pleased him before.

‘I need not remind you,’ said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon her
black dress, ‘through what means our circumstances changed. You have not
forgotten that our brother James, upon that dreadful day, left no will,
no relations but ourselves.’

The face was pleasanter to him now, though it was pale and melancholy,
than it had been a moment since. He seemed to breathe more cheerily.

‘You know,’ she said, ‘our history, the history of both my brothers,
in connexion with the unfortunate, unhappy gentleman, of whom you have
spoken so truly. You know how few our wants are--John’s and mine--and
what little use we have for money, after the life we have led together
for so many years; and now that he is earning an income that is ample
for us, through your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear what
favour I have come to ask of you?’

‘I hardly know. I was, a minute ago. Now, I think, I am not.’

‘Of my dead brother I say nothing. If the dead know what we do--but you
understand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need I
say more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask your
indispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until it
is performed!’

She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face began
to appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her.

‘Dear Sir,’ she went on to say, ‘it must be done very quietly and
secretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doing
it. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is something
saved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is a
voluntary tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some of
those with whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lost
debt repaid. There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will choose
the best. The favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it for
us in your own kind, generous, considerate manner. That you will never
speak of it to John, whose chief happiness in this act of restitution
is to do it secretly, unknown, and unapproved of: that only a very small
part of the inheritance may be reserved to us, until Mr Dombey shall
have possessed the interest of the rest for the remainder of his life;
that you will keep our secret, faithfully--but that I am sure you will;
and that, from this time, it may seldom be whispered, even between
you and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new reason for
thankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother.’

Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels’ faces when the one
repentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was not
dimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but was
the brighter for them.

‘My dear Harriet,’ said Mr Morfin, after a silence, ‘I was not prepared
for this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in the
inheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John’s?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she returned ‘When we have shared everything together for so
long a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bear
to be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be my
brother’s partner and companion to the last?’

‘Heaven forbid that I should dispute it!’ he replied.

‘We may rely on your friendly help?’ she said. ‘I knew we might!’

‘I should be a worse man than,--than I hope I am, or would willingly
believe myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart and
soul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret. And
if it should be found that Mr Dombey is so reduced as I fear he will be,
acting on a determination that there seem to be no means of influencing,
I will assist you to accomplish the design, on which you and John are
jointly resolved.’

She gave him her hand, and thanked him with a cordial, happy face.

‘Harriet,’ he said, detaining it in his. ‘To speak to you of the worth
of any sacrifice that you can make now--above all, of any sacrifice of
mere money--would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appeal
to reconsider your purpose or to set narrow limits to it, would be,
I feel, not less so. I have no right to mar the great end of a great
history, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right to
bend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comes
from a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldly
knowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I would
rather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in the
world, except yourself.’

She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night.

‘Are you going home?’ he said. ‘Let me go with you.’

‘Not to-night. I am not going home now; I have a visit to make alone.
Will you come to-morrow?’

‘Well, well,’ said he, ‘I’ll come to-morrow. In the meantime, I’ll think
of this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I’ll think of it, dear
Harriet, and--and--think of me a little in connexion with it.’

He handed her down to a coach she had in waiting at the door; and if
his landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering as
he went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we were
creatures of habit, and it was a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor.

The violoncello lying on the sofa between the two chairs, he took it up,
without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and
slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time.
The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though
monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he
communicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: which
was so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain Cuttle’s
remedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve. By degrees,
however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of mind, glided
melodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he played over and
over again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like true metal on
the anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello and
the empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearly
midnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end in
the sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole foundry full
of harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair out of its
crooked eyes, with unutterable intelligence.

When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, taking
a course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out by
bye-ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at some
open ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses standing
among gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, and
Harriet alighted.

Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-looking
woman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping on
one side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across the
garden to the house.

‘How is your patient, nurse, to-night?’ said Harriet.

‘In a poor way, Miss, I am afraid. Oh how she do remind me, sometimes,
of my Uncle’s Betsey Jane!’ returned the woman of the light complexion,
in a sort of doleful rapture.

‘In what respect?’ asked Harriet.

‘Miss, in all respects,’ replied the other, ‘except that she’s grown up,
and Betsey Jane, when at death’s door, was but a child.’

‘But you have told me she recovered,’ observed Harriet mildly; ‘so there
is the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam.’

‘Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits to
bear it!’ said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. ‘My own spirits is not
equal to it, but I don’t owe it any grudge. I envys them that is so
blest!’

‘You should try to be more cheerful,’ remarked Harriet.

‘Thank you, Miss, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Wickam grimly. ‘If I was so
inclined, the loneliness of this situation--you’ll excuse my speaking
so free--would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but I
ain’t at all. I’d rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I was
bereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myself
the better for it.’

In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richards
as the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gained
the loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. The
excellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription,
which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most dreary
and uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act as
instructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors,
attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs Wickam in
very good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualities
being particularly commended by an admiring and numerous connexion.

Mrs Wickam, with her eyebrows elevated, and her head on one side,
lighted the way upstairs to a clean, neat chamber, opening on another
chamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an old
woman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness.
In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure that
had spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognised
now, but by the long black hair that showed so very black against the
colourless face, and all the white things about it.

Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so eagerly
and brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head that
could not raise itself, and moved so slowly round upon its pillow!

‘Alice!’ said the visitor’s mild voice, ‘am I late to-night?’

‘You always seem late, but are always early.’

Harriet had sat down by the bedside now, and put her hand upon the thin
hand lying there.

‘You are better?’

Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolate
spectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative this
position.

‘It matters very little!’ said Alice, with a faint smile. ‘Better or
worse to-day, is but a day’s difference--perhaps not so much.’

Mrs Wickam, as a serious character, expressed her approval with a groan;
and having made some cold dabs at the bottom of the bedclothes, as
feeling for the patient’s feet and expecting to find them stony; went
clinking among the medicine bottles on the table, as who should say,
‘while we are here, let us repeat the mixture as before.’

‘No,’ said Alice, whispering to her visitor, ‘evil courses, and remorse,
travel, want, and weather, storm within, and storm without, have worn my
life away. It will not last much longer.

She drew the hand up as she spoke, and laid her face against it.

‘I lie here, sometimes, thinking I should like to live until I had had
a little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, and
soon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!’

How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when she
took it by the fireside on the bleak winter evening! Scorn, rage,
defiance, recklessness, look here! This is the end.

Mrs Wickam having clinked sufficiently among the bottles, now produced
the mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act of
drinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook her
head, expressing that tortures shouldn’t make her say it was a hopeless
case. Mrs Wickam then sprinkled a little cooling-stuff about the room,
with the air of a female grave-digger, who was strewing ashes on ashes,
dust on dust--for she was a serious character--and withdrew to partake
of certain funeral baked meats downstairs.

‘How long is it,’ asked Alice, ‘since I went to you and told you what
I had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone to
follow?’

‘It is a year and more,’ said Harriet.

‘A year and more,’ said Alice, thoughtfully intent upon her face.
‘Months upon months since you brought me here!’

Harriet answered ‘Yes.’

‘Brought me here, by force of gentleness and kindness. Me!’ said Alice,
shrinking with her face behind her hand, ‘and made me human by woman’s
looks and words, and angel’s deeds!’

Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alice
lying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have her
mother called.

Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbed
looking out at the open window on the darkness, that she did not hear.
It was not until Harriet went to her and touched her, that she rose up,
and came.

‘Mother,’ said Alice, taking the hand again, and fixing her lustrous
eyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion of
her finger to the old woman, ‘tell her what you know.’

‘To-night, my deary?’

‘Ay, mother,’ answered Alice, faintly and solemnly, ‘to-night!’

The old woman, whose wits appeared disorderly by alarm, remorse, or
grief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that on
which Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered face
upon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as to
touch her daughter’s arm, began:

‘My handsome gal--’

Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at the
poor form lying on the bed!

‘Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago,’ said Alice, without
looking at her. ‘Don’t grieve for that now.’

‘--My daughter,’ faltered the old woman, ‘my gal who’ll soon get better,
and shame ‘em all with her good looks.’

Alice smiled mournfully at Harriet, and fondled her hand a little
closer, but said nothing.

‘Who’ll soon get better, I say,’ repeated the old woman, menacing the
vacant air with her shrivelled fist, ‘and who’ll shame ‘em all with her
good looks--she will. I say she will! she shall!’--as if she were in
passionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, who
contradicted her--‘my daughter has been turned away from, and cast out,
but she could boast relationship to proud folks too, if she chose.
Ah! To proud folks! There’s relationship without your clergy and
your wedding rings--they may make it, but they can’t break it--and
my daughter’s well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and I’ll show you my
Alice’s first cousin.’

Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon her
face, and derived corroboration from them.

‘What!’ cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastly
vanity. ‘Though I am old and ugly now,--much older by life and habit
than years though,--I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, as
many! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling,’ stretching out
her arm to Harriet, across the bed, ‘and looked it, too. Down in my
country, Mrs Dombey’s father and his brother were the gayest gentlemen
and the best-liked that came a visiting from London--they have long
been dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was my
Ally’s father, longest of the two.’

She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter’s face; as if
from the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembrance
of her child’s. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, and
shut her head up in her hands and arms.

‘They were as like,’ said the old woman, without looking up, as you
could see two brothers, so near an age--there wasn’t much more than a
year between them, as I recollect--and if you could have seen my gal, as
I have seen her once, side by side with the other’s daughter, you’d have
seen, for all the difference of dress and life, that they were like each
other. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it my gal--only my gal--that’s
to change so!’

‘We shall all change, mother, in our turn,’ said Alice.

‘Turn!’ cried the old woman, ‘but why not hers as soon as my gal’s! The
mother must have changed--she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint--but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have
I done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!’

With another of those wild cries, she went running out into the room from
which she had come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood, returned,
and creeping up to Harriet, said:

‘That’s what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That’s all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshire
there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me, then. They
wouldn’t have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should have asked
‘em, maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn’t been for my
Alice; she’d a’most have killed me, if I had, I think. She was as proud
as t’other in her way,’ said the old woman, touching the face of her
daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, ‘for all she’s so quiet
now; but she’ll shame ‘em with her good looks yet. Ha, ha! She’ll shame
‘em, will my handsome daughter!’

Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting
air with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the
darkness.

The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:

‘I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had
heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up
with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed
was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had
bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that their
way was not so foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God for
it. That is all past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite
remember or understand. It has been more and more like a dream, every
day, since you began to sit here, and to read to me. I only tell it you,
as I can recollect it. Will you read to me a little more?’

Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.

‘You will not forget my mother? I forgive her, if I have any cause.
I know that she forgives me, and is sorry in her heart. You will not
forget her?’

‘Never, Alice!’

‘A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see the
words in your kind face.’

Harriet complied and read--read the eternal book for all the weary, and
the heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of this
earth--read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar,
the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all our
dainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, or
sophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can take
away, or by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce--read the ministry of
Him who, through the round of human life, and all its hopes and griefs,
from birth to death, from infancy to age, had sweet compassion for, and
interest in, its every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow.

‘I shall come,’ said Harriet, when she shut the book, ‘very early in the
morning.’

The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, then
opened; and Alice kissed and blest her.

The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on the
tranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed.

They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring the
sacred name that had been read to her; and life passed from her face,
like light removed.

Nothing lay there, any longer, but the ruin of the mortal house on which
the rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the wintry
wind.

CHAPTER 59. Retribution

Changes have come again upon the great house in the long dull street,
once the scene of Florence’s childhood and loneliness. It is a great
house still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in the
roof, or shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin none
the less, and the rats fly from it.

Mr Towlinson and company are, at first, incredulous in respect of the
shapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our people’s credit ain’t so
easy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr Towlinson expects to hear
it reported next, that the Bank of England’s a-going to break, or the
jewels in the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the Gazette, and Mr
Perch; and Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the kitchen, and
to spend a pleasant evening.

As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson’s main anxiety is
that the failure should be a good round one--not less than a hundred
thousand pound. Mr Perch don’t think himself that a hundred thousand
pound will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and Cook, often
repeat ‘a hun-dred thou-sand pound!’ with awful satisfaction--as if
handling the words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, who
has her eye on Mr Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of the
sum to bestow on the man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful of
his old wrong, opines that a foreigner would hardly know what to do with
so much money, unless he spent it on his whiskers; which bitter sarcasm
causes the housemaid to withdraw in tears.

But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the reputation of being
extremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let ‘em stand by one
another now, Towlinson, for there’s no telling how soon they may be
divided. They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, a
wedding, and a running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn’t
agree among themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch is
immensely affected by this moving address, and openly remarks that Cook
is an angel. Mr Towlinson replies to Cook, far be it from him to
stand in the way of that good feeling which he could wish to see; and
adjourning in quest of the housemaid, and presently returning with that
young lady on his arm, informs the kitchen that foreigners is only his
fun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to take one another
for better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the general
greengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours is
particular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation;
and Mrs Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, ‘girls,’ in
Cook’s ear, in a solemn whisper.

Misfortune in the family without feasting, in these lower regions,
couldn’t be. Therefore Cook tosses up a hot dish or two for supper,
and Mr Towlinson compounds a lobster salad to be devoted to the same
hospitable purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, rings
her bell, and sends down word that she requests to have that little bit
of sweetbread that was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to her
on a tray with about a quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; for
she feels poorly.

There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chiefly
speculation as to how long he has known that this was going to happen.
Cook says shrewdly, ‘Oh a long time, bless you! Take your oath of that.’
And reference being made to Mr Perch, he confirms her view of the
case. Somebody wonders what he’ll do, and whether he’ll go out in any
situation. Mr Towlinson thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of them
genteel almshouses of the better kind. ‘Ah, where he’ll have his little
garden, you know,’ says Cook plaintively, ‘and bring up sweet peas
in the spring.’ ‘Exactly so,’ says Mr Towlinson, ‘and be one of the
Brethren of something or another.’ ‘We are all brethren,’ says Mrs
Perch, in a pause of her drink. ‘Except the sisters,’ says Mr Perch.
‘How are the mighty fallen!’ remarks Cook. ‘Pride shall have a fall, and
it always was and will be so!’ observes the housemaid.

It is wonderful how good they feel, in making these reflections; and
what a Christian unanimity they are sensible of, in bearing the common
shock with resignation. There is only one interruption to this excellent
state of mind, which is occasioned by a young kitchen-maid of inferior
rank--in black stockings--who, having sat with her mouth open for a long
time, unexpectedly discharges from it words to this effect, ‘Suppose the
wages shouldn’t be paid!’ The company sit for a moment speechless; but
Cook recovering first, turns upon the young woman, and requests to
know how she dares insult the family, whose bread she eats, by such a
dishonest supposition, and whether she thinks that anybody, with a scrap
of honour left, could deprive poor servants of their pittance? ‘Because
if that is your religious feelings, Mary Daws,’ says Cook warmly, ‘I
don’t know where you mean to go to.’

Mr Towlinson don’t know either; nor anybody; and the young kitchen-maid,
appearing not to know exactly, herself, and scouted by the general
voice, is covered with confusion, as with a garment.

After a few days, strange people begin to call at the house, and to
make appointments with one another in the dining-room, as if they lived
there. Especially, there is a gentleman, of a Mosaic Arabian cast
of countenance, with a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in the
drawing-room, and, while he is waiting for the other gentleman, who
always has pen and ink in his pocket, asks Mr Towlinson (by the easy
name of ‘Old Cock,’) if he happens to know what the figure of them
crimson and gold hangings might have been, when new bought. The callers
and appointments in the dining-room become more numerous every day, and
every gentleman seems to have pen and ink in his pocket, and to have
some occasion to use it. At last it is said that there is going to be
a Sale; and then more people arrive, with pen and ink in their pockets,
commanding a detachment of men with carpet caps, who immediately begin
to pull up the carpets, and knock the furniture about, and to print off
thousands of impressions of their shoes upon the hall and staircase.

The council downstairs are in full conclave all this time, and, having
nothing to do, perform perfect feats of eating. At length, they are one
day summoned in a body to Mrs Pipchin’s room, and thus addressed by the
fair Peruvian:

‘Your master’s in difficulties,’ says Mrs Pipchin, tartly. ‘You know
that, I suppose?’

Mr Towlinson, as spokesman, admits a general knowledge of the fact.

‘And you’re all on the look-out for yourselves, I warrant you,’ says Mrs
Pipchin, shaking her head at them.

A shrill voice from the rear exclaims, ‘No more than yourself!’

‘That’s your opinion, Mrs Impudence, is it?’ says the ireful Pipchin,
looking with a fiery eye over the intermediate heads.

‘Yes, Mrs Pipchin, it is,’ replies Cook, advancing. ‘And what then,
pray?’

‘Why, then you may go as soon as you like,’ says Mrs Pipchin. ‘The
sooner the better; and I hope I shall never see your face again.’

With this the doughty Pipchin produces a canvas bag; and tells her wages
out to that day, and a month beyond it; and clutches the money tight,
until a receipt for the same is duly signed, to the last upstroke; when
she grudgingly lets it go. This form of proceeding Mrs Pipchin repeats
with every member of the household, until all are paid.

‘Now those that choose, can go about their business,’ says Mrs Pipchin,
‘and those that choose can stay here on board wages for a week or so,
and make themselves useful. Except,’ says the inflammable Pipchin, ‘that
slut of a cook, who’ll go immediately.’

‘That,’ says Cook, ‘she certainly will! I wish you good day, Mrs
Pipchin, and sincerely wish I could compliment you on the sweetness of
your appearance!’

‘Get along with you,’ says Mrs Pipchin, stamping her foot.

Cook sails off with an air of beneficent dignity, highly exasperating
to Mrs Pipchin, and is shortly joined below stairs by the rest of the
confederation.

Mr Towlinson then says that, in the first place, he would beg to propose
a little snack of something to eat; and over that snack would desire to
offer a suggestion which he thinks will meet the position in which
they find themselves. The refreshment being produced, and very heartily
partaken of, Mr Towlinson’s suggestion is, in effect, that Cook is
going, and that if we are not true to ourselves, nobody will be true
to us. That they have lived in that house a long time, and exerted
themselves very much to be sociable together. (At this, Cook says, with
emotion, ‘Hear, hear!’ and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and full to
the throat, sheds tears.) And that he thinks, at the present time, the
feeling ought to be ‘Go one, go all!’ The housemaid is much affected by
this generous sentiment, and warmly seconds it. Cook says she feels it’s
right, and only hopes it’s not done as a compliment to her, but from a
sense of duty. Mr Towlinson replies, from a sense of duty; and that now
he is driven to express his opinions, he will openly say, that he does
not think it over-respectable to remain in a house where Sales and
such-like are carrying forwards. The housemaid is sure of it; and
relates, in confirmation, that a strange man, in a carpet cap, offered,
this very morning, to kiss her on the stairs. Hereupon, Mr Towlinson is
starting from his chair, to seek and ‘smash’ the offender; when he is
laid hold on by the ladies, who beseech him to calm himself, and
to reflect that it is easier and wiser to leave the scene of such
indecencies at once. Mrs Perch, presenting the case in a new light,
even shows that delicacy towards Mr Dombey, shut up in his own rooms,
imperatively demands precipitate retreat. ‘For what,’ says the good
woman, ‘must his feelings be, if he was to come upon any of the poor
servants that he once deceived into thinking him immensely rich!’ Cook
is so struck by this moral consideration, that Mrs Perch improves it
with several pious axioms, original and selected. It becomes a clear
case that they must all go. Boxes are packed, cabs fetched, and at dusk
that evening there is not one member of the party left.

The house stands, large and weather-proof, in the long dull street; but
it is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.

The men in the carpet caps go on tumbling the furniture about; and the
gentlemen with the pens and ink make out inventories of it, and sit upon
pieces of furniture never made to be sat upon, and eat bread and cheese
from the public-house on other pieces of furniture never made to be
eaten on, and seem to have a delight in appropriating precious articles
to strange uses. Chaotic combinations of furniture also take place.
Mattresses and bedding appear in the dining-room; the glass and china
get into the conservatory; the great dinner service is set out in heaps
on the long divan in the large drawing-room; and the stair-wires, made
into fasces, decorate the marble chimneypieces. Finally, a rug, with
a printed bill upon it, is hung out from the balcony; and a similar
appendage graces either side of the hall door.

Then, all day long, there is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-carts
in the street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-run
the house, sounding the plate-glass mirrors with their knuckles, striking
discordant octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over the
pictures, breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punching
the squabs of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling the
feather beds, opening and shutting all the drawers, balancing the silver
spoons and forks, looking into the very threads of the drapery and
linen, and disparaging everything. There is not a secret place in the
whole house. Fluffy and snuffy strangers stare into the kitchen-range as
curiously as into the attic clothes-press. Stout men with napless hats
on, look out of the bedroom windows, and cut jokes with friends in the
street. Quiet, calculating spirits withdraw into the dressing-rooms with
catalogues, and make marginal notes thereon, with stumps of pencils. Two
brokers invade the very fire-escape, and take a panoramic survey of the
neighbourhood from the top of the house. The swarm and buzz, and going
up and down, endure for days. The Capital Modern Household Furniture,
&c., is on view.

Then there is a palisade of tables made in the best drawing-room; and
on the capital, french-polished, extending, telescopic range of Spanish
mahogany dining-tables with turned legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneer
is erected; and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, the
strangers fluffy and snuffy, and the stout men with the napless hats,
congregate about it and sit upon everything within reach, mantel-pieces
included, and begin to bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms all
day; and--high above the heat, hum, and dust--the head and shoulders,
voice and hammer, of the Auctioneer, are ever at work. The men in the
carpet caps get flustered and vicious with tumbling the Lots about, and
still the Lots are going, going, gone; still coming on. Sometimes
there is joking and a general roar. This lasts all day and three days
following. The Capital Modern Household Furniture, &c., is on sale.

Then the mouldy gigs and chaise-carts reappear; and with them come
spring-vans and waggons, and an army of porters with knots. All day
long, the men with carpet caps are screwing at screw-drivers and
bed-winches, or staggering by the dozen together on the staircase under
heavy burdens, or upheaving perfect rocks of Spanish mahogany, best
rose-wood, or plate-glass, into the gigs and chaise-carts, vans and
waggons. All sorts of vehicles of burden are in attendance, from a
tilted waggon to a wheelbarrow. Poor Paul’s little bedstead is carried
off in a donkey-tandem. For nearly a whole week, the Capital Modern
Household Furniture, & c., is in course of removal.

At last it is all gone. Nothing is left about the house but scattered
leaves of catalogues, littered scraps of straw and hay, and a battery of
pewter pots behind the hall-door. The men with the carpet-caps gather up
their screw-drivers and bed-winches into bags, shoulder them, and walk
off. One of the pen-and-ink gentlemen goes over the house as a last
attention; sticking up bills in the windows respecting the lease of
this desirable family mansion, and shutting the shutters. At length he
follows the men with the carpet caps. None of the invaders remain. The
house is a ruin, and the rats fly from it.

Mrs Pipchin’s apartments, together with those locked rooms on the
ground-floor where the window-blinds are drawn down close, have been
spared the general devastation. Mrs Pipchin has remained austere and
stony during the proceedings, in her own room; or has occasionally
looked in at the sale to see what the goods are fetching, and to bid for
one particular easy chair. Mrs Pipchin has been the highest bidder for
the easy chair, and sits upon her property when Mrs Chick comes to see
her.

‘How is my brother, Mrs Pipchin?’ says Mrs Chick.

‘I don’t know any more than the deuce,’ says Mrs Pipchin. ‘He never does
me the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the next
room to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there’s
nobody there. It’s no use asking me. I know no more about him than the
man in the south who burnt his mouth by eating cold plum porridge.’

This the acrimonious Pipchin says with a flounce.

‘But good gracious me!’ cries Mrs Chick blandly. ‘How long is this to
last! If my brother will not make an effort, Mrs Pipchin, what is to
become of him? I am sure I should have thought he had seen enough of the
consequences of not making an effort, by this time, to be warned against
that fatal error.’

‘Hoity toity!’ says Mrs Pipchin, rubbing her nose. ‘There’s a great
fuss, I think, about it. It ain’t so wonderful a case. People have had
misfortunes before now, and been obliged to part with their furniture.
I’m sure I have!’

‘My brother,’ pursues Mrs Chick profoundly, ‘is so peculiar--so strange
a man. He is the most peculiar man I ever saw. Would anyone believe that
when he received news of the marriage and emigration of that unnatural
child--it’s a comfort to me, now, to remember that I always said there
was something extraordinary about that child: but nobody minds me--would
anybody believe, I say, that he should then turn round upon me and say
he had supposed, from my manner, that she had come to my house? Why,
my gracious! And would anybody believe that when I merely say to him,
“Paul, I may be very foolish, and I have no doubt I am, but I cannot
understand how your affairs can have got into this state,” he should
actually fly at me, and request that I will come to see him no more
until he asks me! Why, my goodness!’

‘Ah!’ says Mrs Pipchin. ‘It’s a pity he hadn’t a little more to do with
mines. They’d have tried his temper for him.’

‘And what,’ resumes Mrs Chick, quite regardless of Mrs Pipchin’s
observations, ‘is it to end in? That’s what I want to know. What does my
brother mean to do? He must do something. It’s of no use remaining shut
up in his own rooms. Business won’t come to him. No. He must go to it.
Then why don’t he go? He knows where to go, I suppose, having been a man
of business all his life. Very good. Then why not go there?’

Mrs Chick, after forging this powerful chain of reasoning, remains
silent for a minute to admire it.

‘Besides,’ says the discreet lady, with an argumentative air, ‘who ever
heard of such obstinacy as his staying shut up here through all these
dreadful disagreeables? It’s not as if there was no place for him to go
to. Of course he could have come to our house. He knows he is at home
there, I suppose? Mr Chick has perfectly bored about it, and I said
with my own lips, “Why surely, Paul, you don’t imagine that because your
affairs have got into this state, you are the less at home to such near
relatives as ourselves? You don’t imagine that we are like the rest of
the world?” But no; here he stays all through, and here he is. Why, good
gracious me, suppose the house was to be let! What would he do then? He
couldn’t remain here then. If he attempted to do so, there would be an
ejectment, an action for Doe, and all sorts of things; and then he must
go. Then why not go at first instead of at last? And that brings me back
to what I said just now, and I naturally ask what is to be the end of
it?’

‘I know what’s to be the end of it, as far as I am concerned,’ replies
Mrs Pipchin, ‘and that’s enough for me. I’m going to take myself off in
a jiffy.’

‘In a which, Mrs Pipchin,’ says Mrs Chick.

‘In a jiffy,’ retorts Mrs Pipchin sharply.

‘Ah, well! really I can’t blame you, Mrs Pipchin,’ says Mrs Chick, with
frankness.

‘It would be pretty much the same to me, if you could,’ replies the
sardonic Pipchin. ‘At any rate I’m going. I can’t stop here. I should
be dead in a week. I had to cook my own pork chop yesterday, and I’m not
used to it. My constitution will be giving way next. Besides, I had a
very fair connexion at Brighton when I came here--little Pankey’s folks
alone were worth a good eighty pounds a-year to me--and I can’t afford
to throw it away. I’ve written to my niece, and she expects me by this
time.’

‘Have you spoken to my brother?’ inquires Mrs Chick

‘Oh, yes, it’s very easy to say speak to him,’ retorts Mrs Pipchin. ‘How
is it done? I called out to him yesterday, that I was no use here, and
that he had better let me send for Mrs Richards. He grunted something
or other that meant yes, and I sent. Grunt indeed! If he had been Mr
Pipchin, he’d have had some reason to grunt. Yah! I’ve no patience with
it!’

Here this exemplary female, who has pumped up so much fortitude and
virtue from the depths of the Peruvian mines, rises from her cushioned
property to see Mrs Chick to the door. Mrs Chick, deploring to the
last the peculiar character of her brother, noiselessly retires, much
occupied with her own sagacity and clearness of head.

In the dusk of the evening Mr Toodle, being off duty, arrives with Polly
and a box, and leaves them, with a sounding kiss, in the hall of the
empty house, the retired character of which affects Mr Toodle’s spirits
strongly.

‘I tell you what, Polly, me dear,’ says Mr Toodle, ‘being now an
ingine-driver, and well to do in the world, I shouldn’t allow of your
coming here, to be made dull-like, if it warn’t for favours past.
But favours past, Polly, is never to be forgot. To them which is in
adversity, besides, your face is a cord’l. So let’s have another kiss on
it, my dear. You wish no better than to do a right act, I know; and my
views is, that it’s right and dutiful to do this. Good-night, Polly!’

Mrs Pipchin by this time looms dark in her black bombazeen skirts, black
bonnet, and shawl; and has her personal property packed up; and has her
chair (late a favourite chair of Mr Dombey’s and the dead bargain of
the sale) ready near the street door; and is only waiting for a fly-van,
going to-night to Brighton on private service, which is to call for her,
by private contract, and convey her home.

Presently it comes. Mrs Pipchin’s wardrobe being handed in and stowed
away, Mrs Pipchin’s chair is next handed in, and placed in a convenient
corner among certain trusses of hay; it being the intention of the
amiable woman to occupy the chair during her journey. Mrs Pipchin
herself is next handed in, and grimly takes her seat. There is a snaky
gleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast,
relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharp
snappings at poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress’s
castle. Mrs Pipchin almost laughs as the fly-van drives off, and she
composes her black bombazeen skirts, and settles herself among the
cushions of her easy chair.

The house is such a ruin that the rats have fled, and there is not one
left.

But Polly, though alone in the deserted mansion--for there is no
companionship in the shut-up rooms in which its late master hides his
head--is not alone long. It is night; and she is sitting at work in the
housekeeper’s room, trying to forget what a lonely house it is, and what
a history belongs to it; when there is a knock at the hall door, as loud
sounding as any knock can be, striking into such an empty place. Opening
it, she returns across the echoing hall, accompanied by a female figure
in a close black bonnet. It is Miss Tox, and Miss Tox’s eyes are red.

‘Oh, Polly,’ says Miss Tox, ‘when I looked in to have a little lesson
with the children just now, I got the message that you left for me; and
as soon as I could recover my spirits at all, I came on after you. Is
there no one here but you?’

‘Ah! not a soul,’ says Polly.

‘Have you seen him?’ whispers Miss Tox.

‘Bless you,’ returns Polly, ‘no; he has not been seen this many a day.
They tell me he never leaves his room.’

‘Is he said to be ill?’ inquires Miss Tox.

‘No, Ma’am, not that I know of,’ returns Polly, ‘except in his mind. He
must be very bad there, poor gentleman!’

Miss Tox’s sympathy is such that she can scarcely speak. She is no
chicken, but she has not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her heart is
very tender, her compassion very genuine, her homage very real. Beneath
the locket with the fishy eye in it, Miss Tox bears better qualities
than many a less whimsical outside; such qualities as will outlive, by
many courses of the sun, the best outsides and brightest husks that fall
in the harvest of the great reaper.

It is long before Miss Tox goes away, and before Polly, with a candle
flaring on the blank stairs, looks after her, for company, down the
street, and feels unwilling to go back into the dreary house, and jar
its emptiness with the heavy fastenings of the door, and glide away to
bed. But all this Polly does; and in the morning sets in one of those
darkened rooms such matters as she has been advised to prepare, and then
retires and enters them no more until next morning at the same hour.
There are bells there, but they never ring; and though she can sometimes
hear a footfall going to and fro, it never comes out.

Miss Tox returns early in the day. It then begins to be Miss Tox’s
occupation to prepare little dainties--or what are such to her--to be
carried into these rooms next morning. She derives so much satisfaction
from the pursuit, that she enters on it regularly from that time; and
brings daily in her little basket, various choice condiments selected
from the scanty stores of the deceased owner of the powdered head and
pigtail. She likewise brings, in sheets of curl-paper, morsels of
cold meats, tongues of sheep, halves of fowls, for her own dinner; and
sharing these collations with Polly, passes the greater part of her time
in the ruined house that the rats have fled from: hiding, in a fright
at every sound, stealing in and out like a criminal; only desiring to be
true to the fallen object of her admiration, unknown to him, unknown to
all the world but one poor simple woman.

The Major knows it; but no one is the wiser for that, though the Major
is much the merrier. The Major, in a fit of curiosity, has charged
the Native to watch the house sometimes, and find out what becomes of
Dombey. The Native has reported Miss Tox’s fidelity, and the Major has
nearly choked himself dead with laughter. He is permanently bluer from
that hour, and constantly wheezes to himself, his lobster eyes starting
out of his head, ‘Damme, Sir, the woman’s a born idiot!’

And the ruined man. How does he pass the hours, alone?

‘Let him remember it in that room, years to come!’ He did remember it.
It was heavy on his mind now; heavier than all the rest.

‘Let him remember it in that room, years to come! The rain that
falls upon the roof, the wind that mourns outside the door, may have
foreknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let him remember it in that
room, years to come!’

He did remember it. In the miserable night he thought of it; in the
dreary day, the wretched dawn, the ghostly, memory-haunted twilight.
He did remember it. In agony, in sorrow, in remorse, in despair! ‘Papa!
Papa! Speak to me, dear Papa!’ He heard the words again, and saw
the face. He saw it fall upon the trembling hands, and heard the one
prolonged low cry go upward.

He was fallen, never to be raised up any more. For the night of his
worldly ruin there was no to-morrow’s sun; for the stain of his domestic
shame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bring his
dead child back to life. But that which he might have made so different
in all the Past--which might have made the Past itself so different,
though this he hardly thought of now--that which was his own work,
that which he could so easily have wrought into a blessing, and had set
himself so steadily for years to form into a curse: that was the sharp
grief of his soul.

Oh! He did remember it! The rain that fell upon the roof, the wind that
mourned outside the door that night, had had foreknowledge in their
melancholy sound. He knew, now, what he had done. He knew, now, that
he had called down that upon his head, which bowed it lower than the
heaviest stroke of fortune. He knew, now, what it was to be rejected and
deserted; now, when every loving blossom he had withered in his innocent
daughter’s heart was snowing down in ashes on him.

He thought of her, as she had been that night when he and his bride came
home. He thought of her as she had been, in all the home-events of the
abandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone had
never changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk into
a polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed into
the worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls that
sheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned the same
mild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest and the last. She
had never changed to him--nor had he ever changed to her--and she was
lost.

As, one by one, they fell away before his mind--his baby--hope, his
wife, his friend, his fortune--oh how the mist, through which he had
seen her, cleared, and showed him her true self! Oh, how much better
than this that he had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as he
had his boy, and laid them in their early grave together!

In his pride--for he was proud yet--he let the world go from him freely.
As it fell away, he shook it off. Whether he imagined its face as
expressing pity for him, or indifference to him, he shunned it alike. It
was in the same degree to be avoided, in either aspect. He had no idea
of any one companion in his misery, but the one he had driven away. What
he would have said to her, or what consolation submitted to receive from
her, he never pictured to himself. But he always knew she would have
been true to him, if he had suffered her. He always knew she would have
loved him better now, than at any other time; he was as certain that it
was in her nature, as he was that there was a sky above him; and he sat
thinking so, in his loneliness, from hour to hour. Day after day uttered
this speech; night after night showed him this knowledge.

It began, beyond all doubt (however slow it advanced for some time), in
the receipt of her young husband’s letter, and the certainty that she
was gone. And yet--so proud he was in his ruin, or so reminiscent of
her only as something that might have been his, but was lost beyond
redemption--that if he could have heard her voice in an adjoining room,
he would not have gone to her. If he could have seen her in the street,
and she had done no more than look at him as she had been used to look,
he would have passed on with his old cold unforgiving face, and not
addressed her, or relaxed it, though his heart should have broken soon
afterwards. However turbulent his thoughts, or harsh his anger had been,
at first, concerning her marriage, or her husband, that was all past
now. He chiefly thought of what might have been, and what was not. What
was, was all summed up in this: that she was lost, and he bowed down
with sorrow and remorse.

And now he felt that he had had two children born to him in that house,
and that between him and the bare wide empty walls there was a tie,
mournful, but hard to rend asunder, connected with a double childhood,
and a double loss. He had thought to leave the house--knowing he must
go, not knowing whither--upon the evening of the day on which this
feeling first struck root in his breast; but he resolved to stay another
night, and in the night to ramble through the rooms once more.

He came out of his solitude when it was the dead of night, and with
a candle in his hand went softly up the stairs. Of all the footmarks
there, making them as common as the common street, there was not one, he
thought, but had seemed at the time to set itself upon his brain while
he had kept close, listening. He looked at their number, and their
hurry, and contention--foot treading foot out, and upward track and
downward jostling one another--and thought, with absolute dread and
wonder, how much he must have suffered during that trial, and what
a changed man he had cause to be. He thought, besides, oh was there,
somewhere in the world, a light footstep that might have worn out in a
moment half those marks!--and bent his head, and wept as he went up.

He almost saw it, going on before. He stopped, looking up towards the
skylight; and a figure, childish itself, but carrying a child, and
singing as it went, seemed to be there again. Anon, it was the same
figure, alone, stopping for an instant, with suspended breath; the
bright hair clustering loosely round its tearful face; and looking back
at him.

He wandered through the rooms: lately so luxurious; now so bare and
dismal and so changed, apparently, even in their shape and size. The
press of footsteps was as thick here; and the same consideration of the
suffering he had had, perplexed and terrified him. He began to fear
that all this intricacy in his brain would drive him mad; and that his
thoughts already lost coherence as the footprints did, and were pieced
on to one another, with the same trackless involutions, and varieties of
indistinct shapes.

He did not so much as know in which of these rooms she had lived, when
she was alone. He was glad to leave them, and go wandering higher up.
Abundance of associations were here, connected with his false wife, his
false friend and servant, his false grounds of pride; but he put
them all by now, and only recalled miserably, weakly, fondly, his two
children.

Everywhere, the footsteps! They had had no respect for the old room high
up, where the little bed had been; he could hardly find a clear space
there, to throw himself down, on the floor, against the wall, poor
broken man, and let his tears flow as they would. He had shed so many
tears here, long ago, that he was less ashamed of his weakness in this
place than in any other--perhaps, with that consciousness, had made
excuses to himself for coming here. Here, with stooping shoulders, and
his chin dropped on his breast, he had come. Here, thrown upon the bare
boards, in the dead of night, he wept, alone--a proud man, even then;
who, if a kind hand could have been stretched out, or a kind face could
have looked in, would have risen up, and turned away, and gone down to
his cell.

When the day broke he was shut up in his rooms again. He had meant to
go away to-day, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and only
thing left to him. He would go to-morrow. To-morrow came. He would go
to-morrow. Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, he
came forth, and wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Many
a morning when the day broke, his altered face, drooping behind the
closed blind in his window, imperfectly transparent to the light as yet,
pondered on the loss of his two children. It was one child no more. He
reunited them in his thoughts, and they were never asunder. Oh, that he
could have united them in his past love, and in death, and that one had
not been so much worse than dead!

Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, even
before his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullen
natures; for they struggle hard to be such. Ground, long undermined,
will often fall down in a moment; what was undermined here in so many
ways, weakened, and crumbled, little by little, more and more, as the
hand moved on the dial.

At last he began to think he need not go at all. He might yet give up
what his creditors had spared him (that they had not spared him more,
was his own act), and only sever the tie between him and the ruined
house, by severing that other link--

It was then that his footfall was audible in the late housekeeper’s
room, as he walked to and fro; but not audible in its true meaning, or
it would have had an appalling sound.

The world was very busy and restless about him. He became aware of that
again. It was whispering and babbling. It was never quiet. This, and
the intricacy and complication of the footsteps, harassed him to death.
Objects began to take a bleared and russet colour in his eyes. Dombey
and Son was no more--his children no more. This must be thought of,
well, to-morrow.

He thought of it to-morrow; and sitting thinking in his chair, saw in
the glass, from time to time, this picture:

A spectral, haggard, wasted likeness of himself, brooded and brooded
over the empty fireplace. Now it lifted up its head, examining the lines
and hollows in its face; now hung it down again, and brooded afresh. Now
it rose and walked about; now passed into the next room, and came
back with something from the dressing-table in its breast. Now, it was
looking at the bottom of the door, and thinking.

--Hush! what?

It was thinking that if blood were to trickle that way, and to leak out
into the hall, it must be a long time going so far. It would move so
stealthily and slowly, creeping on, with here a lazy little pool, and
there a start, and then another little pool, that a desperately wounded
man could only be discovered through its means, either dead or dying.
When it had thought of this a long while, it got up again, and walked to
and fro with its hand in its breast. He glanced at it occasionally, very
curious to watch its motions, and he marked how wicked and murderous that
hand looked.

Now it was thinking again! What was it thinking?

Whether they would tread in the blood when it crept so far, and carry
it about the house among those many prints of feet, or even out into the
street.

It sat down, with its eyes upon the empty fireplace, and as it lost
itself in thought there shone into the room a gleam of light; a ray of
sun. It was quite unmindful, and sat thinking. Suddenly it rose, with
a terrible face, and that guilty hand grasping what was in its breast.
Then it was arrested by a cry--a wild, loud, piercing, loving, rapturous
cry--and he only saw his own reflection in the glass, and at his knees,
his daughter!

Yes. His daughter! Look at her! Look here! Down upon the ground,
clinging to him, calling to him, folding her hands, praying to him.

‘Papa! Dearest Papa! Pardon me, forgive me! I have come back to ask
forgiveness on my knees. I never can be happy more, without it!’

Unchanged still. Of all the world, unchanged. Raising the same face to
his, as on that miserable night. Asking his forgiveness!

‘Dear Papa, oh don’t look strangely on me! I never meant to leave you. I
never thought of it, before or afterwards. I was frightened when I went
away, and could not think. Papa, dear, I am changed. I am penitent. I
know my fault. I know my duty better now. Papa, don’t cast me off, or I
shall die!’

He tottered to his chair. He felt her draw his arms about her neck; he
felt her put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felt
her wet cheek laid against his own; he felt--oh, how deeply!--all that
he had done.

Upon the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he had
almost broken, she laid his face, now covered with his hands, and said,
sobbing:

‘Papa, love, I am a mother. I have a child who will soon call Walter by
the name by which I call you. When it was born, and when I knew how
much I loved it, I knew what I had done in leaving you. Forgive me, dear
Papa! oh say God bless me, and my little child!’

He would have said it, if he could. He would have raised his hands and
besought her for pardon, but she caught them in her own, and put them
down, hurriedly.

‘My little child was born at sea, Papa I prayed to God (and so did
Walter for me) to spare me, that I might come home. The moment I could
land, I came back to you. Never let us be parted any more, Papa. Never
let us be parted any more!’

His head, now grey, was encircled by her arm; and he groaned to think
that never, never, had it rested so before.

‘You will come home with me, Papa, and see my baby. A boy, Papa. His
name is Paul. I think--I hope--he’s like--’

Her tears stopped her.

‘Dear Papa, for the sake of my child, for the sake of the name we have
given him, for my sake, pardon Walter. He is so kind and tender to me. I
am so happy with him. It was not his fault that we were married. It was
mine. I loved him so much.’

She clung closer to him, more endearing and more earnest.

‘He is the darling of my heart, Papa I would die for him. He will love
and honour you as I will. We will teach our little child to love and
honour you; and we will tell him, when he can understand, that you had
a son of that name once, and that he died, and you were very sorry; but
that he is gone to Heaven, where we all hope to see him when our
time for resting comes. Kiss me, Papa, as a promise that you will be
reconciled to Walter--to my dearest husband--to the father of the little
child who taught me to come back, Papa Who taught me to come back!’

As she clung closer to him, in another burst of tears, he kissed her on
her lips, and, lifting up his eyes, said, ‘Oh my God, forgive me, for I
need it very much!’

With that he dropped his head again, lamenting over and caressing her,
and there was not a sound in all the house for a long, long time; they
remaining clasped in one another’s arms, in the glorious sunshine that
had crept in with Florence.

He dressed himself for going out, with a docile submission to her
entreaty; and walking with a feeble gait, and looking back, with a
tremble, at the room in which he had been so long shut up, and where he
had seen the picture in the glass, passed out with her into the hall.
Florence, hardly glancing round her, lest she should remind him freshly
of their last parting--for their feet were on the very stones where he
had struck her in his madness--and keeping close to him, with her eyes
upon his face, and his arm about her, led him out to a coach that was
waiting at the door, and carried him away.

Then, Miss Tox and Polly came out of their concealment, and exulted
tearfully. And then they packed his clothes, and books, and so forth,
with great care; and consigned them in due course to certain persons
sent by Florence, in the evening, to fetch them. And then they took a
last cup of tea in the lonely house.

‘And so Dombey and Son, as I observed upon a certain sad occasion,’ said
Miss Tox, winding up a host of recollections, ‘is indeed a daughter,
Polly, after all.’

‘And a good one!’ exclaimed Polly.

‘You are right,’ said Miss Tox; ‘and it’s a credit to you, Polly, that
you were always her friend when she was a little child. You were her
friend long before I was, Polly,’ said Miss Tox; ‘and you’re a good
creature. Robin!’

Miss Tox addressed herself to a bullet-headed young man, who appeared to
be in but indifferent circumstances, and in depressed spirits, and who
was sitting in a remote corner. Rising, he disclosed to view the form
and features of the Grinder.

‘Robin,’ said Miss Tox, ‘I have just observed to your mother, as you may
have heard, that she is a good creature.’

‘And so she is, Miss,’ quoth the Grinder, with some feeling.

‘Very well, Robin,’ said Miss Tox, ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Now,
Robin, as I am going to give you a trial, at your urgent request, as my
domestic, with a view to your restoration to respectability, I will take
this impressive occasion of remarking that I hope you will never forget
that you have, and have always had, a good mother, and that you will
endeavour so to conduct yourself as to be a comfort to her.’

‘Upon my soul I will, Miss,’ returned the Grinder. ‘I have come through
a good deal, and my intentions is now as straightfor’ard, Miss, as a
cove’s--’

‘I must get you to break yourself of that word, Robin, if you please,’
interposed Miss Tox, politely.

‘If you please, Miss, as a chap’s--’

‘Thankee, Robin, no,’ returned Miss Tox, ‘I should prefer individual.’

‘As a indiwiddle’s--,’ said the Grinder.

‘Much better,’ remarked Miss Tox, complacently; ‘infinitely more
expressive!’

‘--can be,’ pursued Rob. ‘If I hadn’t been and got made a Grinder on,
Miss and Mother, which was a most unfortunate circumstance for a young
co--indiwiddle--’

‘Very good indeed,’ observed Miss Tox, approvingly.

‘--and if I hadn’t been led away by birds, and then fallen into a bad
service,’ said the Grinder, ‘I hope I might have done better. But it’s
never too late for a--’

‘Indi--’ suggested Miss Tox.

‘--widdle,’ said the Grinder, ‘to mend; and I hope to mend, Miss, with
your kind trial; and wishing, Mother, my love to father, and brothers
and sisters, and saying of it.’

‘I am very glad indeed to hear it,’ observed Miss Tox. ‘Will you take a
little bread and butter, and a cup of tea, before we go, Robin?’

‘Thankee, Miss,’ returned the Grinder; who immediately began to use his
own personal grinders in a most remarkable manner, as if he had been on
very short allowance for a considerable period.

Miss Tox, being, in good time, bonneted and shawled, and Polly too, Rob
hugged his mother, and followed his new mistress away; so much to the
hopeful admiration of Polly, that something in her eyes made luminous
rings round the gas-lamps as she looked after him. Polly then put out
her light, locked the house-door, delivered the key at an agent’s hard
by, and went home as fast as she could go; rejoicing in the shrill
delight that her unexpected arrival would occasion there. The great
house, dumb as to all that had been suffered in it, and the changes it
had witnessed, stood frowning like a dark mute on the street; baulking
any nearer inquiries with the staring announcement that the lease of
this desirable Family Mansion was to be disposed of.

CHAPTER 60. Chiefly Matrimonial

The grand half-yearly festival holden by Doctor and Mrs Blimber, on
which occasion they requested the pleasure of the company of every young
gentleman pursuing his studies in that genteel establishment, at an
early party, when the hour was half-past seven o’clock, and when the
object was quadrilles, had duly taken place, about this time; and
the young gentlemen, with no unbecoming demonstrations of levity, had
betaken themselves, in a state of scholastic repletion, to their
own homes. Mr Skettles had repaired abroad, permanently to grace the
establishment of his father Sir Barnet Skettles, whose popular manners
had obtained him a diplomatic appointment, the honours of which were
discharged by himself and Lady Skettles, to the satisfaction even of
their own countrymen and countrywomen: which was considered almost
miraculous. Mr Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature, in Wellington
boots, was so extremely full of antiquity as to be nearly on a par with
a genuine ancient Roman in his knowledge of English: a triumph that
affected his good parents with the tenderest emotions, and caused
the father and mother of Mr Briggs (whose learning, like ill-arranged
luggage, was so tightly packed that he couldn’t get at anything he
wanted) to hide their diminished heads. The fruit laboriously gathered
from the tree of knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in fact,
had been subjected to so much pressure, that it had become a kind of
intellectual Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form or
flavour remaining. Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing system
had the happier and not uncommon effect of leaving no impression
whatever, when the forcing apparatus ceased to work, was in a much more
comfortable plight; and being then on shipboard, bound for Bengal, found
himself forgetting, with such admirable rapidity, that it was doubtful
whether his declensions of noun-substantives would hold out to the end
of the voyage.

When Doctor Blimber, in pursuance of the usual course, would have said
to the young gentlemen, on the morning of the party, ‘Gentlemen, we will
resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month,’ he departed from
the usual course, and said, ‘Gentlemen, when our friend Cincinnatus
retired to his farm, he did not present to the senate any Roman who he
sought to nominate as his successor. But there is a Roman here,’ said
Doctor Blimber, laying his hand on the shoulder of Mr Feeder, B.A.,
‘adolescens imprimis gravis et doctus, gentlemen, whom I, a retiring
Cincinnatus, wish to present to my little senate, as their future
Dictator. Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of
next month, under the auspices of Mr Feeder, B.A.’ At this (which
Doctor Blimber had previously called upon all the parents, and urbanely
explained), the young gentlemen cheered; and Mr Tozer, on behalf of the
rest, instantly presented the Doctor with a silver inkstand, in a speech
containing very little of the mother-tongue, but fifteen quotations
from the Latin, and seven from the Greek, which moved the younger of the
young gentlemen to discontent and envy: they remarking, ‘Oh, ah. It was
all very well for old Tozer, but they didn’t subscribe money for old
Tozer to show off with, they supposed; did they? What business was it
of old Tozer’s more than anybody else’s? It wasn’t his inkstand.
Why couldn’t he leave the boys’ property alone?’ and murmuring other
expressions of their dissatisfaction, which seemed to find a greater
relief in calling him old Tozer, than in any other available vent.

Not a word had been said to the young gentlemen, nor a hint dropped, of
anything like a contemplated marriage between Mr Feeder, B.A., and the
fair Cornelia Blimber. Doctor Blimber, especially, seemed to take pains
to look as if nothing would surprise him more; but it was perfectly well
known to all the young gentlemen nevertheless, and when they departed
for the society of their relations and friends, they took leave of Mr
Feeder with awe.

Mr Feeder’s most romantic visions were fulfilled. The Doctor had
determined to paint the house outside, and put it in thorough repair;
and to give up the business, and to give up Cornelia. The painting and
repairing began upon the very day of the young gentlemen’s departure,
and now behold! the wedding morning was come, and Cornelia, in a new
pair of spectacles, was waiting to be led to the hymeneal altar.

The Doctor with his learned legs, and Mrs Blimber in a lilac bonnet, and
Mr Feeder, B.A., with his long knuckles and his bristly head of hair,
and Mr Feeder’s brother, the Reverend Alfred Feeder, M.A., who was
to perform the ceremony, were all assembled in the drawing-room, and
Cornelia with her orange-flowers and bridesmaids had just come down, and
looked, as of old, a little squeezed in appearance, but very charming,
when the door opened, and the weak-eyed young man, in a loud voice, made
the following proclamation:

‘MR AND MRS TOOTS!’

Upon which there entered Mr Toots, grown extremely stout, and on his arm
a lady very handsomely and becomingly dressed, with very bright black
eyes.

‘Mrs Blimber,’ said Mr Toots, ‘allow me to present my wife.’

Mrs Blimber was delighted to receive her. Mrs Blimber was a little
condescending, but extremely kind.

‘And as you’ve known me for a long time, you know,’ said Mr Toots, ‘let
me assure you that she is one of the most remarkable women that ever
lived.’

‘My dear!’ remonstrated Mrs Toots.

‘Upon my word and honour she is,’ said Mr Toots. ‘I--I assure you, Mrs
Blimber, she’s a most extraordinary woman.’

Mrs Toots laughed merrily, and Mrs Blimber led her to Cornelia. Mr Toots
having paid his respects in that direction and having saluted his old
preceptor, who said, in allusion to his conjugal state, ‘Well, Toots,
well, Toots! So you are one of us, are you, Toots?’--retired with Mr
Feeder, B.A., into a window.

Mr Feeder, B.A., being in great spirits, made a spar at Mr Toots, and
tapped him skilfully with the back of his hand on the breastbone.

‘Well, old Buck!’ said Mr Feeder with a laugh. ‘Well! Here we are! Taken
in and done for. Eh?’

‘Feeder,’ returned Mr Toots. ‘I give you joy. If you’re as--as--as
perfectly blissful in a matrimonial life, as I am myself, you’ll have
nothing to desire.’

‘I don’t forget my old friends, you see,’ said Mr Feeder. ‘I ask em to
my wedding, Toots.’

‘Feeder,’ replied Mr Toots gravely, ‘the fact is, that there were
several circumstances which prevented me from communicating with you
until after my marriage had been solemnised. In the first place, I had
made a perfect brute of myself to you, on the subject of Miss Dombey;
and I felt that if you were asked to any wedding of mine, you
would naturally expect that it was with Miss Dombey, which involved
explanations, that upon my word and honour, at that crisis, would
have knocked me completely over. In the second place, our wedding was
strictly private; there being nobody present but one friend of myself
and Mrs Toots’s, who is a Captain in--I don’t exactly know in what,’
said Mr Toots, ‘but it’s of no consequence. I hope, Feeder, that in
writing a statement of what had occurred before Mrs Toots and myself
went abroad upon our foreign tour, I fully discharged the offices of
friendship.’

‘Toots, my boy,’ said Mr Feeder, shaking his hands, ‘I was joking.’

‘And now, Feeder,’ said Mr Toots, ‘I should be glad to know what you
think of my union.’

‘Capital!’ returned Mr Feeder.

‘You think it’s capital, do you, Feeder?’ said Mr Toots solemnly.
‘Then how capital must it be to Me! For you can never know what an
extraordinary woman that is.’

Mr Feeder was willing to take it for granted. But Mr Toots shook his
head, and wouldn’t hear of that being possible.

‘You see,’ said Mr Toots, ‘what I wanted in a wife was--in short, was
sense. Money, Feeder, I had. Sense I--I had not, particularly.’

Mr Feeder murmured, ‘Oh, yes, you had, Toots!’ But Mr Toots said:

‘No, Feeder, I had not. Why should I disguise it? I had not. I knew that
sense was There,’ said Mr Toots, stretching out his hand towards his
wife, ‘in perfect heaps. I had no relation to object or be offended, on
the score of station; for I had no relation. I have never had anybody
belonging to me but my guardian, and him, Feeder, I have always
considered as a Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it was not
likely,’ said Mr Toots, ‘that I should take his opinion.’

‘No,’ said Mr Feeder.

‘Accordingly,’ resumed Mr Toots, ‘I acted on my own. Bright was the day
on which I did so! Feeder! Nobody but myself can tell what the capacity
of that woman’s mind is. If ever the Rights of Women, and all that kind
of thing, are properly attended to, it will be through her powerful
intellect--Susan, my dear!’ said Mr Toots, looking abruptly out of the
windows ‘pray do not exert yourself!’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Toots, ‘I was only talking.’

‘But, my love,’ said Mr Toots, ‘pray do not exert yourself. You really
must be careful. Do not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She’s so easily
excited,’ said Mr Toots, apart to Mrs Blimber, ‘and then she forgets the
medical man altogether.’

Mrs Blimber was impressing on Mrs Toots the necessity of caution, when
Mr Feeder, B.A., offered her his arm, and led her down to the carriages
that were waiting to go to church. Doctor Blimber escorted Mrs Toots. Mr
Toots escorted the fair bride, around whose lambent spectacles two gauzy
little bridesmaids fluttered like moths. Mr Feeder’s brother, Mr Alfred
Feeder, M.A., had already gone on, in advance, to assume his official
functions.

The ceremony was performed in an admirable manner. Cornelia, with her
crisp little curls, ‘went in,’ as the Chicken might have said, with
great composure; and Doctor Blimber gave her away, like a man who had
quite made up his mind to it. The gauzy little bridesmaids appeared
to suffer most. Mrs Blimber was affected, but gently so; and told the
Reverend Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A., on the way home, that if she could only
have seen Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum, she would not have had a
wish, now, ungratified.

There was a breakfast afterwards, limited to the same small party;
at which the spirits of Mr Feeder, B.A., were tremendous, and so
communicated themselves to Mrs Toots that Mr Toots was several times
heard to observe, across the table, ‘My dear Susan, don’t exert
yourself!’ The best of it was, that Mr Toots felt it incumbent on him to
make a speech; and in spite of a whole code of telegraphic dissuasions
from Mrs Toots, appeared on his legs for the first time in his life.

‘I really,’ said Mr Toots, ‘in this house, where whatever was done to
me in the way of--of any mental confusion sometimes--which is of no
consequence and I impute to nobody--I was always treated like one of
Doctor Blimber’s family, and had a desk to myself for a considerable
period--can--not--allow--my friend Feeder to be--’

Mrs Toots suggested ‘married.’

‘It may not be inappropriate to the occasion, or altogether
uninteresting,’ said Mr Toots with a delighted face, ‘to observe that my
wife is a most extraordinary woman, and would do this much better than
myself--allow my friend Feeder to be married--especially to--’

Mrs Toots suggested ‘to Miss Blimber.’

‘To Mrs Feeder, my love!’ said Mr Toots, in a subdued tone of private
discussion: “‘whom God hath joined,” you know, “let no man”--don’t you
know? I cannot allow my friend Feeder to be married--especially to Mrs
Feeder--without proposing their--their--Toasts; and may,’ said Mr Toots,
fixing his eyes on his wife, as if for inspiration in a high flight,
‘may the torch of Hymen be the beacon of joy, and may the flowers
we have this day strewed in their path, be the--the banishers of--of
gloom!’

Doctor Blimber, who had a taste for metaphor, was pleased with this, and
said, ‘Very good, Toots! Very well said, indeed, Toots!’ and nodded
his head and patted his hands. Mr Feeder made in reply, a comic speech
chequered with sentiment. Mr Alfred Feeder, M.A., was afterwards very
happy on Doctor and Mrs Blimber; Mr Feeder, B.A., scarcely less so, on
the gauzy little bridesmaids. Doctor Blimber then, in a sonorous voice,
delivered a few thoughts in the pastoral style, relative to the rushes
among which it was the intention of himself and Mrs Blimber to dwell,
and the bee that would hum around their cot. Shortly after which, as the
Doctor’s eyes were twinkling in a remarkable manner, and his son-in-law
had already observed that time was made for slaves, and had inquired
whether Mrs Toots sang, the discreet Mrs Blimber dissolved the sitting,
and sent Cornelia away, very cool and comfortable, in a post-chaise,
with the man of her heart.

Mr and Mrs Toots withdrew to the Bedford (Mrs Toots had been there
before in old times, under her maiden name of Nipper), and there found
a letter, which it took Mr Toots such an enormous time to read, that Mrs
Toots was frightened.

‘My dear Susan,’ said Mr Toots, ‘fright is worse than exertion. Pray be
calm!’

‘Who is it from?’ asked Mrs Toots.

‘Why, my love,’ said Mr Toots, ‘it’s from Captain Gills. Do not excite
yourself. Walters and Miss Dombey are expected home!’

‘My dear,’ said Mrs Toots, raising herself quickly from the sofa, very
pale, ‘don’t try to deceive me, for it’s no use, they’re come home--I
see it plainly in your face!’

‘She’s a most extraordinary woman!’ exclaimed Mr Toots, in rapturous
admiration. ‘You’re perfectly right, my love, they have come home. Miss
Dombey has seen her father, and they are reconciled!’

‘Reconciled!’ cried Mrs Toots, clapping her hands.

‘My dear,’ said Mr Toots; ‘pray do not exert yourself. Do remember the
medical man! Captain Gills says--at least he don’t say, but I imagine,
from what I can make out, he means--that Miss Dombey has brought her
unfortunate father away from his old house, to one where she and Walters
are living; that he is lying very ill there--supposed to be dying; and
that she attends upon him night and day.’

Mrs Toots began to cry quite bitterly.

‘My dearest Susan,’ replied Mr Toots, ‘do, do, if you possibly can,
remember the medical man! If you can’t, it’s of no consequence--but do
endeavour to!’

His wife, with her old manner suddenly restored, so pathetically
entreated him to take her to her precious pet, her little mistress, her
own darling, and the like, that Mr Toots, whose sympathy and admiration
were of the strongest kind, consented from his very heart of hearts; and
they agreed to depart immediately, and present themselves in answer to
the Captain’s letter.

Now some hidden sympathies of things, or some coincidences, had that
day brought the Captain himself (toward whom Mr and Mrs Toots were soon
journeying) into the flowery train of wedlock; not as a principal, but
as an accessory. It happened accidentally, and thus:

The Captain, having seen Florence and her baby for a moment, to his
unbounded content, and having had a long talk with Walter, turned out
for a walk; feeling it necessary to have some solitary meditation on the
changes of human affairs, and to shake his glazed hat profoundly over
the fall of Mr Dombey, for whom the generosity and simplicity of his
nature were awakened in a lively manner. The Captain would have been
very low, indeed, on the unhappy gentleman’s account, but for the
recollection of the baby; which afforded him such intense satisfaction
whenever it arose, that he laughed aloud as he went along the street,
and, indeed, more than once, in a sudden impulse of joy, threw up his
glazed hat and caught it again; much to the amazement of the spectators.
The rapid alternations of light and shade to which these two conflicting
subjects of reflection exposed the Captain, were so very trying to his
spirits, that he felt a long walk necessary to his composure; and as
there is a great deal in the influence of harmonious associations, he
chose, for the scene of this walk, his old neighbourhood, down among
the mast, oar, and block makers, ship-biscuit bakers, coal-whippers,
pitch-kettles, sailors, canals, docks, swing-bridges, and other soothing
objects.

These peaceful scenes, and particularly the region of Limehouse Hole and
thereabouts, were so influential in calming the Captain, that he walked
on with restored tranquillity, and was, in fact, regaling himself, under
his breath, with the ballad of Lovely Peg, when, on turning a corner,
he was suddenly transfixed and rendered speechless by a triumphant
procession that he beheld advancing towards him.

This awful demonstration was headed by that determined woman Mrs
MacStinger, who, preserving a countenance of inexorable resolution, and
wearing conspicuously attached to her obdurate bosom a stupendous watch
and appendages, which the Captain recognised at a glance as the property
of Bunsby, conducted under her arm no other than that sagacious mariner;
he, with the distraught and melancholy visage of a captive borne into a
foreign land, meekly resigning himself to her will. Behind them appeared
the young MacStingers, in a body, exulting. Behind them, two ladies
of a terrible and steadfast aspect, leading between them a short
gentleman in a tall hat, who likewise exulted. In the wake, appeared
Bunsby’s boy, bearing umbrellas. The whole were in good marching order;
and a dreadful smartness that pervaded the party would have sufficiently
announced, if the intrepid countenances of the ladies had been wanting,
that it was a procession of sacrifice, and that the victim was Bunsby.

The first impulse of the Captain was to run away. This also appeared
to be the first impulse of Bunsby, hopeless as its execution must
have proved. But a cry of recognition proceeding from the party, and
Alexander MacStinger running up to the Captain with open arms, the
Captain struck.

‘Well, Cap’en Cuttle!’ said Mrs MacStinger. ‘This is indeed a meeting! I
bear no malice now, Cap’en Cuttle--you needn’t fear that I’m a going to
cast any reflections. I hope to go to the altar in another spirit.’ Here
Mrs MacStinger paused, and drawing herself up, and inflating her bosom
with a long breath, said, in allusion to the victim, ‘My ‘usband, Cap’en
Cuttle!’

The abject Bunsby looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor at
his bride, nor at his friend, but straight before him at nothing. The
Captain putting out his hand, Bunsby put out his; but, in answer to the
Captain’s greeting, spake no word.

‘Cap’en Cuttle,’ said Mrs MacStinger, ‘if you would wish to heal up past
animosities, and to see the last of your friend, my ‘usband, as a single
person, we should be ‘appy of your company to chapel. Here is a lady
here,’ said Mrs MacStinger, turning round to the more intrepid of
the two, ‘my bridesmaid, that will be glad of your protection, Cap’en
Cuttle.’

The short gentleman in the tall hat, who it appeared was the husband of
the other lady, and who evidently exulted at the reduction of a fellow
creature to his own condition, gave place at this, and resigned the lady
to Captain Cuttle. The lady immediately seized him, and, observing that
there was no time to lose, gave the word, in a strong voice, to advance.

The Captain’s concern for his friend, not unmingled, at first, with some
concern for himself--for a shadowy terror that he might be married by
violence, possessed him, until his knowledge of the service came to his
relief, and remembering the legal obligation of saying, ‘I will,’
he felt himself personally safe so long as he resolved, if asked
any question, distinctly to reply ‘I won’t’--threw him into a profuse
perspiration; and rendered him, for a time, insensible to the movements
of the procession, of which he now formed a feature, and to the
conversation of his fair companion. But as he became less agitated, he
learnt from this lady that she was the widow of a Mr Bokum, who had held
an employment in the Custom House; that she was the dearest friend of
Mrs MacStinger, whom she considered a pattern for her sex; that she had
often heard of the Captain, and now hoped he had repented of his past
life; that she trusted Mr Bunsby knew what a blessing he had gained, but
that she feared men seldom did know what such blessings were, until they
had lost them; with more to the same purpose.

All this time, the Captain could not but observe that Mrs Bokum kept
her eyes steadily on the bridegroom, and that whenever they came near a
court or other narrow turning which appeared favourable for flight, she
was on the alert to cut him off if he attempted escape. The other lady,
too, as well as her husband, the short gentleman with the tall hat, were
plainly on guard, according to a preconcerted plan; and the wretched man
was so secured by Mrs MacStinger, that any effort at self-preservation
by flight was rendered futile. This, indeed, was apparent to the mere
populace, who expressed their perception of the fact by jeers and cries;
to all of which, the dread MacStinger was inflexibly indifferent, while
Bunsby himself appeared in a state of unconsciousness.

The Captain made many attempts to accost the philosopher, if only in
a monosyllable or a signal; but always failed, in consequence of the
vigilance of the guard, and the difficulty, at all times peculiar to
Bunsby’s constitution, of having his attention aroused by any outward
and visible sign whatever. Thus they approached the chapel, a neat
whitewashed edifice, recently engaged by the Reverend Melchisedech
Howler, who had consented, on very urgent solicitation, to give the
world another two years of existence, but had informed his followers
that, then, it must positively go.

While the Reverend Melchisedech was offering up some extemporary
orisons, the Captain found an opportunity of growling in the
bridegroom’s ear:

‘What cheer, my lad, what cheer?’

To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness of the Reverend
Melchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances could have
excused:

‘D----d bad,’

‘Jack Bunsby,’ whispered the Captain, ‘do you do this here, of your own
free will?’

Mr Bunsby answered ‘No.’

‘Why do you do it, then, my lad?’ inquired the Captain, not unnaturally.

Bunsby, still looking, and always looking with an immovable countenance,
at the opposite side of the world, made no reply.

‘Why not sheer off?’ said the Captain. ‘Eh?’ whispered Bunsby, with a
momentary gleam of hope.

‘Sheer off,’ said the Captain.

‘Where’s the good?’ retorted the forlorn sage. ‘She’d capter me agen.’

‘Try!’ replied the Captain. ‘Cheer up! Come! Now’s your time. Sheer off,
Jack Bunsby!’

Jack Bunsby, however, instead of profiting by the advice, said in a
doleful whisper:

‘It all began in that there chest o’ yourn. Why did I ever conwoy her
into port that night?’

‘My lad,’ faltered the Captain, ‘I thought as you had come over her; not
as she had come over you. A man as has got such opinions as you have!’

Mr Bunsby merely uttered a suppressed groan.

‘Come!’ said the Captain, nudging him with his elbow, ‘now’s your time!
Sheer off! I’ll cover your retreat. The time’s a flying. Bunsby! It’s
for liberty. Will you once?’

Bunsby was immovable.

‘Bunsby!’ whispered the Captain, ‘will you twice?’

Bunsby wouldn’t twice.

‘Bunsby!’ urged the Captain, ‘it’s for liberty; will you three times?
Now or never!’

Bunsby didn’t then, and didn’t ever; for Mrs MacStinger immediately
afterwards married him.

One of the most frightful circumstances of the ceremony to the Captain,
was the deadly interest exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger; and the
fatal concentration of her faculties, with which that promising child,
already the image of her parent, observed the whole proceedings. The
Captain saw in this a succession of man-traps stretching out infinitely;
a series of ages of oppression and coercion, through which the seafaring
line was doomed. It was a more memorable sight than the unflinching
steadiness of Mrs Bokum and the other lady, the exultation of the
short gentleman in the tall hat, or even the fell inflexibility of Mrs
MacStinger. The Master MacStingers understood little of what was going
on, and cared less; being chiefly engaged, during the ceremony, in
treading on one another’s half-boots; but the contrast afforded by
those wretched infants only set off and adorned the precocious woman in
Juliana. Another year or two, the Captain thought, and to lodge where
that child was, would be destruction.

The ceremony was concluded by a general spring of the young family on Mr
Bunsby, whom they hailed by the endearing name of father, and from
whom they solicited half-pence. These gushes of affection over, the
procession was about to issue forth again, when it was delayed for
some little time by an unexpected transport on the part of Alexander
MacStinger. That dear child, it seemed, connecting a chapel with
tombstones, when it was entered for any purpose apart from the ordinary
religious exercises, could not be persuaded but that his mother was now
to be decently interred, and lost to him for ever. In the anguish of
this conviction, he screamed with astonishing force, and turned black in
the face. However touching these marks of a tender disposition were
to his mother, it was not in the character of that remarkable woman to
permit her recognition of them to degenerate into weakness. Therefore,
after vainly endeavouring to convince his reason by shakes, pokes,
bawlings-out, and similar applications to his head, she led him into
the air, and tried another method; which was manifested to the marriage
party by a quick succession of sharp sounds, resembling applause, and
subsequently, by their seeing Alexander in contact with the coolest
paving-stone in the court, greatly flushed, and loudly lamenting.

The procession being then in a condition to form itself once more, and
repair to Brig Place, where a marriage feast was in readiness, returned
as it had come; not without the receipt, by Bunsby, of many humorous
congratulations from the populace on his recently-acquired happiness.
The Captain accompanied it as far as the house-door, but, being made
uneasy by the gentler manner of Mrs Bokum, who, now that she was
relieved from her engrossing duty--for the watchfulness and alacrity
of the ladies sensibly diminished when the bridegroom was safely
married--had greater leisure to show an interest in his behalf, there
left it and the captive; faintly pleading an appointment, and promising
to return presently. The Captain had another cause for uneasiness, in
remorsefully reflecting that he had been the first means of Bunsby’s
entrapment, though certainly without intending it, and through his
unbounded faith in the resources of that philosopher.

To go back to old Sol Gills at the wooden Midshipman’s, and not first go
round to ask how Mr Dombey was--albeit the house where he lay was out of
London, and away on the borders of a fresh heath--was quite out of the
Captain’s course. So he got a lift when he was tired, and made out the
journey gaily.

The blinds were pulled down, and the house so quiet, that the Captain
was almost afraid to knock; but listening at the door, he heard low
voices within, very near it, and, knocking softly, was admitted by Mr
Toots. Mr Toots and his wife had, in fact, just arrived there; having
been at the Midshipman’s to seek him, and having there obtained the
address.

They were not so recently arrived, but that Mrs Toots had caught the
baby from somebody, taken it in her arms, and sat down on the stairs,
hugging and fondling it. Florence was stooping down beside her; and no
one could have said which Mrs Toots was hugging and fondling most, the
mother or the child, or which was the tenderer, Florence of Mrs Toots,
or Mrs Toots of her, or both of the baby; it was such a little group of
love and agitation.

‘And is your Pa very ill, my darling dear Miss Floy?’ asked Susan.

‘He is very, very ill,’ said Florence. ‘But, Susan, dear, you must
not speak to me as you used to speak. And what’s this?’ said Florence,
touching her clothes, in amazement. ‘Your old dress, dear? Your old cap,
curls, and all?’

Susan burst into tears, and showered kisses on the little hand that had
touched her so wonderingly.

‘My dear Miss Dombey,’ said Mr Toots, stepping forward, ‘I’ll explain.
She’s the most extraordinary woman. There are not many to equal her! She
has always said--she said before we were married, and has said to this
day--that whenever you came home, she’d come to you in no dress but the
dress she used to serve you in, for fear she might seem strange to you,
and you might like her less. I admire the dress myself,’ said Mr Toots,
‘of all things. I adore her in it! My dear Miss Dombey, she’ll be your
maid again, your nurse, all that she ever was, and more. There’s no
change in her. But, Susan, my dear,’ said Mr Toots, who had spoken with
great feeling and high admiration, ‘all I ask is, that you’ll remember
the medical man, and not exert yourself too much!’

CHAPTER 61. Relenting

Florence had need of help. Her father’s need of it was sore, and made
the aid of her old friend invaluable. Death stood at his pillow. A
shade, already, of what he had been, shattered in mind, and perilously
sick in body, he laid his weary head down on the bed his daughter’s
hands prepared for him, and had never raised it since.

She was always with him. He knew her, generally; though, in the
wandering of his brain, he often confused the circumstances under which
he spoke to her. Thus he would address her, sometimes, as if his boy
were newly dead; and would tell her, that although he had said nothing
of her ministering at the little bedside, yet he had seen it--he had
seen it; and then would hide his face and sob, and put out his worn
hand. Sometimes he would ask her for herself. ‘Where is Florence?’ ‘I am
here, Papa, I am here.’ ‘I don’t know her!’ he would cry. ‘We have been
parted so long, that I don’t know her!’ and then a staring dread would
be upon him, until she could soothe his perturbation; and recall the
tears she tried so hard, at other times, to dry.

He rambled through the scenes of his old pursuits--through many where
Florence lost him as she listened--sometimes for hours. He would repeat
that childish question, ‘What is money?’ and ponder on it, and think
about it, and reason with himself, more or less connectedly, for a good
answer; as if it had never been proposed to him until that moment. He
would go on with a musing repetition of the title of his old firm twenty
thousand times, and at every one of them, would turn his head upon his
pillow. He would count his children--one--two--stop, and go back, and
begin again in the same way.

But this was when his mind was in its most distracted state. In all the
other phases of its illness, and in those to which it was most constant,
it always turned on Florence. What he would oftenest do was this: he
would recall that night he had so recently remembered, the night on
which she came down to his room, and would imagine that his heart smote
him, and that he went out after her, and up the stairs to seek her.
Then, confounding that time with the later days of the many footsteps,
he would be amazed at their number, and begin to count them as he
followed her. Here, of a sudden, was a bloody footstep going on among
the others; and after it there began to be, at intervals, doors standing
open, through which certain terrible pictures were seen, in mirrors,
of haggard men, concealing something in their breasts. Still, among the
many footsteps and the bloody footsteps here and there, was the step of
Florence. Still she was going on before. Still the restless mind went,
following and counting, ever farther, ever higher, as to the summit of a
mighty tower that it took years to climb.

One day he inquired if that were not Susan who had spoken a long while
ago.

Florence said ‘Yes, dear Papa;’ and asked him would he like to see her?

He said ‘very much.’ And Susan, with no little trepidation, showed
herself at his bedside.

It seemed a great relief to him. He begged her not to go; to understand
that he forgave her what she had said; and that she was to stay.
Florence and he were very different now, he said, and very happy. Let
her look at this! He meant his drawing the gentle head down to his
pillow, and laying it beside him.

He remained like this for days and weeks. At length, lying, the faint
feeble semblance of a man, upon his bed, and speaking in a voice so low
that they could only hear him by listening very near to his lips, he
became quiet. It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie there, with the
window open, looking out at the summer sky and the trees: and, in the
evening, at the sunset. To watch the shadows of the clouds and leaves,
and seem to feel a sympathy with shadows. It was natural that he should.
To him, life and the world were nothing else.

He began to show now that he thought of Florence’s fatigue: and often
taxed his weakness to whisper to her, ‘Go and walk, my dearest, in the
sweet air. Go to your good husband!’ One time when Walter was in his
room, he beckoned him to come near, and to stoop down; and pressing his
hand, whispered an assurance to him that he knew he could trust him with
his child when he was dead.

It chanced one evening, towards sunset, when Florence and Walter were
sitting in his room together, as he liked to see them, that Florence,
having her baby in her arms, began in a low voice to sing to the little
fellow, and sang the old tune she had so often sung to the dead child:
He could not bear it at the time; he held up his trembling hand,
imploring her to stop; but next day he asked her to repeat it, and to
do so often of an evening: which she did. He listening, with his face
turned away.

Florence was sitting on a certain time by his window, with her
work-basket between her and her old attendant, who was still her
faithful companion. He had fallen into a doze. It was a beautiful
evening, with two hours of light to come yet; and the tranquillity and
quiet made Florence very thoughtful. She was lost to everything for the
moment, but the occasion when the so altered figure on the bed had first
presented her to her beautiful Mama; when a touch from Walter leaning on
the back of her chair, made her start.

‘My dear,’ said Walter, ‘there is someone downstairs who wishes to speak
to you.’

She fancied Walter looked grave, and asked him if anything had happened.

‘No, no, my love!’ said Walter. ‘I have seen the gentleman myself, and
spoken with him. Nothing has happened. Will you come?’

Florence put her arm through his; and confiding her father to the
black-eyed Mrs Toots, who sat as brisk and smart at her work as
black-eyed woman could, accompanied her husband downstairs. In the
pleasant little parlour opening on the garden, sat a gentleman, who rose
to advance towards her when she came in, but turned off, by reason of
some peculiarity in his legs, and was only stopped by the table.

Florence then remembered Cousin Feenix, whom she had not at first
recognised in the shade of the leaves. Cousin Feenix took her hand, and
congratulated her upon her marriage.

‘I could have wished, I am sure,’ said Cousin Feenix, sitting down
as Florence sat, ‘to have had an earlier opportunity of offering my
congratulations; but, in point of fact, so many painful occurrences have
happened, treading, as a man may say, on one another’s heels, that I
have been in a devil of a state myself, and perfectly unfit for every
description of society. The only description of society I have kept, has
been my own; and it certainly is anything but flattering to a man’s good
opinion of his own sources, to know that, in point of fact, he has the
capacity of boring himself to a perfectly unlimited extent.’

Florence divined, from some indefinable constraint and anxiety in this
gentleman’s manner--which was always a gentleman’s, in spite of the
harmless little eccentricities that attached to it--and from Walter’s
manner no less, that something more immediately tending to some object
was to follow this.

‘I have been mentioning to my friend Mr Gay, if I may be allowed to have
the honour of calling him so,’ said Cousin Feenix, ‘that I am rejoiced
to hear that my friend Dombey is very decidedly mending. I trust my
friend Dombey will not allow his mind to be too much preyed upon, by any
mere loss of fortune. I cannot say that I have ever experienced any very
great loss of fortune myself: never having had, in point of fact, any
great amount of fortune to lose. But as much as I could lose, I have
lost; and I don’t find that I particularly care about it. I know my
friend Dombey to be a devilish honourable man; and it’s calculated to
console my friend Dombey very much, to know, that this is the universal
sentiment. Even Tommy Screwzer,--a man of an extremely bilious habit,
with whom my friend Gay is probably acquainted--cannot say a syllable in
disputation of the fact.’

Florence felt, more than ever, that there was something to come; and
looked earnestly for it. So earnestly, that Cousin Feenix answered, as
if she had spoken.

‘The fact is,’ said Cousin Feenix, ‘that my friend Gay and myself have
been discussing the propriety of entreating a favour at your hands;
and that I have the consent of my friend Gay--who has met me in an
exceedingly kind and open manner, for which I am very much indebted to
him--to solicit it. I am sensible that so amiable a lady as the lovely
and accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey will not require much
urging; but I am happy to know, that I am supported by my friend Gay’s
influence and approval. As in my parliamentary time, when a man had a
motion to make of any sort--which happened seldom in those days, for we
were kept very tight in hand, the leaders on both sides being regular
Martinets, which was a devilish good thing for the rank and file, like
myself, and prevented our exposing ourselves continually, as a great
many of us had a feverish anxiety to do--as, in my parliamentary time,
I was about to say, when a man had leave to let off any little private
popgun, it was always considered a great point for him to say that he
had the happiness of believing that his sentiments were not without
an echo in the breast of Mr Pitt; the pilot, in point of fact, who had
weathered the storm. Upon which, a devilish large number of fellows
immediately cheered, and put him in spirits. Though the fact is, that
these fellows, being under orders to cheer most excessively whenever Mr
Pitt’s name was mentioned, became so proficient that it always woke ‘em.
And they were so entirely innocent of what was going on, otherwise, that
it used to be commonly said by Conversation Brown--four-bottle man at
the Treasury Board, with whom the father of my friend Gay was probably
acquainted, for it was before my friend Gay’s time--that if a man had
risen in his place, and said that he regretted to inform the house that
there was an Honourable Member in the last stage of convulsions in the
Lobby, and that the Honourable Member’s name was Pitt, the approbation
would have been vociferous.’

This postponement of the point, put Florence in a flutter; and she
looked from Cousin Feenix to Walter, in increasing agitation.

‘My love,’ said Walter, ‘there is nothing the matter.’

‘There is nothing the matter, upon my honour,’ said Cousin Feenix; ‘and
I am deeply distressed at being the means of causing you a moment’s
uneasiness. I beg to assure you that there is nothing the matter.
The favour that I have to ask is, simply--but it really does seem so
exceedingly singular, that I should be in the last degree obliged to my
friend Gay if he would have the goodness to break the--in point of fact,
the ice,’ said Cousin Feenix.

Walter thus appealed to, and appealed to no less in the look that
Florence turned towards him, said:

‘My dearest, it is no more than this. That you will ride to London with
this gentleman, whom you know.’

‘And my friend Gay, also--I beg your pardon!’ interrupted Cousin Feenix.

‘--And with me--and make a visit somewhere.’

‘To whom?’ asked Florence, looking from one to the other.

‘If I might entreat,’ said Cousin Feenix, ‘that you would not press
for an answer to that question, I would venture to take the liberty of
making the request.’

‘Do you know, Walter?’

‘Yes.’

‘And think it right?’

‘Yes. Only because I am sure that you would too. Though there may be
reasons I very well understand, which make it better that nothing more
should be said beforehand.’

‘If Papa is still asleep, or can spare me if he is awake, I will go
immediately,’ said Florence. And rising quietly, and glancing at them
with a look that was a little alarmed but perfectly confiding, left the
room.

When she came back, ready to bear them company, they were talking
together, gravely, at the window; and Florence could not but wonder what
the topic was, that had made them so well acquainted in so short a time.
She did not wonder at the look of pride and love with which her husband
broke off as she entered; for she never saw him, but that rested on her.

‘I will leave,’ said Cousin Feenix, ‘a card for my friend Dombey,
sincerely trusting that he will pick up health and strength with every
returning hour. And I hope my friend Dombey will do me the favour to
consider me a man who has a devilish warm admiration of his character,
as, in point of fact, a British merchant and a devilish upright
gentleman. My place in the country is in a most confounded state of
dilapidation, but if my friend Dombey should require a change of air,
and would take up his quarters there, he would find it a remarkably
healthy spot--as it need be, for it’s amazingly dull. If my friend
Dombey suffers from bodily weakness, and would allow me to recommend
what has frequently done myself good, as a man who has been extremely
queer at times, and who lived pretty freely in the days when men lived
very freely, I should say, let it be in point of fact the yolk of an
egg, beat up with sugar and nutmeg, in a glass of sherry, and taken
in the morning with a slice of dry toast. Jackson, who kept the
boxing-rooms in Bond Street--man of very superior qualifications, with
whose reputation my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted--used to mention
that in training for the ring they substituted rum for sherry. I should
recommend sherry in this case, on account of my friend Dombey being in
an invalided condition; which might occasion rum to fly--in point of
fact to his head--and throw him into a devil of a state.’

Of all this, Cousin Feenix delivered himself with an obviously nervous
and discomposed air. Then, giving his arm to Florence, and putting
the strongest possible constraint upon his wilful legs, which seemed
determined to go out into the garden, he led her to the door, and handed
her into a carriage that was ready for her reception.

Walter entered after him, and they drove away.

Their ride was six or eight miles long. When they drove through certain
dull and stately streets, lying westward in London, it was growing dusk.
Florence had, by this time, put her hand in Walter’s; and was looking
very earnestly, and with increasing agitation, into every new street
into which they turned.

When the carriage stopped, at last, before that house in Brook Street,
where her father’s unhappy marriage had been celebrated, Florence
said, ‘Walter, what is this? Who is here?’ Walter cheering her, and
not replying, she glanced up at the house-front, and saw that all the
windows were shut, as if it were uninhabited. Cousin Feenix had by this
time alighted, and was offering his hand.

‘Are you not coming, Walter?’

‘No, I will remain here. Don’t tremble there is nothing to fear, dearest
Florence.’

‘I know that, Walter, with you so near. I am sure of that, but--’

The door was softly opened, without any knock, and Cousin Feenix led her
out of the summer evening air into the close dull house. More sombre and
brown than ever, it seemed to have been shut up from the wedding-day,
and to have hoarded darkness and sadness ever since.

Florence ascended the dusky staircase, trembling; and stopped, with her
conductor, at the drawing-room door. He opened it, without speaking,
and signed an entreaty to her to advance into the inner room, while he
remained there. Florence, after hesitating an instant, complied.

Sitting by the window at a table, where she seemed to have been writing
or drawing, was a lady, whose head, turned away towards the dying light,
was resting on her hand. Florence advancing, doubtfully, all at once
stood still, as if she had lost the power of motion. The lady turned her
head.

‘Great Heaven!’ she said, ‘what is this?’

‘No, no!’ cried Florence, shrinking back as she rose up and putting out
her hands to keep her off. ‘Mama!’

They stood looking at each other. Passion and pride had worn it, but it
was the face of Edith, and beautiful and stately yet. It was the face
of Florence, and through all the terrified avoidance it expressed, there
was pity in it, sorrow, a grateful tender memory. On each face, wonder
and fear were painted vividly; each so still and silent, looking at the
other over the black gulf of the irrevocable past.

Florence was the first to change. Bursting into tears, she said from her
full heart, ‘Oh, Mama, Mama! why do we meet like this? Why were you ever
kind to me when there was no one else, that we should meet like this?’

Edith stood before her, dumb and motionless. Her eyes were fixed upon
her face.

‘I dare not think of that,’ said Florence, ‘I am come from Papa’s sick
bed. We are never asunder now; we never shall be’ any more. If you would
have me ask his pardon, I will do it, Mama. I am almost sure he will
grant it now, if I ask him. May Heaven grant it to you, too, and comfort
you!’

She answered not a word.

‘Walter--I am married to him, and we have a son,’ said Florence,
timidly--‘is at the door, and has brought me here. I will tell him
that you are repentant; that you are changed,’ said Florence, looking
mournfully upon her; ‘and he will speak to Papa with me, I know. Is
there anything but this that I can do?’

Edith, breaking her silence, without moving eye or limb, answered
slowly:

‘The stain upon your name, upon your husband’s, on your child’s. Will
that ever be forgiven, Florence?’

‘Will it ever be, Mama? It is! Freely, freely, both by Walter and by me.
If that is any consolation to you, there is nothing that you may believe
more certainly. You do not--you do not,’ faltered Florence, ‘speak of
Papa; but I am sure you wish that I should ask him for his forgiveness.
I am sure you do.’

She answered not a word.

‘I will!’ said Florence. ‘I will bring it you, if you will let me; and
then, perhaps, we may take leave of each other, more like what we
used to be to one another. I have not,’ said Florence very gently, and
drawing nearer to her, ‘I have not shrunk back from you, Mama, because
I fear you, or because I dread to be disgraced by you. I only wish to do
my duty to Papa. I am very dear to him, and he is very dear to me. But
I never can forget that you were very good to me. Oh, pray to Heaven,’
cried Florence, falling on her bosom, ‘pray to Heaven, Mama, to forgive
you all this sin and shame, and to forgive me if I cannot help doing
this (if it is wrong), when I remember what you used to be!’

Edith, as if she fell beneath her touch, sunk down on her knees, and
caught her round the neck.

‘Florence!’ she cried. ‘My better angel! Before I am mad again, before
my stubbornness comes back and strikes me dumb, believe me, upon my soul
I am innocent!’

‘Mama!’

‘Guilty of much! Guilty of that which sets a waste between us evermore.
Guilty of what must separate me, through the whole remainder of my life,
from purity and innocence--from you, of all the earth. Guilty of a blind
and passionate resentment, of which I do not, cannot, will not, even
now, repent; but not guilty with that dead man. Before God!’

Upon her knees upon the ground, she held up both her hands, and swore
it.

‘Florence!’ she said, ‘purest and best of natures,--whom I love--who
might have changed me long ago, and did for a time work some change even
in the woman that I am,--believe me, I am innocent of that; and once
more, on my desolate heart, let me lay this dear head, for the last
time!’

She was moved and weeping. Had she been oftener thus in older days, she
had been happier now.

‘There is nothing else in all the world,’ she said, ‘that would have
wrung denial from me. No love, no hatred, no hope, no threat. I said
that I would die, and make no sign. I could have done so, and I would,
if we had never met, Florence.’

‘I trust,’ said Cousin Feenix, ambling in at the door, and speaking,
half in the room, and half out of it, ‘that my lovely and accomplished
relative will excuse my having, by a little stratagem, effected this
meeting. I cannot say that I was, at first, wholly incredulous as to
the possibility of my lovely and accomplished relative having, very
unfortunately, committed herself with the deceased person with white
teeth; because in point of fact, one does see, in this world--which is
remarkable for devilish strange arrangements, and for being decidedly
the most unintelligible thing within a man’s experience--very odd
conjunctions of that sort. But as I mentioned to my friend Dombey, I
could not admit the criminality of my lovely and accomplished relative
until it was perfectly established. And feeling, when the deceased
person was, in point of fact, destroyed in a devilish horrible manner,
that her position was a very painful one--and feeling besides that our
family had been a little to blame in not paying more attention to her,
and that we are a careless family--and also that my aunt, though a
devilish lively woman, had perhaps not been the very best of mothers--I
took the liberty of seeking her in France, and offering her such
protection as a man very much out at elbows could offer. Upon which
occasion, my lovely and accomplished relative did me the honour to
express that she believed I was, in my way, a devilish good sort of
fellow; and that therefore she put herself under my protection. Which in
point of fact I understood to be a kind thing on the part of my lovely
and accomplished relative, as I am getting extremely shaky, and have
derived great comfort from her solicitude.’

Edith, who had taken Florence to a sofa, made a gesture with her hand as
if she would have begged him to say no more.

‘My lovely and accomplished relative,’ resumed Cousin Feenix, still
ambling about at the door, ‘will excuse me, if, for her satisfaction,
and my own, and that of my friend Dombey, whose lovely and accomplished
daughter we so much admire, I complete the thread of my observations.
She will remember that, from the first, she and I never alluded to the
subject of her elopement. My impression, certainly, has always been,
that there was a mystery in the affair which she could explain if so
inclined. But my lovely and accomplished relative being a devilish
resolute woman, I knew that she was not, in point of fact, to be trifled
with, and therefore did not involve myself in any discussions. But,
observing lately, that her accessible point did appear to be a very
strong description of tenderness for the daughter of my friend Dombey,
it occurred to me that if I could bring about a meeting, unexpected on
both sides, it might lead to beneficial results. Therefore, we being in
London, in the present private way, before going to the South of Italy,
there to establish ourselves, in point of fact, until we go to our long
homes, which is a devilish disagreeable reflection for a man, I applied
myself to the discovery of the residence of my friend Gay--handsome man
of an uncommonly frank disposition, who is probably known to my lovely
and accomplished relative--and had the happiness of bringing his amiable
wife to the present place. And now,’ said Cousin Feenix, with a real
and genuine earnestness shining through the levity of his manner and his
slipshod speech, ‘I do conjure my relative, not to stop half way, but to
set right, as far as she can, whatever she has done wrong--not for
the honour of her family, not for her own fame, not for any of those
considerations which unfortunate circumstances have induced her to
regard as hollow, and in point of fact, as approaching to humbug--but
because it is wrong, and not right.’

Cousin Feenix’s legs consented to take him away after this; and leaving
them alone together, he shut the door.

Edith remained silent for some minutes, with Florence sitting close
beside her. Then she took from her bosom a sealed paper.

‘I debated with myself a long time,’ she said in a low voice, ‘whether
to write this at all, in case of dying suddenly or by accident, and
feeling the want of it upon me. I have deliberated, ever since, when and
how to destroy it. Take it, Florence. The truth is written in it.’

‘Is it for Papa?’ asked Florence.

‘It is for whom you will,’ she answered. ‘It is given to you, and is
obtained by you. He never could have had it otherwise.’

Again they sat silent, in the deepening darkness.

‘Mama,’ said Florence, ‘he has lost his fortune; he has been at the
point of death; he may not recover, even now. Is there any word that I
shall say to him from you?’

‘Did you tell me,’ asked Edith, ‘that you were very dear to him?’

‘Yes!’ said Florence, in a thrilling voice.

‘Tell him I am sorry that we ever met.’

‘No more?’ said Florence after a pause.

‘Tell him, if he asks, that I do not repent of what I have done--not
yet--for if it were to do again to-morrow, I should do it. But if he is
a changed man---’

She stopped. There was something in the silent touch of Florence’s hand
that stopped her.

‘--But that being a changed man, he knows, now, it would never be. Tell
him I wish it never had been.’

‘May I say,’ said Florence, ‘that you grieved to hear of the afflictions
he has suffered?’

‘Not,’ she replied, ‘if they have taught him that his daughter is very
dear to him. He will not grieve for them himself, one day, if they have
brought that lesson, Florence.’

‘You wish well to him, and would have him happy. I am sure you would!’
said Florence. ‘Oh! let me be able, if I have the occasion at some
future time, to say so?’

Edith sat with her dark eyes gazing steadfastly before her, and did not
reply until Florence had repeated her entreaty; when she drew her hand
within her arm, and said, with the same thoughtful gaze upon the night
outside:

‘Tell him that if, in his own present, he can find any reason to
compassionate my past, I sent word that I asked him to do so. Tell him
that if, in his own present, he can find a reason to think less bitterly
of me, I asked him to do so. Tell him, that, dead as we are to one
another, never more to meet on this side of eternity, he knows there is
one feeling in common between us now, that there never was before.’

Her sternness seemed to yield, and there were tears in her dark eyes.

‘I trust myself to that,’ she said, ‘for his better thoughts of me, and
mine of him. When he loves his Florence most, he will hate me least.
When he is most proud and happy in her and her children, he will be most
repentant of his own part in the dark vision of our married life. At
that time, I will be repentant too--let him know it then--and think that
when I thought so much of all the causes that had made me what I was,
I needed to have allowed more for the causes that had made him what he
was. I will try, then, to forgive him his share of blame. Let him try to
forgive me mine!’

‘Oh Mama!’ said Florence. ‘How it lightens my heart, even in such a
strange meeting and parting, to hear this!’

‘Strange words in my own ears,’ said Edith, ‘and foreign to the sound of
my own voice! But even if I had been the wretched creature I have
given him occasion to believe me, I think I could have said them still,
hearing that you and he were very dear to one another. Let him, when
you are dearest, ever feel that he is most forbearing in his thoughts of
me--that I am most forbearing in my thoughts of him! Those are the last
words I send him! Now, goodbye, my life!’

She clasped her in her arms, and seemed to pour out all her woman’s soul
of love and tenderness at once.

‘This kiss for your child! These kisses for a blessing on your head! My
own dear Florence, my sweet girl, farewell!’

‘To meet again!’ cried Florence.

‘Never again! Never again! When you leave me in this dark room, think
that you have left me in the grave. Remember only that I was once, and
that I loved you!’

And Florence left her, seeing her face no more, but accompanied by her
embraces and caresses to the last.

Cousin Feenix met her at the door, and took her down to Walter in the
dingy dining room, upon whose shoulder she laid her head weeping.

‘I am devilish sorry,’ said Cousin Feenix, lifting his wristbands to his
eyes in the simplest manner possible, and without the least concealment,
‘that the lovely and accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey and
amiable wife of my friend Gay, should have had her sensitive nature
so very much distressed and cut up by the interview which is just
concluded. But I hope and trust I have acted for the best, and that my
honourable friend Dombey will find his mind relieved by the disclosures
which have taken place. I exceedingly lament that my friend Dombey
should have got himself, in point of fact, into the devil’s own state
of conglomeration by an alliance with our family; but am strongly of
opinion that if it hadn’t been for the infernal scoundrel Barker--man
with white teeth--everything would have gone on pretty smoothly.
In regard to my relative who does me the honour to have formed an
uncommonly good opinion of myself, I can assure the amiable wife of my
friend Gay, that she may rely on my being, in point of fact, a father to
her. And in regard to the changes of human life, and the extraordinary
manner in which we are perpetually conducting ourselves, all I can say
is, with my friend Shakespeare--man who wasn’t for an age but for all
time, and with whom my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted--that its like
the shadow of a dream.’

CHAPTER 62. Final

A bottle that has been long excluded from the light of day, and is
hoary with dust and cobwebs, has been brought into the sunshine; and the
golden wine within it sheds a lustre on the table.

It is the last bottle of the old Madiera.

‘You are quite right, Mr Gills,’ says Mr Dombey. ‘This is a very rare
and most delicious wine.’

The Captain, who is of the party, beams with joy. There is a very halo
of delight round his glowing forehead.

‘We always promised ourselves, Sir,’ observes Mr Gills,’ Ned and myself,
I mean--’

Mr Dombey nods at the Captain, who shines more and more with speechless
gratification.

‘--that we would drink this, one day or other, to Walter safe at home:
though such a home we never thought of. If you don’t object to our old
whim, Sir, let us devote this first glass to Walter and his wife.’

‘To Walter and his wife!’ says Mr Dombey. ‘Florence, my child’--and
turns to kiss her.

‘To Walter and his wife!’ says Mr Toots.

‘To Wal’r and his wife!’ exclaims the Captain. ‘Hooroar!’ and the
Captain exhibiting a strong desire to clink his glass against some other
glass, Mr Dombey, with a ready hand, holds out his. The others follow;
and there is a blithe and merry ringing, as of a little peal of marriage
bells.

Other buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did in its time; and
dust and cobwebs thicken on the bottles.

Mr Dombey is a white-haired gentleman, whose face bears heavy marks of
care and suffering; but they are traces of a storm that has passed on
for ever, and left a clear evening in its track.

Ambitious projects trouble him no more. His only pride is in his
daughter and her husband. He has a silent, thoughtful, quiet manner, and
is always with his daughter. Miss Tox is not infrequently of the family
party, and is quite devoted to it, and a great favourite. Her admiration
of her once stately patron is, and has been ever since the morning of
her shock in Princess’s Place, platonic, but not weakened in the least.

Nothing has drifted to him from the wreck of his fortunes, but a certain
annual sum that comes he knows not how, with an earnest entreaty that he
will not seek to discover, and with the assurance that it is a debt, and
an act of reparation. He has consulted with his old clerk about this,
who is clear it may be honourably accepted, and has no doubt it arises
out of some forgotten transaction in the times of the old House.

That hazel-eyed bachelor, a bachelor no more, is married now, and to the
sister of the grey-haired Junior. He visits his old chief sometimes, but
seldom. There is a reason in the greyhaired Junior’s history, and yet
a stronger reason in his name, why he should keep retired from his
old employer; and as he lives with his sister and her husband, they
participate in that retirement. Walter sees them sometimes--Florence
too--and the pleasant house resounds with profound duets arranged for
the Piano-Forte and Violoncello, and with the labours of Harmonious
Blacksmiths.

And how goes the wooden Midshipman in these changed days? Why, here he
still is, right leg foremost, hard at work upon the hackney coaches, and
more on the alert than ever, being newly painted from his cocked hat to
his buckled shoes; and up above him, in golden characters, these names
shine refulgent, GILLS AND CUTTLE.

Not another stroke of business does the Midshipman achieve beyond his
usual easy trade. But they do say, in a circuit of some half-mile round
the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, that some of Mr Gills’s old
investments are coming out wonderfully well; and that instead of being
behind the time in those respects, as he supposed, he was, in truth,
a little before it, and had to wait the fulness of the time and the
design. The whisper is that Mr Gills’s money has begun to turn itself,
and that it is turning itself over and over pretty briskly. Certain it
is that, standing at his shop-door, in his coffee-coloured suit, with
his chronometer in his pocket, and his spectacles on his forehead, he
don’t appear to break his heart at customers not coming, but looks very
jovial and contented, though full as misty as of yore.

As to his partner, Captain Cuttle, there is a fiction of a business in
the Captain’s mind which is better than any reality. The Captain is as
satisfied of the Midshipman’s importance to the commerce and navigation
of the country, as he could possibly be, if no ship left the Port of
London without the Midshipman’s assistance. His delight in his own name
over the door, is inexhaustible. He crosses the street, twenty times a
day, to look at it from the other side of the way; and invariably says,
on these occasions, ‘Ed’ard Cuttle, my lad, if your mother could ha’
know’d as you would ever be a man o’ science, the good old creetur would
ha’ been took aback in-deed!’

But here is Mr Toots descending on the Midshipman with violent rapidity,
and Mr Toots’s face is very red as he bursts into the little parlour.

‘Captain Gills,’ says Mr Toots, ‘and Mr Sols, I am happy to inform you
that Mrs Toots has had an increase to her family.’

‘And it does her credit!’ cries the Captain.

‘I give you joy, Mr Toots!’ says old Sol.

‘Thank’ee,’ chuckles Mr Toots, ‘I’m very much obliged to you. I knew
that you’d be glad to hear, and so I came down myself. We’re positively
getting on, you know. There’s Florence, and Susan, and now here’s
another little stranger.’

‘A female stranger?’ inquires the Captain.

‘Yes, Captain Gills,’ says Mr Toots, ‘and I’m glad of it. The oftener we
can repeat that most extraordinary woman, my opinion is, the better!’

‘Stand by!’ says the Captain, turning to the old case-bottle with no
throat--for it is evening, and the Midshipman’s usual moderate provision
of pipes and glasses is on the board. ‘Here’s to her, and may she have
ever so many more!’

‘Thank’ee, Captain Gills,’ says the delighted Mr Toots. ‘I echo the
sentiment. If you’ll allow me, as my so doing cannot be unpleasant to
anybody, under the circumstances, I think I’ll take a pipe.’

Mr Toots begins to smoke, accordingly, and in the openness of his heart
is very loquacious.

‘Of all the remarkable instances that that delightful woman has given of
her excellent sense, Captain Gills and Mr Sols,’ said Mr Toots, ‘I
think none is more remarkable than the perfection with which she has
understood my devotion to Miss Dombey.’

Both his auditors assent.

‘Because you know,’ says Mr Toots, ‘I have never changed my sentiments
towards Miss Dombey. They are the same as ever. She is the same
bright vision to me, at present, that she was before I made Walters’s
acquaintance. When Mrs Toots and myself first began to talk of--in
short, of the tender passion, you know, Captain Gills.’

‘Ay, ay, my lad,’ says the Captain, ‘as makes us all slue round--for
which you’ll overhaul the book--’

‘I shall certainly do so, Captain Gills,’ says Mr Toots, with great
earnestness; ‘when we first began to mention such subjects, I explained
that I was what you may call a Blighted Flower, you know.’

The Captain approves of this figure greatly; and murmurs that no flower
as blows, is like the rose.

‘But Lord bless me,’ pursues Mr Toots, ‘she was as entirely conscious of
the state of my feelings as I was myself. There was nothing I could tell
her. She was the only person who could have stood between me and the
silent Tomb, and she did it, in a manner to command my everlasting
admiration. She knows that there’s nobody in the world I look up to, as
I do to Miss Dombey. Knows that there’s nothing on earth I wouldn’t
do for Miss Dombey. She knows that I consider Miss Dombey the most
beautiful, the most amiable, the most angelic of her sex. What is her
observation upon that? The perfection of sense. “My dear, you’re right.
I think so too.”’

‘And so do I!’ says the Captain.

‘So do I,’ says Sol Gills.

‘Then,’ resumes Mr Toots, after some contemplative pulling at his pipe,
during which his visage has expressed the most contented reflection,
‘what an observant woman my wife is! What sagacity she possesses! What
remarks she makes! It was only last night, when we were sitting in
the enjoyment of connubial bliss--which, upon my word and honour, is a
feeble term to express my feelings in the society of my wife--that
she said how remarkable it was to consider the present position of
our friend Walters. “Here,” observes my wife, “he is, released from
sea-going, after that first long voyage with his young bride”--as you
know he was, Mr Sols.’

‘Quite true,’ says the old Instrument-maker, rubbing his hands.

‘“Here he is,” says my wife, “released from that, immediately; appointed
by the same establishment to a post of great trust and confidence at
home; showing himself again worthy; mounting up the ladder with the
greatest expedition; beloved by everybody; assisted by his uncle at the
very best possible time of his fortunes”--which I think is the case, Mr
Sols? My wife is always correct.’

‘Why yes, yes--some of our lost ships, freighted with gold, have come
home, truly,’ returns old Sol, laughing. ‘Small craft, Mr Toots, but
serviceable to my boy!’

‘Exactly so,’ says Mr Toots. ‘You’ll never find my wife wrong. “Here he
is,” says that most remarkable woman, “so situated,--and what follows?
What follows?” observed Mrs Toots. Now pray remark, Captain Gills, and
Mr Sols, the depth of my wife’s penetration. “Why that, under the very
eye of Mr Dombey, there is a foundation going on, upon which a--an
Edifice;” that was Mrs Toots’s word,’ says Mr Toots exultingly, “‘is
gradually rising, perhaps to equal, perhaps excel, that of which he was
once the head, and the small beginnings of which (a common fault, but a
bad one, Mrs Toots said) escaped his memory. Thus,” said my wife, “from
his daughter, after all, another Dombey and Son will ascend”--no “rise;”
that was Mrs Toots’s word--“triumphant!”’

Mr Toots, with the assistance of his pipe--which he is extremely glad to
devote to oratorical purposes, as its proper use affects him with a
very uncomfortable sensation--does such grand justice to this prophetic
sentence of his wife’s, that the Captain, throwing away his glazed hat
in a state of the greatest excitement, cries:

‘Sol Gills, you man of science and my ould pardner, what did I tell
Wal’r to overhaul on that there night when he first took to business?
Was it this here quotation, “Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of
London, and when you are old you will never depart from it.” Was it them
words, Sol Gills?’

‘It certainly was, Ned,’ replied the old Instrument-maker. ‘I remember
well.’

‘Then I tell you what,’ says the Captain, leaning back in his chair,
and composing his chest for a prodigious roar. ‘I’ll give you Lovely Peg
right through; and stand by, both on you, for the chorus!’

Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did, in its time; and dust
and cobwebs thicken on the bottles.

Autumn days are shining, and on the sea-beach there are often a young
lady, and a white-haired gentleman. With them, or near them, are two
children: boy and girl. And an old dog is generally in their company.

The white-haired gentleman walks with the little boy, talks with him,
helps him in his play, attends upon him, watches him as if he were the
object of his life. If he be thoughtful, the white-haired gentleman is
thoughtful too; and sometimes when the child is sitting by his side, and
looks up in his face, asking him questions, he takes the tiny hand in
his, and holding it, forgets to answer. Then the child says:

‘What, grandpa! Am I so like my poor little Uncle again?’

‘Yes, Paul. But he was weak, and you are very strong.’

‘Oh yes, I am very strong.’

‘And he lay on a little bed beside the sea, and you can run about.’

And so they range away again, busily, for the white-haired gentleman
likes best to see the child free and stirring; and as they go about
together, the story of the bond between them goes about, and follows
them.

But no one, except Florence, knows the measure of the white-haired
gentleman’s affection for the girl. That story never goes about. The
child herself almost wonders at a certain secrecy he keeps in it. He
hoards her in his heart. He cannot bear to see a cloud upon her face.
He cannot bear to see her sit apart. He fancies that she feels a slight,
when there is none. He steals away to look at her, in her sleep. It
pleases him to have her come, and wake him in the morning. He is fondest
of her and most loving to her, when there is no creature by. The child
says then, sometimes:

‘Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?’

He only answers, ‘Little Florence! little Florence!’ and smooths away
the curls that shade her earnest eyes.

The voices in the waves speak low to him of Florence, day and
night--plainest when he, his blooming daughter, and her husband, beside
them in the evening, or sit at an open window, listening to their roar.
They speak to him of Florence and his altered heart; of Florence and
their ceaseless murmuring to her of the love, eternal and illimitable,
extending still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisible
country far away.

Never from the mighty sea may voices rise too late, to come between us
and the unseen region on the other shore! Better, far better, that
they whispered of that region in our childish ears, and the swift river
hurried us away!

PREFACE OF 1848

I cannot forego my usual opportunity of saying farewell to my readers
in this greeting-place, though I have only to acknowledge the unbounded
warmth and earnestness of their sympathy in every stage of the journey
we have just concluded.

If any of them have felt a sorrow in one of the principal incidents on
which this fiction turns, I hope it may be a sorrow of that sort which
endears the sharers in it, one to another. This is not unselfish in me.
I may claim to have felt it, at least as much as anybody else; and I
would fain be remembered kindly for my part in the experience.

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, Twenty-Fourth March, 1848.

PREFACE OF 1867

I make so bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of
correctly observing the characters of men, is a rare one. I have not
even found, within my experience, that the faculty (or the habit) of
correctly observing so much as the faces of men, is a general one by any
means. The two commonest mistakes in judgement that I suppose to
arise from the former default, are, the confounding of shyness with
arrogance--a very common mistake indeed--and the not understanding that
an obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself.

Mr Dombey undergoes no violent change, either in this book, or in real
life. A sense of his injustice is within him, all along. The more he
represses it, the more unjust he necessarily is. Internal shame and
external circumstances may bring the contest to a close in a week, or a
day; but, it has been a contest for years, and is only fought out after
a long balance of victory.

I began this book by the Lake of Geneva, and went on with it for some
months in France, before pursuing it in England. The association between
the writing and the place of writing is so curiously strong in my mind,
that at this day, although I know, in my fancy, every stair in the
little midshipman’s house, and could swear to every pew in the church
in which Florence was married, or to every young gentleman’s bedstead in
Doctor Blimber’s establishment, I yet confusedly imagine Captain
Cuttle as secluding himself from Mrs MacStinger among the mountains of
Switzerland. Similarly, when I am reminded by any chance of what it was
that the waves were always saying, my remembrance wanders for a whole
winter night about the streets of Paris--as I restlessly did with a
heavy heart, on the night when I had written the chapter in which my
little friend and I parted company.

Dombey and Son - Part 3