DOMBEY AND SON

by Charles Dickens

CONTENTS

 1. Dombey and Son 2. In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that will sometimes arise in the best-regulated Families 3. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at the Head of the Home-Department 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage of these Adventures 5. Paul's Progress and Christening 6. Paul's Second Deprivation 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place; also of the State of Miss Tox's Affections 8. Paul's further Progress, Growth, and Character 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble 10. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster 11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene 12. Paul's Education 13. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business 14. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home for the holidays 15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit for Walter Gay 16. What the Waves were always saying 17. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young people 18. Father and Daughter 19. Walter goes away 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a journey 21. New Faces 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager 23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious 24. The Study of a Loving Heart 25. Strange News of Uncle Sol 26. Shadows of the Past and Future 27. Deeper shadows 28. Alterations 29. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick 30. The Interval before the Marriage 31. The Wedding 32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces 33. Contrasts 34. Another Mother and Daughter 35. The Happy Pair 36. Housewarming 37. More Warnings than One 38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance 39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner 40. Domestic Relations 41. New Voices in the Waves 42. Confidential and Accidental 43. The Watches of the Night 44. A Separation 45. The Trusty Agent 46. Recognizant and Reflective 47. The Thunderbolt 48. The Flight of Florence 49. The Midshipman makes a Discovery 50. Mr Toots's Complaint 51. Mr Dombey and the World 52. Secret Intelligence 53. More Intelligence 54. The Fugitives 55. Rob the Grinder loses his Place 56. Several People delighted, and the Game Chicken disgusted 57. Another Wedding 58. After a Lapse 59. Retribution 60. Chiefly Matrimonial 61. Relenting 62. Final

CHAPTER 1. Dombey and Son

Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chairby the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire andclose to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new. 

Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-fortyminutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsomewell-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniablyfine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet. On the brow of Dombey, Time and his brother Care had set some marks, ason a tree that was to come down in good time--remorseless twins they arefor striding through their human forests, notching as they go--while thecountenance of Son was crossed with a thousand little creases, which thesame deceitful Time would take delight in smoothing out and wearing awaywith the flat part of his scythe, as a preparation of the surface forhis deeper operations. 

Dombey, exulting in the long-looked-for event, jingled and jingled theheavy gold watch-chain that depended from below his trim blue coat, whereof the buttons sparkled phosphorescently in the feeble rays of thedistant fire. Son, with his little fists curled up and clenched, seemed, in his feeble way, to be squaring at existence for having come upon himso unexpectedly. 

'The House will once again, Mrs Dombey, ' said Mr Dombey, 'be not only inname but in fact Dombey and Son;' and he added, in a tone of luxurioussatisfaction, with his eyes half-closed as if he were reading the namein a device of flowers, and inhaling their fragrance at the same time;'Dom-bey and Son!'

The words had such a softening influence, that he appended a term ofendearment to Mrs Dombey's name (though not without some hesitation, as being a man but little used to that form of address): and said, 'MrsDombey, my--my dear. '

A transient flush of faint surprise overspread the sick lady's face asshe raised her eyes towards him. 

'He will be christened Paul, my--Mrs Dombey--of course. '

She feebly echoed, 'Of course, ' or rather expressed it by the motion ofher lips, and closed her eyes again. 

'His father's name, Mrs Dombey, and his grandfather's! I wish hisgrandfather were alive this day! There is some inconvenience in thenecessity of writing Junior, ' said Mr Dombey, making a fictitiousautograph on his knee; 'but it is merely of a private and personalcomplexion. It doesn't enter into the correspondence of the House. Its signature remains the same. ' And again he said 'Dombey and Son, inexactly the same tone as before. 

Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr Dombey's life. The earthwas made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were madeto give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships;rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or againsttheir enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, topreserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre. Commonabbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole referenceto them. A. D. Had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood for annoDombei--and Son. 

He had risen, as his father had before him, in the course of life anddeath, from Son to Dombey, and for nearly twenty years had been thesole representative of the Firm. Of those years he had been married, ten--married, as some said, to a lady with no heart to give him; whosehappiness was in the past, and who was content to bind her broken spiritto the dutiful and meek endurance of the present. Such idle talk waslittle likely to reach the ears of Mr Dombey, whom it nearly concerned;and probably no one in the world would have received it with such utterincredulity as he, if it had reached him. Dombey and Son had often dealtin hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys andgirls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr Dombey would have reasoned:That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That thehope of giving birth to a new partner in such a House, could not failto awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the leastambitious of her sex. That Mrs Dombey had entered on that socialcontract of matrimony: almost necessarily part of a genteel and wealthystation, even without reference to the perpetuation of family Firms:with her eyes fully open to these advantages. That Mrs Dombey had haddaily practical knowledge of his position in society. That Mrs Dombeyhad always sat at the head of his table, and done the honours of hishouse in a remarkably lady-like and becoming manner. That Mrs Dombeymust have been happy. That she couldn't help it. 

Or, at all events, with one drawback. Yes. That he would have allowed. With only one; but that one certainly involving much. With the drawbackof hope deferred. That hope deferred, which, (as the Scripture verycorrectly tells us, Mr Dombey would have added in a patronising way;for his highest distinct idea even of Scripture, if examined, wouldhave been found to be; that as forming part of a general whole, of whichDombey and Son formed another part, it was therefore to be commendedand upheld) maketh the heart sick. They had been married ten years, anduntil this present day on which Mr Dombey sat jingling and jingling hisheavy gold watch-chain in the great arm-chair by the side of the bed, had had no issue. --To speak of; none worth mentioning. There had beena girl some six years before, and the child, who had stolen into thechamber unobserved, was now crouching timidly, in a corner whence shecould see her mother's face. But what was a girl to Dombey and Son! Inthe capital of the House's name and dignity, such a child was merely apiece of base coin that couldn't be invested--a bad Boy--nothing more. 

Mr Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full at this moment, however, that he felt he could afford a drop or two of its contents, even tosprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little daughter. 

So he said, 'Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, ifyou like, I daresay. Don't touch him!'

The child glanced keenly at the blue coat and stiff white cravat, which, with a pair of creaking boots and a very loud ticking watch, embodiedher idea of a father; but her eyes returned to her mother's faceimmediately, and she neither moved nor answered. 

'Her insensibility is as proof against a brother as against every thingelse, ' said Mr Dombey to himself He seemed so confirmed in a previousopinion by the discovery, as to be quite glad of it. '

Next moment, the lady had opened her eyes and seen the child; and thechild had run towards her; and, standing on tiptoe, the better to hideher face in her embrace, had clung about her with a desperate affectionvery much at variance with her years. 

'Oh Lord bless me!' said Mr Dombey, rising testily. 'A very illadvisedand feverish proceeding this, I am sure. Please to ring there for MissFlorence's nurse. Really the person should be more care-'

'Wait! I--had better ask Doctor Peps if he'll have the goodness to stepupstairs again perhaps. I'll go down. I'll go down. I needn't beg you, 'he added, pausing for a moment at the settee before the fire, 'to takeparticular care of this young gentleman, Mrs ----'

'Blockitt, Sir?' suggested the nurse, a simpering piece of fadedgentility, who did not presume to state her name as a fact, but merelyoffered it as a mild suggestion. 

'Of this young gentleman, Mrs Blockitt. '

'No, Sir, indeed. I remember when Miss Florence was born--'

'Ay, ay, ay, ' said Mr Dombey, bending over the basket bedstead, andslightly bending his brows at the same time. 'Miss Florence was all verywell, but this is another matter. This young gentleman has to accomplisha destiny. A destiny, little fellow!' As he thus apostrophised theinfant he raised one of his hands to his lips, and kissed it; then, seeming to fear that the action involved some compromise of his dignity, went, awkwardly enough, away. 

Doctor Parker Peps, one of the Court Physicians, and a man of immensereputation for assisting at the increase of great families, waswalking up and down the drawing-room with his hands behind him, to theunspeakable admiration of the family Surgeon, who had regularly puffedthe case for the last six weeks, among all his patients, friends, andacquaintances, as one to which he was in hourly expectation day andnight of being summoned, in conjunction with Doctor Parker Pep. 

'Well, Sir, ' said Doctor Parker Peps in a round, deep, sonorous voice, muffled for the occasion, like the knocker; 'do you find that your dearlady is at all roused by your visit?'

'Stimulated as it were?' said the family practitioner faintly: bowing atthe same time to the Doctor, as much as to say, 'Excuse my putting in aword, but this is a valuable connexion. '

Mr Dombey was quite discomfited by the question. He had thought solittle of the patient, that he was not in a condition to answer it. Hesaid that it would be a satisfaction to him, if Doctor Parker Peps wouldwalk upstairs again. 

'Good! We must not disguise from you, Sir, ' said Doctor Parker Peps, 'that there is a want of power in Her Grace the Duchess--I beg yourpardon; I confound names; I should say, in your amiable lady. That thereis a certain degree of languor, and a general absence of elasticity, which we would rather--not--

'See, ' interposed the family practitioner with another inclination ofthe head. 

'Quite so, ' said Doctor Parker Peps, ' which we would rather not see. Itwould appear that the system of Lady Cankaby--excuse me: I should say ofMrs Dombey: I confuse the names of cases--'

'So very numerous, ' murmured the family practitioner--'can't be expectedI'm sure--quite wonderful if otherwise--Doctor Parker Peps's West-Endpractice--'

'Thank you, ' said the Doctor, 'quite so. It would appear, I wasobserving, that the system of our patient has sustained a shock, fromwhich it can only hope to rally by a great and strong--'

'And vigorous, ' murmured the family practitioner. 

'Quite so, ' assented the Doctor--'and vigorous effort. Mr Pilkins here, who from his position of medical adviser in this family--no one betterqualified to fill that position, I am sure. '

'Oh!' murmured the family practitioner. '"Praise from Sir HubertStanley!"'

'You are good enough, ' returned Doctor Parker Peps, 'to say so. MrPilkins who, from his position, is best acquainted with the patient'sconstitution in its normal state (an acquaintance very valuable to us informing our opinions in these occasions), is of opinion, with me, thatNature must be called upon to make a vigorous effort in this instance;and that if our interesting friend the Countess of Dombey--I beg yourpardon; Mrs Dombey--should not be--'

'Able, ' said the family practitioner. 

'To make, ' said Doctor Parker Peps. 

'That effort, ' said the family practitioner. 

'Successfully, ' said they both together. 

'Then, ' added Doctor Parker Peps, alone and very gravely, a crisis mightarise, which we should both sincerely deplore. '

With that, they stood for a few seconds looking at the ground. Then, on the motion--made in dumb show--of Doctor Parker Peps, they wentupstairs; the family practitioner opening the room door for thatdistinguished professional, and following him out, with most obsequiouspoliteness. 

To record of Mr Dombey that he was not in his way affected by thisintelligence, would be to do him an injustice. He was not a man of whomit could properly be said that he was ever startled, or shocked; buthe certainly had a sense within him, that if his wife should sicken anddecay, he would be very sorry, and that he would find a something gonefrom among his plate and furniture, and other household possessions, which was well worth the having, and could not be lost without sincereregret. Though it would be a cool, business-like, gentlemanly, self-possessed regret, no doubt. 

His meditations on the subject were soon interrupted, first by therustling of garments on the staircase, and then by the sudden whiskinginto the room of a lady rather past the middle age than otherwise butdressed in a very juvenile manner, particularly as to the tightness ofher bodice, who, running up to him with a kind of screw in her face andcarriage, expressive of suppressed emotion, flung her arms around hisneck, and said, in a choking voice, 'My dear Paul! He's quite a Dombey!'

'Well, well!' returned her brother--for Mr Dombey was her brother--'Ithink he is like the family. Don't agitate yourself, Louisa. '

'It's very foolish of me, ' said Louisa, sitting down, and taking out herpocket-handkerchief, 'but he's--he's such a perfect Dombey!'

Mr Dombey coughed. 

'It's so extraordinary, ' said Louisa; smiling through her tears, which indeed were not overpowering, 'as to be perfectly ridiculous. Socompletely our family. I never saw anything like it in my life!'

'But what is this about Fanny, herself?' said Mr Dombey. 'How is Fanny?'

'My dear Paul, ' returned Louisa, 'it's nothing whatever. Take my word, it's nothing whatever. There is exhaustion, certainly, but nothing likewhat I underwent myself, either with George or Frederick. An effortis necessary. That's all. If dear Fanny were a Dombey!--But I daresayshe'll make it; I have no doubt she'll make it. Knowing it to berequired of her, as a duty, of course she'll make it. My dear Paul, it'svery weak and silly of me, I know, to be so trembly and shaky from headto foot; but I am so very queer that I must ask you for a glass of wineand a morsel of that cake. '

Mr Dombey promptly supplied her with these refreshments from a tray onthe table. 

'I shall not drink my love to you, Paul, ' said Louisa: 'I shall drink tothe little Dombey. Good gracious me!--it's the most astonishing thing Iever knew in all my days, he's such a perfect Dombey. '

Quenching this expression of opinion in a short hysterical laugh whichterminated in tears, Louisa cast up her eyes, and emptied her glass. 

'I know it's very weak and silly of me, ' she repeated, 'to be so tremblyand shaky from head to foot, and to allow my feelings so completelyto get the better of me, but I cannot help it. I thought I should havefallen out of the staircase window as I came down from seeing dearFanny, and that tiddy ickle sing. ' These last words originated in asudden vivid reminiscence of the baby. 

They were succeeded by a gentle tap at the door. 

'Mrs Chick, ' said a very bland female voice outside, 'how are you now, my dear friend?'

'My dear Paul, ' said Louisa in a low voice, as she rose from her seat, 'it's Miss Tox. The kindest creature! I never could have got herewithout her! Miss Tox, my brother Mr Dombey. Paul, my dear, my veryparticular friend Miss Tox. '

The lady thus specially presented, was a long lean figure, wearing sucha faded air that she seemed not to have been made in what linen-draperscall 'fast colours' originally, and to have, by little and little, washed out. But for this she might have been described as the very pinkof general propitiation and politeness. From a long habit of listeningadmiringly to everything that was said in her presence, and looking atthe speakers as if she were mentally engaged in taking off impressionsof their images upon her soul, never to part with the same but withlife, her head had quite settled on one side. Her hands had contracteda spasmodic habit of raising themselves of their own accord as ininvoluntary admiration. Her eyes were liable to a similar affection. Shehad the softest voice that ever was heard; and her nose, stupendouslyaquiline, had a little knob in the very centre or key-stone of thebridge, whence it tended downwards towards her face, as in an invincibledetermination never to turn up at anything. 

Miss Tox's dress, though perfectly genteel and good, had a certaincharacter of angularity and scantiness. She was accustomed to wearodd weedy little flowers in her bonnets and caps. Strange grasses weresometimes perceived in her hair; and it was observed by the curious, of all her collars, frills, tuckers, wristbands, and other gossamerarticles--indeed of everything she wore which had two ends to itintended to unite--that the two ends were never on good terms, andwouldn't quite meet without a struggle. She had furry articles forwinter wear, as tippets, boas, and muffs, which stood up on end inrampant manner, and were not at all sleek. She was much given to thecarrying about of small bags with snaps to them, that went off likelittle pistols when they were shut up; and when full-dressed, she woreround her neck the barrenest of lockets, representing a fishy old eye, with no approach to speculation in it. These and other appearances of asimilar nature, had served to propagate the opinion, that Miss Tox wasa lady of what is called a limited independence, which she turned tothe best account. Possibly her mincing gait encouraged the belief, and suggested that her clipping a step of ordinary compass into two orthree, originated in her habit of making the most of everything. 

'I am sure, ' said Miss Tox, with a prodigious curtsey, 'that to havethe honour of being presented to Mr Dombey is a distinction which I havelong sought, but very little expected at the present moment. My dear MrsChick--may I say Louisa!'

Mrs Chick took Miss Tox's hand in hers, rested the foot of herwine-glass upon it, repressed a tear, and said in a low voice, 'Godbless you!'

'My dear Louisa then, ' said Miss Tox, 'my sweet friend, how are younow?'

'Better, ' Mrs Chick returned. 'Take some wine. You have been almost asanxious as I have been, and must want it, I am sure. '

Mr Dombey of course officiated, and also refilled his sister's glass, which she (looking another way, and unconscious of his intention)held straight and steady the while, and then regarded with greatastonishment, saying, 'My dear Paul, what have you been doing!'

'Miss Tox, Paul, ' pursued Mrs Chick, still retaining her hand, 'knowinghow much I have been interested in the anticipation of the event ofto-day, and how trembly and shaky I have been from head to foot inexpectation of it, has been working at a little gift for Fanny, which Ipromised to present. Miss Tox is ingenuity itself. '

'My dear Louisa, ' said Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. 

'It is only a pincushion for the toilette table, Paul, ' resumed hissister; 'one of those trifles which are insignificant to your sex ingeneral, as it's very natural they should be--we have no business toexpect they should be otherwise--but to which we attach some interest. 

'Miss Tox is very good, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'And I do say, and will say, and must say, ' pursued his sister, pressingthe foot of the wine-glass on Miss Tox's hand, at each of the threeclauses, 'that Miss Tox has very prettily adapted the sentiment to theoccasion. I call "Welcome little Dombey" Poetry, myself!'

'Is that the device?' inquired her brother. 

'That is the device, ' returned Louisa. 

'But do me the justice to remember, my dear Louisa, ' said Miss Toxina tone of low and earnest entreaty, 'that nothing but the--I have somedifficulty in expressing myself--the dubiousness of the result wouldhave induced me to take so great a liberty: "Welcome, Master Dombey, "would have been much more congenial to my feelings, as I am sure youknow. But the uncertainty attendant on angelic strangers, will, I hope, excuse what must otherwise appear an unwarrantable familiarity. ' MissTox made a graceful bend as she spoke, in favour of Mr Dombey, whichthat gentleman graciously acknowledged. Even the sort of recognition ofDombey and Son, conveyed in the foregoing conversation, was so palatableto him, that his sister, Mrs Chick--though he affected to consider hera weak good-natured person--had perhaps more influence over him thananybody else. 

'My dear Paul, ' that lady broke out afresh, after silently contemplatinghis features for a few moments, 'I don't know whether to laugh or crywhen I look at you, I declare, you do so remind me of that dear babyupstairs. '

'Well!' said Mrs Chick, with a sweet smile, 'after this, I forgive Fannyeverything!'

It was a declaration in a Christian spirit, and Mrs Chick felt that itdid her good. Not that she had anything particular to forgive in hersister-in-law, nor indeed anything at all, except her having married herbrother--in itself a species of audacity--and her having, in the courseof events, given birth to a girl instead of a boy: which, as Mrs Chickhad frequently observed, was not quite what she had expected of her, andwas not a pleasant return for all the attention and distinction she hadmet with. 

Mr Dombey being hastily summoned out of the room at this moment, the twoladies were left alone together. Miss Tox immediately became spasmodic. 

'I knew you would admire my brother. I told you so beforehand, my dear, 'said Louisa. Miss Tox's hands and eyes expressed how much. 'And as tohis property, my dear!'

'Ah!' said Miss Tox, with deep feeling. 'Im-mense!'

'But his deportment, my dear Louisa!' said Miss Tox. 'His presence! Hisdignity! No portrait that I have ever seen of anyone has been halfso replete with those qualities. Something so stately, you know: souncompromising: so very wide across the chest: so upright! A pecuniaryDuke of York, my love, and nothing short of it!' said Miss Tox. 'That'swhat I should designate him. '

'Why, my dear Paul!' exclaimed his sister, as he returned, 'you lookquite pale! There's nothing the matter?'

'I am sorry to say, Louisa, that they tell me that Fanny--'

'Now, my dear Paul, ' returned his sister rising, 'don't believe it. Donot allow yourself to receive a turn unnecessarily. Remember of whatimportance you are to society, and do not allow yourself to be worriedby what is so very inconsiderately told you by people who ought to knowbetter. Really I'm surprised at them. '

'I hope I know, Louisa, ' said Mr Dombey, stiffly, 'how to bear myselfbefore the world. '

'Nobody better, my dear Paul. Nobody half so well. They would beignorant and base indeed who doubted it. '

'Ignorant and base indeed!' echoed Miss Tox softly. 

'But, ' pursued Louisa, 'if you have any reliance on my experience, Paul, you may rest assured that there is nothing wanting but an effort onFanny's part. And that effort, ' she continued, taking off her bonnet, and adjusting her cap and gloves, in a business-like manner, 'she mustbe encouraged, and really, if necessary, urged to make. Now, my dearPaul, come upstairs with me. '

Mr Dombey, who, besides being generally influenced by his sister for thereason already mentioned, had really faith in her as an experiencedand bustling matron, acquiesced; and followed her, at once, to the sickchamber. 

The lady lay upon her bed as he had left her, clasping her littledaughter to her breast. The child clung close about her, with the sameintensity as before, and never raised her head, or moved her soft cheekfrom her mother's face, or looked on those who stood around, or spoke, or moved, or shed a tear. 

'Restless without the little girl, ' the Doctor whispered Mr Dombey. 'Wefound it best to have her in again. '

'Can nothing be done?' asked Mr Dombey. 

The Doctor shook his head. 'We can do no more. '

The windows stood open, and the twilight was gathering without. 

The scent of the restoratives that had been tried was pungent inthe room, but had no fragrance in the dull and languid air the ladybreathed. 

There was such a solemn stillness round the bed; and the two medicalattendants seemed to look on the impassive form with so much compassionand so little hope, that Mrs Chick was for the moment diverted from herpurpose. But presently summoning courage, and what she called presenceof mind, she sat down by the bedside, and said in the low precise toneof one who endeavours to awaken a sleeper:

'Fanny! Fanny!'

There was no sound in answer but the loud ticking of Mr Dombey's watchand Doctor Parker Peps's watch, which seemed in the silence to berunning a race. 

'Fanny, my dear, ' said Mrs Chick, with assumed lightness, 'here's MrDombey come to see you. Won't you speak to him? They want to lay yourlittle boy--the baby, Fanny, you know; you have hardly seen him yet, Ithink--in bed; but they can't till you rouse yourself a little. Don'tyou think it's time you roused yourself a little? Eh?'

She bent her ear to the bed, and listened: at the same time lookinground at the bystanders, and holding up her finger. 

'Eh?' she repeated, 'what was it you said, Fanny? I didn't hear you. '

No word or sound in answer. Mr Dombey's watch and Dr Parker Peps's watchseemed to be racing faster. 

'Now, really, Fanny my dear, ' said the sister-in-law, altering herposition, and speaking less confidently, and more earnestly, in spiteof herself, 'I shall have to be quite cross with you, if you don't rouseyourself. It's necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a verygreat and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but this isa world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so muchdepends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you don't!'

The race in the ensuing pause was fierce and furious. The watches seemedto jostle, and to trip each other up. 

'Fanny!' said Louisa, glancing round, with a gathering alarm. 'Only lookat me. Only open your eyes to show me that you hear and understand me;will you? Good Heaven, gentlemen, what is to be done!'

The two medical attendants exchanged a look across the bed; and thePhysician, stooping down, whispered in the child's ear. Not havingunderstood the purport of his whisper, the little creature turned herperfectly colourless face and deep dark eyes towards him; but withoutloosening her hold in the least. 

The whisper was repeated. 

'Mama!' said the child. 

The little voice, familiar and dearly loved, awakened some show ofconsciousness, even at that ebb. For a moment, the closed eye lidstrembled, and the nostril quivered, and the faintest shadow of a smilewas seen. 

'Mama!' cried the child sobbing aloud. 'Oh dear Mama! oh dear Mama!'

The Doctor gently brushed the scattered ringlets of the child, asidefrom the face and mouth of the mother. Alas how calm they lay there; howlittle breath there was to stir them!

Thus, clinging fast to that slight spar within her arms, the motherdrifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls round all theworld. 

CHAPTER 2. In which Timely Provision is made for an Emergency that willsometimes arise in the best-regulated Families

'I shall never cease to congratulate myself, ' said Mrs Chick, ' on havingsaid, when I little thought what was in store for us, --really as if Iwas inspired by something, --that I forgave poor dear Fanny everything. Whatever happens, that must always be a comfort to me!'

Mrs Chick made this impressive observation in the drawing-room, afterhaving descended thither from the inspection of the mantua-makersupstairs, who were busy on the family mourning. She delivered it for thebehoof of Mr Chick, who was a stout bald gentleman, with a very largeface, and his hands continually in his pockets, and who had a tendencyin his nature to whistle and hum tunes, which, sensible of the indecorumof such sounds in a house of grief, he was at some pains to repress atpresent. 

'Don't you over-exert yourself, Loo, ' said Mr Chick, 'or you'll be laidup with spasms, I see. Right tol loor rul! Bless my soul, I forgot!We're here one day and gone the next!'

Mrs Chick contented herself with a glance of reproof, and then proceededwith the thread of her discourse. 

'I am sure, ' she said, 'I hope this heart-rending occurrence will be awarning to all of us, to accustom ourselves to rouse ourselves, and tomake efforts in time where they're required of us. There's a moral ineverything, if we would only avail ourselves of it. It will be our ownfaults if we lose sight of this one. '

Mr Chick invaded the grave silence which ensued on this remark withthe singularly inappropriate air of 'A cobbler there was;' and checkinghimself, in some confusion, observed, that it was undoubtedly our ownfaults if we didn't improve such melancholy occasions as the present. 

'Which might be better improved, I should think, Mr C. , ' retorted hishelpmate, after a short pause, 'than by the introduction, either ofthe college hornpipe, or the equally unmeaning and unfeeling remark ofrump-te-iddity, bow-wow-wow!'--which Mr Chick had indeed indulged in, under his breath, and which Mrs Chick repeated in a tone of witheringscorn. 

'Merely habit, my dear, ' pleaded Mr Chick. 

'Nonsense! Habit!' returned his wife. 'If you're a rational being, don'tmake such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as youcall it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enoughof it, I daresay. 

It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended withsome degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn't venture to dispute theposition. 

'Bow-wow-wow!' repeated Mrs Chick with an emphasis of blightingcontempt on the last syllable. 'More like a professional singer with thehydrophobia, than a man in your station of life!'

'How's the Baby, Loo?' asked Mr Chick: to change the subject. 

'What Baby do you mean?' answered Mrs Chick. 

'The poor bereaved little baby, ' said Mr Chick. 'I don't know of anyother, my dear. '

'You don't know of any other, 'retorted Mrs Chick. 'More shame for you, Iwas going to say. 

Mr Chick looked astonished. 

'I am sure the morning I have had, with that dining-room downstairs, onemass of babies, no one in their senses would believe. '

'One mass of babies!' repeated Mr Chick, staring with an alarmedexpression about him. 

'It would have occurred to most men, ' said Mrs Chick, 'that poor dearFanny being no more, --those words of mine will always be a balm andcomfort to me, ' here she dried her eyes; 'it becomes necessary toprovide a Nurse. '

'Oh! Ah!' said Mr Chick. 'Toor-ru!--such is life, I mean. I hope you aresuited, my dear. '

'Indeed I am not, ' said Mrs Chick; 'nor likely to be, so far as I cansee, and in the meantime the poor child seems likely to be starved todeath. Paul is so very particular--naturally so, of course, having sethis whole heart on this one boy--and there are so many objections toeverybody that offers, that I don't see, myself, the least chance of anarrangement. Meanwhile, of course, the child is--'

'Going to the Devil, ' said Mr Chick, thoughtfully, 'to be sure. '

Admonished, however, that he had committed himself, by the indignationexpressed in Mrs Chick's countenance at the idea of a Dombey goingthere; and thinking to atone for his misconduct by a bright suggestion, he added:

'Couldn't something temporary be done with a teapot?'

If he had meant to bring the subject prematurely to a close, he couldnot have done it more effectually. After looking at him for some momentsin silent resignation, Mrs Chick said she trusted he hadn't said it inaggravation, because that would do very little honour to his heart. Shetrusted he hadn't said it seriously, because that would do very littlehonour to his head. As in any case, he couldn't, however sanguine hisdisposition, hope to offer a remark that would be a greater outrage onhuman nature in general, we would beg to leave the discussion at thatpoint. 

Mrs Chick then walked majestically to the window and peeped throughthe blind, attracted by the sound of wheels. Mr Chick, finding that hisdestiny was, for the time, against him, said no more, and walked off. But it was not always thus with Mr Chick. He was often in theascendant himself, and at those times punished Louisa roundly. Intheir matrimonial bickerings they were, upon the whole, a well-matched, fairly-balanced, give-and-take couple. It would have been, generallyspeaking, very difficult to have betted on the winner. Often when MrChick seemed beaten, he would suddenly make a start, turn the tables, clatter them about the ears of Mrs Chick, and carry all before him. Being liable himself to similar unlooked for checks from Mrs Chick, their little contests usually possessed a character of uncertainty thatwas very animating. 

Miss Tox had arrived on the wheels just now alluded to, and came runninginto the room in a breathless condition. 'My dear Louisa, 'said Miss Tox, 'is the vacancy still unsupplied?'

'You good soul, yes, ' said Mrs Chick. 

'Then, my dear Louisa, ' returned Miss Tox, 'I hope and believe--but inone moment, my dear, I'll introduce the party. '

Running downstairs again as fast as she had run up, Miss Tox got theparty out of the hackney-coach, and soon returned with it under convoy. 

It then appeared that she had used the word, not in its legal orbusiness acceptation, when it merely expresses an individual, but asa noun of multitude, or signifying many: for Miss Tox escorted a plumprosy-cheeked wholesome apple-faced young woman, with an infant in herarms; a younger woman not so plump, but apple-faced also, who leda plump and apple-faced child in each hand; another plump and alsoapple-faced boy who walked by himself; and finally, a plump andapple-faced man, who carried in his arms another plump and apple-facedboy, whom he stood down on the floor, and admonished, in a huskywhisper, to 'kitch hold of his brother Johnny. '

'My dear Louisa, ' said Miss Tox, 'knowing your great anxiety, andwishing to relieve it, I posted off myself to the Queen Charlotte'sRoyal Married Females, ' which you had forgot, and put the question, Wasthere anybody there that they thought would suit? No, they said therewas not. When they gave me that answer, I do assure you, my dear, I wasalmost driven to despair on your account. But it did so happen, that oneof the Royal Married Females, hearing the inquiry, reminded the matronof another who had gone to her own home, and who, she said, would inall likelihood be most satisfactory. The moment I heard this, and hadit corroborated by the matron--excellent references and unimpeachablecharacter--I got the address, my dear, and posted off again. '

'Like the dear good Tox, you are!' said Louisa. 

'Not at all, ' returned Miss Tox. 'Don't say so. Arriving at the house(the cleanest place, my dear! You might eat your dinner off the floor), I found the whole family sitting at table; and feeling that no accountof them could be half so comfortable to you and Mr Dombey as the sightof them all together, I brought them all away. This gentleman, ' saidMiss Tox, pointing out the apple-faced man, 'is the father. Will youhave the goodness to come a little forward, Sir?'

The apple-faced man having sheepishly complied with this request, stoodchuckling and grinning in a front row. 

'This is his wife, of course, ' said Miss Tox, singling out the youngwoman with the baby. 'How do you do, Polly?'

'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am, ' said Polly. 

By way of bringing her out dexterously, Miss Tox had made the inquiryas in condescension to an old acquaintance whom she hadn't seen for afortnight or so. 

'I'm glad to hear it, ' said Miss Tox. 'The other young woman is herunmarried sister who lives with them, and would take care of herchildren. Her name's Jemima. How do you do, Jemima?'

'I'm pretty well, I thank you, Ma'am, ' returned Jemima. 

'I'm very glad indeed to hear it, ' said Miss Tox. 'I hope you'll keepso. Five children. Youngest six weeks. The fine little boy with theblister on his nose is the eldest The blister, I believe, ' saidMiss Tox, looking round upon the family, 'is not constitutional, butaccidental?'

The apple-faced man was understood to growl, 'Flat iron. 

'I beg your pardon, Sir, ' said Miss Tox, 'did you?

'Flat iron, ' he repeated. 

'Oh yes, ' said Miss Tox. 'Yes! quite true. I forgot. The littlecreature, in his mother's absence, smelt a warm flat iron. You're quiteright, Sir. You were going to have the goodness to inform me, when wearrived at the door that you were by trade a--'

'Stoker, ' said the man. 

'A choker!' said Miss Tox, quite aghast. 

'Stoker, ' said the man. 'Steam ingine. '

'Oh-h! Yes!' returned Miss Tox, looking thoughtfully at him, and seemingstill to have but a very imperfect understanding of his meaning. 

'And how do you like it, Sir?'

'Which, Mum?' said the man. 

'That, ' replied Miss Tox. 'Your trade. '

'Oh! Pretty well, Mum. The ashes sometimes gets in here;' touching hischest: 'and makes a man speak gruff, as at the present time. But it isashes, Mum, not crustiness. '

Miss Tox seemed to be so little enlightened by this reply, as to finda difficulty in pursuing the subject. But Mrs Chick relieved her, byentering into a close private examination of Polly, her children, hermarriage certificate, testimonials, and so forth. Polly coming outunscathed from this ordeal, Mrs Chick withdrew with her report to herbrother's room, and as an emphatic comment on it, and corroboration ofit, carried the two rosiest little Toodles with her. Toodle being thefamily name of the apple-faced family. 

Mr Dombey had remained in his own apartment since the death of his wife, absorbed in visions of the youth, education, and destination of his babyson. Something lay at the bottom of his cool heart, colder and heavierthan its ordinary load; but it was more a sense of the child's loss thanhis own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the lifeand progress on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in theoutset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering fora nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, heviewed with so much bitterness the thought of being dependent for thevery first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on ahired serving-woman who would be to the child, for the time, all thateven his alliance could have made his own wife, that in every newrejection of a candidate he felt a secret pleasure. The time had nowcome, however, when he could no longer be divided between these two setsof feelings. The less so, as there seemed to be no flaw in the title ofPolly Toodle after his sister had set it forth, with many commendationson the indefatigable friendship of Miss Tox. 

'These children look healthy, ' said Mr Dombey. 'But my God, to think oftheir some day claiming a sort of relationship to Paul!'

'But what relationship is there!' Louisa began--

'Is there!' echoed Mr Dombey, who had not intended his sister toparticipate in the thought he had unconsciously expressed. 'Is there, did you say, Louisa!'

'Can there be, I mean--'

'Why none, ' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 'The whole world knows that, Ipresume. Grief has not made me idiotic, Louisa. Take them away, Louisa!Let me see this woman and her husband. '

Mrs Chick bore off the tender pair of Toodles, and presently returnedwith that tougher couple whose presence her brother had commanded. 

'My good woman, ' said Mr Dombey, turning round in his easy chair, asone piece, and not as a man with limbs and joints, 'I understand you arepoor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who hasbeen so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. I have noobjection to your adding to the comforts of your family by that means. So far as I can tell, you seem to be a deserving object. But I mustimpose one or two conditions on you, before you enter my house in thatcapacity. While you are here, I must stipulate that you are always knownas--say as Richards--an ordinary name, and convenient. Have you anyobjection to be known as Richards? You had better consult your husband. '

'Well?' said Mr Dombey, after a pretty long pause. 'What does yourhusband say to your being called Richards?'

As the husband did nothing but chuckle and grin, and continually drawhis right hand across his mouth, moistening the palm, Mrs Toodle, afternudging him twice or thrice in vain, dropped a curtsey and replied 'thatperhaps if she was to be called out of her name, it would be consideredin the wages. '

'Oh, of course, ' said Mr Dombey. 'I desire to make it a question ofwages, altogether. Now, Richards, if you nurse my bereaved child, Iwish you to remember this always. You will receive a liberal stipend inreturn for the discharge of certain duties, in the performance of which, I wish you to see as little of your family as possible. When thoseduties cease to be required and rendered, and the stipend ceases to bepaid, there is an end of all relations between us. Do you understandme?'

Mrs Toodle seemed doubtful about it; and as to Toodle himself, he hadevidently no doubt whatever, that he was all abroad. 

'You have children of your own, ' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not at all inthis bargain that you need become attached to my child, or that my childneed become attached to you. I don't expect or desire anything of thekind. Quite the reverse. When you go away from here, you will haveconcluded what is a mere matter of bargain and sale, hiring and letting:and will stay away. The child will cease to remember you; and you willcease, if you please, to remember the child. '

Mrs Toodle, with a little more colour in her cheeks than she had hadbefore, said 'she hoped she knew her place. '

'I hope you do, Richards, ' said Mr Dombey. 'I have no doubt you knowit very well. Indeed it is so plain and obvious that it could hardly beotherwise. Louisa, my dear, arrange with Richards about money, and lether have it when and how she pleases. Mr what's-your name, a word withyou, if you please!'

Thus arrested on the threshold as he was following his wife out of theroom, Toodle returned and confronted Mr Dombey alone. He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, shaggy fellow, on whom his clothessat negligently: with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in itsnatural tint, perhaps by smoke and coal-dust: hard knotty hands: and asquare forehead, as coarse in grain as the bark of an oak. Athorough contrast in all respects, to Mr Dombey, who was one of thoseclose-shaved close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp likenew bank-notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened asby the stimulating action of golden showerbaths. 

'You have a son, I believe?' said Mr Dombey. 

'Four on 'em, Sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!'

'Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!' said Mr Dombey. 

'I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, Sir. '

'What is that?'

'To lose 'em, Sir. '

'Can you read?' asked Mr Dombey. 

'Why, not partick'ler, Sir. '

'Write?'

'With chalk, Sir?'

'With anything?'

'I could make shift to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it, 'said Toodle after some reflection. 

'And yet, ' said Mr Dombey, 'you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?'

'Thereabouts, I suppose, Sir, ' answered Toodle, after more reflection

'Then why don't you learn?' asked Mr Dombey. 

'So I'm a going to, Sir. One of my little boys is a going to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself. '

'Well, ' said Mr Dombey, after looking at him attentively, and with nogreat favour, as he stood gazing round the room (principally round theceiling) and still drawing his hand across and across his mouth. 'Youheard what I said to your wife just now?'

'Polly heerd it, ' said Toodle, jerking his hat over his shoulder in thedirection of the door, with an air of perfect confidence in his betterhalf. 'It's all right. '

'But I ask you if you heard it. You did, I suppose, and understood it?'pursued Mr Dombey. 

'I heerd it, ' said Toodle, 'but I don't know as I understood it rightlySir, 'account of being no scholar, and the words being--ask yourpardon--rayther high. But Polly heerd it. It's all right. '

'As you appear to leave everything to her, ' said Mr Dombey, frustratedin his intention of impressing his views still more distinctly on thehusband, as the stronger character, 'I suppose it is of no use my sayinganything to you. '

'Not a bit, ' said Toodle. 'Polly heerd it. She's awake, Sir. '

'I won't detain you any longer then, ' returned Mr Dombey, disappointed. 'Where have you worked all your life?'

'Mostly underground, Sir, 'till I got married. I come to the level then. I'm a going on one of these here railroads when they comes into fullplay. '

As he added in one of his hoarse whispers, 'We means to bring up littleBiler to that line, ' Mr Dombey inquired haughtily who little Biler was. 

'The eldest on 'em, Sir, ' said Toodle, with a smile. 'It ain't a commonname. Sermuchser that when he was took to church the gen'lm'n said, itwam't a chris'en one, and he couldn't give it. But we always calls himBiler just the same. For we don't mean no harm. Not we. 

'Do you mean to say, Man, ' inquired Mr Dombey; looking at him withmarked displeasure, 'that you have called a child after a boiler?'

'No, no, Sir, ' returned Toodle, with a tender consideration for hismistake. 'I should hope not! No, Sir. Arter a BILER Sir. The Steaminginewas a'most as good as a godfather to him, and so we called him Biler, don't you see!'

As the last straw breaks the laden camel's back, this piece ofinformation crushed the sinking spirits of Mr Dombey. He motioned hischild's foster-father to the door, who departed by no means unwillingly:and then turning the key, paced up and down the room in solitarywretchedness. 

It would be harsh, and perhaps not altogether true, to say of him thathe felt these rubs and gratings against his pride more keenly than hehad felt his wife's death: but certainly they impressed that event uponhim with new force, and communicated to it added weight and bitterness. It was a rude shock to his sense of property in his child, that thesepeople--the mere dust of the earth, as he thought them--should benecessary to him; and it was natural that in proportion as he feltdisturbed by it, he should deplore the occurrence which had made themso. For all his starched, impenetrable dignity and composure, he wipedblinding tears from his eyes as he paced up and down his room; and oftensaid, with an emotion of which he would not, for the world, have had awitness, 'Poor little fellow!'

It may have been characteristic of Mr Dombey's pride, that he pitiedhimself through the child. Not poor me. Not poor widower, confiding byconstraint in the wife of an ignorant Hind who has been working 'mostlyunderground' all his life, and yet at whose door Death had neverknocked, and at whose poor table four sons daily sit--but poor littlefellow!

Those words being on his lips, it occurred to him--and it is an instanceof the strong attraction with which his hopes and fears and all histhoughts were tending to one centre--that a great temptation was beingplaced in this woman's way. Her infant was a boy too. Now, would it bepossible for her to change them?

Though he was soon satisfied that he had dismissed the idea as romanticand unlikely--though possible, there was no denying--he could not helppursuing it so far as to entertain within himself a picture of what hiscondition would be, if he should discover such an imposture when he wasgrown old. Whether a man so situated would be able to pluck away theresult of so many years of usage, confidence, and belief, from theimpostor, and endow a stranger with it?

But it was idle speculating thus. It couldn't happen. In a momentafterwards he determined that it could, but that such women wereconstantly observed, and had no opportunity given them for theaccomplishment of such a design, even when they were so wicked as toentertain it. In another moment, he was remembering how few such casesseemed to have ever happened. In another moment he was wondering whetherthey ever happened and were not found out. 

As his unusual emotion subsided, these misgivings gradually melted away, though so much of their shadow remained behind, that he was constant inhis resolution to look closely after Richards himself, without appearingto do so. Being now in an easier frame of mind, he regarded the woman'sstation as rather an advantageous circumstance than otherwise, byplacing, in itself, a broad distance between her and the child, andrendering their separation easy and natural. Thence he passed to thecontemplation of the future glories of Dombey and Son, and dismissed thememory of his wife, for the time being, with a tributary sigh or two. 

Meanwhile terms were ratified and agreed upon between Mrs Chick andRichards, with the assistance of Miss Tox; and Richards being with muchceremony invested with the Dombey baby, as if it were an Order, resignedher own, with many tears and kisses, to Jemima. Glasses of wine werethen produced, to sustain the drooping spirits of the family; and MissTox, busying herself in dispensing 'tastes' to the younger branches, bred them up to their father's business with such surprising expedition, that she made chokers of four of them in a quarter of a minute. 

'You'll take a glass yourself, Sir, won't you?' said Miss Tox, as Toodleappeared. 

'Thankee, Mum, ' said Toodle, 'since you are suppressing. '

'And you're very glad to leave your dear good wife in such a comfortablehome, ain't you, Sir?'said Miss Tox, nodding and winking at himstealthily. 

'No, Mum, ' said Toodle. 'Here's wishing of her back agin. '

Polly cried more than ever at this. So Mrs Chick, who had her matronlyapprehensions that this indulgence in grief might be prejudicial to thelittle Dombey ('acid, indeed, ' she whispered Miss Tox), hastened to therescue. 

'Your little child will thrive charmingly with your sister Jemima, Richards, ' said Mrs Chick; 'and you have only to make an effort--this isa world of effort, you know, Richards--to be very happy indeed. You havebeen already measured for your mourning, haven't you, Richards?'

'Ye--es, Ma'am, ' sobbed Polly. 

'And it'll fit beautifully. I know, ' said Mrs Chick, 'for the same youngperson has made me many dresses. The very best materials, too!'

'Lor, you'll be so smart, ' said Miss Tox, 'that your husband won't knowyou; will you, Sir?'

'I should know her, ' said Toodle, gruffly, 'anyhows and anywheres. '

Toodle was evidently not to be bought over. 

'As to living, Richards, you know, ' pursued Mrs Chick, 'why, the verybest of everything will be at your disposal. You will order your littledinner every day; and anything you take a fancy to, I'm sure will be asreadily provided as if you were a Lady. '

'Yes to be sure!' said Miss Tox, keeping up the ball with greatsympathy. 'And as to porter!--quite unlimited, will it not, Louisa?'

'Oh, certainly!' returned Mrs Chick in the same tone. 'With a littleabstinence, you know, my dear, in point of vegetables. '

'And pickles, perhaps, ' suggested Miss Tox. 

'With such exceptions, ' said Louisa, 'she'll consult her choiceentirely, and be under no restraint at all, my love. '

'And then, of course, you know, ' said Miss Tox, 'however fond she is ofher own dear little child--and I'm sure, Louisa, you don't blame her forbeing fond of it?'

'Oh no!' cried Mrs Chick, benignantly. 

'Still, ' resumed Miss Tox, 'she naturally must be interested in heryoung charge, and must consider it a privilege to see a little cherubconnected with the superior classes, gradually unfolding itself from dayto day at one common fountain--is it not so, Louisa?'

'Most undoubtedly!' said Mrs Chick. 'You see, my love, she's alreadyquite contented and comfortable, and means to say goodbye to her sisterJemima and her little pets, and her good honest husband, with a lightheart and a smile; don't she, my dear?'

'Oh yes!' cried Miss Tox. 'To be sure she does!'

Notwithstanding which, however, poor Polly embraced them all round ingreat distress, and coming to her spouse at last, could not make up hermind to part from him, until he gently disengaged himself, at the closeof the following allegorical piece of consolation:

'Polly, old 'ooman, whatever you do, my darling, hold up your headand fight low. That's the only rule as I know on, that'll carry anyonethrough life. You always have held up your head and fought low, Polly. Do it now, or Bricks is no longer so. God bless you, Polly! Me andJ'mima will do your duty by you; and with relating to your'n, hold upyour head and fight low, Polly, and you can't go wrong!'

Fortified by this golden secret, Folly finally ran away to avoid anymore particular leave-taking between herself and the children. But thestratagem hardly succeeded as well as it deserved; for the smallest boybut one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs afterher--if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible--on his arms andlegs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, inremembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with hisboots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the rest of thefamily. 

A quantity of oranges and halfpence thrust indiscriminately on eachyoung Toodle, checked the first violence of their regret, and thefamily were speedily transported to their own home, by means of thehackney-coach kept in waiting for that purpose. The children, under theguardianship of Jemima, blocked up the window, and dropped out orangesand halfpence all the way along. Mr Toodle himself preferred to ridebehind among the spikes, as being the mode of conveyance to which he wasbest accustomed. 

CHAPTER 3. In which Mr Dombey, as a Man and a Father, is seen at theHead of the Home-Department

The funeral of the deceased lady having been 'performed to the entiresatisfaction of the undertaker, as well as of the neighbourhood atlarge, which is generally disposed to be captious on such a point, and is prone to take offence at any omissions or short-comings in theceremonies, the various members of Mr Dombey's household subsided intotheir several places in the domestic system. That small world, like thegreat one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting itsdead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and thehouse-keeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had saidwho'd have thought it, and the housemaid had said she couldn't hardlybelieve it, and the footman had said it seemed exactly like a dream, they had quite worn the subject out, and began to think their mourningwas wearing rusty too. 

On Richards, who was established upstairs in a state of honourablecaptivity, the dawn of her new life seemed to break cold and grey. Mr Dombey's house was a large one, on the shady side of a tall, dark, dreadfully genteel street in the region between Portland Place andBryanstone Square. ' It was a corner house, with great wide areascontaining cellars frowned upon by barred windows, and leered at bycrooked-eyed doors leading to dustbins. It was a house of dismal state, with a circular back to it, containing a whole suite of drawing-roomslooking upon a gravelled yard, where two gaunt trees, with blackenedtrunks and branches, rattled rather than rustled, their leaves were sosmoked-dried. The summer sun was never on the street, but in the morningabout breakfast-time, when it came with the water-carts and the oldclothes men, and the people with geraniums, and the umbrella-mender, andthe man who trilled the little bell of the Dutch clock as he went along. It was soon gone again to return no more that day; and the bands ofmusic and the straggling Punch's shows going after it, left it a preyto the most dismal of organs, and white mice; with now and then aporcupine, to vary the entertainments; until the butlers whose familieswere dining out, began to stand at the house-doors in the twilight, andthe lamp-lighter made his nightly failure in attempting to brighten upthe street with gas. 

It was as blank a house inside as outside. When the funeral was over, Mr Dombey ordered the furniture to be covered up--perhaps to preserve itfor the son with whom his plans were all associated--and the rooms to beungarnished, saving such as he retained for himself on the ground floor. Accordingly, mysterious shapes were made of tables and chairs, heaped together in the middle of rooms, and covered over with greatwinding-sheets. Bell-handles, window-blinds, and looking-glasses, beingpapered up in journals, daily and weekly, obtruded fragmentary accountsof deaths and dreadful murders. Every chandelier or lustre, muffled inholland, looked like a monstrous tear depending from the ceiling's eye. Odours, as from vaults and damp places, came out of the chimneys. Thedead and buried lady was awful in a picture-frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner fromthe neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewnbefore the house when she was ill, mildewed remains of which were stillcleaving to the neighbourhood: and these, being always drawn bysome invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to letimmediately opposite, addressed a dismal eloquence to Mr Dombey'swindows. 

The apartments which Mr Dombey reserved for his own inhabiting, wereattainable from the hall, and consisted of a sitting-room; a library, which was in fact a dressing-room, so that the smell of hot-pressedpaper, vellum, morocco, and Russia leather, contended in it with thesmell of divers pairs of boots; and a kind of conservatory or littleglass breakfast-room beyond, commanding a prospect of the trees beforementioned, and, generally speaking, of a few prowling cats. These threerooms opened upon one another. In the morning, when Mr Dombey was at hisbreakfast in one or other of the two first-mentioned of them, as wellas in the afternoon when he came home to dinner, a bell was rung forRichards to repair to this glass chamber, and there walk to and fro withher young charge. From the glimpses she caught of Mr Dombey at thesetimes, sitting in the dark distance, looking out towards the infant fromamong the dark heavy furniture--the house had been inhabited for yearsby his father, and in many of its appointments was old-fashioned andgrim--she began to entertain ideas of him in his solitary state, as ifhe were a lone prisoner in a cell, or a strange apparition that was notto be accosted or understood. Mr Dombey came to be, in the course of afew days, invested in his own person, to her simple thinking, with allthe mystery and gloom of his house. As she walked up and down the glassroom, or sat hushing the baby there--which she very often did for hourstogether, when the dusk was closing in, too--she would sometimes try topierce the gloom beyond, and make out how he was looking and what hewas doing. Sensible that she was plainly to be seen by him' however, shenever dared to pry in that direction but very furtively and for a momentat a time. Consequently she made out nothing, and Mr Dombey in his denremained a very shade. 

Little Paul Dombey's foster-mother had led this life herself, and hadcarried little Paul through it for some weeks; and had returned upstairsone day from a melancholy saunter through the dreary rooms of state (shenever went out without Mrs Chick, who called on fine mornings, usuallyaccompanied by Miss Tox, to take her and Baby for an airing--or in otherwords, to march them gravely up and down the pavement, like a walkingfuneral); when, as she was sitting in her own room, the door was slowlyand quietly opened, and a dark-eyed little girl looked in. 

'It's Miss Florence come home from her aunt's, no doubt, ' thoughtRichards, who had never seen the child before. 'Hope I see you well, Miss. '

'Is that my brother?' asked the child, pointing to the Baby. 

'Yes, my pretty, ' answered Richards. 'Come and kiss him. '

But the child, instead of advancing, looked her earnestly in the face, and said:

'What have you done with my Mama?'

'Lord bless the little creeter!' cried Richards, 'what a sad question! Idone? Nothing, Miss. '

'What have they done with my Mama?' inquired the child, with exactly thesame look and manner. 

'I never saw such a melting thing in all my life!' said Richards, whonaturally substituted 'for this child one of her own, inquiring forherself in like circumstances. 'Come nearer here, my dear Miss! Don't beafraid of me. '

'I am not afraid of you, ' said the child, drawing nearer. 'But I want toknow what they have done with my Mama. '

Her heart swelled so as she stood before the woman, looking into hereyes, that she was fain to press her little hand upon her breast andhold it there. Yet there was a purpose in the child that prevented bothher slender figure and her searching gaze from faltering. 

'My darling, ' said Richards, 'you wear that pretty black frock inremembrance of your Mama. '

'I can remember my Mama, ' returned the child, with tears springing toher eyes, 'in any frock. '

'But people put on black, to remember people when they're gone. '

'Where gone?' asked the child. 

'Come and sit down by me, ' said Richards, 'and I'll tell you a story. '

With a quick perception that it was intended to relate to what she hadasked, little Florence laid aside the bonnet she had held in her handuntil now, and sat down on a stool at the Nurse's feet, looking up intoher face. 

'Once upon a time, ' said Richards, 'there was a lady--a very good lady, and her little daughter dearly loved her. '

'A very good lady and her little daughter dearly loved her, ' repeatedthe child. 

'Who, when God thought it right that it should be so, was taken ill anddied. '

The child shuddered. 

'Died, never to be seen again by anyone on earth, and was buried in theground where the trees grow. 

'The cold ground?' said the child, shuddering again. 'No! The warmground, ' returned Polly, seizing her advantage, 'where the ugly littleseeds turn into beautiful flowers, and into grass, and corn, and I don'tknow what all besides. Where good people turn into bright angels, andfly away to Heaven!'

The child, who had dropped her head, raised it again, and sat looking ather intently. 

'So; let me see, ' said Polly, not a little flurried between this earnestscrutiny, her desire to comfort the child, her sudden success, and hervery slight confidence in her own powers. ' So, when this lady died, wherever they took her, or wherever they put her, she went to GOD! andshe prayed to Him, this lady did, ' said Polly, affecting herself beyondmeasure; being heartily in earnest, 'to teach her little daughter tobe sure of that in her heart: and to know that she was happy there andloved her still: and to hope and try--Oh, all her life--to meet herthere one day, never, never, never to part any more. '

'It was my Mama!' exclaimed the child, springing up, and clasping herround the neck. 

'And the child's heart, ' said Polly, drawing her to her breast: 'thelittle daughter's heart was so full of the truth of this, that even whenshe heard it from a strange nurse that couldn't tell it right, but was apoor mother herself and that was all, she found a comfort in it--didn'tfeel so lonely--sobbed and cried upon her bosom--took kindly to the babylying in her lap--and--there, there, there!' said Polly, smoothing thechild's curls and dropping tears upon them. 'There, poor dear!'

'Oh well, Miss Floy! And won't your Pa be angry neither!' cried a quickvoice at the door, proceeding from a short, brown, womanly girl offourteen, with a little snub nose, and black eyes like jet beads. 'Whenit was 'tickerlerly given out that you wasn't to go and worrit the wetnurse. 

'She don't worry me, ' was the surprised rejoinder of Polly. 'I am veryfond of children. '

'Oh! but begging your pardon, Mrs Richards, that don't matter, youknow, ' returned the black-eyed girl, who was so desperately sharp andbiting that she seemed to make one's eyes water. 'I may be very fond ofpennywinkles, Mrs Richards, but it don't follow that I'm to have 'em fortea. 'Well, it don't matter, ' said Polly. 'Oh, thank'ee, Mrs Richards, don't it!' returned the sharp girl. 'Remembering, however, if you'llbe so good, that Miss Floy's under my charge, and Master Paul's underyour'n. '

'But still we needn't quarrel, ' said Polly. 

'Oh no, Mrs Richards, ' rejoined Spitfire. 'Not at all, I don't wish it, we needn't stand upon that footing, Miss Floy being a permanency, MasterPaul a temporary. ' Spitfire made use of none but comma pauses; shootingout whatever she had to say in one sentence, and in one breath, ifpossible. 

'Miss Florence has just come home, hasn't she?' asked Polly. 

'Yes, Mrs Richards, just come, and here, Miss Floy, before you've beenin the house a quarter of an hour, you go a smearing your wet faceagainst the expensive mourning that Mrs Richards is a wearing for yourMa!' With this remonstrance, young Spitfire, whose real name was SusanNipper, detached the child from her new friend by a wrench--as if shewere a tooth. But she seemed to do it, more in the excessively sharpexercise of her official functions, than with any deliberate unkindness. 

'She'll be quite happy, now she has come home again, ' said Polly, nodding to her with an encouraging smile upon her wholesome face, 'andwill be so pleased to see her dear Papa to-night. '

'Lork, Mrs Richards!' cried Miss Nipper, taking up her words with ajerk. 'Don't. See her dear Papa indeed! I should like to see her do it!'

'Won't she then?' asked Polly. 

'Lork, Mrs Richards, no, her Pa's a deal too wrapped up in somebodyelse, and before there was a somebody else to be wrapped up in she neverwas a favourite, girls are thrown away in this house, Mrs Richards, Iassure you. 

The child looked quickly from one nurse to the other, as if sheunderstood and felt what was said. 

'You surprise me!' cried Folly. 'Hasn't Mr Dombey seen her since--'

'No, ' interrupted Susan Nipper. 'Not once since, and he hadn't hardlyset his eyes upon her before that for months and months, and I don'tthink he'd have known her for his own child if he had met her in thestreets, or would know her for his own child if he was to meet her inthe streets to-morrow, Mrs Richards, as to me, ' said Spitfire, with agiggle, 'I doubt if he's aweer of my existence. '

'Pretty dear!' said Richards; meaning, not Miss Nipper, but the littleFlorence. 

'Oh! there's a Tartar within a hundred miles of where we're now inconversation, I can tell you, Mrs Richards, present company alwaysexcepted too, ' said Susan Nipper; 'wish you good morning, Mrs Richards, now Miss Floy, you come along with me, and don't go hanging back like anaughty wicked child that judgments is no example to, don't!'

In spite of being thus adjured, and in spite also of some hauling onthe part of Susan Nipper, tending towards the dislocation of herright shoulder, little Florence broke away, and kissed her new friend, affectionately. 

'Oh dear! after it was given out so 'tickerlerly, that Mrs Richardswasn't to be made free with!' exclaimed Susan. 'Very well, Miss Floy!'

'God bless the sweet thing!' said Richards, 'Good-bye, dear!'

'Good-bye!' returned the child. 'God bless you! I shall come to see youagain soon, and you'll come to see me? Susan will let us. Won't you, Susan?'

Spitfire seemed to be in the main a good-natured little body, althougha disciple of that school of trainers of the young idea which holds thatchildhood, like money, must be shaken and rattled and jostled abouta good deal to keep it bright. For, being thus appealed to with someendearing gestures and caresses, she folded her small arms and shook herhead, and conveyed a relenting expression into her very-wide-open blackeyes. 

'It ain't right of you to ask it, Miss Floy, for you know I can't refuseyou, but Mrs Richards and me will see what can be done, if Mrs Richardslikes, I may wish, you see, to take a voyage to Chaney, Mrs Richards, but I mayn't know how to leave the London Docks. '

Richards assented to the proposition. 

'This house ain't so exactly ringing with merry-making, ' said MissNipper, 'that one need be lonelier than one must be. Your Toxes andyour Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs Richards, butthat's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole set. '

This proposition was also assented to by Richards, as an obvious one. 

'So I'm able, I'm sure, 'said Susan Nipper, 'to live friendly, MrsRichards, while Master Paul continues a permanency, if the means can beplanned out without going openly against orders, but goodness graciousMiss Floy, you haven't got your things off yet, you naughty child, youhaven't, come along!'

With these words, Susan Nipper, in a transport of coercion, made acharge at her young ward, and swept her out of the room. 

The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet, anduncomplaining; was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed tocare to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed tomind or think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore whenshe was left alone again. In the simple passage that had taken placebetween herself and the motherless little girl, her own motherly hearthad been touched no less than the child's; and she felt, as the childdid, that there was something of confidence and interest between themfrom that moment. 

Notwithstanding Mr Toodle's great reliance on Polly, she was perhaps inpoint of artificial accomplishments very little his superior. She hadbeen good-humouredly working and drudging for her life all her life, and was a sober steady-going person, with matter-of-fact ideas about thebutcher and baker, and the division of pence into farthings. But shewas a good plain sample of a nature that is ever, in the mass, better, truer, higher, nobler, quicker to feel, and much more constant toretain, all tenderness and pity, self-denial and devotion, than thenature of men. And, perhaps, unlearned as she was, she could havebrought a dawning knowledge home to Mr Dombey at that early day, whichwould not then have struck him in the end like lightning. 

But this is from the purpose. Polly only thought, at that time, ofimproving on her successful propitiation of Miss Nipper, and devisingsome means of having little Florence aide her, lawfully, and withoutrebellion. An opening happened to present itself that very night. 

She had been rung down into the glass room as usual, and had walkedabout and about it a long time, with the baby in her arms, when, to hergreat surprise and dismay, Mr Dombey--whom she had seen at first leaningon his elbow at the table, and afterwards walking up and down the middleroom, drawing, each time, a little nearer, she thought, to the openfolding doors--came out, suddenly, and stopped before her. 

'Good evening, Richards. '

Just the same austere, stiff gentleman, as he had appeared to her onthat first day. Such a hard-looking gentleman, that she involuntarilydropped her eyes and her curtsey at the same time. 

'How is Master Paul, Richards?'

'Quite thriving, Sir, and well. '

'He looks so, ' said Mr Dombey, glancing with great interest at the tinyface she uncovered for his observation, and yet affecting to be halfcareless of it. 'They give you everything you want, I hope?'

'Oh yes, thank you, Sir. '

She suddenly appended such an obvious hesitation to this reply, however, that Mr Dombey, who had turned away; stopped, and turned round again, inquiringly. 

'If you please, Sir, the child is very much disposed to take notice ofthings, ' said Richards, with another curtsey, 'and--upstairs is a littledull for him, perhaps, Sir. '

'I begged them to take you out for airings, constantly, ' said Mr Dombey. 'Very well! You shall go out oftener. You're quite right to mention it. '

'I beg your pardon, Sir, ' faltered Polly, 'but we go out quite plentySir, thank you. '

'What would you have then?' asked Mr Dombey. 

'Indeed Sir, I don't exactly know, ' said Polly, 'unless--'

'Yes?'

'I believe nothing is so good for making children lively and cheerful, Sir, as seeing other children playing about 'em, ' observed Polly, takingcourage. 

'I think I mentioned to you, Richards, when you came here, ' said MrDombey, with a frown, 'that I wished you to see as little of your familyas possible. '

'Oh dear yes, Sir, I wasn't so much as thinking of that. '

'I am glad of it, ' said Mr Dombey hastily. 'You can continue your walkif you please. '

With that, he disappeared into his inner room; and Polly had thesatisfaction of feeling that he had thoroughly misunderstood her object, and that she had fallen into disgrace without the least advancement ofher purpose. 

Next night, she found him walking about the conservatory when she camedown. As she stopped at the door, checked by this unusual sight, anduncertain whether to advance or retreat, he called her in. His mind wastoo much set on Dombey and Son, it soon appeared, to admit of his havingforgotten her suggestion. 

'If you really think that sort of society is good for the child, ' hesaid sharply, as if there had been no interval since she proposed it, 'where's Miss Florence?'

'Nothing could be better than Miss Florence, Sir, ' said Polly eagerly, 'but I understood from her maid that they were not to--'

Mr Dombey rang the bell, and walked till it was answered. 

'Tell them always to let Miss Florence be with Richards when shechooses, and go out with her, and so forth. Tell them to let thechildren be together, when Richards wishes it. '

The iron was now hot, and Richards striking on it boldly--it was agood cause and she bold in it, though instinctively afraid of MrDombey--requested that Miss Florence might be sent down then and there, to make friends with her little brother. 

She feigned to be dandling the child as the servant retired on thiserrand, but she thought that she saw Mr Dombey's colour changed; thatthe expression of his face quite altered; that he turned, hurriedly, asif to gainsay what he had said, or she had said, or both, and was onlydeterred by very shame. 

And she was right. The last time he had seen his slighted child, therehad been that in the sad embrace between her and her dying mother, whichwas at once a revelation and a reproach to him. Let him be absorbedas he would in the Son on whom he built such high hopes, he could notforget that closing scene. He could not forget that he had had no partin it. That, at the bottom of its clear depths of tenderness and truth'lay those two figures clasped in each other's arms, while he stood onthe bank above them, looking down a mere spectator--not a sharer withthem--quite shut out. 

Unable to exclude these things from his remembrance, or to keep hismind free from such imperfect shapes of the meaning with which they werefraught, as were able to make themselves visible to him through themist of his pride, his previous feeling of indifference towards littleFlorence changed into an uneasiness of an extraordinary kind. Young asshe was, and possessing in any eyes but his (and perhaps in his too)even more than the usual amount of childish simplicity and confidence, he almost felt as if she watched and distrusted him. As if she held theclue to something secret in his breast, of the nature of which hewas hardly informed himself. As if she had an innate knowledge of onejarring and discordant string within him, and her very breath couldsound it. 

His feeling about the child had been negative from her birth. He hadnever conceived an aversion to her: it had not been worth his while orin his humour. She had never been a positively disagreeable object tohim. But now he was ill at ease about her. She troubled his peace. Hewould have preferred to put her idea aside altogether, if he had knownhow. Perhaps--who shall decide on such mysteries!--he was afraid that hemight come to hate her. 

When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr Dombey stopped in hispacing up and down and looked towards her. Had he looked with greaterinterest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glancethe impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to runclinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, 'Oh father, try to love me! there's no one else!' the dread of a repulse; the fearof being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which shestood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged youngheart was wandering to find some natural resting-place, for its sorrowand affection. 

But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the doorand look towards him; and he saw no more. 

'Come in, ' he said, 'come in: what is the child afraid of?'

She came in; and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertainair, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within thedoor. 

'Come here, Florence, ' said her father, coldly. 'Do you know who I am?'

'Yes, Papa. '

'Have you nothing to say to me?'

The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face, were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again, and putout her trembling hand. 

Mr Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon herfor a moment, as if he knew as little as the child, what to say or do. 

'There! Be a good girl, ' he said, patting her on the head, and regardingher as it were by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. 'Go toRichards! Go!'

His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she wouldhave clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he mightraise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then, to what it had been whenshe looked round at the Doctor--that night--and instinctively droppedher hand and turned away. 

It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a greatdisadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint uponthe child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of heractions. As she sported and played about her baby brother that night, her manner was seldom so winning and so pretty as it naturally was, and sometimes when in his pacing to and fro, he came near her (she had, perhaps, for the moment, forgotten him) it changed upon the instant andbecame forced and embarrassed. 

Still, Polly persevered with all the better heart for seeing this; and, judging of Mr Dombey by herself, had great confidence in the mute appealof poor little Florence's mourning dress. ' It's hard indeed, ' thoughtPolly, 'if he takes only to one little motherless child, when he hasanother, and that a girl, before his eyes. '

So, Polly kept her before his eyes, as long as she could, and managedso well with little Paul, as to make it very plain that he was all thelivelier for his sister's company. When it was time to withdrawupstairs again, she would have sent Florence into the inner room to saygood-night to her father, but the child was timid and drew back; andwhen she urged her again, said, spreading her hands before her eyes, asif to shut out her own unworthiness, 'Oh no, no! He don't want me. Hedon't want me!'

The little altercation between them had attracted the notice of MrDombey, who inquired from the table where he was sitting at his wine, what the matter was. 

'Miss Florence was afraid of interrupting, Sir, if she came in to saygood-night, ' said Richards. 

'It doesn't matter, ' returned Mr Dombey. 'You can let her come and gowithout regarding me. '

The child shrunk as she listened--and was gone, before her humble friendlooked round again. 

However, Polly triumphed not a little in the success of herwell-intentioned scheme, and in the address with which she had broughtit to bear: whereof she made a full disclosure to Spitfire when she wasonce more safely entrenched upstairs. Miss Nipper received that proofof her confidence, as well as the prospect of their free associationfor the future, rather coldly, and was anything but enthusiastic in herdemonstrations of joy. 

'I thought you would have been pleased, ' said Polly. 

'Oh yes, Mrs Richards, I'm very well pleased, thank you, ' returnedSusan, who had suddenly become so very upright that she seemed to haveput an additional bone in her stays. 

'You don't show it, ' said Polly. 

'Oh! Being only a permanency I couldn't be expected to show it like atemporary, ' said Susan Nipper. 'Temporaries carries it all before 'emhere, I find, but though there's a excellent party-wall between thishouse and the next, I mayn't exactly like to go to it, Mrs Richards, notwithstanding!'

CHAPTER 4. In which some more First Appearances are made on the Stage ofthese Adventures

Though the offices of Dombey and Son were within the liberties of theCity of London, and within hearing of Bow Bells, when their clashingvoices were not drowned by the uproar in the streets, yet were therehints of adventurous and romantic story to be observed in some of theadjacent objects. Gog and Magog held their state within ten minutes'walk; the Royal Exchange was close at hand; the Bank of England, withits vaults of gold and silver 'down among the dead men' underground, wastheir magnificent neighbour. Just round the corner stood the rich EastIndia House, teeming with suggestions of precious stuffs and stones, tigers, elephants, howdahs, hookahs, umbrellas, palm trees, palanquins, and gorgeous princes of a brown complexion sitting on carpets, withtheir slippers very much turned up at the toes. Anywhere in theimmediate vicinity there might be seen pictures of ships speeding awayfull sail to all parts of the world; outfitting warehouses ready to packoff anybody anywhere, fully equipped in half an hour; and little timbermidshipmen in obsolete naval uniforms, eternally employed outside theshop doors of nautical Instrument-makers in taking observations of thehackney carriages. 

Sole master and proprietor of one of these effigies--of that which mightbe called, familiarly, the woodenest--of that which thrust itselfout above the pavement, right leg foremost, with a suavity the leastendurable, and had the shoe buckles and flapped waistcoat the leastreconcileable to human reason, and bore at its right eye the mostoffensively disproportionate piece of machinery--sole master andproprietor of that Midshipman, and proud of him too, an elderlygentleman in a Welsh wig had paid house-rent, taxes, rates, and dues, for more years than many a full-grown midshipman of flesh and blood hasnumbered in his life; and midshipmen who have attained a pretty greenold age, have not been wanting in the English Navy. 

The stock-in-trade of this old gentleman comprised chronometers, barometers, telescopes, compasses, charts, maps, sextants, quadrants, and specimens of every kind of instrument used in the working of aship's course, or the keeping of a ship's reckoning, or the prosecutingof a ship's discoveries. Objects in brass and glass were in his drawersand on his shelves, which none but the initiated could have found thetop of, or guessed the use of, or having once examined, could have evergot back again into their mahogany nests without assistance. Everythingwas jammed into the tightest cases, fitted into the narrowest corners, fenced up behind the most impertinent cushions, and screwed into theacutest angles, to prevent its philosophical composure from beingdisturbed by the rolling of the sea. Such extraordinary precautions weretaken in every instance to save room, and keep the thing compact; andso much practical navigation was fitted, and cushioned, and screwed intoevery box (whether the box was a mere slab, as some were, or somethingbetween a cocked hat and a star-fish, as others were, and those quitemild and modest boxes as compared with others); that the shop itself, partaking of the general infection, seemed almost to become a snug, sea-going, ship-shape concern, wanting only good sea-room, in the eventof an unexpected launch, to work its way securely to any desert islandin the world. 

Many minor incidents in the household life of the Ships'

Instrument-maker who was proud of his little Midshipman, assisted andbore out this fancy. His acquaintance lying chiefly among ship-chandlersand so forth, he had always plenty of the veritable ships' biscuit onhis table. It was familiar with dried meats and tongues, possessing anextraordinary flavour of rope yarn. Pickles were produced upon it, ingreat wholesale jars, with 'dealer in all kinds of Ships' Provisions' onthe label; spirits were set forth in case bottles with no throats. Oldprints of ships with alphabetical references to their various mysteries, hung in frames upon the walls; the Tartar Frigate under weigh, wason the plates; outlandish shells, seaweeds, and mosses, decorated thechimney-piece; the little wainscotted back parlour was lighted by asky-light, like a cabin. 

Here he lived too, in skipper-like state, all alone with his nephewWalter: a boy of fourteen who looked quite enough like a midshipman, to carry out the prevailing idea. But there it ended, for Solomon Gillshimself (more generally called old Sol) was far from having a maritimeappearance. To say nothing of his Welsh wig, which was as plain andstubborn a Welsh wig as ever was worn, and in which he looked likeanything but a Rover, he was a slow, quiet-spoken, thoughtful oldfellow, with eyes as red as if they had been small suns looking atyou through a fog; and a newly-awakened manner, such as he might haveacquired by having stared for three or four days successively throughevery optical instrument in his shop, and suddenly came back to theworld again, to find it green. The only change ever known in his outwardman, was from a complete suit of coffee-colour cut very square, andornamented with glaring buttons, to the same suit of coffee-colour minusthe inexpressibles, which were then of a pale nankeen. He wore a veryprecise shirt-frill, and carried a pair of first-rate spectacles on hisforehead, and a tremendous chronometer in his fob, rather than doubtwhich precious possession, he would have believed in a conspiracyagainst it on part of all the clocks and watches in the City, and evenof the very Sun itself. Such as he was, such he had been in the shopand parlour behind the little Midshipman, for years upon years; goingregularly aloft to bed every night in a howling garret remote from thelodgers, where, when gentlemen of England who lived below at ease hadlittle or no idea of the state of the weather, it often blew great guns. 

It is half-past five o'clock, and an autumn afternoon, when the readerand Solomon Gills become acquainted. Solomon Gills is in the act ofseeing what time it is by the unimpeachable chronometer. The usual dailyclearance has been making in the City for an hour or more; and the humantide is still rolling westward. 'The streets have thinned, ' as MrGills says, 'very much. ' It threatens to be wet to-night. All theweatherglasses in the shop are in low spirits, and the rain alreadyshines upon the cocked hat of the wooden Midshipman. 

'Where's Walter, I wonder!' said Solomon Gills, after he had carefullyput up the chronometer again. 'Here's dinner been ready, half an hour, and no Walter!'

Turning round upon his stool behind the counter, Mr Gills looked outamong the instruments in the window, to see if his nephew might becrossing the road. No. He was not among the bobbing umbrellas, and hecertainly was not the newspaper boy in the oilskin cap who was slowlyworking his way along the piece of brass outside, writing his name overMr Gills's name with his forefinger. 

'If I didn't know he was too fond of me to make a run of it, and goand enter himself aboard ship against my wishes, I should begin to befidgetty, ' said Mr Gills, tapping two or three weather-glasses withhis knuckles. 'I really should. All in the Downs, eh! Lots of moisture!Well! it's wanted. '

I believe, ' said Mr Gills, blowing the dust off the glass top of acompass-case, 'that you don't point more direct and due to the backparlour than the boy's inclination does after all. And the parlourcouldn't bear straighter either. Due north. Not the twentieth part of apoint either way. '

'Halloa, Uncle Sol!'

'Halloa, my boy!' cried the Instrument-maker, turning briskly round. 'What! you are here, are you?'

A cheerful looking, merry boy, fresh with running home in the rain;fair-faced, bright-eyed, and curly-haired. 

'Well, Uncle, how have you got on without me all day? Is dinner ready?I'm so hungry. '

'As to getting on, ' said Solomon good-naturedly, 'it would be odd if Icouldn't get on without a young dog like you a great deal better thanwith you. As to dinner being ready, it's been ready this half hour andwaiting for you. As to being hungry, I am!'

'Come along then, Uncle!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral!'

'Confound the admiral!' returned Solomon Gills. 'You mean the LordMayor. '

'No I don't!' cried the boy. 'Hurrah for the admiral! Hurrah for theadmiral! For-ward!'

At this word of command, the Welsh wig and its wearer were borne withoutresistance into the back parlour, as at the head of a boarding party offive hundred men; and Uncle Sol and his nephew were speedily engaged ona fried sole with a prospect of steak to follow. 

'The Lord Mayor, Wally, ' said Solomon, 'for ever! No more admirals. TheLord Mayor's your admiral. '

'Oh, is he though!' said the boy, shaking his head. 'Why, the SwordBearer's better than him. He draws his sword sometimes. 

'And a pretty figure he cuts with it for his pains, ' returned the Uncle. 'Listen to me, Wally, listen to me. Look on the mantelshelf. '

'Why who has cocked my silver mug up there, on a nail?' exclaimed theboy. 

I have, ' said his Uncle. 'No more mugs now. We must begin to drink outof glasses to-day, Walter. We are men of business. We belong to theCity. We started in life this morning. 

'Well, Uncle, ' said the boy, 'I'll drink out of anything you like, solong as I can drink to you. Here's to you, Uncle Sol, and Hurrah forthe--

'Lord Mayor, ' interrupted the old man. 

'For the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs, Common Council, and Livery, ' said theboy. 'Long life to 'em!'

The uncle nodded his head with great satisfaction. 'And now, ' he said, 'let's hear something about the Firm. '

'Oh! there's not much to be told about the Firm, Uncle, ' said the boy, plying his knife and fork. ' It's a precious dark set of offices, and inthe room where I sit, there's a high fender, and an iron safe, and somecards about ships that are going to sail, and an almanack, and somedesks and stools, and an inkbottle, and some books, and some boxes, anda lot of cobwebs, and in one of 'em, just over my head, a shrivelled-upblue-bottle that looks as if it had hung there ever so long. '

'Nothing else?' said the Uncle. 

'No, nothing else, except an old birdcage (I wonder how that ever camethere!) and a coal-scuttle. '

'No bankers' books, or cheque books, or bills, or such tokens of wealthrolling in from day to day?' said old Sol, looking wistfully at hisnephew out of the fog that always seemed to hang about him, and layingan unctuous emphasis upon the words. 

'Oh yes, plenty of that I suppose, ' returned his nephew carelessly;'but all that sort of thing's in Mr Carker's room, or Mr Morfin's, or MRDombey's. '

'Has Mr Dombey been there to-day?' inquired the Uncle. 

'Oh yes! In and out all day. '

'He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?'. 

'Yes he did. He walked up to my seat, --I wish he wasn't so solemn andstiff, Uncle, --and said, "Oh! you are the son of Mr Gills the Ships'Instrument-maker. " "Nephew, Sir, " I said. "I said nephew, boy, " said he. But I could take my oath he said son, Uncle. '

'You're mistaken I daresay. It's no matter. 

'No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so sharp, I thought. Therewas no harm in it though he did say son. Then he told me that you hadspoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in the Houseaccordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual, andthen he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much. '

'You mean, I suppose, ' observed the Instrument-maker, 'that you didn'tseem to like him much?'

'Well, Uncle, ' returned the boy, laughing. 'Perhaps so; I never thoughtof that. '

Solomon looked a little graver as he finished his dinner, and glancedfrom time to time at the boy's bright face. When dinner was done, andthe cloth was cleared away (the entertainment had been brought from aneighbouring eating-house), he lighted a candle, and went downbelow into a little cellar, while his nephew, standing on the mouldystaircase, dutifully held the light. After a moment's groping here andthere, he presently returned with a very ancient-looking bottle, coveredwith dust and dirt. 

'Why, Uncle Sol!' said the boy, 'what are you about? that's thewonderful Madeira!--there's only one more bottle!'

Uncle Sol nodded his head, implying that he knew very well what he wasabout; and having drawn the cork in solemn silence, filled two glassesand set the bottle and a third clean glass on the table. 

'You shall drink the other bottle, Wally, ' he said, 'when you come togood fortune; when you are a thriving, respected, happy man; when thestart in life you have made to-day shall have brought you, as I prayHeaven it may!--to a smooth part of the course you have to run, mychild. My love to you!'

Some of the fog that hung about old Sol seemed to have got into histhroat; for he spoke huskily. His hand shook too, as he clinked hisglass against his nephew's. But having once got the wine to his lips, hetossed it off like a man, and smacked them afterwards. 

'Dear Uncle, ' said the boy, affecting to make light of it, while thetears stood in his eyes, 'for the honour you have done me, et cetera, et cetera. I shall now beg to propose Mr Solomon Gills with three timesthree and one cheer more. Hurrah! and you'll return thanks, Uncle, whenwe drink the last bottle together; won't you?'

They clinked their glasses again; and Walter, who was hoarding his wine, took a sip of it, and held the glass up to his eye with as critical anair as he could possibly assume. 

His Uncle sat looking at him for some time in silence. When their eyesat last met, he began at once to pursue the theme that had occupied histhoughts, aloud, as if he had been speaking all the time. 

'You see, Walter, ' he said, 'in truth this business is merely a habitwith me. I am so accustomed to the habit that I could hardly live ifI relinquished it: but there's nothing doing, nothing doing. When thatuniform was worn, ' pointing out towards the little Midshipman, 'thenindeed, fortunes were to be made, and were made. But competition, competition--new invention, new invention--alteration, alteration--theworld's gone past me. I hardly know where I am myself, much less wheremy customers are. 

'Never mind 'em, Uncle!'

'Since you came home from weekly boarding-school at Peckham, forinstance--and that's ten days, ' said Solomon, 'I don't remember morethan one person that has come into the shop. '

'Two, Uncle, don't you recollect? There was the man who came to ask forchange for a sovereign--'

'That's the one, ' said Solomon. 

'Why Uncle! don't you call the woman anybody, who came to ask the way toMile-End Turnpike?'

'Oh! it's true, ' said Solomon, 'I forgot her. Two persons. '

'To be sure, they didn't buy anything, ' cried the boy. 

'No. They didn't buy anything, ' said Solomon, quietly. 

'Nor want anything, ' cried the boy. 

'No. If they had, they'd gone to another shop, ' said Solomon, in thesame tone. 

'But there were two of 'em, Uncle, ' cried the boy, as if that were agreat triumph. 'You said only one. '

'Well, Wally, ' resumed the old man, after a short pause: 'not being likethe Savages who came on Robinson Crusoe's Island, we can't live on a manwho asks for change for a sovereign, and a woman who inquires the wayto Mile-End Turnpike. As I said just now, the world has gone past me. I don't blame it; but I no longer understand it. Tradesmen are not thesame as they used to be, apprentices are not the same, business is notthe same, business commodities are not the same. Seven-eighths of mystock is old-fashioned. I am an old-fashioned man in an old-fashionedshop, in a street that is not the same as I remember it. I have fallenbehind the time, and am too old to catch it again. Even the noise itmakes a long way ahead, confuses me. '

Walter was going to speak, but his Uncle held up his hand. 

'Therefore, Wally--therefore it is that I am anxious you should be earlyin the busy world, and on the world's track. I am only the ghost of thisbusiness--its substance vanished long ago; and when I die, its ghostwill be laid. As it is clearly no inheritance for you then, I havethought it best to use for your advantage, almost the only fragment ofthe old connexion that stands by me, through long habit. Some peoplesuppose me to be wealthy. I wish for your sake they were right. Butwhatever I leave behind me, or whatever I can give you, you in such aHouse as Dombey's are in the road to use well and make the most of. Bediligent, try to like it, my dear boy, work for a steady independence, and be happy!'

'I'll do everything I can, Uncle, to deserve your affection. Indeed Iwill, ' said the boy, earnestly. 

'I know it, ' said Solomon. 'I am sure of it, ' and he applied himselfto a second glass of the old Madeira, with increased relish. 'As to theSea, ' he pursued, 'that's well enough in fiction, Wally, but it won't doin fact: it won't do at all. It's natural enough that you should thinkabout it, associating it with all these familiar things; but it won'tdo, it won't do. '

Solomon Gills rubbed his hands with an air of stealthy enjoyment, as hetalked of the sea, though; and looked on the seafaring objects about himwith inexpressible complacency. 

'Think of this wine for instance, ' said old Sol, 'which has been to theEast Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been onceround the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, androlling seas:'

'The thunder, lightning, rain, hail, storm of all kinds, ' said the boy. 

'To be sure, ' said Solomon, --'that this wine has passed through. Thinkwhat a straining and creaking of timbers and masts: what a whistling andhowling of the gale through ropes and rigging:'

'What a clambering aloft of men, vying with each other who shall lieout first upon the yards to furl the icy sails, while the ship rolls andpitches, like mad!' cried his nephew. 

'Exactly so, ' said Solomon: 'has gone on, over the old cask that heldthis wine. Why, when the Charming Sally went down in the--'

'In the Baltic Sea, in the dead of night; five-and-twenty minutes pasttwelve when the captain's watch stopped in his pocket; he lyingdead against the main-mast--on the fourteenth of February, seventeenforty-nine!' cried Walter, with great animation. 

'Ay, to be sure!' cried old Sol, 'quite right! Then, there were fivehundred casks of such wine aboard; and all hands (except the first mate, first lieutenant, two seamen, and a lady, in a leaky boat) going to workto stave the casks, got drunk and died drunk, singing "Rule Britannia", when she settled and went down, and ending with one awful scream inchorus. '

'But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast ofCornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourthof March, 'seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and thehorses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to andfro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set upsuch human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of devils, some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in despair, and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale. '

'And when, ' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus--'

'Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons, Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co. , ' cried Walter. 

'The same, ' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fairwind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night--'

'There were two brothers on board, ' interposed his nephew, speaking veryfast and loud, 'and there not being room for both of them in the onlyboat that wasn't swamped, neither of them would consent to go, untilthe elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And thenthe younger, rising in the boat, cried out, "Dear Edward, think of yourpromised wife at home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leapdown into my place!" and flung himself in the sea!'

The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen fromhis seat in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remindold Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist hadhitherto shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as hehad evidently intended but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough, and said, 'Well! suppose we change the subject. '

The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attractiontowards the marvellous and adventurous--of which he was, in some sort, a distant relation, by his trade--had greatly encouraged the sameattraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been putbefore the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usualunaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable. It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lureand charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course. 

But an addition to the little party now made its appearance, in theshape of a gentleman in a wide suit of blue, with a hook instead of ahand attached to his right wrist; very bushy black eyebrows; and a thickstick in his left hand, covered all over (like his nose) with knobs. He wore a loose black silk handkerchief round his neck, and such a verylarge coarse shirt collar, that it looked like a small sail. He wasevidently the person for whom the spare wine-glass was intended, andevidently knew it; for having taken off his rough outer coat, and hungup, on a particular peg behind the door, such a hard glazed hat as asympathetic person's head might ache at the sight of, and which left ared rim round his own forehead as if he had been wearing a tight basin, he brought a chair to where the clean glass was, and sat himself downbehind it. He was usually addressed as Captain, this visitor; and hadbeen a pilot, or a skipper, or a privateersman, or all three perhaps;and was a very salt-looking man indeed. 

His face, remarkable for a brown solidity, brightened as he shook handswith Uncle and nephew; but he seemed to be of a laconic disposition, andmerely said:

'How goes it?'

'All well, ' said Mr Gills, pushing the bottle towards him. 

He took it up, and having surveyed and smelt it, said with extraordinaryexpression:

'The?'

'The, ' returned the Instrument-maker. 

Upon that he whistled as he filled his glass, and seemed to think theywere making holiday indeed. 

'Wal'r!' he said, arranging his hair (which was thin) with his hook, andthen pointing it at the Instrument-maker, 'Look at him! Love! Honour!And Obey! Overhaul your catechism till you find that passage, and whenfound turn the leaf down. Success, my boy!'

He was so perfectly satisfied both with his quotation and his referenceto it, that he could not help repeating the words again in a low voice, and saying he had forgotten 'em these forty year. 

'But I never wanted two or three words in my life that I didn't knowwhere to lay my hand upon 'em, Gills, ' he observed. 'It comes of notwasting language as some do. '

The reflection perhaps reminded him that he had better, like youngNorval's father, '"ncrease his store. " At any rate he became silent, andremained so, until old Sol went out into the shop to light it up, whenhe turned to Walter, and said, without any introductory remark:

'I suppose he could make a clock if he tried?'

'I shouldn't wonder, Captain Cuttle, ' returned the boy. 

'And it would go!' said Captain Cuttle, making a species of serpent inthe air with his hook. 'Lord, how that clock would go!'

For a moment or two he seemed quite lost in contemplating the pace ofthis ideal timepiece, and sat looking at the boy as if his face were thedial. 

'But he's chockful of science, ' he observed, waving his hook towards thestock-in-trade. 'Look'ye here! Here's a collection of 'em. Earth, air, or water. It's all one. Only say where you'll have it. Up in a balloon?There you are. Down in a bell? There you are. D'ye want to put the NorthStar in a pair of scales and weigh it? He'll do it for you. '

It may be gathered from these remarks that Captain Cuttle's reverencefor the stock of instruments was profound, and that his philosophy knewlittle or no distinction between trading in it and inventing it. 

'Ah!' he said, with a sigh, 'it's a fine thing to understand 'em. Andyet it's a fine thing not to understand 'em. I hardly know whichis best. It's so comfortable to sit here and feel that you might beweighed, measured, magnified, electrified, polarized, played the verydevil with: and never know how. '

Nothing short of the wonderful Madeira, combined with the occasion(which rendered it desirable to improve and expand Walter's mind), couldhave ever loosened his tongue to the extent of giving utterance to thisprodigious oration. He seemed quite amazed himself at the manner inwhich it opened up to view the sources of the taciturn delight he hadhad in eating Sunday dinners in that parlour for ten years. Becoming asadder and a wiser man, he mused and held his peace. 

'Come!' cried the subject of this admiration, returning. 'Before youhave your glass of grog, Ned, we must finish the bottle. '

'Stand by!' said Ned, filling his glass. 'Give the boy some more. '

'No more, thank'e, Uncle!'

'Yes, yes, ' said Sol, 'a little more. We'll finish the bottle, to theHouse, Ned--Walter's House. Why it may be his House one of thesedays, in part. Who knows? Sir Richard Whittington married his master'sdaughter. '

'"Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, and when you are old youwill never depart from it, "' interposed the Captain. 'Wal'r! Overhaulthe book, my lad. '

'And although Mr Dombey hasn't a daughter, ' Sol began. 

'Yes, yes, he has, Uncle, ' said the boy, reddening and laughing. 

'Has he?' cried the old man. 'Indeed I think he has too. 

'Oh! I know he has, ' said the boy. 'Some of 'em were talking about it inthe office today. And they do say, Uncle and Captain Cuttle, ' loweringhis voice, 'that he's taken a dislike to her, and that she's left, unnoticed, among the servants, and that his mind's so set all the whileupon having his son in the House, that although he's only a baby now, he is going to have balances struck oftener than formerly, and thebooks kept closer than they used to be, and has even been seen (whenhe thought he wasn't) walking in the Docks, looking at his ships andproperty and all that, as if he was exulting like, over what he andhis son will possess together. That's what they say. Of course, I don'tknow. 

'He knows all about her already, you see, ' said the instrument-maker. 

'Nonsense, Uncle, ' cried the boy, still reddening and laughing, boy-like. 'How can I help hearing what they tell me?'

'The Son's a little in our way at present, I'm afraid, Ned, ' said theold man, humouring the joke. 

'Very much, ' said the Captain. 

'Nevertheless, we'll drink him, ' pursued Sol. 'So, here's to Dombey andSon. '

'Oh, very well, Uncle, ' said the boy, merrily. 'Since you haveintroduced the mention of her, and have connected me with her and havesaid that I know all about her, I shall make bold to amend the toast. Sohere's to Dombey--and Son--and Daughter!'

CHAPTER 5. Paul's Progress and Christening

Little Paul, suffering no contamination from the blood of the Toodles, grew stouter and stronger every day. Every day, too, he was moreand more ardently cherished by Miss Tox, whose devotion was so farappreciated by Mr Dombey that he began to regard her as a woman ofgreat natural good sense, whose feelings did her credit and deservedencouragement. He was so lavish of this condescension, that he not onlybowed to her, in a particular manner, on several occasions, but evenentrusted such stately recognitions of her to his sister as 'pray tellyour friend, Louisa, that she is very good, ' or 'mention to MissTox, Louisa, that I am obliged to her;'specialities which made a deepimpression on the lady thus distinguished. 

Whether Miss Tox conceived that having been selected by the Fatesto welcome the little Dombey before he was born, in Kirby, Beard andKirby's Best Mixed Pins, it therefore naturally devolved upon her togreet him with all other forms of welcome in all other early stagesof his existence--or whether her overflowing goodness induced her tovolunteer into the domestic militia as a substitute in some sort for hisdeceased Mama--or whether she was conscious of any other motives--arequestions which in this stage of the Firm's history herself only couldhave solved. Nor have they much bearing on the fact (of which thereis no doubt), that Miss Tox's constancy and zeal were a heavydiscouragement to Richards, who lost flesh hourly under her patronage, and was in some danger of being superintended to death. 

Miss Tox was often in the habit of assuring Mrs Chick, that nothingcould exceed her interest in all connected with the development ofthat sweet child;' and an observer of Miss Tox's proceedings might haveinferred so much without declaratory confirmation. She wouldpreside over the innocent repasts of the young heir, with ineffablesatisfaction, almost with an air of joint proprietorship with Richardsin the entertainment. At the little ceremonies of the bath and toilette, she assisted with enthusiasm. The administration of infantine doses ofphysic awakened all the active sympathy of her character; and being onone occasion secreted in a cupboard (whither she had fled in modesty), when Mr Dombey was introduced into the nursery by his sister, to beholdhis son, in the course of preparation for bed, taking a short walkuphill over Richards's gown, in a short and airy linen jacket, MissTox was so transported beyond the ignorant present as to be unable torefrain from crying out, 'Is he not beautiful Mr Dombey! Is he nota Cupid, Sir!' and then almost sinking behind the closet door withconfusion and blushes. 

'Louisa, ' said Mr Dombey, one day, to his sister, 'I really think I mustpresent your friend with some little token, on the occasion of Paul'schristening. She has exerted herself so warmly in the child's behalffrom the first, and seems to understand her position so thoroughly (avery rare merit in this world, I am sorry to say), that it would reallybe agreeable to me to notice her. '

Let it be no detraction from the merits of Miss Tox, to hint that in MrDombey's eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, theyonly achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of theirown position, who showed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so muchtheir merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowedlow before him. 

'My dear Paul, ' returned his sister, 'you do Miss Tox but justice, as aman of your penetration was sure, I knew, to do. I believe if thereare three words in the English language for which she has a respectamounting almost to veneration, those words are, Dombey and Son. '

'Well, ' said Mr Dombey, 'I believe it. It does Miss Tox credit. '

'And as to anything in the shape of a token, my dear Paul, ' pursuedhis sister, 'all I can say is that anything you give Miss Tox will behoarded and prized, I am sure, like a relic. But there is a way, my dearPaul, of showing your sense of Miss Tox's friendliness in a still moreflattering and acceptable manner, if you should be so inclined. '

'How is that?' asked Mr Dombey. 

'Godfathers, of course, ' continued Mrs Chick, 'are important in point ofconnexion and influence. '

'I don't know why they should be, to my son, said Mr Dombey, coldly. 

'Very true, my dear Paul, ' retorted Mrs Chick, with an extraordinaryshow of animation, to cover the suddenness of her conversion; 'andspoken like yourself. I might have expected nothing else from you. Imight have known that such would have been your opinion. Perhaps;' hereMrs Chick faltered again, as not quite comfortably feeling her way;'perhaps that is a reason why you might have the less objection toallowing Miss Tox to be godmother to the dear thing, if it were only asdeputy and proxy for someone else. That it would be received as a greathonour and distinction, Paul, I need not say. 

'Louisa, ' said Mr Dombey, after a short pause, 'it is not to besupposed--'

'Certainly not, ' cried Mrs Chick, hastening to anticipate a refusal, 'Inever thought it was. '

Mr Dombey looked at her impatiently. 

'Don't flurry me, my dear Paul, ' said his sister; 'for that destroysme. I am far from strong. I have not been quite myself, since poor dearFanny departed. '

Mr Dombey glanced at the pocket-handkerchief which his sister applied toher eyes, and resumed:

'It is not be supposed, I say 'And I say, ' murmured Mrs Chick, 'that Inever thought it was. '

'Good Heaven, Louisa!' said Mr Dombey. 

'No, my dear Paul, ' she remonstrated with tearful dignity, 'I mustreally be allowed to speak. I am not so clever, or so reasoning, or soeloquent, or so anything, as you are. I know that very well. So much theworse for me. But if they were the last words I had to utter--andlast words should be very solemn to you and me, Paul, after poor dearFanny--I would still say I never thought it was. And what is more, 'added Mrs Chick with increased dignity, as if she had withheld hercrushing argument until now, 'I never did think it was. ' Mr Dombeywalked to the window and back again. 

'It is not to be supposed, Louisa, ' he said (Mrs Chick had nailed hercolours to the mast, and repeated 'I know it isn't, ' but he took nonotice of it), 'but that there are many persons who, supposing thatI recognised any claim at all in such a case, have a claim upon mesuperior to Miss Tox's. But I do not. I recognise no such thing. Pauland myself will be able, when the time comes, to hold our own--theHouse, in other words, will be able to hold its own, and maintain itsown, and hand down its own of itself, and without any such common-placeaids. The kind of foreign help which people usually seek for theirchildren, I can afford to despise; being above it, I hope. So thatPaul's infancy and childhood pass away well, and I see him becomingqualified without waste of time for the career on which he is destinedto enter, I am satisfied. He will make what powerful friends he pleasesin after-life, when he is actively maintaining--and extending, if thatis possible--the dignity and credit of the Firm. Until then, I am enoughfor him, perhaps, and all in all. I have no wish that people should stepin between us. I would much rather show my sense of the obliging conductof a deserving person like your friend. Therefore let it be so; andyour husband and myself will do well enough for the other sponsors, Idaresay. '

In the course of these remarks, delivered with great majesty andgrandeur, Mr Dombey had truly revealed the secret feelings of hisbreast. An indescribable distrust of anybody stepping in between himselfand his son; a haughty dread of having any rival or partner in the boy'srespect and deference; a sharp misgiving, recently acquired, that he wasnot infallible in his power of bending and binding human wills; as sharpa jealousy of any second check or cross; these were, at that time themaster keys of his soul. In all his life, he had never made a friend. His cold and distant nature had neither sought one, nor found one. Andnow, when that nature concentrated its whole force so strongly on apartial scheme of parental interest and ambition, it seemed as if itsicy current, instead of being released by this influence, and runningclear and free, had thawed for but an instant to admit its burden, andthen frozen with it into one unyielding block. 

Elevated thus to the godmothership of little Paul, in virtue of herinsignificance, Miss Tox was from that hour chosen and appointed tooffice; and Mr Dombey further signified his pleasure that the ceremony, already long delayed, should take place without further postponement. His sister, who had been far from anticipating so signal a success, withdrew as soon as she could, to communicate it to her best of friends;and Mr Dombey was left alone in his library. He had already laid hishand upon the bellrope to convey his usual summons to Richards, when hiseye fell upon a writing-desk, belonging to his deceased wife, which hadbeen taken, among other things, from a cabinet in her chamber. It wasnot the first time that his eye had lighted on it He carried the keyin his pocket; and he brought it to his table and opened it now--havingpreviously locked the room door--with a well-accustomed hand. 

From beneath a leaf of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he took oneletter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as heopened this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something ofhis arrogant demeanour, he sat down, resting his head upon one hand, and read it through. 

He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularityto every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemedunnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowedno sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, hefolded and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully intofragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he putthem in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the chancesof being re-united and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, forlittle Paul, he sat solitary, all the evening, in his cheerless room. 

There was anything but solitude in the nursery; for there, Mrs Chick andMiss Tox were enjoying a social evening, so much to the disgust of MissSusan Nipper, that that young lady embraced every opportunity of makingwry faces behind the door. Her feelings were so much excited on theoccasion, that she found it indispensable to afford them this relief, even without having the comfort of any audience or sympathy whatever. As the knight-errants of old relieved their minds by carving theirmistress's names in deserts, and wildernesses, and other savage placeswhere there was no probability of there ever being anybody to read them, so did Miss Susan Nipper curl her snub nose into drawers and wardrobes, put away winks of disparagement in cupboards, shed derisive squints intostone pitchers, and contradict and call names out in the passage. 

The two interlopers, however, blissfully unconscious of the young lady'ssentiments, saw little Paul safe through all the stages of undressing, airy exercise, supper and bed; and then sat down to tea before the fire. The two children now lay, through the good offices of Polly, inone room; and it was not until the ladies were established at theirtea-table that, happening to look towards the little beds, they thoughtof Florence. 

'How sound she sleeps!' said Miss Tox. 

'Why, you know, my dear, she takes a great deal of exercise in thecourse of the day, ' returned Mrs Chick, 'playing about little Paul somuch. '

'She is a curious child, ' said Miss Tox. 

'My dear, ' retorted Mrs Chick, in a low voice: 'Her Mama, all over!'

'In deed!' said Miss Tox. 'Ah dear me!'

A tone of most extraordinary compassion Miss Tox said it in, though shehad no distinct idea why, except that it was expected of her. 

'Florence will never, never, never be a Dombey, 'said Mrs Chick, 'not ifshe lives to be a thousand years old. '

Miss Tox elevated her eyebrows, and was again full of commiseration. 

'I quite fret and worry myself about her, ' said Mrs Chick, with a sighof modest merit. 'I really don't see what is to become of her when shegrows older, or what position she is to take. She don't gain on her Papain the least. How can one expect she should, when she is so very unlikea Dombey?'

Miss Tox looked as if she saw no way out of such a cogent argument asthat, at all. 

'And the child, you see, ' said Mrs Chick, in deep confidence, 'has poordear Fanny's nature. She'll never make an effort in after-life, I'llventure to say. Never! She'll never wind and twine herself about herPapa's heart like--'

'Like the ivy?' suggested Miss Tox. 

'Like the ivy, ' Mrs Chick assented. 'Never! She'll never glide andnestle into the bosom of her Papa's affections like--the--'

'Startled fawn?' suggested Miss Tox. 

'Like the startled fawn, ' said Mrs Chick. 'Never! Poor Fanny! Yet, how Iloved her!'

'You must not distress yourself, my dear, ' said Miss Tox, in a soothingvoice. 'Now really! You have too much feeling. '

'We have all our faults, ' said Mrs Chick, weeping and shaking her head. 'I daresay we have. I never was blind to hers. I never said I was. Farfrom it. Yet how I loved her!'

What a satisfaction it was to Mrs Chick--a common-place piece of follyenough, compared with whom her sister-in-law had been a very angel ofwomanly intelligence and gentleness--to patronise and be tender to thememory of that lady: in exact pursuance of her conduct to her in herlifetime: and to thoroughly believe herself, and take herself in, andmake herself uncommonly comfortable on the strength of her toleration!What a mighty pleasant virtue toleration should be when we are right, tobe so very pleasant when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstratehow we come to be invested with the privilege of exercising it!

Mrs Chick was yet drying her eyes and shaking her head, when Richardsmade bold to caution her that Miss Florence was awake and sitting in herbed. She had risen, as the nurse said, and the lashes of her eyes werewet with tears. But no one saw them glistening save Polly. No one elseleant over her, and whispered soothing words to her, or was near enoughto hear the flutter of her beating heart. 

'Oh! dear nurse!' said the child, looking earnestly up in her face, 'letme lie by my brother!'

'Why, my pet?' said Richards. 

'Oh! I think he loves me, ' cried the child wildly. 'Let me lie by him. Pray do!'

Mrs Chick interposed with some motherly words about going to sleep likea dear, but Florence repeated her supplication, with a frightened look, and in a voice broken by sobs and tears. 

'I'll not wake him, ' she said, covering her face and hanging down herhead. 'I'll only touch him with my hand, and go to sleep. Oh, pray, pray, let me lie by my brother to-night, for I believe he's fond of me!'

Richards took her without a word, and carrying her to the little bed inwhich the infant was sleeping, laid her down by his side. She crept asnear him as she could without disturbing his rest; and stretching outone arm so that it timidly embraced his neck, and hiding her face onthe other, over which her damp and scattered hair fell loose, laymotionless. 

'Poor little thing, ' said Miss Tox; 'she has been dreaming, I daresay. '

Dreaming, perhaps, of loving tones for ever silent, of loving eyes forever closed, of loving arms again wound round her, and relaxing in thatdream within the dam which no tongue can relate. Seeking, perhaps--indreams--some natural comfort for a heart, deeply and sorely wounded, though so young a child's: and finding it, perhaps, in dreams, if notin waking, cold, substantial truth. This trivial incident had sointerrupted the current of conversation, that it was difficultof resumption; and Mrs Chick moreover had been so affected by thecontemplation of her own tolerant nature, that she was not in spirits. The two friends accordingly soon made an end of their tea, and a servantwas despatched to fetch a hackney cabriolet for Miss Tox. Miss Tox hadgreat experience in hackney cabs, and her starting in one was generallya work of time, as she was systematic in the preparatory arrangements. 

'Have the goodness, if you please, Towlinson, ' said Miss Tox, 'first ofall, to carry out a pen and ink and take his number legibly. '

'Yes, Miss, ' said Towlinson. 

'Then, if you please, Towlinson, ' said Miss Tox, 'have the goodnessto turn the cushion. Which, ' said Miss Tox apart to Mrs Chick, 'isgenerally damp, my dear. '

'Yes, Miss, ' said Towlinson. 

'I'll trouble you also, if you please, Towlinson, ' said Miss Tox, 'with this card and this shilling. He's to drive to the card, and is tounderstand that he will not on any account have more than the shilling. '

'No, Miss, ' said Towlinson. 

'And--I'm sorry to give you so much trouble, Towlinson, ' said Miss Tox, looking at him pensively. 

'Not at all, Miss, ' said Towlinson. 

'Mention to the man, then, if you please, Towlinson, ' said Miss Tox, 'that the lady's uncle is a magistrate, and that if he gives her any ofhis impertinence he will be punished terribly. You can pretend to saythat, if you please, Towlinson, in a friendly way, and because you knowit was done to another man, who died. '

'Certainly, Miss, ' said Towlinson. 

'And now good-night to my sweet, sweet, sweet, godson, ' said Miss Tox, with a soft shower of kisses at each repetition of the adjective; 'andLouisa, my dear friend, promise me to take a little something warmbefore you go to bed, and not to distress yourself!'

It was with extreme difficulty that Nipper, the black-eyed, wholooked on steadfastly, contained herself at this crisis, and until thesubsequent departure of Mrs Chick. But the nursery being at length freeof visitors, she made herself some recompense for her late restraint. 

'You might keep me in a strait-waistcoat for six weeks, ' said Nipper, 'and when I got it off I'd only be more aggravated, who ever heard thelike of them two Griffins, Mrs Richards?'

'And then to talk of having been dreaming, poor dear!' said Polly. 

'Oh you beauties!' cried Susan Nipper, affecting to salute the door bywhich the ladies had departed. 'Never be a Dombey won't she? It's to behoped she won't, we don't want any more such, one's enough. '

'Don't wake the children, Susan dear, ' said Polly. 

'I'm very much beholden to you, Mrs Richards, ' said Susan, who wasnot by any means discriminating in her wrath, 'and really feel it as ahonour to receive your commands, being a black slave and a mulotter. Mrs Richards, if there's any other orders, you can give me, pray mention'em. '

'Nonsense; orders, ' said Polly. 

'Oh! bless your heart, Mrs Richards, ' cried Susan, 'temporaries alwaysorders permanencies here, didn't you know that, why wherever was youborn, Mrs Richards? But wherever you was born, Mrs Richards, ' pursuedSpitfire, shaking her head resolutely, 'and whenever, and however (whichis best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it's onething to give orders, and quite another thing to take 'em. A person maytell a person to dive off a bridge head foremost into five-and-fortyfeet of water, Mrs Richards, but a person may be very far from diving. '

'There now, ' said Polly, 'you're angry because you're a good littlething, and fond of Miss Florence; and yet you turn round on me, becausethere's nobody else. '

'It's very easy for some to keep their tempers, and be soft-spoken, MrsRichards, ' returned Susan, slightly mollified, 'when their child's madeas much of as a prince, and is petted and patted till it wishes itsfriends further, but when a sweet young pretty innocent, that neverought to have a cross word spoken to or of it, is rundown, the case isvery different indeed. My goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, you naughty, sinful child, if you don't shut your eyes this minute, I'll call in themhobgoblins that lives in the cock-loft to come and eat you up alive!'

Here Miss Nipper made a horrible lowing, supposed to issue from aconscientious goblin of the bull species, impatient to discharge thesevere duty of his position. Having further composed her young chargeby covering her head with the bedclothes, and making three or four angrydabs at the pillow, she folded her arms, and screwed up her mouth, andsat looking at the fire for the rest of the evening. 

Though little Paul was said, in nursery phrase, 'to take a deal ofnotice for his age, ' he took as little notice of all this as ofthe preparations for his christening on the next day but one; whichnevertheless went on about him, as to his personal apparel, and that ofhis sister and the two nurses, with great activity. Neither did he, onthe arrival of the appointed morning, show any sense of its importance;being, on the contrary, unusually inclined to sleep, and unusuallyinclined to take it ill in his attendants that they dressed him to goout. 

It happened to be an iron-grey autumnal day, with a shrewd east windblowing--a day in keeping with the proceedings. Mr Dombey represented inhimself the wind, the shade, and the autumn of the christening. He stoodin his library to receive the company, as hard and cold as the weather;and when he looked out through the glass room, at the trees in thelittle garden, their brown and yellow leaves came fluttering down, as ifhe blighted them. 

Ugh! They were black, cold rooms; and seemed to be in mourning, like theinmates of the house. The books precisely matched as to size, anddrawn up in line, like soldiers, looked in their cold, hard, slipperyuniforms, as if they had but one idea among them, and that was afreezer. The bookcase, glazed and locked, repudiated all familiarities. Mr Pitt, in bronze, on the top, with no trace of his celestial origin'about him, guarded the unattainable treasure like an enchanted Moor. A dusty urn at each high corner, dug up from an ancient tomb, preacheddesolation and decay, as from two pulpits; and the chimney-glass, reflecting Mr Dombey and his portrait at one blow, seemed fraught withmelancholy meditations. 

The stiff and stark fire-irons appeared to claim a nearer relationshipthan anything else there to Mr Dombey, with his buttoned coat, his whitecravat, his heavy gold watch-chain, and his creaking boots. 

But this was before the arrival of Mr and Mrs Chick, his lawfulrelatives, who soon presented themselves. 

'My dear Paul, ' Mrs Chick murmured, as she embraced him, 'the beginning, I hope, of many joyful days!'

'Thank you, Louisa, ' said Mr Dombey, grimly. 'How do you do, Mr John?'

'How do you do, Sir?' said Chick. 

He gave Mr Dombey his hand, as if he feared it might electrify him. MrDombey tool: it as if it were a fish, or seaweed, or some such clammysubstance, and immediately returned it to him with exalted politeness. 

'Perhaps, Louisa, ' said Mr Dombey, slightly turning his head in hiscravat, as if it were a socket, 'you would have preferred a fire?'

'Oh, my dear Paul, no, ' said Mrs Chick, who had much ado to keep herteeth from chattering; 'not for me. '

'Mr John, ' said Mr Dombey, 'you are not sensible of any chill?'

Mr John, who had already got both his hands in his pockets over thewrists, and was on the very threshold of that same canine chorus whichhad given Mrs Chick so much offence on a former occasion, protested thathe was perfectly comfortable. 

He added in a low voice, 'With my tiddle tol toor rul'--when he wasprovidentially stopped by Towlinson, who announced:

'Miss Tox!'

And enter that fair enslaver, with a blue nose and indescribably frostyface, referable to her being very thinly clad in a maze of flutteringodds and ends, to do honour to the ceremony. 

'How do you do, Miss Tox?' said Mr Dombey. 

Miss Tox, in the midst of her spreading gauzes, went down altogetherlike an opera-glass shutting-up; she curtseyed so low, in acknowledgmentof Mr Dombey's advancing a step or two to meet her. 

'I can never forget this occasion, Sir, ' said Miss Tox, softly. ''Tisimpossible. My dear Louisa, I can hardly believe the evidence of mysenses. '

If Miss Tox could believe the evidence of one of her senses, it was avery cold day. That was quite clear. She took an early opportunity ofpromoting the circulation in the tip of her nose by secretly chafingit with her pocket handkerchief, lest, by its very low temperature, itshould disagreeably astonish the baby when she came to kiss it. 

The baby soon appeared, carried in great glory by Richards; whileFlorence, in custody of that active young constable, Susan Nipper, brought up the rear. Though the whole nursery party were dressed bythis time in lighter mourning than at first, there was enough in theappearance of the bereaved children to make the day no brighter. Thebaby too--it might have been Miss Tox's nose--began to cry. Thereby, asit happened, preventing Mr Chick from the awkward fulfilment of a veryhonest purpose he had; which was, to make much of Florence. For thisgentleman, insensible to the superior claims of a perfect Dombey(perhaps on account of having the honour to be united to a Dombeyhimself, and being familiar with excellence), really liked her, andshowed that he liked her, and was about to show it in his own way now, when Paul cried, and his helpmate stopped him short--

'Now Florence, child!' said her aunt, briskly, 'what are you doing, love? Show yourself to him. Engage his attention, my dear!'

The atmosphere became or might have become colder and colder, when MrDombey stood frigidly watching his little daughter, who, clapping herhands, and standing On tip-toe before the throne of his son and heir, lured him to bend down from his high estate, and look at her. Somehonest act of Richards's may have aided the effect, but he did lookdown, and held his peace. As his sister hid behind her nurse, hefollowed her with his eyes; and when she peeped out with a merry cry tohim, he sprang up and crowed lustily--laughing outright when she ran inupon him; and seeming to fondle her curls with his tiny hands, while shesmothered him with kisses. 

Was Mr Dombey pleased to see this? He testified no pleasure by therelaxation of a nerve; but outward tokens of any kind of feeling wereunusual with him. If any sunbeam stole into the room to light thechildren at their play, it never reached his face. He looked on sofixedly and coldly, that the warm light vanished even from the laughingeyes of little Florence, when, at last, they happened to meet his. 

It was a dull, grey, autumn day indeed, and in a minute's pause andsilence that took place, the leaves fell sorrowfully. 

'Mr John, ' said Mr Dombey, referring to his watch, and assuming his hatand gloves. 'Take my sister, if you please: my arm today is Miss Tox's. You had better go first with Master Paul, Richards. Be very careful. '

In Mr Dombey's carriage, Dombey and Son, Miss Tox, Mrs Chick, Richards, and Florence. In a little carriage following it, Susan Nipper and theowner Mr Chick. Susan looking out of window, without intermission, asa relief from the embarrassment of confronting the large face of thatgentleman, and thinking whenever anything rattled that he was putting upin paper an appropriate pecuniary compliment for herself. 

Once upon the road to church, Mr Dombey clapped his hands for theamusement of his son. At which instance of parental enthusiasm MissTox was enchanted. But exclusive of this incident, the chief differencebetween the christening party and a party in a mourning coach consistedin the colours of the carriage and horses. 

Arrived at the church steps, they were received by a portentous beadle. 'Mr Dombey dismounting first to help the ladies out, and standing nearhim at the church door, looked like another beadle. A beadle lessgorgeous but more dreadful; the beadle of private life; the beadle ofour business and our bosoms. 

Miss Tox's hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr Dombey's arm, and felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat anda Babylonian collar. It seemed for a moment like that other solemninstitution, 'Wilt thou have this man, Lucretia?' 'Yes, I will. '

'Please to bring the child in quick out of the air there, ' whispered thebeadle, holding open the inner door of the church. 

Little Paul might have asked with Hamlet 'into my grave?' so chill andearthy was the place. The tall shrouded pulpit and reading desk; thedreary perspective of empty pews stretching away under the galleries, and empty benches mounting to the roof and lost in the shadow of thegreat grim organ; the dusty matting and cold stone slabs; the grislyfree seats' in the aisles; and the damp corner by the bell-rope, wherethe black trestles used for funerals were stowed away, along with someshovels and baskets, and a coil or two of deadly-looking rope; thestrange, unusual, uncomfortable smell, and the cadaverous light; wereall in unison. It was a cold and dismal scene. 

'There's a wedding just on, Sir, ' said the beadle, 'but it'll be overdirectly, if you'll walk into the westry here. 

Before he turned again to lead the way, he gave Mr Dombey a bow and ahalf smile of recognition, importing that he (the beadle) remembered tohave had the pleasure of attending on him when he buried his wife, andhoped he had enjoyed himself since. 

The very wedding looked dismal as they passed in front of the altar. Thebride was too old and the bridegroom too young, and a superannuated beauwith one eye and an eyeglass stuck in its blank companion, was givingaway the lady, while the friends were shivering. In the vestry the firewas smoking; and an over-aged and over-worked and under-paid attorney'sclerk, 'making a search, ' was running his forefinger down the parchmentpages of an immense register (one of a long series of similar volumes)gorged with burials. Over the fireplace was a ground-plan of the vaultsunderneath the church; and Mr Chick, skimming the literary portion ofit aloud, by way of enlivening the company, read the reference to MrsDombey's tomb in full, before he could stop himself. 

After another cold interval, a wheezy little pew-opener afflicted withan asthma, appropriate to the churchyard, if not to the church, summonedthem to the font--a rigid marble basin which seemed to have been playinga churchyard game at cup and ball with its matter of fact pedestal, andto have been just that moment caught on the top of it. Here they waitedsome little time while the marriage party enrolled themselves; andmeanwhile the wheezy little pew-opener--partly in consequence of herinfirmity, and partly that the marriage party might not forget her--wentabout the building coughing like a grampus. 

Presently the clerk (the only cheerful-looking object there, and he wasan undertaker) came up with a jug of warm water, and said something, ashe poured it into the font, about taking the chill off; which millionsof gallons boiling hot could not have done for the occasion. Then theclergyman, an amiable and mild-looking young curate, but obviouslyafraid of the baby, appeared like the principal character in aghost-story, 'a tall figure all in white;' at sight of whom Paul rentthe air with his cries, and never left off again till he was taken outblack in the face. 

Even when that event had happened, to the great relief of everybody, he was heard under the portico, during the rest of the ceremony, nowfainter, now louder, now hushed, now bursting forth again with anirrepressible sense of his wrongs. This so distracted the attention ofthe two ladies, that Mrs Chick was constantly deploying into the centreaisle, to send out messages by the pew-opener, while Miss Tox kept herPrayer-book open at the Gunpowder Plot, and occasionally read responsesfrom that service. 

During the whole of these proceedings, Mr Dombey remained as impassiveand gentlemanly as ever, and perhaps assisted in making it so cold, thatthe young curate smoked at the mouth as he read. The only time that heunbent his visage in the least, was when the clergyman, in delivering(very unaffectedly and simply) the closing exhortation, relative to thefuture examination of the child by the sponsors, happened to rest hiseye on Mr Chick; and then Mr Dombey might have been seen to express by amajestic look, that he would like to catch him at it. 

It might have been well for Mr Dombey, if he had thought of his owndignity a little less; and had thought of the great origin and purposeof the ceremony in which he took so formal and so stiff a part, a littlemore. His arrogance contrasted strangely with its history. 

When it was all over, he again gave his arm to Miss Tox, and conductedher to the vestry, where he informed the clergyman how much pleasureit would have given him to have solicited the honour of his companyat dinner, but for the unfortunate state of his household affairs. Theregister signed, and the fees paid, and the pew-opener (whose cough wasvery bad again) remembered, and the beadle gratified, and the sexton(who was accidentally on the doorsteps, looking with great interest atthe weather) not forgotten, they got into the carriage again, and drovehome in the same bleak fellowship. 

There they found Mr Pitt turning up his nose at a cold collation, setforth in a cold pomp of glass and silver, and looking more like a deaddinner lying in state than a social refreshment. On their arrival MissTox produced a mug for her godson, and Mr Chick a knife and fork andspoon in a case. Mr Dombey also produced a bracelet for Miss Tox; and, on the receipt of this token, Miss Tox was tenderly affected. 

'Mr John, ' said Mr Dombey, 'will you take the bottom of the table, ifyou please? What have you got there, Mr John?'

'I have got a cold fillet of veal here, Sir, ' replied Mr Chick, rubbinghis numbed hands hard together. 'What have you got there, Sir?'

'This, ' returned Mr Dombey, 'is some cold preparation of calf's head, Ithink. I see cold fowls--ham--patties--salad--lobster. Miss Tox will dome the honour of taking some wine? Champagne to Miss Tox. '

There was a toothache in everything. The wine was so bitter cold that itforced a little scream from Miss Tox, which she had great difficulty inturning into a 'Hem!' The veal had come from such an airy pantry, thatthe first taste of it had struck a sensation as of cold lead to MrChick's extremities. Mr Dombey alone remained unmoved. He might havebeen hung up for sale at a Russian fair as a specimen of a frozengentleman. 

The prevailing influence was too much even for his sister. She madeno effort at flattery or small talk, and directed all her efforts tolooking as warm as she could. 

'Well, Sir, ' said Mr Chick, making a desperate plunge, after a longsilence, and filling a glass of sherry; 'I shall drink this, if you'llallow me, Sir, to little Paul. '

'Bless him!' murmured Miss Tox, taking a sip of wine. 

'Dear little Dombey!' murmured Mrs Chick. 

'Mr John, ' said Mr Dombey, with severe gravity, 'my son would feel andexpress himself obliged to you, I have no doubt, if he could appreciatethe favour you have done him. He will prove, in time to come, I trust, equal to any responsibility that the obliging disposition of hisrelations and friends, in private, or the onerous nature of ourposition, in public, may impose upon him. '

The tone in which this was said admitting of nothing more, Mr Chickrelapsed into low spirits and silence. Not so Miss Tox, who, havinglistened to Mr Dombey with even a more emphatic attention than usual, and with a more expressive tendency of her head to one side, now leantacross the table, and said to Mrs Chick softly:

'Louisa!'

'My dear, ' said Mrs Chick. 

'Onerous nature of our position in public may--I have forgottenthe exact term. '

'Expose him to, ' said Mrs Chick. 

'Pardon me, my dear, ' returned Miss Tox, 'I think not. It was morerounded and flowing. Obliging disposition of relations and friends inprivate, or onerous nature of position in public--may--impose upon him!'

'Impose upon him, to be sure, ' said Mrs Chick. 

Miss Tox struck her delicate hands together lightly, in triumph; andadded, casting up her eyes, 'eloquence indeed!'

Mr Dombey, in the meanwhile, had issued orders for the attendance ofRichards, who now entered curtseying, but without the baby; Paul beingasleep after the fatigues of the morning. Mr Dombey, having delivered aglass of wine to this vassal, addressed her in the following words: MissTox previously settling her head on one side, and making other littlearrangements for engraving them on her heart. 

'During the six months or so, Richards, which have seen you an inmateof this house, you have done your duty. Desiring to connect some littleservice to you with this occasion, I considered how I could best effectthat object, and I also advised with my sister, Mrs--'

'Chick, ' interposed the gentleman of that name. 

'Oh, hush if you please!' said Miss Tox. 

'I was about to say to you, Richards, ' resumed Mr Dombey, with anappalling glance at Mr John, 'that I was further assisted in mydecision, by the recollection of a conversation I held with your husbandin this room, on the occasion of your being hired, when he disclosed tome the melancholy fact that your family, himself at the head, were sunkand steeped in ignorance. 

Richards quailed under the magnificence of the reproof. 

'I am far from being friendly, ' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to what is called bypersons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessarythat the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know theirposition, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve ofschools. Having the power of nominating a child on the foundation of anancient establishment, called (from a worshipful company) the CharitableGrinders; where not only is a wholesome education bestowed upon thescholars, but where a dress and badge is likewise provided for them;I have (first communicating, through Mrs Chick, with your family)nominated your eldest son to an existing vacancy; and he has this day, Iam informed, assumed the habit. The number of her son, I believe, ' saidMr Dombey, turning to his sister and speaking of the child as if he werea hackney-coach, is one hundred and forty-seven. Louisa, you can tellher. '

'One hundred and forty-seven, ' said Mrs Chick 'The dress, Richards, isa nice, warm, blue baize tailed coat and cap, turned up with orangecoloured binding; red worsted stockings; and very strong leathersmall-clothes. One might wear the articles one's self, ' said Mrs Chick, with enthusiasm, 'and be grateful. '

'There, Richards!' said Miss Tox. 'Now, indeed, you may be proud. TheCharitable Grinders!'

'I am sure I am very much obliged, Sir, ' returned Richards faintly, 'andtake it very kind that you should remember my little ones. ' At the sametime a vision of Biler as a Charitable Grinder, with his very small legsencased in the serviceable clothing described by Mrs Chick, swam beforeRichards's eyes, and made them water. 

'I am very glad to see you have so much feeling, Richards, ' said MissTox. 

'It makes one almost hope, it really does, ' said Mrs Chick, who pridedherself on taking trustful views of human nature, 'that there may yet besome faint spark of gratitude and right feeling in the world. '

Richards deferred to these compliments by curtseying and murmuringher thanks; but finding it quite impossible to recover her spirits fromthe disorder into which they had been thrown by the image of her son inhis precocious nether garments, she gradually approached the door andwas heartily relieved to escape by it. 

Such temporary indications of a partial thaw that had appeared with her, vanished with her; and the frost set in again, as cold and hard as ever. Mr Chick was twice heard to hum a tune at the bottom of the table, buton both occasions it was a fragment of the Dead March in Saul. The partyseemed to get colder and colder, and to be gradually resolving itselfinto a congealed and solid state, like the collation round which it wasassembled. At length Mrs Chick looked at Miss Tox, and Miss Tox returnedthe look, and they both rose and said it was really time to go. MrDombey receiving this announcement with perfect equanimity, they tookleave of that gentleman, and presently departed under the protection ofMr Chick; who, when they had turned their backs upon the house and leftits master in his usual solitary state, put his hands in his pockets, threw himself back in the carriage, and whistled 'With a hey ho chevy!'all through; conveying into his face as he did so, an expression of suchgloomy and terrible defiance, that Mrs Chick dared not protest, or inany way molest him. 

Richards, though she had little Paul on her lap, could not forget herown first-born. She felt it was ungrateful; but the influence of theday fell even on the Charitable Grinders, and she could hardly helpregarding his pewter badge, number one hundred and forty-seven, as, somehow, a part of its formality and sternness. She spoke, too, in thenursery, of his 'blessed legs, ' and was again troubled by his spectre inuniform. 

'I don't know what I wouldn't give, ' said Polly, 'to see the poor littledear before he gets used to 'em. '

'Why, then, I tell you what, Mrs Richards, ' retorted Nipper, who hadbeen admitted to her confidence, 'see him and make your mind easy. '

'Mr Dombey wouldn't like it, ' said Polly. 

'Oh, wouldn't he, Mrs Richards!' retorted Nipper, 'he'd like it verymuch, I think when he was asked. '

'You wouldn't ask him, I suppose, at all?' said Polly. 

'No, Mrs Richards, quite contrairy, ' returned Susan, 'and them twoinspectors Tox and Chick, not intending to be on duty tomorrow, as Iheard 'em say, me and Mid Floy will go along with you tomorrow morning, and welcome, Mrs Richards, if you like, for we may as well walk there asup and down a street, and better too. '

Polly rejected the idea pretty stoutly at first; but by little andlittle she began to entertain it, as she entertained more and moredistinctly the forbidden pictures of her children, and her own home. At length, arguing that there could be no great harm in calling for amoment at the door, she yielded to the Nipper proposition. 

The matter being settled thus, little Paul began to cry most piteously, as if he had a foreboding that no good would come of it. 

'What's the matter with the child?' asked Susan. 

'He's cold, I think, ' said Polly, walking with him to and fro, andhushing him. 

It was a bleak autumnal afternoon indeed; and as she walked, and hushed, and, glancing through the dreary windows, pressed the little fellowcloser to her breast, the withered leaves came showering down. 

CHAPTER 6. Paul's Second Deprivation

Polly was beset by so many misgivings in the morning, that but forthe incessant promptings of her black-eyed companion, she would haveabandoned all thoughts of the expedition, and formally petitioned forleave to see number one hundred and forty-seven, under the awful shadowof Mr Dombey's roof. But Susan who was personally disposed in favourof the excursion, and who (like Tony Lumpkin), if she could bear thedisappointments of other people with tolerable fortitude, could notabide to disappoint herself, threw so many ingenious doubts in the wayof this second thought, and stimulated the original intention with somany ingenious arguments, that almost as soon as Mr Dombey's statelyback was turned, and that gentleman was pursuing his daily road towardsthe City, his unconscious son was on his way to Staggs's Gardens. 

This euphonious locality was situated in a suburb, known by theinhabitants of Staggs's Gardens by the name of Camberling Town; adesignation which the Strangers' Map of London, as printed (with aview to pleasant and commodious reference) on pocket handkerchiefs, condenses, with some show of reason, into Camden Town. Hither the twonurses bent their steps, accompanied by their charges; Richards carryingPaul, of course, and Susan leading little Florence by the hand, andgiving her such jerks and pokes from time to time, as she considered itwholesome to administer. 

The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent thewhole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visibleon every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through andstopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps ofearth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown andjumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnaturalhill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in somethingthat had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that lednowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towersof chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden housesand enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of raggedtenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles ofscaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of cranes, andtripods straddling above nothing. There were a hundred thousand shapesand substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, moulderingin the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs andfiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent theircontributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heavedwithin dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flamescame issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, andwholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood. 

In short, the yet unfinished and unopened Railroad was in progress; and, from the very core of all this dire disorder, trailed smoothly away, upon its mighty course of civilisation and improvement. 

But as yet, the neighbourhood was shy to own the Railroad. One or twobold speculators had projected streets; and one had built a little, but had stopped among the mud and ashes to consider farther of it. Abran-new Tavern, redolent of fresh mortar and size, and fronting nothingat all, had taken for its sign The Railway Arms; but that might be rashenterprise--and then it hoped to sell drink to the workmen. So, theExcavators' House of Call had sprung up from a beer-shop; and theold-established Ham and Beef Shop had become the Railway Eating House, with a roast leg of pork daily, through interested motives of a similarimmediate and popular description. Lodging-house keepers were favourablein like manner; and for the like reasons were not to be trusted. Thegeneral belief was very slow. There were frowzy fields, andcow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of theRailway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and oflobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and fadedcabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places. Posts, and rails, and old cautions to trespassers, and backs of mean houses, and patches of wretched vegetation, stared it out of countenance. Nothing was the better for it, or thought of being so. If the miserablewaste ground lying near it could have laughed, it would have laughed itto scorn, like many of the miserable neighbours. 

Staggs's Gardens was uncommonly incredulous. It was a little row ofhouses, with little squalid patches of ground before them, fenced offwith old doors, barrel staves, scraps of tarpaulin, and dead bushes;with bottomless tin kettles and exhausted iron fenders, thrust into thegaps. Here, the Staggs's Gardeners trained scarlet beans, kept fowlsand rabbits, erected rotten summer-houses (one was an old boat), driedclothes, and smoked pipes. Some were of opinion that Staggs's Gardensderived its name from a deceased capitalist, one Mr Staggs, who hadbuilt it for his delectation. Others, who had a natural taste for thecountry, held that it dated from those rural times when the antleredherd, under the familiar denomination of Staggses, had resorted to itsshady precincts. Be this as it may, Staggs's Gardens was regarded byits population as a sacred grove not to be withered by Railroads; and soconfident were they generally of its long outliving any such ridiculousinventions, that the master chimney-sweeper at the corner, who wasunderstood to take the lead in the local politics of the Gardens, hadpublicly declared that on the occasion of the Railroad opening, if everit did open, two of his boys should ascend the flues of his dwelling, with instructions to hail the failure with derisive cheers from thechimney-pots. 

To this unhallowed spot, the very name of which had hitherto beencarefully concealed from Mr Dombey by his sister, was little Paul nowborne by Fate and Richards

'That's my house, Susan, ' said Polly, pointing it out. 

'Is it, indeed, Mrs Richards?' said Susan, condescendingly. 

'And there's my sister Jemima at the door, I do declare' cried Polly, 'with my own sweet precious baby in her arms!'

The sight added such an extensive pair of wings to Polly's impatience, that she set off down the Gardens at a run, and bouncing on Jemima, changed babies with her in a twinkling; to the unutterable astonishmentof that young damsel, on whom the heir of the Dombeys seemed to havefallen from the clouds. 

'Why, Polly!' cried Jemima. 'You! what a turn you have given me! who'dhave thought it! come along in Polly! How well you do look to be sure!The children will go half wild to see you Polly, that they will. '

That they did, if one might judge from the noise they made, and theway in which they dashed at Polly and dragged her to a low chair in thechimney corner, where her own honest apple face became immediately thecentre of a bunch of smaller pippins, all laying their rosy cheeks closeto it, and all evidently the growth of the same tree. As to Polly, shewas full as noisy and vehement as the children; and it was not until shewas quite out of breath, and her hair was hanging all about her flushedface, and her new christening attire was very much dishevelled, that anypause took place in the confusion. Even then, the smallest Toodle butone remained in her lap, holding on tight with both arms round her neck;while the smallest Toodle but two mounted on the back of the chair, andmade desperate efforts, with one leg in the air, to kiss her round thecorner. 

'Look! there's a pretty little lady come to see you, ' said Polly; 'andsee how quiet she is! what a beautiful little lady, ain't she?'

This reference to Florence, who had been standing by the door notunobservant of what passed, directed the attention of the youngerbranches towards her; and had likewise the happy effect of leading tothe formal recognition of Miss Nipper, who was not quite free from amisgiving that she had been already slighted. 

'Oh do come in and sit down a minute, Susan, please, ' said Polly. 'Thisis my sister Jemima, this is. Jemima, I don't know what I should ever dowith myself, if it wasn't for Susan Nipper; I shouldn't be here now butfor her. '

'Oh do sit down, Miss Nipper, if you please, ' quoth Jemima. 

Susan took the extreme corner of a chair, with a stately and ceremoniousaspect. 

'I never was so glad to see anybody in all my life; now really I neverwas, Miss Nipper, ' said Jemima. 

Susan relaxing, took a little more of the chair, and smiled graciously. 

'Do untie your bonnet-strings, and make yourself at home, Miss Nipper, please, ' entreated Jemima. 'I am afraid it's a poorer place than you'reused to; but you'll make allowances, I'm sure. '

The black-eyed was so softened by this deferential behaviour, thatshe caught up little Miss Toodle who was running past, and took her toBanbury Cross immediately. 

'But where's my pretty boy?' said Polly. 'My poor fellow? I came allthis way to see him in his new clothes. '

'Ah what a pity!' cried Jemima. 'He'll break his heart, when he hearshis mother has been here. He's at school, Polly. '

'Gone already!'

'Yes. He went for the first time yesterday, for fear he should lose anylearning. But it's half-holiday, Polly: if you could only stop till hecomes home--you and Miss Nipper, leastways, ' said Jemima, mindful ingood time of the dignity of the black-eyed. 

'And how does he look, Jemima, bless him!' faltered Polly. 

'Well, really he don't look so bad as you'd suppose, ' returned Jemima. 

'Ah!' said Polly, with emotion, 'I knew his legs must be too short. '

His legs is short, ' returned Jemima; 'especially behind; but they'll getlonger, Polly, every day. '

It was a slow, prospective kind of consolation; but the cheerfulness andgood nature with which it was administered, gave it a value it did notintrinsically possess. After a moment's silence, Polly asked, in a moresprightly manner:

'And where's Father, Jemima dear?'--for by that patriarchal appellation, Mr Toodle was generally known in the family. 

'There again!' said Jemima. 'What a pity! Father took his dinner withhim this morning, and isn't coming home till night. But he's alwaystalking of you, Polly, and telling the children about you; and is thepeaceablest, patientest, best-temperedest soul in the world, as healways was and will be!'

'Thankee, Jemima, ' cried the simple Polly; delighted by the speech, anddisappointed by the absence. 

'Oh you needn't thank me, Polly, ' said her sister, giving her a soundingkiss upon the cheek, and then dancing little Paul cheerfully. 'I say thesame of you sometimes, and think it too. '

In spite of the double disappointment, it was impossible to regard inthe light of a failure a visit which was greeted with such a reception;so the sisters talked hopefully about family matters, and about Biler, and about all his brothers and sisters: while the black-eyed, havingperformed several journeys to Banbury Cross and back, took sharp noteof the furniture, the Dutch clock, the cupboard, the castle onthe mantel-piece with red and green windows in it, susceptible ofillumination by a candle-end within; and the pair of small black velvetkittens, each with a lady's reticule in its mouth; regarded by theStaggs's Gardeners as prodigies of imitative art. The conversation soonbecoming general lest the black-eyed should go off at score and turnsarcastic, that young lady related to Jemima a summary of everythingshe knew concerning Mr Dombey, his prospects, family, pursuits, andcharacter. Also an exact inventory of her personal wardrobe, and someaccount of her principal relations and friends. Having relieved her mindof these disclosures, she partook of shrimps and porter, and evinced adisposition to swear eternal friendship. 

Little Florence herself was not behind-hand in improving the occasion;for, being conducted forth by the young Toodles to inspect sometoad-stools and other curiosities of the Gardens, she entered with them, heart and soul, on the formation of a temporary breakwater across asmall green pool that had collected in a corner. She was still busilyengaged in that labour, when sought and found by Susan; who, such washer sense of duty, even under the humanizing influence of shrimps, delivered a moral address to her (punctuated with thumps) on herdegenerate nature, while washing her face and hands; and predicted thatshe would bring the grey hairs of her family in general, with sorrow tothe grave. After some delay, occasioned by a pretty long confidentialinterview above stairs on pecuniary subjects, between Polly and Jemima, an interchange of babies was again effected--for Polly had all thistime retained her own child, and Jemima little Paul--and the visitorstook leave. 

But first the young Toodles, victims of a pious fraud, were deluded intorepairing in a body to a chandler's shop in the neighbourhood, for theostensible purpose of spending a penny; and when the coast was quiteclear, Polly fled: Jemima calling after her that if they could only goround towards the City Road on their way back, they would be sure tomeet little Biler coming from school. 

'Do you think that we might make time to go a little round in thatdirection, Susan?' inquired Polly, when they halted to take breath. 

'Why not, Mrs Richards?' returned Susan. 

'It's getting on towards our dinner time you know, ' said Polly. 

But lunch had rendered her companion more than indifferent to this graveconsideration, so she allowed no weight to it, and they resolved to go'a little round. '

Now, it happened that poor Biler's life had been, since yesterdaymorning, rendered weary by the costume of the Charitable Grinders. Theyouth of the streets could not endure it. No young vagabond could bebrought to bear its contemplation for a moment, without throwing himselfupon the unoffending wearer, and doing him a mischief. His socialexistence had been more like that of an early Christian, than aninnocent child of the nineteenth century. He had been stoned in thestreets. He had been overthrown into gutters; bespattered with mud;violently flattened against posts. Entire strangers to his person hadlifted his yellow cap off his head, and cast it to the winds. His legshad not only undergone verbal criticisms and revilings, but had beenhandled and pinched. That very morning, he had received a perfectlyunsolicited black eye on his way to the Grinders' establishment, andhad been punished for it by the master: a superannuated old Grinderof savage disposition, who had been appointed schoolmaster because hedidn't know anything, and wasn't fit for anything, and for whose cruelcane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination. '

Thus it fell out that Biler, on his way home, sought unfrequentedpaths; and slunk along by narrow passages and back streets, to avoidhis tormentors. Being compelled to emerge into the main road, his illfortune brought him at last where a small party of boys, headed by aferocious young butcher, were lying in wait for any means of pleasurableexcitement that might happen. These, finding a Charitable Grinder inthe midst of them--unaccountably delivered over, as it were, into theirhands--set up a general yell and rushed upon him. 

But it so fell out likewise, that, at the same time, Polly, lookinghopelessly along the road before her, after a good hour's walk, had saidit was no use going any further, when suddenly she saw this sight. Sheno sooner saw it than, uttering a hasty exclamation, and giving MasterDombey to the black-eyed, she started to the rescue of her unhappylittle son. 

Surprises, like misfortunes, rarely come alone. The astonished SusanNipper and her two young charges were rescued by the bystanders fromunder the very wheels of a passing carriage before they knew what hadhappened; and at that moment (it was market day) a thundering alarm of'Mad Bull!' was raised. 

With a wild confusion before her, of people running up and down, andshouting, and wheels running over them, and boys fighting, and mad bullscoming up, and the nurse in the midst of all these dangers being tornto pieces, Florence screamed and ran. She ran till she was exhausted, urging Susan to do the same; and then, stopping and wringing her handsas she remembered they had left the other nurse behind, found, with asensation of terror not to be described, that she was quite alone. 

'Susan! Susan!' cried Florence, clapping her hands in the very ecstasyof her alarm. 'Oh, where are they? where are they?'

'Where are they?' said an old woman, coming hobbling across as fast asshe could from the opposite side of the way. 'Why did you run away from'em?'

'I was frightened, ' answered Florence. 'I didn't know what I did. Ithought they were with me. Where are they?'

The old woman took her by the wrist, and said, 'I'll show you. '

She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouththat mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. She wasmiserably dressed, and carried some skins over her arm. She seemed tohave followed Florence some little way at all events, for she had losther breath; and this made her uglier still, as she stood trying toregain it: working her shrivelled yellow face and throat into all sortsof contortions. 

Florence was afraid of her, and looked, hesitating, up the street, ofwhich she had almost reached the bottom. It was a solitary place--more aback road than a street--and there was no one in it but her-self and theold woman. 

'You needn't be frightened now, ' said the old woman, still holding hertight. 'Come along with me. '

'I--I don't know you. What's your name?' asked Florence. 

'Mrs Brown, ' said the old woman. 'Good Mrs Brown. '

'Are they near here?' asked Florence, beginning to be led away. 

'Susan ain't far off, ' said Good Mrs Brown; 'and the others are close toher. '

'Is anybody hurt?' cried Florence. 

'Not a bit of it, ' said Good Mrs Brown. 

The child shed tears of delight on hearing this, and accompanied the oldwoman willingly; though she could not help glancing at her face asthey went along--particularly at that industrious mouth--and wonderingwhether Bad Mrs Brown, if there were such a person, was at all like her. 

They had not gone far, but had gone by some very uncomfortable places, such as brick-fields and tile-yards, when the old woman turned down adirty lane, where the mud lay in deep black ruts in the middle of theroad. She stopped before a shabby little house, as closely shut up asa house that was full of cracks and crevices could be. Opening the doorwith a key she took out of her bonnet, she pushed the child before herinto a back room, where there was a great heap of rags of differentcolours lying on the floor; a heap of bones, and a heap of sifted dustor cinders; but there was no furniture at all, and the walls and ceilingwere quite black. 

The child became so terrified the she was stricken speechless, andlooked as though about to swoon. 

'Now don't be a young mule, ' said Good Mrs Brown, reviving her with ashake. 'I'm not a going to hurt you. Sit upon the rags. '

Florence obeyed her, holding out her folded hands, in mute supplication. 

'I'm not a going to keep you, even, above an hour, ' said Mrs Brown. 'D'ye understand what I say?'

The child answered with great difficulty, 'Yes. '

'Then, ' said Good Mrs Brown, taking her own seat on the bones, 'don'tvex me. If you don't, I tell you I won't hurt you. But if you do, I'llkill you. I could have you killed at any time--even if you was in yourown bed at home. Now let's know who you are, and what you are, and allabout it. '

The old woman's threats and promises; the dread of giving her offence;and the habit, unusual to a child, but almost natural to Florence now, of being quiet, and repressing what she felt, and feared, and hoped;enabled her to do this bidding, and to tell her little history, or whatshe knew of it. Mrs Brown listened attentively, until she had finished. 

'So your name's Dombey, eh?' said Mrs Brown. 

'I want that pretty frock, Miss Dombey, ' said Good Mrs Brown, 'and thatlittle bonnet, and a petticoat or two, and anything else you can spare. Come! Take 'em off. '

Florence obeyed, as fast as her trembling hands would allow; keeping, all the while, a frightened eye on Mrs Brown. When she had divestedherself of all the articles of apparel mentioned by that lady, Mrs B. Examined them at leisure, and seemed tolerably well satisfied with theirquality and value. 

'Humph!' she said, running her eyes over the child's slight figure, 'Idon't see anything else--except the shoes. I must have the shoes, MissDombey. '

Poor little Florence took them off with equal alacrity, only too gladto have any more means of conciliation about her. The old woman thenproduced some wretched substitutes from the bottom of the heap of rags, which she turned up for that purpose; together with a girl's cloak, quite worn out and very old; and the crushed remains of a bonnet thathad probably been picked up from some ditch or dunghill. In thisdainty raiment, she instructed Florence to dress herself; and as suchpreparation seemed a prelude to her release, the child complied withincreased readiness, if possible. 

In hurriedly putting on the bonnet, if that may be called a bonnet whichwas more like a pad to carry loads on, she caught it in her hair whichgrew luxuriantly, and could not immediately disentangle it. GoodMrs Brown whipped out a large pair of scissors, and fell into anunaccountable state of excitement. 

'Why couldn't you let me be!' said Mrs Brown, 'when I was contented? Youlittle fool!'

'I beg your pardon. I don't know what I have done, ' panted Florence. 'Icouldn't help it. '

'Couldn't help it!' cried Mrs Brown. 'How do you expect I can helpit? Why, Lord!' said the old woman, ruffling her curls with a furiouspleasure, 'anybody but me would have had 'em off, first of all. 'Florence was so relieved to find that it was only her hair and nother head which Mrs Brown coveted, that she offered no resistance orentreaty, and merely raised her mild eyes towards the face of that goodsoul. 

'If I hadn't once had a gal of my own--beyond seas now--that was proudof her hair, ' said Mrs Brown, 'I'd have had every lock of it. She's faraway, she's far away! Oho! Oho!'

Mrs Brown's was not a melodious cry, but, accompanied with a wildtossing up of her lean arms, it was full of passionate grief, andthrilled to the heart of Florence, whom it frightened more than ever. It had its part, perhaps, in saving her curls; for Mrs Brown, afterhovering about her with the scissors for some moments, like a new kindof butterfly, bade her hide them under the bonnet and let no trace ofthem escape to tempt her. Having accomplished this victory over herself, Mrs Brown resumed her seat on the bones, and smoked a very short blackpipe, mowing and mumbling all the time, as if she were eating the stem. 

When the pipe was smoked out, she gave the child a rabbit-skin to carry, that she might appear the more like her ordinary companion, and told herthat she was now going to lead her to a public street whence she couldinquire her way to her friends. But she cautioned her, with threats ofsummary and deadly vengeance in case of disobedience, not to talk tostrangers, nor to repair to her own home (which may have been too nearfor Mrs Brown's convenience), but to her father's office in the City;also to wait at the street corner where she would be left, until theclock struck three. These directions Mrs Brown enforced with assurancesthat there would be potent eyes and ears in her employment cognizantof all she did; and these directions Florence promised faithfully andearnestly to observe. 

At length, Mrs Brown, issuing forth, conducted her changed and raggedlittle friend through a labyrinth of narrow streets and lanes andalleys, which emerged, after a long time, upon a stable yard, with agateway at the end, whence the roar of a great thoroughfare made itselfaudible. Pointing out this gateway, and informing Florence that when theclocks struck three she was to go to the left, Mrs Brown, after making aparting grasp at her hair which seemed involuntary and quite beyond herown control, told her she knew what to do, and bade her go and do it:remembering that she was watched. 

With a lighter heart, but still sore afraid, Florence felt herselfreleased, and tripped off to the corner. When she reached it, she lookedback and saw the head of Good Mrs Brown peeping out of the low woodenpassage, where she had issued her parting injunctions; likewise the fistof Good Mrs Brown shaking towards her. But though she often looked backafterwards--every minute, at least, in her nervous recollection of theold woman--she could not see her again. 

Florence remained there, looking at the bustle in the street, and moreand more bewildered by it; and in the meanwhile the clocks appeared tohave made up their minds never to strike three any more. At last thesteeples rang out three o'clock; there was one close by, so she couldn'tbe mistaken; and--after often looking over her shoulder, and often goinga little way, and as often coming back again, lest the all-powerfulspies of Mrs Brown should take offence--she hurried off, as fast as shecould in her slipshod shoes, holding the rabbit-skin tight in her hand. 

All she knew of her father's offices was that they belonged to Dombeyand Son, and that that was a great power belonging to the City. Soshe could only ask the way to Dombey and Son's in the City; and asshe generally made inquiry of children--being afraid to ask grownpeople--she got very little satisfaction indeed. But by dint of askingher way to the City after a while, and dropping the rest of her inquiryfor the present, she really did advance, by slow degrees, towards theheart of that great region which is governed by the terrible Lord Mayor. 

Tired of walking, repulsed and pushed about, stunned by the noise andconfusion, anxious for her brother and the nurses, terrified by what shehad undergone, and the prospect of encountering her angry father in suchan altered state; perplexed and frightened alike by what had passed, andwhat was passing, and what was yet before her; Florence went upon herweary way with tearful eyes, and once or twice could not help stoppingto ease her bursting heart by crying bitterly. But few people noticedher at those times, in the garb she wore: or if they did, believed thatshe was tutored to excite compassion, and passed on. Florence, too, called to her aid all the firmness and self-reliance of a character thather sad experience had prematurely formed and tried: and keeping the endshe had in view steadily before her, steadily pursued it. 

It was full two hours later in the afternoon than when she had startedon this strange adventure, when, escaping from the clash and clangourof a narrow street full of carts and waggons, she peeped into a kindof wharf or landing-place upon the river-side, where there were a greatmany packages, casks, and boxes, strewn about; a large pair of woodenscales; and a little wooden house on wheels, outside of which, lookingat the neighbouring masts and boats, a stout man stood whistling, withhis pen behind his ear, and his hands in his pockets, as if his day'swork were nearly done. 

'Now then! 'said this man, happening to turn round. 'We haven't gotanything for you, little girl. Be off!'

'If you please, is this the City?' asked the trembling daughter of theDombeys. 

'Ah! It's the City. You know that well enough, I daresay. Be off! Wehaven't got anything for you. '

'I don't want anything, thank you, ' was the timid answer. 'Except toknow the way to Dombey and Son's. '

The man who had been strolling carelessly towards her, seemed surprisedby this reply, and looking attentively in her face, rejoined:

'Why, what can you want with Dombey and Son's?'

'To know the way there, if you please. '

The man looked at her yet more curiously, and rubbed the back of hishead so hard in his wonderment that he knocked his own hat off. 

'Joe!' he called to another man--a labourer--as he picked it up and putit on again. 

'Joe it is!' said Joe. 

'Where's that young spark of Dombey's who's been watching the shipmentof them goods?'

'Just gone, by t'other gate, ' said Joe. 

'Call him back a minute. '

Joe ran up an archway, bawling as he went, and very soon returnedwith a blithe-looking boy. 

'You're Dombey's jockey, ain't you?' said the first man. 

'I'm in Dombey's House, Mr Clark, ' returned the boy. 

'Look'ye here, then, ' said Mr Clark. 

Obedient to the indication of Mr Clark's hand, the boy approachedtowards Florence, wondering, as well he might, what he had to do withher. But she, who had heard what passed, and who, besides the reliefof so suddenly considering herself safe at her journey's end, feltreassured beyond all measure by his lively youthful face and manner, raneagerly up to him, leaving one of the slipshod shoes upon the ground andcaught his hand in both of hers. 

'I am lost, if you please!' said Florence. 

'Lost!' cried the boy. 

'Yes, I was lost this morning, a long way from here--and I have had myclothes taken away, since--and I am not dressed in my own now--and myname is Florence Dombey, my little brother's only sister--and, oh dear, dear, take care of me, if you please!' sobbed Florence, giving full ventto the childish feelings she had so long suppressed, and bursting intotears. At the same time her miserable bonnet falling off, her haircame tumbling down about her face: moving to speechless admirationand commiseration, young Walter, nephew of Solomon Gills, Ships'Instrument-maker in general. 

Mr Clark stood rapt in amazement: observing under his breath, I neversaw such a start on this wharf before. Walter picked up the shoe, andput it on the little foot as the Prince in the story might have fittedCinderella's slipper on. He hung the rabbit-skin over his left arm;gave the right to Florence; and felt, not to say like RichardWhittington--that is a tame comparison--but like Saint George ofEngland, with the dragon lying dead before him. 

'Don't cry, Miss Dombey, ' said Walter, in a transport of enthusiasm. 

'What a wonderful thing for me that I am here! You are as safe now as ifyou were guarded by a whole boat's crew of picked men from a man-of-war. Oh, don't cry. '

'I won't cry any more, ' said Florence. 'I am only crying for joy. '

'Crying for joy!' thought Walter, 'and I'm the cause of it! Come along, Miss Dombey. There's the other shoe off now! Take mine, Miss Dombey. '

'No, no, no, ' said Florence, checking him in the act of impetuouslypulling off his own. 'These do better. These do very well. '

'Why, to be sure, ' said Walter, glancing at her foot, 'mine are a miletoo large. What am I thinking about! You never could walk in mine! Comealong, Miss Dombey. Let me see the villain who will dare molest younow. '

So Walter, looking immensely fierce, led off Florence, looking veryhappy; and they went arm-in-arm along the streets, perfectly indifferentto any astonishment that their appearance might or did excite by theway. 

It was growing dark and foggy, and beginning to rain too; but they carednothing for this: being both wholly absorbed in the late adventures ofFlorence, which she related with the innocent good faith and confidenceof her years, while Walter listened as if, far from the mud and greaseof Thames Street, they were rambling alone among the broad leaves andtall trees of some desert island in the tropics--as he very likelyfancied, for the time, they were. 

'Have we far to go?' asked Florence at last, lilting up her eyes to hercompanion's face. 

'Ah! By-the-bye, ' said Walter, stopping, 'let me see; where are we? Oh!I know. But the offices are shut up now, Miss Dombey. There's nobodythere. Mr Dombey has gone home long ago. I suppose we must go home too?or, stay. Suppose I take you to my Uncle's, where I live--it's very nearhere--and go to your house in a coach to tell them you are safe, andbring you back some clothes. Won't that be best?'

'I think so, ' answered Florence. 'Don't you? What do you think?'

As they stood deliberating in the street, a man passed them, who glancedquickly at Walter as he went by, as if he recognised him; but seeming tocorrect that first impression, he passed on without stopping. 

'Why, I think it's Mr Carker, ' said Walter. 'Carker in our House. NotCarker our Manager, Miss Dombey--the other Carker; the Junior--Halloa!Mr Carker!'

'Is that Walter Gay?' said the other, stopping and returning. 'Icouldn't believe it, with such a strange companion. 

As he stood near a lamp, listening with surprise to Walter's hurriedexplanation, he presented a remarkable contrast to the two youthfulfigures arm-in-arm before him. He was not old, but his hair was white;his body was bent, or bowed as if by the weight of some great trouble:and there were deep lines in his worn and melancholy face. The fire ofhis eyes, the expression of his features, the very voice in which hespoke, were all subdued and quenched, as if the spirit within him layin ashes. He was respectably, though very plainly dressed, in black; buthis clothes, moulded to the general character of his figure, seemedto shrink and abase themselves upon him, and to join in the sorrowfulsolicitation which the whole man from head to foot expressed, to be leftunnoticed, and alone in his humility. 

And yet his interest in youth and hopefulness was not extinguishedwith the other embers of his soul, for he watched the boy's earnestcountenance as he spoke with unusual sympathy, though with aninexplicable show of trouble and compassion, which escaped into hislooks, however hard he strove to hold it prisoner. When Walter, inconclusion, put to him the question he had put to Florence, he stillstood glancing at him with the same expression, as if he had read somefate upon his face, mournfully at variance with its present brightness. 

'What do you advise, Mr Carker?' said Walter, smiling. 'You always giveme good advice, you know, when you do speak to me. That's not often, though. '

'I think your own idea is the best, ' he answered: looking from Florenceto Walter, and back again. 

'Mr Carker, ' said Walter, brightening with a generous thought, 'Come!Here's a chance for you. Go you to Mr Dombey's, and be the messenger ofgood news. It may do you some good, Sir. I'll remain at home. You shallgo. '

'I!' returned the other. 

'Yes. Why not, Mr Carker?' said the boy. 

He merely shook him by the hand in answer; he seemed in a manner ashamedand afraid even to do that; and bidding him good-night, and advising himto make haste, turned away. 

'Come, Miss Dombey, ' said Walter, looking after him as they turned awayalso, 'we'll go to my Uncle's as quick as we can. Did you ever hear MrDombey speak of Mr Carker the Junior, Miss Florence?'

'No, ' returned the child, mildly, 'I don't often hear Papa speak. '

'Ah! true! more shame for him, ' thought Walter. After a minute's pause, during which he had been looking down upon the gentle patient littleface moving on at his side, he said, 'The strangest man, Mr Carkerthe Junior is, Miss Florence, that ever you heard of. If you couldunderstand what an extraordinary interest he takes in me, and yet how heshuns me and avoids me; and what a low place he holds in our office, andhow he is never advanced, and never complains, though year after yearhe sees young men passed over his head, and though his brother (youngerthan he is), is our head Manager, you would be as much puzzled about himas I am. '

As Florence could hardly be expected to understand much about it, Walterbestirred himself with his accustomed boyish animation and restlessnessto change the subject; and one of the unfortunate shoes coming off againopportunely, proposed to carry Florence to his uncle's in his arms. Florence, though very tired, laughingly declined the proposal, lesthe should let her fall; and as they were already near the woodenMidshipman, and as Walter went on to cite various precedents, fromshipwrecks and other moving accidents, where younger boys than he hadtriumphantly rescued and carried off older girls than Florence, theywere still in full conversation about it when they arrived at theInstrument-maker's door. 

'Holloa, Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, bursting into the shop, and speakingincoherently and out of breath, from that time forth, for the rest ofthe evening. 'Here's a wonderful adventure! Here's Mr Dombey's daughterlost in the streets, and robbed of her clothes by an old witch of awoman--found by me--brought home to our parlour to rest--look here!'

'Good Heaven!' said Uncle Sol, starting back against his favouritecompass-case. 'It can't be! Well, I--'

'No, nor anybody else, ' said Walter, anticipating the rest. 'Nobodywould, nobody could, you know. Here! just help me lift the little sofanear the fire, will you, Uncle Sol--take care of the plates--cut somedinner for her, will you, Uncle--throw those shoes under the grate. MissFlorence--put your feet on the fender to dry--how damp they are--here'san adventure, Uncle, eh?--God bless my soul, how hot I am!'

Solomon Gills was quite as hot, by sympathy, and in excessivebewilderment. He patted Florence's head, pressed her to eat, pressedher to drink, rubbed the soles of her feet with his pocket-handkerchiefheated at the fire, followed his locomotive nephew with his eyes, andears, and had no clear perception of anything except that he was beingconstantly knocked against and tumbled over by that excited younggentleman, as he darted about the room attempting to accomplish twentythings at once, and doing nothing at all. 

'Here, wait a minute, Uncle, ' he continued, catching up a candle, 'tillI run upstairs, and get another jacket on, and then I'll be off. I say, Uncle, isn't this an adventure?'

'My dear boy, ' said Solomon, who, with his spectacles on his foreheadand the great chronometer in his pocket, was incessantly oscillatingbetween Florence on the sofa, and his nephew in all parts of theparlour, 'it's the most extraordinary--'

'No, but do, Uncle, please--do, Miss Florence--dinner, you know, Uncle. '

'Yes, yes, yes, ' cried Solomon, cutting instantly into a leg of mutton, as if he were catering for a giant. 'I'll take care of her, Wally! Iunderstand. Pretty dear! Famished, of course. You go and get ready. Lordbless me! Sir Richard Whittington thrice Lord Mayor of London. '

Walter was not very long in mounting to his lofty garret and descendingfrom it, but in the meantime Florence, overcome by fatigue, had sunkinto a doze before the fire. The short interval of quiet, though onlya few minutes in duration, enabled Solomon Gills so far to collect hiswits as to make some little arrangements for her comfort, and to darkenthe room, and to screen her from the blaze. Thus, when the boy returned, she was sleeping peacefully. 

'That's capital!' he whispered, giving Solomon such a hug that itsqueezed a new expression into his face. 'Now I'm off. I'll just take acrust of bread with me, for I'm very hungry--and don't wake her, UncleSol. '

'No, no, ' said Solomon. 'Pretty child. '

'Pretty, indeed!' cried Walter. 'I never saw such a face, Uncle Sol. NowI'm off. '

'That's right, ' said Solomon, greatly relieved. 

'I say, Uncle Sol, ' cried Walter, putting his face in at the door. 

'Here he is again, ' said Solomon. 

'How does she look now?'

'Quite happy, ' said Solomon. 

'That's famous! now I'm off. '

'I hope you are, ' said Solomon to himself. 

'I say, Uncle Sol, ' cried Walter, reappearing at the door. 

'Here he is again!' said Solomon. 

'We met Mr Carker the Junior in the street, queerer than ever. He bademe good-bye, but came behind us here--there's an odd thing!--for when wereached the shop door, I looked round, and saw him going quietly away, like a servant who had seen me home, or a faithful dog. How does shelook now, Uncle?'

'Pretty much the same as before, Wally, ' replied Uncle Sol. 

'That's right. Now I am off!'

And this time he really was: and Solomon Gills, with no appetite fordinner, sat on the opposite side of the fire, watching Florence inher slumber, building a great many airy castles of the most fantasticarchitecture; and looking, in the dim shade, and in the close vicinityof all the instruments, like a magician disguised in a Welsh wig and asuit of coffee colour, who held the child in an enchanted sleep. 

In the meantime, Walter proceeded towards Mr Dombey's house at a paceseldom achieved by a hack horse from the stand; and yet with his headout of window every two or three minutes, in impatient remonstrancewith the driver. Arriving at his journey's end, he leaped out, andbreathlessly announcing his errand to the servant, followed him straightinto the library, we there was a great confusion of tongues, and whereMr Dombey, his sister, and Miss Tox, Richards, and Nipper, were allcongregated together. 

'Oh! I beg your pardon, Sir, ' said Walter, rushing up to him, 'but I'mhappy to say it's all right, Sir. Miss Dombey's found!'

The boy with his open face, and flowing hair, and sparkling eyes, panting with pleasure and excitement, was wonderfully opposed to MrDombey, as he sat confronting him in his library chair. 

'I told you, Louisa, that she would certainly be found, ' said Mr Dombey, looking slightly over his shoulder at that lady, who wept in companywith Miss Tox. 'Let the servants know that no further steps arenecessary. This boy who brings the information, is young Gay, from theoffice. How was my daughter found, Sir? I know how she was lost. ' Herehe looked majestically at Richards. 'But how was she found? Who foundher?'

'Why, I believe I found Miss Dombey, Sir, ' said Walter modestly, 'atleast I don't know that I can claim the merit of having exactly foundher, Sir, but I was the fortunate instrument of--'

'What do you mean, Sir, ' interrupted Mr Dombey, regarding the boy'sevident pride and pleasure in his share of the transaction with aninstinctive dislike, 'by not having exactly found my daughter, and bybeing a fortunate instrument? Be plain and coherent, if you please. '

It was quite out of Walter's power to be coherent; but he renderedhimself as explanatory as he could, in his breathless state, and statedwhy he had come alone. 

'You hear this, girl?' said Mr Dombey sternly to the black-eyed. 'Takewhat is necessary, and return immediately with this young man to fetchMiss Florence home. Gay, you will be rewarded to-morrow. 

'Oh! thank you, Sir, ' said Walter. 'You are very kind. I'm sure I wasnot thinking of any reward, Sir. '

'You are a boy, ' said Mr Dombey, suddenly and almost fiercely; 'and whatyou think of, or affect to think of, is of little consequence. Youhave done well, Sir. Don't undo it. Louisa, please to give the lad somewine. '

Mr Dombey's glance followed Walter Gay with sharp disfavour, as he leftthe room under the pilotage of Mrs Chick; and it may be that his mind'seye followed him with no greater relish, as he rode back to his Uncle'swith Miss Susan Nipper. 

There they found that Florence, much refreshed by sleep, had dined, andgreatly improved the acquaintance of Solomon Gills, with whom she was onterms of perfect confidence and ease. The black-eyed (who had cried somuch that she might now be called the red-eyed, and who was very silentand depressed) caught her in her arms without a word of contradiction orreproach, and made a very hysterical meeting of it. Then converting theparlour, for the nonce, into a private tiring room, she dressed her, with great care, in proper clothes; and presently led her forth, as likea Dombey as her natural disqualifications admitted of her being made. 

'Good-night!' said Florence, running up to Solomon. 'You have been verygood to me. 

Old Sol was quite delighted, and kissed her like her grand-father. 

'Good-night, Walter! Good-bye!' said Florence. 

'Good-bye!' said Walter, giving both his hands. 

'I'll never forget you, ' pursued Florence. 'No! indeed I never will. Good-bye, Walter!' In the innocence of her grateful heart, the childlifted up her face to his. Walter, bending down his own, raised itagain, all red and burning; and looked at Uncle Sol, quite sheepishly. 

'Where's Walter?' 'Good-night, Walter!' 'Good-bye, Walter!' 'Shake handsonce more, Walter!' This was still Florence's cry, after she was shut upwith her little maid, in the coach. And when the coach at lengthmoved off, Walter on the door-step gaily turned the waving of herhandkerchief, while the wooden Midshipman behind him seemed, likehimself, intent upon that coach alone, excluding all the other passingcoaches from his observation. 

In good time Mr Dombey's mansion was gained again, and again there wasa noise of tongues in the library. Again, too, the coach was orderedto wait--'for Mrs Richards, ' one of Susan's fellow-servants ominouslywhispered, as she passed with Florence. 

The entrance of the lost child made a slight sensation, but not much. MrDombey, who had never found her, kissed her once upon the forehead, andcautioned her not to run away again, or wander anywhere with treacherousattendants. Mrs Chick stopped in her lamentations on the corruption ofhuman nature, even when beckoned to the paths of virtue by a CharitableGrinder; and received her with a welcome something short of thereception due to none but perfect Dombeys. Miss Tox regulated herfeelings by the models before her. Richards, the culprit Richards, alonepoured out her heart in broken words of welcome, and bowed herself overthe little wandering head as if she really loved it. 

'Ah, Richards!' said Mrs Chick, with a sigh. 'It would have been muchmore satisfactory to those who wish to think well of their fellowcreatures, and much more becoming in you, if you had shown someproper feeling, in time, for the little child that is now going to beprematurely deprived of its natural nourishment. 

'Cut off, ' said Miss Tox, in a plaintive whisper, 'from one commonfountain!'

'If it was ungrateful case, ' said Mrs Chick, solemnly, 'and I had yourreflections, Richards, I should feel as if the Charitable Grinders'dress would blight my child, and the education choke him. '

For the matter of that--but Mrs Chick didn't know it--he had been prettywell blighted by the dress already; and as to the education, even itsretributive effect might be produced in time, for it was a storm of sobsand blows. 

'Louisa!' said Mr Dombey. 'It is not necessary to prolong theseobservations. The woman is discharged and paid. You leave this house, Richards, for taking my son--my son, ' said Mr Dombey, emphaticallyrepeating these two words, 'into haunts and into society which are notto be thought of without a shudder. As to the accident which befel MissFlorence this morning, I regard that as, in one great sense, a happy andfortunate circumstance; inasmuch as, but for that occurrence, I nevercould have known--and from your own lips too--of what you had beenguilty. I think, Louisa, the other nurse, the young person, ' here MissNipper sobbed aloud, 'being so much younger, and necessarily influencedby Paul's nurse, may remain. Have the goodness to direct that thiswoman's coach is paid to'--Mr Dombey stopped and winced--'to Staggs'sGardens. '

Polly moved towards the door, with Florence holding to her dress, andcrying to her in the most pathetic manner not to go away. It was adagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see howthe flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, orfrom whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as hethought of what his son might do. 

His son cried lustily that night, at all events. Sooth to say, poor Paulhad better reason for his tears than sons of that age often have, for hehad lost his second mother--his first, so far as he knew--by a strokeas sudden as that natural affliction which had darkened the beginning ofhis life. At the same blow, his sister too, who cried herself to sleepso mournfully, had lost as good and true a friend. But that is quitebeside the question. Let us waste no words about it. 

CHAPTER 7. A Bird's-eye Glimpse of Miss Tox's Dwelling-place: also ofthe State of Miss Tox's Affections

Miss Tox inhabited a dark little house that had been squeezed, at someremote period of English History, into a fashionable neighbourhoodat the west end of the town, where it stood in the shade like a poorrelation of the great street round the corner, coldly looked downupon by mighty mansions. It was not exactly in a court, and it wasnot exactly in a yard; but it was in the dullest of No-Thoroughfares, rendered anxious and haggard by distant double knocks. The name of thisretirement, where grass grew between the chinks in the stone pavement, was Princess's Place; and in Princess's Place was Princess's Chapel, with a tinkling bell, where sometimes as many as five-and-twenty peopleattended service on a Sunday. The Princess's Arms was also there, andmuch resorted to by splendid footmen. A sedan chair was kept inside therailing before the Princess's Arms, but it had never come out within thememory of man; and on fine mornings, the top of every rail (there wereeight-and-forty, as Miss Tox had often counted) was decorated with apewter-pot. 

There was another private house besides Miss Tox's in Princess'sPlace: not to mention an immense Pair of gates, with an immense pair oflion-headed knockers on them, which were never opened by any chance, andwere supposed to constitute a disused entrance to somebody's stables. Indeed, there was a smack of stabling in the air of Princess's Place;and Miss Tox's bedroom (which was at the back) commanded a vista ofMews, where hostlers, at whatever sort of work engaged, were continuallyaccompanying themselves with effervescent noises; and where the mostdomestic and confidential garments of coachmen and their wives andfamilies, usually hung, like Macbeth's banners, on the outward walls. '

At this other private house in Princess's Place, tenanted by a retiredbutler who had married a housekeeper, apartments were let Furnished, toa single gentleman: to wit, a wooden-featured, blue-faced Major, withhis eyes starting out of his head, in whom Miss Tox recognised, as sheherself expressed it, 'something so truly military;' and between whomand herself, an occasional interchange of newspapers and pamphlets, and such Platonic dalliance, was effected through the medium of a darkservant of the Major's who Miss Tox was quite content to classify as a'native, ' without connecting him with any geographical idea whatever. 

Perhaps there never was a smaller entry and staircase, than the entryand staircase of Miss Tox's house. Perhaps, taken altogether, from topto bottom, it was the most inconvenient little house in England, and thecrookedest; but then, Miss Tox said, what a situation! There was verylittle daylight to be got there in the winter: no sun at the best oftimes: air was out of the question, and traffic was walled out. StillMiss Tox said, think of the situation! So said the blue-faced Major, whose eyes were starting out of his head: who gloried in Princess'sPlace: and who delighted to turn the conversation at his club, wheneverhe could, to something connected with some of the great people in thegreat street round the corner, that he might have the satisfaction ofsaying they were his neighbours. 

In short, with Miss Tox and the blue-faced Major, it was enough forPrincess's Place--as with a very small fragment of society, it is enoughfor many a little hanger-on of another sort--to be well connected, andto have genteel blood in its veins. It might be poor, mean, shabby, stupid, dull. No matter. The great street round the corner trailed offinto Princess's Place; and that which of High Holborn would have becomea choleric word, spoken of Princess's Place became flat blasphemy. 

The dingy tenement inhabited by Miss Tox was her own; having beendevised and bequeathed to her by the deceased owner of the fishy eyein the locket, of whom a miniature portrait, with a powdered head anda pigtail, balanced the kettle-holder on opposite sides of the parlourfireplace. The greater part of the furniture was of the powdered-headand pig-tail period: comprising a plate-warmer, always languishingand sprawling its four attenuated bow legs in somebody's way; and anobsolete harpsichord, illuminated round the maker's name with a paintedgarland of sweet peas. In any part of the house, visitors were usuallycognizant of a prevailing mustiness; and in warm weather Miss Toxhad been seen apparently writing in sundry chinks and crevices ofthe wainscoat with the the wrong end of a pen dipped in spirits ofturpentine. 

Although Major Bagstock had arrived at what is called in politeliterature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on hisjourney downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pairof jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes andcomplexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned, hewas mightily proud of awakening an interest in Miss Tox, and tickled hisvanity with the fiction that she was a splendid woman who had her eyeon him. This he had several times hinted at the club: in connexion withlittle jocularities, of which old Joe Bagstock, old Joey Bagstock, oldJ. Bagstock, old Josh Bagstock, or so forth, was the perpetual theme:it being, as it were, the Major's stronghold and donjon-keep of lighthumour, to be on the most familiar terms with his own name. 

'Joey B. , Sir, 'the Major would say, with a flourish of hiswalking-stick, 'is worth a dozen of you. If you had a few more of theBagstock breed among you, Sir, you'd be none the worse for it. Old Joe, Sir, needn't look far for a wile even now, if he was on the look-out;but he's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe--he's tough, Sir, tough, andde-vilish sly!' After such a declaration, wheezing sounds would beheard; and the Major's blue would deepen into purple, while his eyesstrained and started convulsively. 

Notwithstanding his very liberal laudation of himself, however, theMajor was selfish. It may be doubted whether there ever was a moreentirely selfish person at heart; or at stomach is perhaps a betterexpression, seeing that he was more decidedly endowed with that latterorgan than with the former. He had no idea of being overlooked orslighted by anybody; least of all, had he the remotest comprehension ofbeing overlooked and slighted by Miss Tox. 

And yet, Miss Tox, as it appeared, forgot him--gradually forgot him. Shebegan to forget him soon after her discovery of the Toodle family. Shecontinued to forget him up to the time of the christening. She went onforgetting him with compound interest after that. Something or somebodyhad superseded him as a source of interest. 

'Good morning, Ma'am, ' said the Major, meeting Miss Tox in Princess'sPlace, some weeks after the changes chronicled in the last chapter. 

'Good morning, Sir, ' said Miss Tox; very coldly. 

'Joe Bagstock, Ma'am, ' observed the Major, with his usual gallantry, 'has not had the happiness of bowing to you at your window, for aconsiderable period. Joe has been hardly used, Ma'am. His sun has beenbehind a cloud. '

Miss Tox inclined her head; but very coldly indeed. 

'Joe's luminary has been out of town, Ma'am, perhaps, ' inquired theMajor. 

'I? out of town? oh no, I have not been out of town, ' said Miss Tox. 'I have been much engaged lately. My time is nearly all devoted to somevery intimate friends. I am afraid I have none to spare, even now. Goodmorning, Sir!'

As Miss Tox, with her most fascinating step and carriage, disappearedfrom Princess's Place, the Major stood looking after her with a bluerface than ever: muttering and growling some not at all complimentaryremarks. 

'Why, damme, Sir, ' said the Major, rolling his lobster eyes round andround Princess's Place, and apostrophizing its fragrant air, 'six monthsago, the woman loved the ground Josh Bagstock walked on. What's themeaning of it?'

The Major decided, after some consideration, that it meant mantraps;that it meant plotting and snaring; that Miss Tox was digging pitfalls. 'But you won't catch Joe, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 'He's tough, Ma'am, tough, is J. B. Tough, and de-vilish sly!' over which reflection hechuckled for the rest of the day. 

But still, when that day and many other days were gone and past, itseemed that Miss Tox took no heed whatever of the Major, and thoughtnothing at all about him. She had been wont, once upon a time, to lookout at one of her little dark windows by accident, and blushingly returnthe Major's greeting; but now, she never gave the Major a chance, and cared nothing at all whether he looked over the way or not. Otherchanges had come to pass too. The Major, standing in the shade of hisown apartment, could make out that an air of greater smartness hadrecently come over Miss Tox's house; that a new cage with gilded wireshad been provided for the ancient little canary bird; that diversornaments, cut out of coloured card-boards and paper, seemed to decoratethe chimney-piece and tables; that a plant or two had suddenly sprung upin the windows; that Miss Tox occasionally practised on the harpsichord, whose garland of sweet peas was always displayed ostentatiously, crownedwith the Copenhagen and Bird Waltzes in a Music Book of Miss Tox's owncopying. 

Over and above all this, Miss Tox had long been dressed with uncommoncare and elegance in slight mourning. But this helped the Major out ofhis difficulty; and be determined within himself that she had come intoa small legacy, and grown proud. 

It was on the very next day after he had eased his mind by arrivingat this decision, that the Major, sitting at his breakfast, sawan apparition so tremendous and wonderful in Miss Tox's littledrawing-room, that he remained for some time rooted to his chair;then, rushing into the next room, returned with a double-barrelledopera-glass, through which he surveyed it intently for some minutes. 

'It's a Baby, Sir, ' said the Major, shutting up the glass again, 'forfifty thousand pounds!'

The Major couldn't forget it. He could do nothing but whistle, and stareto that extent, that his eyes, compared with what they now became, hadbeen in former times quite cavernous and sunken. Day after day, two, three, four times a week, this Baby reappeared. The Major continued tostare and whistle. To all other intents and purposes he was alone inPrincess's Place. Miss Tox had ceased to mind what he did. He might havebeen black as well as blue, and it would have been of no consequence toher. 

The perseverance with which she walked out of Princess's Place to fetchthis baby and its nurse, and walked back with them, and walked homewith them again, and continually mounted guard over them; and theperseverance with which she nursed it herself, and fed it, and playedwith it, and froze its young blood with airs upon the harpsichord, wasextraordinary. At about this same period too, she was seized with apassion for looking at a certain bracelet; also with a passion forlooking at the moon, of which she would take long observations fromher chamber window. But whatever she looked at; sun, moon, stars, orbracelet; she looked no more at the Major. And the Major whistled, andstared, and wondered, and dodged about his room, and could make nothingof it. 

'You'll quite win my brother Paul's heart, and that's the truth, mydear, ' said Mrs Chick, one day. 

Miss Tox turned pale. 

'He grows more like Paul every day, ' said Mrs Chick. 

Miss Tox returned no other reply than by taking the little Paul in herarms, and making his cockade perfectly flat and limp with her caresses. 

'His mother, my dear, ' said Miss Tox, 'whose acquaintance I was to havemade through you, does he at all resemble her?'

'Not at all, ' returned Louisa

'She was--she was pretty, I believe?' faltered Miss Tox. 

'Why, poor dear Fanny was interesting, ' said Mrs Chick, after somejudicial consideration. 'Certainly interesting. She had not that airof commanding superiority which one would somehow expect, almost asa matter of course, to find in my brother's wife; nor had she thatstrength and vigour of mind which such a man requires. '

Miss Tox heaved a deep sigh. 

'But she was pleasing:' said Mrs Chick: 'extremely so. And shemeant!--oh, dear, how well poor Fanny meant!'

'You Angel!' cried Miss Tox to little Paul. 'You Picture of your ownPapa!'

If the Major could have known how many hopes and ventures, what amultitude of plans and speculations, rested on that baby head; andcould have seen them hovering, in all their heterogeneous confusionand disorder, round the puckered cap of the unconscious little Paul;he might have stared indeed. Then would he have recognised, among thecrowd, some few ambitious motes and beams belonging to Miss Tox; thenwould he perhaps have understood the nature of that lady's falteringinvestment in the Dombey Firm. 

If the child himself could have awakened in the night, and seen, gathered about his cradle-curtains, faint reflections of the dreams thatother people had of him, they might have scared him, with good reason. But he slumbered on, alike unconscious of the kind intentions of MissTox, the wonder of the Major, the early sorrows of his sister, andthe stern visions of his father; and innocent that any spot of earthcontained a Dombey or a Son. 

CHAPTER 8. Paul's Further Progress, Growth and Character

Beneath the watching and attentive eyes of Time--so far anotherMajor--Paul's slumbers gradually changed. More and more light brokein upon them; distincter and distincter dreams disturbed them; anaccumulating crowd of objects and impressions swarmed about his rest;and so he passed from babyhood to childhood, and became a talking, walking, wondering Dombey. 

On the downfall and banishment of Richards, the nursery may be said tohave been put into commission: as a Public Department is sometimes, whenno individual Atlas can be found to support it The Commissioners were, of course, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox: who devoted themselves to theirduties with such astonishing ardour that Major Bagstock had every daysome new reminder of his being forsaken, while Mr Chick, bereft ofdomestic supervision, cast himself upon the gay world, dined at clubsand coffee-houses, smelt of smoke on three different occasions, went tothe play by himself, and in short, loosened (as Mrs Chick once told him)every social bond, and moral obligation. 

Yet, in spite of his early promise, all this vigilance and care couldnot make little Paul a thriving boy. Naturally delicate, perhaps, hepined and wasted after the dismissal of his nurse, and, for a long time, seemed but to wait his opportunity of gliding through their hands, andseeking his lost mother. This dangerous ground in his steeple-chasetowards manhood passed, he still found it very rough riding, and wasgrievously beset by all the obstacles in his course. Every tooth was abreak-neck fence, and every pimple in the measles a stone wall to him. He was down in every fit of the hooping-cough, and rolled upon andcrushed by a whole field of small diseases, that came trooping on eachother's heels to prevent his getting up again. Some bird of prey gotinto his throat instead of the thrush; and the very chickens turningferocious--if they have anything to do with that infant malady to whichthey lend their name--worried him like tiger-cats. 

The chill of Paul's christening had struck home, perhaps to somesensitive part of his nature, which could not recover itself in the coldshade of his father; but he was an unfortunate child from that day. MrsWickam often said she never see a dear so put upon. 

Mrs Wickam was a waiter's wife--which would seem equivalent to being anyother man's widow--whose application for an engagement in Mr Dombey'sservice had been favourably considered, on account of the apparentimpossibility of her having any followers, or anyone to follow; and who, from within a day or two of Paul's sharp weaning, had been engaged ashis nurse. Mrs Wickam was a meek woman, of a fair complexion, with hereyebrows always elevated, and her head always drooping; who was alwaysready to pity herself, or to be pitied, or to pity anybody else; andwho had a surprising natural gift of viewing all subjects in an utterlyforlorn and pitiable light, and bringing dreadful precedents to bearupon them, and deriving the greatest consolation from the exercise ofthat talent. 

It is hardly necessary to observe, that no touch of this quality everreached the magnificent knowledge of Mr Dombey. It would have beenremarkable, indeed, if any had; when no one in the house--not even MrsChick or Miss Tox--dared ever whisper to him that there had, on any oneoccasion, been the least reason for uneasiness in reference to littlePaul. He had settled, within himself, that the child must necessarilypass through a certain routine of minor maladies, and that the soonerhe did so the better. If he could have bought him off, or provided asubstitute, as in the case of an unlucky drawing for the militia, hewould have been glad to do so, on liberal terms. But as this was notfeasible, he merely wondered, in his haughty-manner, now and then, whatNature meant by it; and comforted himself with the reflection that therewas another milestone passed upon the road, and that the great end ofthe journey lay so much the nearer. For the feeling uppermost in hismind, now and constantly intensifying, and increasing in it as Paul grewolder, was impatience. Impatience for the time to come, when his visionsof their united consequence and grandeur would be triumphantly realized. 

Some philosophers tell us that selfishness is at the root of our bestloves and affections. ' Mr Dombey's young child was, from the beginning, so distinctly important to him as a part of his own greatness, or (whichis the same thing) of the greatness of Dombey and Son, that there is nodoubt his parental affection might have been easily traced, like manya goodly superstructure of fair fame, to a very low foundation. But heloved his son with all the love he had. If there were a warm place inhis frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface couldreceive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there;though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man--the'Son' of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to advance into thefuture, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his history. Therefore he had little or no anxiety' about them, in spite of his love;feeling as if the boy had a charmed life, and must become the man withwhom he held such constant communication in his thoughts, and for whomhe planned and projected, as for an existing reality, every day. 

Thus Paul grew to be nearly five years old. He was a pretty littlefellow; though there was something wan and wistful in his small face, that gave occasion to many significant shakes of Mrs Wickam's head, andmany long-drawn inspirations of Mrs Wickam's breath. His temper gaveabundant promise of being imperious in after-life; and he had as hopefulan apprehension of his own importance, and the rightful subservienceof all other things and persons to it, as heart could desire. He waschildish and sportive enough at times, and not of a sullen disposition;but he had a strange, old-fashioned, thoughtful way, at other times, ofsitting brooding in his miniature arm-chair, when he looked (and talked)like one of those terrible little Beings in the Fairy tales, who, at ahundred and fifty or two hundred years of age, fantastically representthe children for whom they have been substituted. He would frequentlybe stricken with this precocious mood upstairs in the nursery; and wouldsometimes lapse into it suddenly, exclaiming that he was tired: evenwhile playing with Florence, or driving Miss Tox in single harness. But at no time did he fall into it so surely, as when, his little chairbeing carried down into his father's room, he sat there with him afterdinner, by the fire. They were the strangest pair at such a time thatever firelight shone upon. Mr Dombey so erect and solemn, gazing at theblare; his little image, with an old, old face, peering into the redperspective with the fixed and rapt attention of a sage. Mr Dombeyentertaining complicated worldly schemes and plans; the little imageentertaining Heaven knows what wild fancies, half-formed thoughts, andwandering speculations. Mr Dombey stiff with starch and arrogance; thelittle image by inheritance, and in unconscious imitation. The two sovery much alike, and yet so monstrously contrasted. 

On one of these occasions, when they had both been perfectly quiet fora long time, and Mr Dombey only knew that the child was awake byoccasionally glancing at his eye, where the bright fire was sparklinglike a jewel, little Paul broke silence thus:

'Papa! what's money?'

The abrupt question had such immediate reference to the subject of MrDombey's thoughts, that Mr Dombey was quite disconcerted. 

'What is money, Paul?' he answered. 'Money?'

'Yes, ' said the child, laying his hands upon the elbows of his littlechair, and turning the old face up towards Mr Dombey's; 'what is money?'

Mr Dombey was in a difficulty. He would have liked to give himsome explanation involving the terms circulating-medium, currency, depreciation of currency', paper, bullion, rates of exchange, value ofprecious metals in the market, and so forth; but looking down at thelittle chair, and seeing what a long way down it was, he answered:'Gold, and silver, and copper. Guineas, shillings, half-pence. You knowwhat they are?'

'Oh yes, I know what they are, ' said Paul. 'I don't mean that, Papa. Imean what's money after all?'

Heaven and Earth, how old his face was as he turned it up again towardshis father's!

'What is money after all!' said Mr Dombey, backing his chair a little, that he might the better gaze in sheer amazement at the presumptuousatom that propounded such an inquiry. 

'I mean, Papa, what can it do?' returned Paul, folding his arms (theywere hardly long enough to fold), and looking at the fire, and up athim, and at the fire, and up at him again. 

Mr Dombey drew his chair back to its former place, and patted him on thehead. 'You'll know better by-and-by, my man, ' he said. 'Money, Paul, can do anything. ' He took hold of the little hand, and beat it softlyagainst one of his own, as he said so. 

But Paul got his hand free as soon as he could; and rubbing it gently toand fro on the elbow of his chair, as if his wit were in the palm, andhe were sharpening it--and looking at the fire again, as though the firehad been his adviser and prompter--repeated, after a short pause:

'Anything, Papa?'

'Yes. Anything--almost, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Anything means everything, don't it, Papa?' asked his son: notobserving, or possibly not understanding, the qualification. 

'It includes it: yes, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Why didn't money save me my Mama?' returned the child. 'It isn't cruel, is it?'

'Cruel!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth, and seeming to resentthe idea. 'No. A good thing can't be cruel. '

'If it's a good thing, and can do anything, ' said the little fellow, thoughtfully, as he looked back at the fire, 'I wonder why it didn'tsave me my Mama. '

He didn't ask the question of his father this time. Perhaps he hadseen, with a child's quickness, that it had already made his fatheruncomfortable. But he repeated the thought aloud, as if it were quitean old one to him, and had troubled him very much; and sat with his chinresting on his hand, still cogitating and looking for an explanation inthe fire. 

Mr Dombey having recovered from his surprise, not to say his alarm (forit was the very first occasion on which the child had ever broached thesubject of his mother to him, though he had had him sitting by his side, in this same manner, evening after evening), expounded to him howthat money, though a very potent spirit, never to be disparaged on anyaccount whatever, could not keep people alive whose time was come todie; and how that we must all die, unfortunately, even in the City, though we were never so rich. But how that money caused us to behonoured, feared, respected, courted, and admired, and made us powerfuland glorious in the eyes of all men; and how that it could, very often, even keep off death, for a long time together. How, for example, it hadsecured to his Mama the services of Mr Pilkins, by which be, Paul, hadoften profited himself; likewise of the great Doctor Parker Peps, whomhe had never known. And how it could do all, that could be done. This, with more to the same purpose, Mr Dombey instilled into the mind of hisson, who listened attentively, and seemed to understand the greater partof what was said to him. 

'It can't make me strong and quite well, either, Papa; can it?' askedPaul, after a short silence; rubbing his tiny hands. 

'Why, you are strong and quite well, ' returned Mr Dombey. 'Are you not?'

Oh! the age of the face that was turned up again, with an expression, half of melancholy, half of slyness, on it!

'You are as strong and well as such little people usually are? Eh?' saidMr Dombey. 

'Florence is older than I am, but I'm not as strong and well asFlorence, 'I know, ' returned the child; 'and I believe that whenFlorence was as little as me, she could play a great deal longer at atime without tiring herself. I am so tired sometimes, ' said little Paul, warming his hands, and looking in between the bars of the grate, as ifsome ghostly puppet-show were performing there, 'and my bones ache so(Wickam says it's my bones), that I don't know what to do. '

'Ay! But that's at night, ' said Mr Dombey, drawing his own chair closerto his son's, and laying his hand gently on his back; 'little peopleshould be tired at night, for then they sleep well. '

'Oh, it's not at night, Papa, ' returned the child, 'it's in the day;and I lie down in Florence's lap, and she sings to me. At night I dreamabout such cu-ri-ous things!'

And he went on, warming his hands again, and thinking about them, likean old man or a young goblin. 

Mr Dombey was so astonished, and so uncomfortable, and so perfectly ata loss how to pursue the conversation, that he could only sit looking athis son by the light of the fire, with his hand resting on his back, asif it were detained there by some magnetic attraction. Once he advancedhis other hand, and turned the contemplative face towards his own fora moment. But it sought the fire again as soon as he released it;and remained, addressed towards the flickering blaze, until the nurseappeared, to summon him to bed. 

'I want Florence to come for me, ' said Paul. 

'Won't you come with your poor Nurse Wickam, Master Paul?' inquired thatattendant, with great pathos. 

'No, I won't, ' replied Paul, composing himself in his arm-chair again, like the master of the house. 

Invoking a blessing upon his innocence, Mrs Wickam withdrew, andpresently Florence appeared in her stead. The child immediately startedup with sudden readiness and animation, and raised towards his father inbidding him good-night, a countenance so much brighter, so much younger, and so much more child-like altogether, that Mr Dombey, while he feltgreatly reassured by the change, was quite amazed at it. 

After they had left the room together, he thought he heard a soft voicesinging; and remembering that Paul had said his sister sung to him, hehad the curiosity to open the door and listen, and look after them. Shewas toiling up the great, wide, vacant staircase, with him in her arms;his head was lying on her shoulder, one of his arms thrown negligentlyround her neck. So they went, toiling up; she singing all the way, andPaul sometimes crooning out a feeble accompaniment. Mr Dombey lookedafter them until they reached the top of the staircase--not withouthalting to rest by the way--and passed out of his sight; and then hestill stood gazing upwards, until the dull rays of the moon, glimmeringin a melancholy manner through the dim skylight, sent him back to hisroom. 

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox were convoked in council at dinner next day;and when the cloth was removed, Mr Dombey opened the proceedings byrequiring to be informed, without any gloss or reservation, whetherthere was anything the matter with Paul, and what Mr Pilkins said abouthim. 

'For the child is hardly, ' said Mr Dombey, 'as stout as I could wish. '

'My dear Paul, ' returned Mrs Chick, 'with your usual happydiscrimination, which I am weak enough to envy you, every time I am inyour company; and so I think is Miss Tox. '

'Oh my dear!' said Miss Tox, softly, 'how could it be otherwise?Presumptuous as it is to aspire to such a level; still, if the bird ofnight may--but I'll not trouble Mr Dombey with the sentiment. It merelyrelates to the Bulbul. '

Mr Dombey bent his head in stately recognition of the Bulbuls as anold-established body. 

'With your usual happy discrimination, my dear Paul, ' resumed Mrs Chick, 'you have hit the point at once. Our darling is altogether as stout aswe could wish. The fact is, that his mind is too much for him. His soulis a great deal too large for his frame. I am sure the way in whichthat dear child talks!'said Mrs Chick, shaking her head; 'no one wouldbelieve. His expressions, Lucretia, only yesterday upon the subject ofFunerals!

'I am afraid, ' said Mr Dombey, interrupting her testily, 'that some ofthose persons upstairs suggest improper subjects to the child. He wasspeaking to me last night about his--about his Bones, ' said Mr Dombey, laying an irritated stress upon the word. 'What on earth has anybody todo with the--with the--Bones of my son? He is not a living skeleton, Isuppose. 

'Very far from it, ' said Mrs Chick, with unspeakable expression. 

'I hope so, ' returned her brother. 'Funerals again! who talks to thechild of funerals? We are not undertakers, or mutes, or grave-diggers, Ibelieve. '

'Very far from it, ' interposed Mrs Chick, with the same profoundexpression as before. 

'Then who puts such things into his head?' said Mr Dombey. 'Really Iwas quite dismayed and shocked last night. Who puts such things into hishead, Louisa?'

'My dear Paul, ' said Mrs Chick, after a moment's silence, 'it is of nouse inquiring. I do not think, I will tell you candidly that Wickam is aperson of very cheerful spirit, or what one would call a--'

'A daughter of Momus, ' Miss Tox softly suggested. 

'Exactly so, ' said Mrs Chick; 'but she is exceedingly attentive anduseful, and not at all presumptuous; indeed I never saw a more biddablewoman. I would say that for her, if I was put upon my trial before aCourt of Justice. '

'Well! you are not put upon your trial before a Court of Justice, atpresent, Louisa, ' returned Mr Dombey, chafing, ' and therefore it don'tmatter. 

'My dear Paul, ' said Mrs Chick, in a warning voice, 'I must be spokento kindly, or there is an end of me, ' at the same time a premonitoryredness developed itself in Mrs Chick's eyelids which was an invariablesign of rain, unless the weather changed directly. 

'I was inquiring, Louisa, ' observed Mr Dombey, in an altered voice, andafter a decent interval, 'about Paul's health and actual state. 

'If the dear child, ' said Mrs Chick, in the tone of one who was summingup what had been previously quite agreed upon, instead of saying it allfor the first time, 'is a little weakened by that last attack, and isnot in quite such vigorous health as we could wish; and if he has sometemporary weakness in his system, and does occasionally seem about tolose, for the moment, the use of his--'

Mrs Chick was afraid to say limbs, after Mr Dombey's recent objection tobones, and therefore waited for a suggestion from Miss Tox, who, true toher office, hazarded 'members. '

'Members!' repeated Mr Dombey. 

'I think the medical gentleman mentioned legs this morning, my dearLouisa, did he not?' said Miss Tox. 

'Why, of course he did, my love, ' retorted Mrs Chick, mildlyreproachful. 'How can you ask me? You heard him. I say, if our dear Paulshould lose, for the moment, the use of his legs, these are casualtiescommon to many children at his time of life, and not to be preventedby any care or caution. The sooner you understand that, Paul, and admitthat, the better. If you have any doubt as to the amount of care, andcaution, and affection, and self-sacrifice, that has been bestowedupon little Paul, I should wish to refer the question to your medicalattendant, or to any of your dependants in this house. Call Towlinson, 'said Mrs Chick, 'I believe he has no prejudice in our favour; quite thecontrary. I should wish to hear what accusation Towlinson can make!'

'Surely you must know, Louisa, ' observed Mr Dombey, 'that I don'tquestion your natural devotion to, and regard for, the future head of myhouse. '

'I am glad to hear it, Paul, ' said Mrs Chick; 'but really you are veryodd, and sometimes talk very strangely, though without meaning it, Iknow. If your dear boy's soul is too much for his body, Paul, you shouldremember whose fault that is--who he takes after, I mean--and make thebest of it. He's as like his Papa as he can be. People have noticed itin the streets. The very beadle, I am informed, observed it, so long agoas at his christening. He's a very respectable man, with children of hisown. He ought to know. '

'Mr Pilkins saw Paul this morning, I believe?' said Mr Dombey. 

'Yes, he did, ' returned his sister. 'Miss Tox and myself were present. Miss Tox and myself are always present. We make a point of it. MrPilkins has seen him for some days past, and a very clever man I believehim to be. He says it is nothing to speak of; which I can confirm, if that is any consolation; but he recommended, to-day, sea-air. Verywisely, Paul, I feel convinced. '

'Sea-air, ' repeated Mr Dombey, looking at his sister. 

'There is nothing to be made uneasy by, in that, 'said Mrs Chick. 'MyGeorge and Frederick were both ordered sea-air, when they were about hisage; and I have been ordered it myself a great many times. I quiteagree with you, Paul, that perhaps topics may be incautiously mentionedupstairs before him, which it would be as well for his little mind notto expatiate upon; but I really don't see how that is to be helped, inthe case of a child of his quickness. If he were a common child, therewould be nothing in it. I must say I think, with Miss Tox, that a shortabsence from this house, the air of Brighton, and the bodily and mentaltraining of so judicious a person as Mrs Pipchin for instance--'

'Who is Mrs Pipchin, Louisa?' asked Mr Dombey; aghast at this familiarintroduction of a name he had never heard before. 

'Mrs Pipchin, my dear Paul, ' returned his sister, 'is an elderlylady--Miss Tox knows her whole history--who has for some time devotedall the energies of her mind, with the greatest success, to the studyand treatment of infancy, and who has been extremely well connected. Herhusband broke his heart in--how did you say her husband broke his heart, my dear? I forget the precise circumstances. 

'In pumping water out of the Peruvian Mines, ' replied Miss Tox. 

'Not being a Pumper himself, of course, ' said Mrs Chick, glancing at herbrother; and it really did seem necessary to offer the explanation, forMiss Tox had spoken of him as if he had died at the handle; 'but havinginvested money in the speculation, which failed. I believe that MrsPipchin's management of children is quite astonishing. I have heard itcommended in private circles ever since I was--dear me--how high!' MrsChick's eye wandered about the bookcase near the bust of Mr Pitt, whichwas about ten feet from the ground. 

'Perhaps I should say of Mrs Pipchin, my dear Sir, ' observed Miss Tox, with an ingenuous blush, 'having been so pointedly referred to, thatthe encomium which has been passed upon her by your sweet sister iswell merited. Many ladies and gentleman, now grown up to be interestingmembers of society, have been indebted to her care. The humbleindividual who addresses you was once under her charge. I believejuvenile nobility itself is no stranger to her establishment. '

'Do I understand that this respectable matron keeps an establishment, Miss Tox?' the Mr Dombey, condescendingly. 

'Why, I really don't know, ' rejoined that lady, 'whether I am justifiedin calling it so. It is not a Preparatory School by any means. ShouldI express my meaning, ' said Miss Tox, with peculiar sweetness, 'if Idesignated it an infantine Boarding-House of a very select description?'

'On an exceedingly limited and particular scale, ' suggested Mrs Chick, with a glance at her brother. 

'Oh! Exclusion itself!' said Miss Tox. 

There was something in this. Mrs Pipchin's husband having broken hisheart of the Peruvian mines was good. It had a rich sound. Besides, MrDombey was in a state almost amounting to consternation at the ideaof Paul remaining where he was one hour after his removal had beenrecommended by the medical practitioner. It was a stoppage and delayupon the road the child must traverse, slowly at the best, before thegoal was reached. Their recommendation of Mrs Pipchin had great weightwith him; for he knew that they were jealous of any interference withtheir charge, and he never for a moment took it into account that theymight be solicitous to divide a responsibility, of which he had, asshown just now, his own established views. Broke his heart of thePeruvian mines, mused Mr Dombey. Well! a very respectable way of doingIt. 

'Supposing we should decide, on to-morrow's inquiries, to send Paul downto Brighton to this lady, who would go with him?' inquired Mr Dombey, after some reflection. 

'I don't think you could send the child anywhere at present withoutFlorence, my dear Paul, ' returned his sister, hesitating. 'It's quite aninfatuation with him. He's very young, you know, and has his fancies. '

Mr Dombey turned his head away, and going slowly to the bookcase, andunlocking it, brought back a book to read. 

'Anybody else, Louisa?' he said, without looking up, and turning overthe leaves. 

'Wickam, of course. Wickam would be quite sufficient, I should say, 'returned his sister. 'Paul being in such hands as Mrs Pipchin's, youcould hardly send anybody who would be a further check upon her. Youwould go down yourself once a week at least, of course. '

'Of course, ' said Mr Dombey; and sat looking at one page for an hourafterwards, without reading one word. 

This celebrated Mrs Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured, ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that looked as if itmight have been hammered at on an anvil without sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the Peruvian mines had been thedeath of Mr Pipchin; but his relict still wore black bombazeen, of sucha lustreless, deep, dead, sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't lighther up after dark, and her presence was a quencher to any number ofcandles. She was generally spoken of as 'a great manager' of children;and the secret of her management was, to give them everything that theydidn't like, and nothing that they did--which was found to sweeten theirdispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that one wastempted to believe there had been some mistake in the application ofthe Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of gladness and milk ofhuman kindness, had been pumped out dry, instead of the mines. 

The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-streetat Brighton; where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, andsterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; wherethe small front-gardens had the unaccountable property of producingnothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails wereconstantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and otherpublic places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity ofcupping-glasses. In the winter time the air couldn't be got out of theCastle, and in the summer time it couldn't be got in. There was sucha continual reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a greatshell, which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their earsnight and day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, afresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which wasnever opened, Mrs Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots, whichimparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment. Howeverchoice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a kindpeculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs Pipchin. There werehalf-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of lath, likehairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad claws, like a greenlobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed of sticky and adhesiveleaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot hanging to the ceiling, whichappeared to have boiled over, and tickling people underneath withits long green ends, reminded them of spiders--in which Mrs Pipchin'sdwelling was uncommonly prolific, though perhaps it challengedcompetition still more proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs. 

Mrs Pipchin's scale of charges being high, however, to all who couldafford to pay, and Mrs Pipchin very seldom sweetening the equableacidity of her nature in favour of anybody, she was held to be an old'lady of remarkable firmness, who was quite scientific in her knowledgeof the childish character. ' On this reputation, and on the broken heartof Mr Pipchin, she had contrived, taking one year with another, to ekeout a tolerable sufficient living since her husband's demise. Withinthree days after Mrs Chick's first allusion to her, this excellent oldlady had the satisfaction of anticipating a handsome addition toher current receipts, from the pocket of Mr Dombey; and of receivingFlorence and her little brother Paul, as inmates of the Castle. 

Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, who had brought them down on the previous night(which they all passed at an Hotel), had just driven away from the door, on their journey home again; and Mrs Pipchin, with her back to the fire, stood, reviewing the new-comers, like an old soldier. Mrs Pipchin'smiddle-aged niece, her good-natured and devoted slave, but possessing agaunt and iron-bound aspect, and much afflicted with boils on her nose, was divesting Master Bitherstone of the clean collar he had worn onparade. Miss Pankey, the only other little boarder at present, had thatmoment been walked off to the Castle Dungeon (an empty apartment at theback, devoted to correctional purposes), for having sniffed thrice, inthe presence of visitors. 

'Well, Sir, ' said Mrs Pipchin to Paul, 'how do you think you shall likeme?'

'I don't think I shall like you at all, ' replied Paul. 'I want to goaway. This isn't my house. '

'No. It's mine, ' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 

'It's a very nasty one, ' said Paul. 

'There's a worse place in it than this though, ' said Mrs Pipchin, 'wherewe shut up our bad boys. '

'Has he ever been in it?' asked Paul: pointing out Master Bitherstone. 

Mrs Pipchin nodded assent; and Paul had enough to do, for the restof that day, in surveying Master Bitherstone from head to foot, and watching all the workings of his countenance, with the interestattaching to a boy of mysterious and terrible experiences. 

At one o'clock there was a dinner, chiefly of the farinaceous andvegetable kind, when Miss Pankey (a mild little blue-eyed morsel of achild, who was shampoo'd every morning, and seemed in danger of beingrubbed away, altogether) was led in from captivity by the ogressherself, and instructed that nobody who sniffed before visitors everwent to Heaven. When this great truth had been thoroughly impressed uponher, she was regaled with rice; and subsequently repeated the form ofgrace established in the Castle, in which there was a special clause, thanking Mrs Pipchin for a good dinner. Mrs Pipchin's niece, Berinthia, took cold pork. Mrs Pipchin, whose constitution required warmnourishment, made a special repast of mutton-chops, which were broughtin hot and hot, between two plates, and smelt very nice. 

As it rained after dinner, and they couldn't go out walking on thebeach, and Mrs Pipchin's constitution required rest after chops, theywent away with Berry (otherwise Berinthia) to the Dungeon; an empty roomlooking out upon a chalk wall and a water-butt, and made ghastly by aragged fireplace without any stove in it. Enlivened by company, however, this was the best place after all; for Berry played with them there, andseemed to enjoy a game at romps as much as they did; until Mrs Pipchinknocking angrily at the wall, like the Cock Lane Ghost' revived, theyleft off, and Berry told them stories in a whisper until twilight. 

For tea there was plenty of milk and water, and bread and butter, witha little black tea-pot for Mrs Pipchin and Berry, and buttered toastunlimited for Mrs Pipchin, which was brought in, hot and hot, like thechops. Though Mrs Pipchin got very greasy, outside, over this dish, itdidn't seem to lubricate her internally, at all; for she was as fierceas ever, and the hard grey eye knew no softening. 

After tea, Berry brought out a little work-box, with the Royal Pavilionon the lid, and fell to working busily; while Mrs Pipchin, having put onher spectacles and opened a great volume bound in green baize, began tonod. And whenever Mrs Pipchin caught herself falling forward into thefire, and woke up, she filliped Master Bitherstone on the nose fornodding too. 

At last it was the children's bedtime, and after prayers they went tobed. As little Miss Pankey was afraid of sleeping alone in the dark, Mrs Pipchin always made a point of driving her upstairs herself, like asheep; and it was cheerful to hear Miss Pankey moaning long afterwards, in the least eligible chamber, and Mrs Pipchin now and then going into shake her. At about half-past nine o'clock the odour of a warmsweet-bread (Mrs Pipchin's constitution wouldn't go to sleep withoutsweet-bread) diversified the prevailing fragrance of the house, whichMrs Wickam said was 'a smell of building;' and slumber fell upon theCastle shortly after. 

The breakfast next morning was like the tea over night, except that MrsPipchin took her roll instead of toast, and seemed a little more iratewhen it was over. Master Bitherstone read aloud to the rest a pedigreefrom Genesis judiciously selected by Mrs Pipchin), getting over thenames with the ease and clearness of a person tumbling up the treadmill. That done, Miss Pankey was borne away to be shampoo'd; and MasterBitherstone to have something else done to him with salt water, fromwhich he always returned very blue and dejected. Paul and Florence wentout in the meantime on the beach with Wickam--who was constantly intears--and at about noon Mrs Pipchin presided over some Early Readings. It being a part of Mrs Pipchin's system not to encourage a child's mindto develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it byforce like an oyster, the moral of these lessons was usually of aviolent and stunning character: the hero--a naughty boy--seldom, in themildest catastrophe, being finished off anything less than a lion, or abear. 

Such was life at Mrs Pipchin's. On Saturday Mr Dombey came down; andFlorence and Paul would go to his Hotel, and have tea They passed thewhole of Sunday with him, and generally rode out before dinner; and onthese occasions Mr Dombey seemed to grow, like Falstaff's assailants, and instead of being one man in buckram, to become a dozen. Sundayevening was the most melancholy evening in the week; for Mrs Pipchinalways made a point of being particularly cross on Sunday nights. MissPankey was generally brought back from an aunt's at Rottingdean, in deepdistress; and Master Bitherstone, whose relatives were all in India, andwho was required to sit, between the services, in an erect positionwith his head against the parlour wall, neither moving hand nor foot, suffered so acutely in his young spirits that he once asked Florence, on a Sunday night, if she could give him any idea of the way back toBengal. 

But it was generally said that Mrs Pipchin was a woman of system withchildren; and no doubt she was. Certainly the wild ones went home tameenough, after sojourning for a few months beneath her hospitable roof. It was generally said, too, that it was highly creditable of Mrs Pipchinto have devoted herself to this way of life, and to have made sucha sacrifice of her feelings, and such a resolute stand against hertroubles, when Mr Pipchin broke his heart in the Peruvian mines. 

At this exemplary old lady, Paul would sit staring in his littlearm-chair by the fire, for any length of time. He never seemed to knowwhat weariness was, when he was looking fixedly at Mrs Pipchin. He wasnot fond of her; he was not afraid of her; but in those old, old moodsof his, she seemed to have a grotesque attraction for him. There hewould sit, looking at her, and warming his hands, and looking at her, until he sometimes quite confounded Mrs Pipchin, Ogress as she was. Onceshe asked him, when they were alone, what he was thinking about. 

'You, ' said Paul, without the least reserve. 

'And what are you thinking about me?' asked Mrs Pipchin. 

'I'm thinking how old you must be, ' said Paul. 

'You mustn't say such things as that, young gentleman, ' returned thedame. 'That'll never do. '

'Why not?' asked Paul. 

'Because it's not polite, ' said Mrs Pipchin, snappishly. 

'Not polite?' said Paul. 

'No. '

'It's not polite, ' said Paul, innocently, 'to eat all the mutton chopsand toast, Wickam says. 

'Wickam, ' retorted Mrs Pipchin, colouring, 'is a wicked, impudent, bold-faced hussy. '

'What's that?' inquired Paul. 

'Never you mind, Sir, ' retorted Mrs Pipchin. 'Remember the story of thelittle boy that was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions. '

'If the bull was mad, ' said Paul, 'how did he know that the boy hadasked questions? Nobody can go and whisper secrets to a mad bull. Idon't believe that story. 

'You don't believe it, Sir?' repeated Mrs Pipchin, amazed. 

'No, ' said Paul. 

'Not if it should happen to have been a tame bull, you little Infidel?'said Mrs Pipchin. 

As Paul had not considered the subject in that light, and had foundedhis conclusions on the alleged lunacy of the bull, he allowed himselfto be put down for the present. But he sat turning it over in his mind, with such an obvious intention of fixing Mrs Pipchin presently, thateven that hardy old lady deemed it prudent to retreat until he shouldhave forgotten the subject. 

From that time, Mrs Pipchin appeared to have something of the same oddkind of attraction towards Paul, as Paul had towards her. She would makehim move his chair to her side of the fire, instead of sitting opposite;and there he would remain in a nook between Mrs Pipchin and the fender, with all the light of his little face absorbed into the black bombazeendrapery, studying every line and wrinkle of her countenance, and peeringat the hard grey eye, until Mrs Pipchin was sometimes fain to shut it, on pretence of dozing. Mrs Pipchin had an old black cat, who generallylay coiled upon the centre foot of the fender, purring egotistically, and winking at the fire until the contracted pupils of his eyes werelike two notes of admiration. The good old lady might have been--notto record it disrespectfully--a witch, and Paul and the cat her twofamiliars, as they all sat by the fire together. It would have beenquite in keeping with the appearance of the party if they had all sprungup the chimney in a high wind one night, and never been heard of anymore. 

This, however, never came to pass. The cat, and Paul, and Mrs Pipchin, were constantly to be found in their usual places after dark; and Paul, eschewing the companionship of Master Bitherstone, went on studying MrsPipchin, and the cat, and the fire, night after night, as if they were abook of necromancy, in three volumes. 

Mrs Wickam put her own construction on Paul's eccentricities; and beingconfirmed in her low spirits by a perplexed view of chimneys from theroom where she was accustomed to sit, and by the noise of the wind, andby the general dulness (gashliness was Mrs Wickam's strong expression)of her present life, deduced the most dismal reflections from theforegoing premises. It was a part of Mrs Pipchin's policy to preventher own 'young hussy'--that was Mrs Pipchin's generic name for femaleservant--from communicating with Mrs Wickam: to which end she devotedmuch of her time to concealing herself behind doors, and springingout on that devoted maiden, whenever she made an approach towards MrsWickam's apartment. But Berry was free to hold what converse she couldin that quarter, consistently with the discharge of the multifariousduties at which she toiled incessantly from morning to night; and toBerry Mrs Wickam unburdened her mind. 

'What a pretty fellow he is when he's asleep!' said Berry, stopping tolook at Paul in bed, one night when she took up Mrs Wickam's supper. 

'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam. 'He need be. '

'Why, he's not ugly when he's awake, ' observed Berry. 

'No, Ma'am. Oh, no. No more was my Uncle's Betsey Jane, ' said MrsWickam. 

Berry looked as if she would like to trace the connexion of ideasbetween Paul Dombey and Mrs Wickam's Uncle's Betsey Jane. 

'My Uncle's wife, ' Mrs Wickam went on to say, 'died just like his Mama. My Uncle's child took on just as Master Paul do. '

'Took on! You don't think he grieves for his Mama, sure?' argued Berry, sitting down on the side of the bed. 'He can't remember anything abouther, you know, Mrs Wickam. It's not possible. '

'No, Ma'am, ' said Mrs Wickam 'No more did my Uncle's child. But myUncle's child said very strange things sometimes, and looked verystrange, and went on very strange, and was very strange altogether. MyUncle's child made people's blood run cold, some times, she did!'

'How?' asked Berry. 

'I wouldn't have sat up all night alone with Betsey Jane!' said MrsWickam, 'not if you'd have put Wickam into business next morning forhimself. I couldn't have done it, Miss Berry. 

Miss Berry naturally asked why not? But Mrs Wickam, agreeably to theusage of some ladies in her condition, pursued her own branch of thesubject, without any compunction. 

'Betsey Jane, ' said Mrs Wickam, 'was as sweet a child as I could wishto see. I couldn't wish to see a sweeter. Everything that a child couldhave in the way of illnesses, Betsey Jane had come through. The crampswas as common to her, ' said Mrs Wickam, 'as biles is to yourself, MissBerry. ' Miss Berry involuntarily wrinkled her nose. 

'But Betsey Jane, ' said Mrs Wickam, lowering her voice, and lookinground the room, and towards Paul in bed, 'had been minded, in hercradle, by her departed mother. I couldn't say how, nor I couldn't saywhen, nor I couldn't say whether the dear child knew it or not, butBetsey Jane had been watched by her mother, Miss Berry!' and Mrs Wickam, with a very white face, and with watery eyes, and with a tremulousvoice, again looked fearfully round the room, and towards Paul in bed. 

'Nonsense!' cried Miss Berry--somewhat resentful of the idea. 

'You may say nonsense! I ain't offended, Miss. I hope you may be ableto think in your own conscience that it is nonsense; you'll findyour spirits all the better for it in this--you'll excuse my being sofree--in this burying-ground of a place; which is wearing of me down. Master Paul's a little restless in his sleep. Pat his back, if youplease. '

'Of course you think, ' said Berry, gently doing what she was asked, 'that he has been nursed by his mother, too?'

'Betsey Jane, ' returned Mrs Wickam in her most solemn tones, 'was putupon as that child has been put upon, and changed as that child haschanged. I have seen her sit, often and often, think, think, thinking, like him. I have seen her look, often and often, old, old, old, likehim. I have heard her, many a time, talk just like him. I consider thatchild and Betsey Jane on the same footing entirely, Miss Berry. '

'Is your Uncle's child alive?' asked Berry. 

'Yes, Miss, she is alive, ' returned Mrs Wickam with an air of triumph, for it was evident. Miss Berry expected the reverse; 'and is married toa silver-chaser. Oh yes, Miss, SHE is alive, ' said Mrs Wickam, layingstrong stress on her nominative case. 

It being clear that somebody was dead, Mrs Pipchin's niece inquired whoit was. 

'I wouldn't wish to make you uneasy, ' returned Mrs Wickam, pursuing hersupper. Don't ask me. '

This was the surest way of being asked again. Miss Berry repeated herquestion, therefore; and after some resistance, and reluctance, MrsWickam laid down her knife, and again glancing round the room and atPaul in bed, replied:

'She took fancies to people; whimsical fancies, some of them; others, affections that one might expect to see--only stronger than common. Theyall died. '

This was so very unexpected and awful to Mrs Pipchin's niece, thatshe sat upright on the hard edge of the bedstead, breathing short, andsurveying her informant with looks of undisguised alarm. 

Mrs Wickam shook her left fore-finger stealthily towards the bed whereFlorence lay; then turned it upside down, and made several emphaticpoints at the floor; immediately below which was the parlour in whichMrs Pipchin habitually consumed the toast. 

'Remember my words, Miss Berry, ' said Mrs Wickam, 'and be thankful thatMaster Paul is not too fond of you. I am, that he's not too fond ofme, I assure you; though there isn't much to live for--you'll excuse mybeing so free--in this jail of a house!'

Miss Berry's emotion might have led to her patting Paul too hard on theback, or might have produced a cessation of that soothing monotony, buthe turned in his bed just now, and, presently awaking, sat up in it withhis hair hot and wet from the effects of some childish dream, and askedfor Florence. 

She was out of her own bed at the first sound of his voice; and bendingover his pillow immediately, sang him to sleep again. Mrs Wickam shakingher head, and letting fall several tears, pointed out the little groupto Berry, and turned her eyes up to the ceiling. 

'He's asleep now, my dear, ' said Mrs Wickam after a pause, 'you'd bettergo to bed again. Don't you feel cold?'

'No, nurse, ' said Florence, laughing. 'Not at all. '

'Ah!' sighed Mrs Wickam, and she shook her head again, expressing to thewatchful Berry, 'we shall be cold enough, some of us, by and by!'

Berry took the frugal supper-tray, with which Mrs Wickam had by thistime done, and bade her good-night. 

'Good-night, Miss!' returned Wickam softly. 'Good-night! Your aunt is anold lady, Miss Berry, and it's what you must have looked for, often. '

This consolatory farewell, Mrs Wickam accompanied with a look ofheartfelt anguish; and being left alone with the two children again, andbecoming conscious that the wind was blowing mournfully, she indulged inmelancholy--that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries--until she wasoverpowered by slumber. 

Although the niece of Mrs Pipchin did not expect to find that exemplarydragon prostrate on the hearth-rug when she went downstairs, she wasrelieved to find her unusually fractious and severe, and with everypresent appearance of intending to live a long time to be a comfort toall who knew her. Nor had she any symptoms of declining, in the courseof the ensuing week, when the constitutional viands still continued todisappear in regular succession, notwithstanding that Paul studied heras attentively as ever, and occupied his usual seat between the blackskirts and the fender, with unwavering constancy. 

But as Paul himself was no stronger at the expiration of that time thanhe had been on his first arrival, though he looked much healthier in theface, a little carriage was got for him, in which he could lie at hisease, with an alphabet and other elementary works of reference, and bewheeled down to the sea-side. Consistent in his odd tastes, the childset aside a ruddy-faced lad who was proposed as the drawer of thiscarriage, and selected, instead, his grandfather--a weazen, old, crab-faced man, in a suit of battered oilskin, who had got tough andstringy from long pickling in salt water, and who smelt like a weedysea-beach when the tide is out. 

With this notable attendant to pull him along, and Florence alwayswalking by his side, and the despondent Wickam bringing up the rear, hewent down to the margin of the ocean every day; and there he would sitor lie in his carriage for hours together: never so distressed as by thecompany of children--Florence alone excepted, always. 

'Go away, if you please, ' he would say to any child who came to bear himcompany. Thank you, but I don't want you. '

Some small voice, near his ear, would ask him how he was, perhaps. 

'I am very well, I thank you, ' he would answer. 'But you had better goand play, if you please. '

Then he would turn his head, and watch the child away, and say toFlorence, 'We don't want any others, do we? Kiss me, Floy. '

He had even a dislike, at such times, to the company of Wickam, and waswell pleased when she strolled away, as she generally did, to pick upshells and acquaintances. His favourite spot was quite a lonely one, faraway from most loungers; and with Florence sitting by his side at work, or reading to him, or talking to him, and the wind blowing on his face, and the water coming up among the wheels of his bed, he wanted nothingmore. 

'Floy, ' he said one day, 'where's India, where that boy's friends live?'

'Oh, it's a long, long distance off, ' said Florence, raising her eyesfrom her work. 

'Weeks off?' asked Paul. 

'Yes dear. Many weeks' journey, night and day. '

'If you were in India, Floy, ' said Paul, after being silent for aminute, 'I should--what is it that Mama did? I forget. '

'Loved me!' answered Florence. 

'No, no. Don't I love you now, Floy? What is it?--Died. In you were inIndia, I should die, Floy. '

She hurriedly put her work aside, and laid her head down on his pillow, caressing him. And so would she, she said, if he were there. He would bebetter soon. 

'Oh! I am a great deal better now!' he answered. 'I don't mean that. Imean that I should die of being so sorry and so lonely, Floy!'

Another time, in the same place, he fell asleep, and slept quietly for along time. Awaking suddenly, he listened, started up, and sat listening. 

Florence asked him what he thought he heard. 

'I want to know what it says, ' he answered, looking steadily in herface. 'The sea' Floy, what is it that it keeps on saying?'

She told him that it was only the noise of the rolling waves. 

'Yes, yes, ' he said. 'But I know that they are always saying something. Always the same thing. What place is over there?' He rose up, lookingeagerly at the horizon. 

She told him that there was another country opposite, but he said hedidn't mean that: he meant further away--farther away!

Very often afterwards, in the midst of their talk, he would break off, to try to understand what it was that the waves were always saying; andwould rise up in his couch to look towards that invisible region, faraway. 

CHAPTER 9. In which the Wooden Midshipman gets into Trouble

That spice of romance and love of the marvellous, of which there was apretty strong infusion in the nature of young Walter Gay, and which theguardianship of his Uncle, old Solomon Gills, had not very much weakenedby the waters of stern practical experience, was the occasion of hisattaching an uncommon and delightful interest to the adventure ofFlorence with Good Mrs Brown. He pampered and cherished it in hismemory, especially that part of it with which he had been associated:until it became the spoiled child of his fancy, and took its own way, and did what it liked with it. 

The recollection of those incidents, and his own share in them, may havebeen made the more captivating, perhaps, by the weekly dreamings ofold Sol and Captain Cuttle on Sundays. Hardly a Sunday passed, withoutmysterious references being made by one or other of those worthy chumsto Richard Whittington; and the latter gentleman had even gone so far asto purchase a ballad of considerable antiquity, that had long flutteredamong many others, chiefly expressive of maritime sentiments, on a deadwall in the Commercial Road: which poetical performance set forth thecourtship and nuptials of a promising young coal-whipper with a certain'lovely Peg, ' the accomplished daughter of the master and part-owner ofa Newcastle collier. In this stirring legend, Captain Cuttle descried aprofound metaphysical bearing on the case of Walter and Florence; and itexcited him so much, that on very festive occasions, as birthdays and afew other non-Dominical holidays, he would roar through the whole songin the little back parlour; making an amazing shake on the word Pe-e-eg, with which every verse concluded, in compliment to the heroine of thepiece. 

But a frank, free-spirited, open-hearted boy, is not much given toanalysing the nature of his own feelings, however strong their hold uponhim: and Walter would have found it difficult to decide this point. Hehad a great affection for the wharf where he had encountered Florence, and for the streets (albeit not enchanting in themselves) by which theyhad come home. The shoes that had so often tumbled off by the way, hepreserved in his own room; and, sitting in the little back parlour ofan evening, he had drawn a whole gallery of fancy portraits of Good MrsBrown. It may be that he became a little smarter in his dress after thatmemorable occasion; and he certainly liked in his leisure time to walktowards that quarter of the town where Mr Dombey's house was situated, on the vague chance of passing little Florence in the street. But thesentiment of all this was as boyish and innocent as could be. Florencewas very pretty, and it is pleasant to admire a pretty face. Florencewas defenceless and weak, and it was a proud thought that he had beenable to render her any protection and assistance. Florence was the mostgrateful little creature in the world, and it was delightful to see herbright gratitude beaming in her face. Florence was neglected and coldlylooked upon, and his breast was full of youthful interest for theslighted child in her dull, stately home. 

Thus it came about that, perhaps some half-a-dozen times in the courseof the year, Walter pulled off his hat to Florence in the street, and Florence would stop to shake hands. Mrs Wickam (who, with acharacteristic alteration of his name, invariably spoke of him as'Young Graves') was so well used to this, knowing the story of theiracquaintance, that she took no heed of it at all. Miss Nipper, on theother hand, rather looked out for these occasions: her sensitive youngheart being secretly propitiated by Walter's good looks, and incliningto the belief that its sentiments were responded to. 

In this way, Walter, so far from forgetting or losing sight of hisacquaintance with Florence, only remembered it better and better. As toits adventurous beginning, and all those little circumstances which gaveit a distinctive character and relish, he took them into account, moreas a pleasant story very agreeable to his imagination, and not to bedismissed from it, than as a part of any matter of fact with which hewas concerned. They set off Florence very much, to his fancy; but nothimself. Sometimes he thought (and then he walked very fast) what agrand thing it would have been for him to have been going to sea on theday after that first meeting, and to have gone, and to have done wondersthere, and to have stopped away a long time, and to have come back anAdmiral of all the colours of the dolphin, or at least a Post-Captainwith epaulettes of insupportable brightness, and have married Florence(then a beautiful young woman) in spite of Mr Dombey's teeth, cravat, and watch-chain, and borne her away to the blue shores of somewhere orother, triumphantly. But these flights of fancy seldom burnished thebrass plate of Dombey and Son's Offices into a tablet of golden hope, orshed a brilliant lustre on their dirty skylights; and when the Captainand Uncle Sol talked about Richard Whittington and masters' daughters, Walter felt that he understood his true position at Dombey and Son's, much better than they did. 

So it was that he went on doing what he had to do from day to day, ina cheerful, pains-taking, merry spirit; and saw through the sanguinecomplexion of Uncle Sol and Captain Cuttle; and yet entertained athousand indistinct and visionary fancies of his own, to which theirswere work-a-day probabilities. Such was his condition at the Pipchinperiod, when he looked a little older than of yore, but not much; andwas the same light-footed, light-hearted, light-headed lad, as whenhe charged into the parlour at the head of Uncle Sol and the imaginaryboarders, and lighted him to bring up the Madeira. 

'Uncle Sol, ' said Walter, 'I don't think you're well. You haven't eatenany breakfast. I shall bring a doctor to you, if you go on like this. '

'He can't give me what I want, my boy, ' said Uncle Sol. 'At least he isin good practice if he can--and then he wouldn't. '

'What is it, Uncle? Customers?'

'Ay, ' returned Solomon, with a sigh. 'Customers would do. '

'Confound it, Uncle!' said Walter, putting down his breakfast cup witha clatter, and striking his hand on the table: 'when I see the peoplegoing up and down the street in shoals all day, and passing andre-passing the shop every minute, by scores, I feel half tempted to rushout, collar somebody, bring him in, and make him buy fifty pounds' worthof instruments for ready money. What are you looking in at the doorfor?--' continued Walter, apostrophizing an old gentleman with apowdered head (inaudibly to him of course), who was staring at a ship'stelescope with all his might and main. 'That's no use. I could do that. Come in and buy it!'

The old gentleman, however, having satiated his curiosity, walked calmlyaway. 

'There he goes!' said Walter. 'That's the way with 'em all. But, Uncle--I say, Uncle Sol'--for the old man was meditating and had notresponded to his first appeal. 'Don't be cast down. Don't be out ofspirits, Uncle. When orders do come, they'll come in such a crowd, youwon't be able to execute 'em. '

'I shall be past executing 'em, whenever they come, my boy, ' returnedSolomon Gills. 'They'll never come to this shop again, till I am out oft. '

'I say, Uncle! You musn't really, you know!' urged Walter. 'Don't!'

Old Sol endeavoured to assume a cheery look, and smiled across thelittle table at him as pleasantly as he could. 

'There's nothing more than usual the matter; is there, Uncle?' saidWalter, leaning his elbows on the tea tray, and bending over, to speakthe more confidentially and kindly. 'Be open with me, Uncle, if thereis, and tell me all about it. '

'No, no, no, ' returned Old Sol. 'More than usual? No, no. What shouldthere be the matter more than usual?'

Walter answered with an incredulous shake of his head. 'That's what Iwant to know, ' he said, 'and you ask me! I'll tell you what, Uncle, whenI see you like this, I am quite sorry that I live with you. '

Old Sol opened his eyes involuntarily. 

'Yes. Though nobody ever was happier than I am and always have been withyou, I am quite sorry that I live with you, when I see you with anythingin your mind. '

'I am a little dull at such times, I know, ' observed Solomon, meeklyrubbing his hands. 

'What I mean, Uncle Sol, ' pursued Walter, bending over a little moreto pat him on the shoulder, 'is, that then I feel you ought to have, sitting here and pouring out the tea instead of me, a nice littledumpling of a wife, you know, --a comfortable, capital, cosy old lady, who was just a match for you, and knew how to manage you, and keep youin good heart. Here am I, as loving a nephew as ever was (I am sure Iought to be!) but I am only a nephew, and I can't be such a companionto you when you're low and out of sorts as she would have made herself, years ago, though I'm sure I'd give any money if I could cheer you up. And so I say, when I see you with anything on your mind, that I feelquite sorry you haven't got somebody better about you than a blunderingyoung rough-and-tough boy like me, who has got the will to console you, Uncle, but hasn't got the way--hasn't got the way, ' repeated Walter, reaching over further yet, to shake his Uncle by the hand. 

'Wally, my dear boy, ' said Solomon, 'if the cosy little old lady hadtaken her place in this parlour five and forty years ago, I never couldhave been fonder of her than I am of you. '

'I know that, Uncle Sol, ' returned Walter. 'Lord bless you, I know that. But you wouldn't have had the whole weight of any uncomfortable secretsif she had been with you, because she would have known how to relieveyou of 'em, and I don't. '

'Yes, yes, you do, ' returned the Instrument-maker. 

'Well then, what's the matter, Uncle Sol?' said Walter, coaxingly. 'Come! What's the matter?'

Solomon Gills persisted that there was nothing the matter; andmaintained it so resolutely, that his nephew had no resource but to makea very indifferent imitation of believing him. 

'All I can say is, Uncle Sol, that if there is--'

'But there isn't, ' said Solomon. 

'Very well, ' said Walter. 'Then I've no more to say; and that's lucky, for my time's up for going to business. I shall look in by-and-by whenI'm out, to see how you get on, Uncle. And mind, Uncle! I'll neverbelieve you again, and never tell you anything more about Mr Carker theJunior, if I find out that you have been deceiving me!'

Solomon Gills laughingly defied him to find out anything of the kind;and Walter, revolving in his thoughts all sorts of impracticable waysof making fortunes and placing the wooden Midshipman in a position ofindependence, betook himself to the offices of Dombey and Son with aheavier countenance than he usually carried there. 

There lived in those days, round the corner--in Bishopsgate StreetWithout--one Brogley, sworn broker and appraiser, who kept a shop whereevery description of second-hand furniture was exhibited in the mostuncomfortable aspect, and under circumstances and in combinations themost completely foreign to its purpose. Dozens of chairs hooked on towashing-stands, which with difficulty poised themselves on the shouldersof sideboards, which in their turn stood upon the wrong side ofdining-tables, gymnastic with their legs upward on the tops of otherdining-tables, were among its most reasonable arrangements. A banquetarray of dish-covers, wine-glasses, and decanters was generally tobe seen, spread forth upon the bosom of a four-post bedstead, for theentertainment of such genial company as half-a-dozen pokers, and a halllamp. A set of window curtains with no windows belonging to them, wouldbe seen gracefully draping a barricade of chests of drawers, loaded withlittle jars from chemists' shops; while a homeless hearthrug severedfrom its natural companion the fireside, braved the shrewd east windin its adversity, and trembled in melancholy accord with the shrillcomplainings of a cabinet piano, wasting away, a string a day, andfaintly resounding to the noises of the street in its jangling anddistracted brain. Of motionless clocks that never stirred a finger, andseemed as incapable of being successfully wound up, as the pecuniaryaffairs of their former owners, there was always great choice in MrBrogley's shop; and various looking-glasses, accidentally placed atcompound interest of reflection and refraction, presented to the eye aneternal perspective of bankruptcy and ruin. 

Mr Brogley himself was a moist-eyed, pink-complexioned, crisp-hairedman, of a bulky figure and an easy temper--for that class of CaiusMarius who sits upon the ruins of other people's Carthages, can keep uphis spirits well enough. He had looked in at Solomon's shop sometimes, to ask a question about articles in Solomon's way of business; andWalter knew him sufficiently to give him good day when they met in thestreet. But as that was the extent of the broker's acquaintance withSolomon Gills also, Walter was not a little surprised when he came backin the course of the forenoon, agreeably to his promise, to find MrBrogley sitting in the back parlour with his hands in his pockets, andhis hat hanging up behind the door. 

'Well, Uncle Sol!' said Walter. The old man was sitting ruefully on theopposite side of the table, with his spectacles over his eyes, for awonder, instead of on his forehead. 'How are you now?'

Solomon shook his head, and waved one hand towards the broker, asintroducing him. 

'Is there anything the matter?' asked Walter, with a catching in hisbreath. 

'No, no. There's nothing the matter, said Mr Brogley. 'Don't let it putyou out of the way. ' Walter looked from the broker to his Uncle in muteamazement. 'The fact is, ' said Mr Brogley, 'there's a little paymenton a bond debt--three hundred and seventy odd, overdue: and I'm inpossession. '

'In possession!' cried Walter, looking round at the shop. 

'Ah!' said Mr Brogley, in confidential assent, and nodding his headas if he would urge the advisability of their all being comfortabletogether. 'It's an execution. That's what it is. Don't let it put youout of the way. I come myself, because of keeping it quiet and sociable. You know me. It's quite private. '

'Uncle Sol!' faltered Walter. 

'Wally, my boy, ' returned his uncle. 'It's the first time. Such acalamity never happened to me before. I'm an old man to begin. ' Pushingup his spectacles again (for they were useless any longer to conceal hisemotion), he covered his face with his hand, and sobbed aloud, and histears fell down upon his coffee-coloured waistcoat. 

'Uncle Sol! Pray! oh don't!' exclaimed Walter, who really felt a thrillof terror in seeing the old man weep. 'For God's sake don't do that. MrBrogley, what shall I do?'

'I should recommend you looking up a friend or so, ' said Mr Brogley, 'and talking it over. '

'To be sure!' cried Walter, catching at anything. 'Certainly! Thankee. Captain Cuttle's the man, Uncle. Wait till I run to Captain Cuttle. Keep your eye upon my Uncle, will you, Mr Brogley, and make him ascomfortable as you can while I am gone? Don't despair, Uncle Sol. Tryand keep a good heart, there's a dear fellow!'

Saying this with great fervour, and disregarding the old man's brokenremonstrances, Walter dashed out of the shop again as hard as he couldgo; and, having hurried round to the office to excuse himself on theplea of his Uncle's sudden illness, set off, full speed, for CaptainCuttle's residence. 

Everything seemed altered as he ran along the streets. There were theusual entanglement and noise of carts, drays, omnibuses, waggons, and foot passengers, but the misfortune that had fallen on the woodenMidshipman made it strange and new. Houses and shops were different fromwhat they used to be, and bore Mr Brogley's warrant on their frontsin large characters. The broker seemed to have got hold of the verychurches; for their spires rose into the sky with an unwonted air. Eventhe sky itself was changed, and had an execution in it plainly. 

Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the IndiaDocks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then tolet some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street likea stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on theapproach to Captain Cuttle's lodgings, was curious. It began with theerection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then cameslop-sellers' shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou'wester hats, and canvaspantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hangingup outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, wheresledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows ofhouses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves fromamong the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to bedescried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was perfumedwith chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy andunsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle's lodgings--at once a first floor and a top storey, inBrig Place--were close before you. 

The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as wellas hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imaginationto separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantlypoked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like asail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was asfully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain hadbeen a bird and those had been his feathers. 

'Wal'r, my lad!'said Captain Cuttle. 'Stand by and knock again. Hard!It's washing day. '

Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker. 

'Hard it is!' said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, asif he expected a squall. 

Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up toher shoulders, and her arms frothy with soap-suds and smoking with hotwater, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she lookedat Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with hereyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it. 

'Captain Cuttle's at home, I know, ' said Walter with a conciliatorysmile. 

'Is he?' replied the widow lady. 'In-deed!'

'He has just been speaking to me, ' said Walter, in breathlessexplanation. 

'Has he?' replied the widow lady. 'Then p'raps you'll give him MrsMacStinger's respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself andhis lodgings by talking out of the winder she'll thank him to come downand open the door too. ' Mrs MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for anyobservations that might be offered from the first floor. 

'I'll mention it, ' said Walter, 'if you'll have the goodness to let mein, Ma'am. '

For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across thedoorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in theirmoments of recreation from tumbling down the steps. 

'A boy that can knock my door down, ' said Mrs MacStinger, contemptuously, 'can get over that, I should hope!' But Walter, takingthis as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs MacStingerimmediately demanded whether an Englishwoman's house was her castleor not; and whether she was to be broke in upon by 'raff. ' On thesesubjects her thirst for information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through anartificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisterswith a clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle's room, and foundthat gentleman in ambush behind the door. 

'Never owed her a penny, Wal'r, ' said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice, and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. 'Done hera world of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!'

'I should go away, Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter. 

'Dursn't do it, Wal'r, ' returned the Captain. 'She'd find me out, wherever I went. Sit down. How's Gills?'

The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, andsome smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out ofa little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed hishook at dinner-time, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes forWalter. His rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated withtobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being stowed away, as ifthere were an earthquake regularly every half-hour. 

'How's Gills?' inquired the Captain. 

Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost hisspirits--or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had givenhim--looked at his questioner for a moment, said 'Oh, Captain Cuttle!'and burst into tears. 

No words can describe the Captain's consternation at this sight MrsMacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and thefork--and would have dropped the knife too if he could--and sat gazingat the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had openedin the City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-colouredsuit, buttons, chronometer, spectacles, and all. 

But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle, after a moment's reflection, started up into full activity. He emptiedout of a little tin canister on the top shelf of the cupboard, his wholestock of ready money (amounting to thirteen pounds and half-a-crown), which he transferred to one of the pockets of his square blue coat;further enriched that repository with the contents of his plate chest, consisting of two withered atomies of tea-spoons, and an obsolete pairof knock-knee'd sugar-tongs; pulled up his immense double-cased silverwatch from the depths in which it reposed, to assure himself that thatvaluable was sound and whole; re-attached the hook to his right wrist;and seizing the stick covered over with knobs, bade Walter come along. 

Remembering, however, in the midst of his virtuous excitement, that MrsMacStinger might be lying in wait below, Captain Cuttle hesitated atlast, not without glancing at the window, as if he had some thoughtsof escaping by that unusual means of egress, rather than encounter histerrible enemy. He decided, however, in favour of stratagem. 

'Wal'r, ' said the Captain, with a timid wink, 'go afore, my lad. Singout, "good-bye, Captain Cuttle, " when you're in the passage, and shutthe door. Then wait at the corner of the street 'till you see me. 

These directions were not issued without a previous knowledge of theenemy's tactics, for when Walter got downstairs, Mrs MacStinger glidedout of the little back kitchen, like an avenging spirit. But not glidingout upon the Captain, as she had expected, she merely made a furtherallusion to the knocker, and glided in again. 

Some five minutes elapsed before Captain Cuttle could summon courageto attempt his escape; for Walter waited so long at the street corner, looking back at the house, before there were any symptoms of thehard glazed hat. At length the Captain burst out of the door with thesuddenness of an explosion, and coming towards him at a great pace, andnever once looking over his shoulder, pretended, as soon as they werewell out of the street, to whistle a tune. 

'Uncle much hove down, Wal'r?' inquired the Captain, as they werewalking along. 

'I am afraid so. If you had seen him this morning, you would never haveforgotten it. '

'Walk fast, Wal'r, my lad, ' returned the Captain, mending his pace; 'andwalk the same all the days of your life. Overhaul the catechism for thatadvice, and keep it!'

The Captain was too busy with his own thoughts of Solomon Gills, mingledperhaps with some reflections on his late escape from Mrs MacStinger, tooffer any further quotations on the way for Walter's moral improvementThey interchanged no other word until they arrived at old Sol's door, where the unfortunate wooden Midshipman, with his instrument at his eye, seemed to be surveying the whole horizon in search of some friend tohelp him out of his difficulty. 

'Gills!' said the Captain, hurrying into the back parlour, and takinghim by the hand quite tenderly. 'Lay your head well to the wind, andwe'll fight through it. All you've got to do, ' said the Captain, withthe solemnity of a man who was delivering himself of one of the mostprecious practical tenets ever discovered by human wisdom, 'is to layyour head well to the wind, and we'll fight through it!'

Old Sol returned the pressure of his hand, and thanked him. 

Captain Cuttle, then, with a gravity suitable to the nature ofthe occasion, put down upon the table the two tea-spoons and thesugar-tongs, the silver watch, and the ready money; and asked MrBrogley, the broker, what the damage was. 

'Come! What do you make of it?' said Captain Cuttle. 

'Why, Lord help you!' returned the broker; 'you don't suppose thatproperty's of any use, do you?'

'Why not?' inquired the Captain. 

'Why? The amount's three hundred and seventy, odd, ' replied the broker. 

'Never mind, ' returned the Captain, though he was evidently dismayed bythe figures: 'all's fish that comes to your net, I suppose?'

'Certainly, ' said Mr Brogley. 'But sprats ain't whales, you know. '

The philosophy of this observation seemed to strike the Captain. Heruminated for a minute; eyeing the broker, meanwhile, as a deep genius;and then called the Instrument-maker aside. 

'Gills, ' said Captain Cuttle, 'what's the bearings of this business?Who's the creditor?'

'Hush!' returned the old man. 'Come away. Don't speak before Wally. It'sa matter of security for Wally's father--an old bond. I've paid a gooddeal of it, Ned, but the times are so bad with me that I can't do morejust now. I've foreseen it, but I couldn't help it. Not a word beforeWally, for all the world. '

'You've got some money, haven't you?' whispered the Captain. 

'Yes, yes--oh yes--I've got some, ' returned old Sol, first putting hishands into his empty pockets, and then squeezing his Welsh wig betweenthem, as if he thought he might wring some gold out of it; 'but I--thelittle I have got, isn't convertible, Ned; it can't be got at. I havebeen trying to do something with it for Wally, and I'm old fashioned, and behind the time. It's here and there, and--and, in short, it's asgood as nowhere, ' said the old man, looking in bewilderment about him. 

He had so much the air of a half-witted person who had been hiding hismoney in a variety of places, and had forgotten where, that the Captainfollowed his eyes, not without a faint hope that he might remember somefew hundred pounds concealed up the chimney, or down in the cellar. ButSolomon Gills knew better than that. 

'I'm behind the time altogether, my dear Ned, ' said Sol, in resigneddespair, 'a long way. It's no use my lagging on so far behind it. Thestock had better be sold--it's worth more than this debt--and I hadbetter go and die somewhere, on the balance. I haven't any energy left. I don't understand things. This had better be the end of it. Let 'emsell the stock and take him down, ' said the old man, pointing feebly tothe wooden Midshipman, 'and let us both be broken up together. '

'And what d'ye mean to do with Wal'r?'said the Captain. 'There, there!Sit ye down, Gills, sit ye down, and let me think o' this. If I warn't aman on a small annuity, that was large enough till to-day, I hadn't needto think of it. But you only lay your head well to the wind, ' said theCaptain, again administering that unanswerable piece of consolation, 'and you're all right!'

Old Sol thanked him from his heart, and went and laid it against theback parlour fire-place instead. 

Captain Cuttle walked up and down the shop for some time, cogitatingprofoundly, and bringing his bushy black eyebrows to bear so heavily onhis nose, like clouds setting on a mountain, that Walter was afraid tooffer any interruption to the current of his reflections. Mr Brogley, who was averse to being any constraint upon the party, and who hadan ingenious cast of mind, went, softly whistling, among the stock;rattling weather-glasses, shaking compasses as if they were physic, catching up keys with loadstones, looking through telescopes, endeavouring to make himself acquainted with the use of the globes, setting parallel rulers astride on to his nose, and amusing himself withother philosophical transactions. 

'Wal'r!' said the Captain at last. 'I've got it. '

'Have you, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walter, with great animation. 

'Come this way, my lad, ' said the Captain. 'The stock's the security. I'm another. Your governor's the man to advance money. '

'Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter. 

The Captain nodded gravely. 'Look at him, ' he said. 'Look at Gills. If they was to sell off these things now, he'd die of it. You know hewould. We mustn't leave a stone unturned--and there's a stone for you. '

'A stone!--Mr Dombey!' faltered Walter. 

'You run round to the office, first of all, and see if he's there, ' saidCaptain Cuttle, clapping him on the back. 'Quick!'

Walter felt he must not dispute the command--a glance at his Uncle wouldhave determined him if he had felt otherwise--and disappeared to executeit. He soon returned, out of breath, to say that Mr Dombey was notthere. It was Saturday, and he had gone to Brighton. 

'I tell you what, Wal'r!' said the Captain, who seemed to have preparedhimself for this contingency in his absence. 'We'll go to Brighton. I'll back you, my boy. I'll back you, Wal'r. We'll go to Brighton by theafternoon's coach. '

If the application must be made to Mr Dombey at all, which was awfulto think of, Walter felt that he would rather prefer it alone andunassisted, than backed by the personal influence of Captain Cuttle, towhich he hardly thought Mr Dombey would attach much weight. But as theCaptain appeared to be of quite another opinion, and was bent upon it, and as his friendship was too zealous and serious to be trifled withby one so much younger than himself, he forbore to hint the leastobjection. Cuttle, therefore, taking a hurried leave of Solomon Gills, and returning the ready money, the teaspoons, the sugar-tongs, andthe silver watch, to his pocket--with a view, as Walter thought, withhorror, to making a gorgeous impression on Mr Dombey--bore him off tothe coach-office, with--out a minute's delay, and repeatedly assuredhim, on the road, that he would stick by him to the last. 

CHAPTER 10. Containing the Sequel of the Midshipman's Disaster

Major Bagstock, after long and frequent observation of Paul, acrossPrincess's Place, through his double-barrelled opera-glass; and afterreceiving many minute reports, daily, weekly, and monthly, on thatsubject, from the native who kept himself in constant communication withMiss Tox's maid for that purpose; came to the conclusion that Dombey, Sir, was a man to be known, and that J. B. Was the boy to make hisacquaintance. 

Miss Tox, however, maintaining her reserved behaviour, and frigidlydeclining to understand the Major whenever he called (which he oftendid) on any little fishing excursion connected with this project, theMajor, in spite of his constitutional toughness and slyness, was fainto leave the accomplishment of his desire in some measure to chance, 'which, ' as he was used to observe with chuckles at his club, 'has beenfifty to one in favour of Joey B. , Sir, ever since his elder brotherdied of Yellow Jack in the West Indies. '

It was some time coming to his aid in the present instance, but itbefriended him at last. When the dark servant, with full particulars, reported Miss Tox absent on Brighton service, the Major was suddenlytouched with affectionate reminiscences of his friend Bill Bitherstoneof Bengal, who had written to ask him, if he ever went that way, tobestow a call upon his only son. But when the same dark servant reportedPaul at Mrs Pipchin's, and the Major, referring to the letter favouredby Master Bitherstone on his arrival in England--to which he hadnever had the least idea of paying any attention--saw the openingthat presented itself, he was made so rabid by the gout, with whichhe happened to be then laid up, that he threw a footstool at the darkservant in return for his intelligence, and swore he would be the deathof the rascal before he had done with him: which the dark servant wasmore than half disposed to believe. 

At length the Major being released from his fit, went one Saturdaygrowling down to Brighton, with the native behind him; apostrophizingMiss Tox all the way, and gloating over the prospect of carrying bystorm the distinguished friend to whom she attached so much mystery, andfor whom she had deserted him. 

'Would you, Ma'am, would you!' said the Major, straining withvindictiveness, and swelling every already swollen vein in his head. 'Would you give Joey B. The go-by, Ma'am? Not yet, Ma'am, not yet!Damme, not yet, Sir. Joe is awake, Ma'am. Bagstock is alive, Sir. J. B. Knows a move or two, Ma'am. Josh has his weather-eye open, Sir. You'llfind him tough, Ma'am. Tough, Sir, tough is Joseph. Tough, and de-vilishsly!'

And very tough indeed Master Bitherstone found him, when he took thatyoung gentleman out for a walk. But the Major, with his complexionlike a Stilton cheese, and his eyes like a prawn's, went roving about, perfectly indifferent to Master Bitherstone's amusement, and draggingMaster Bitherstone along, while he looked about him high and low, for MrDombey and his children. 

In good time the Major, previously instructed by Mrs Pipchin, spiedout Paul and Florence, and bore down upon them; there being a statelygentleman (Mr Dombey, doubtless) in their company. Charging with MasterBitherstone into the very heart of the little squadron, it fell out, ofcourse, that Master Bitherstone spoke to his fellow-sufferers. Upon thatthe Major stopped to notice and admire them; remembered with amazementthat he had seen and spoken to them at his friend Miss Tox's inPrincess's Place; opined that Paul was a devilish fine fellow, and hisown little friend; inquired if he remembered Joey B. The Major; andfinally, with a sudden recollection of the conventionalities of life, turned and apologised to Mr Dombey. 

'But my little friend here, Sir, ' said the Major, 'makes a boy of meagain: An old soldier, Sir--Major Bagstock, at your service--is notashamed to confess it. ' Here the Major lifted his hat. 'Damme, Sir, 'cried the Major with sudden warmth, 'I envy you. ' Then he recollectedhimself, and added, 'Excuse my freedom. '

Mr Dombey begged he wouldn't mention it. 

'An old campaigner, Sir, ' said the Major, 'a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided old dog of a Major, Sir, was not afraid of beingcondemned for his whim by a man like Mr Dombey. I have the honour ofaddressing Mr Dombey, I believe?'

'I am the present unworthy representative of that name, Major, ' returnedMr Dombey. 

'By G-, Sir!' said the Major, 'it's a great name. It's a name, Sir, 'said the Major firmly, as if he defied Mr Dombey to contradict him, andwould feel it his painful duty to bully him if he did, 'that is knownand honoured in the British possessions abroad. It is a name, Sir, that a man is proud to recognise. There is nothing adulatory in JosephBagstock, Sir. His Royal Highness the Duke of York observed on more thanone occasion, "there is no adulation in Joey. He is a plain old soldieris Joe. He is tough to a fault is Joseph:" but it's a great name, Sir. By the Lord, it's a great name!' said the Major, solemnly. 

'You are good enough to rate it higher than it deserves, perhaps, Major, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

'No, Sir, ' said the Major, in a severe tone. No, Mr Dombey, let usunderstand each other. That is not the Bagstock vein, Sir. You don'tknow Joseph B. He is a blunt old blade is Josh. No flattery in him, Sir. Nothing like it. '

Mr Dombey inclined his head, and said he believed him to be in earnest, and that his high opinion was gratifying. 

'My little friend here, Sir, ' croaked the Major, looking as amiablyas he could, on Paul, 'will certify for Joseph Bagstock that he is athorough-going, down-right, plain-spoken, old Trump, Sir, and nothingmore. That boy, Sir, ' said the Major in a lower tone, 'will live inhistory. That boy, Sir, is not a common production. Take care of him, MrDombey. '

Mr Dombey seemed to intimate that he would endeavour to do so. 

'Here is a boy here, Sir, ' pursued the Major, confidentially, andgiving him a thrust with his cane. 'Son of Bitherstone of Bengal. BillBitherstone formerly of ours. That boy's father and myself, Sir, weresworn friends. Wherever you went, Sir, you heard of nothing but BillBitherstone and Joe Bagstock. Am I blind to that boy's defects? By nomeans. He's a fool, Sir. '

Mr Dombey glanced at the libelled Master Bitherstone, of whom he knew atleast as much as the Major did, and said, in quite a complacent manner, 'Really?'

'That is what he is, sir, ' said the Major. 'He's a fool. Joe Bagstocknever minces matters. The son of my old friend Bill Bitherstone, ofBengal, is a born fool, Sir. ' Here the Major laughed till he was almostblack. 'My little friend is destined for a public school, ' I' presume, Mr Dombey?' said the Major when he had recovered. 

'I am not quite decided, ' returned Mr Dombey. 'I think not. He isdelicate. '

'If he's delicate, Sir, ' said the Major, 'you are right. None but thetough fellows could live through it, Sir, at Sandhurst. We put eachother to the torture there, Sir. We roasted the new fellows at a slowfire, and hung 'em out of a three pair of stairs window, with theirheads downwards. Joseph Bagstock, Sir, was held out of the window by theheels of his boots, for thirteen minutes by the college clock. '

The Major might have appealed to his countenance in corroboration ofthis story. It certainly looked as if he had hung out a little too long. 

'But it made us what we were, Sir, ' said the Major, settling his shirtfrill. 'We were iron, Sir, and it forged us. Are you remaining here, MrDombey?'

'I generally come down once a week, Major, ' returned that gentleman. 'Istay at the Bedford. '

'I shall have the honour of calling at the Bedford, Sir, if you'llpermit me, ' said the Major. 'Joey B. , Sir, is not in general a callingman, but Mr Dombey's is not a common name. I am much indebted to mylittle friend, Sir, for the honour of this introduction. '

Mr Dombey made a very gracious reply; and Major Bagstock, having pattedPaul on the head, and said of Florence that her eyes would play theDevil with the youngsters before long--'and the oldsters too, Sir, ifyou come to that, ' added the Major, chuckling very much--stirred upMaster Bitherstone with his walking-stick, and departed with that younggentleman, at a kind of half-trot; rolling his head and coughing withgreat dignity, as he staggered away, with his legs very wide asunder. 

In fulfilment of his promise, the Major afterwards called on Mr Dombey;and Mr Dombey, having referred to the army list, afterwards called onthe Major. Then the Major called at Mr Dombey's house in town; and camedown again, in the same coach as Mr Dombey. In short, Mr Dombey andthe Major got on uncommonly well together, and uncommonly fast: and MrDombey observed of the Major, to his sister, that besides being quitea military man he was really something more, as he had a very admirableidea of the importance of things unconnected with his own profession. 

At length Mr Dombey, bringing down Miss Tox and Mrs Chick to see thechildren, and finding the Major again at Brighton, invited him to dinnerat the Bedford, and complimented Miss Tox highly, beforehand, on herneighbour and acquaintance. 

'My dearest Louisa, ' said Miss Tox to Mrs Chick, when they were alonetogether, on the morning of the appointed day, 'if I should seem at allreserved to Major Bagstock, or under any constraint with him, promise menot to notice it. '

'My dear Lucretia, ' returned Mrs Chick, 'what mystery is involved inthis remarkable request? I must insist upon knowing. '

'Since you are resolved to extort a confession from me, Louisa, ' saidMiss Tox instantly, 'I have no alternative but to confide to you thatthe Major has been particular. '

'Particular!' repeated Mrs Chick. 

'The Major has long been very particular indeed, my love, in hisattentions, ' said Miss Tox, 'occasionally they have been so very marked, that my position has been one of no common difficulty. '

'Is he in good circumstances?' inquired Mrs Chick. 

'I have every reason to believe, my dear--indeed I may say I know, 'returned Miss Tox, 'that he is wealthy. He is truly military, and fullof anecdote. I have been informed that his valour, when he was in activeservice, knew no bounds. I am told that he did all sorts of things inthe Peninsula, with every description of fire-arm; and in the East andWest Indies, my love, I really couldn't undertake to say what he did notdo. '

'Very creditable to him indeed, ' said Mrs Chick, 'extremely so; and youhave given him no encouragement, my dear?'

'If I were to say, Louisa, ' replied Miss Tox, with every demonstrationof making an effort that rent her soul, 'that I never encouraged MajorBagstock slightly, I should not do justice to the friendship whichexists between you and me. It is, perhaps, hardly in the nature ofwoman to receive such attentions as the Major once lavished upon myselfwithout betraying some sense of obligation. But that is past--long past. Between the Major and me there is now a yawning chasm, and I will notfeign to give encouragement, Louisa, where I cannot give my heart. Myaffections, ' said Miss Tox--'but, Louisa, this is madness!' and departedfrom the room. 

All this Mrs Chick communicated to her brother before dinner: and itby no means indisposed Mr Dombey to receive the Major with unwontedcordiality. The Major, for his part, was in a state of plethoricsatisfaction that knew no bounds: and he coughed, and choked, andchuckled, and gasped, and swelled, until the waiters seemed positivelyafraid of him. 

'Your family monopolises Joe's light, Sir, ' said the Major, when he hadsaluted Miss Tox. 'Joe lives in darkness. Princess's Place is changedinto Kamschatka in the winter time. There is no ray of sun, Sir, forJoey B. , now. '

'Miss Tox is good enough to take a great deal of interest in Paul, Major, ' returned Mr Dombey on behalf of that blushing virgin. 

'Damme Sir, ' said the Major, 'I'm jealous of my little friend. I'mpining away Sir. The Bagstock breed is degenerating in the forsakenperson of old Joe. ' And the Major, becoming bluer and bluer and puffinghis cheeks further and further over the stiff ridge of his tight cravat, stared at Miss Tox, until his eyes seemed as if he were at that momentbeing overdone before the slow fire at the military college. 

Notwithstanding the palpitation of the heart which these allusionsoccasioned her, they were anything but disagreeable to Miss Tox, as theyenabled her to be extremely interesting, and to manifest an occasionalincoherence and distraction which she was not at all unwilling todisplay. The Major gave her abundant opportunities of exhibiting thisemotion: being profuse in his complaints, at dinner, of her desertion ofhim and Princess's Place: and as he appeared to derive great enjoymentfrom making them, they all got on very well. 

None the worse on account of the Major taking charge of the wholeconversation, and showing as great an appetite in that respect as inregard of the various dainties on the table, among which he maybe almost said to have wallowed: greatly to the aggravation of hisinflammatory tendencies. Mr Dombey's habitual silence and reserveyielding readily to this usurpation, the Major felt that he was comingout and shining: and in the flow of spirits thus engendered, rangsuch an infinite number of new changes on his own name that he quiteastonished himself. In a word, they were all very well pleased. TheMajor was considered to possess an inexhaustible fund of conversation;and when he took a late farewell, after a long rubber, Mr Dombey againcomplimented the blushing Miss Tox on her neighbour and acquaintance. 

But all the way home to his own hotel, the Major incessantly said tohimself, and of himself, 'Sly, Sir--sly, Sir--de-vil-ish sly!' Andwhen he got there, sat down in a chair, and fell into a silent fitof laughter, with which he was sometimes seized, and which was alwaysparticularly awful. It held him so long on this occasion that the darkservant, who stood watching him at a distance, but dared not for hislife approach, twice or thrice gave him over for lost. His whole form, but especially his face and head, dilated beyond all former experience;and presented to the dark man's view, nothing but a heaving mass ofindigo. At length he burst into a violent paroxysm of coughing, and whenthat was a little better burst into such ejaculations as the following:

'Would you, Ma'am, would you? Mrs Dombey, eh, Ma'am? I think not, Ma'am. Not while Joe B. Can put a spoke in your wheel, Ma'am. J. B. 's evenwith you now, Ma'am. He isn't altogether bowled out, yet, Sir, isn'tBagstock. She's deep, Sir, deep, but Josh is deeper. Wide awake is oldJoe--broad awake, and staring, Sir!' There was no doubt of this lastassertion being true, and to a very fearful extent; as it continued tobe during the greater part of that night, which the Major chiefly passedin similar exclamations, diversified with fits of coughing and chokingthat startled the whole house. 

It was on the day after this occasion (being Sunday) when, as Mr Dombey, Mrs Chick, and Miss Tox were sitting at breakfast, still eulogising theMajor, Florence came running in: her face suffused with a bright colour, and her eyes sparkling joyfully: and cried, 'Papa! Papa! Here's Walter! and he won't come in. '

'Who?' cried Mr Dombey. 'What does she mean? What is this?'

'Walter, Papa!' said Florence timidly; sensible of having approached thepresence with too much familiarity. 'Who found me when I was lost. '

'Does she mean young Gay, Louisa?' inquired Mr Dombey, knitting hisbrows. 'Really, this child's manners have become very boisterous. Shecannot mean young Gay, I think. See what it is, will you?'

Mrs Chick hurried into the passage, and returned with the informationthat it was young Gay, accompanied by a very strange-looking person; andthat young Gay said he would not take the liberty of coming in, hearingMr Dombey was at breakfast, but would wait until Mr Dombey shouldsignify that he might approach. 

'Tell the boy to come in now, ' said Mr Dombey. 'Now, Gay, what is thematter? Who sent you down here? Was there nobody else to come?'

'I beg your pardon, Sir, ' returned Walter. 'I have not been sent. I havebeen so bold as to come on my own account, which I hope you'll pardonwhen I mention the cause. 

But Mr Dombey, without attending to what he said, was lookingimpatiently on either side of him (as if he were a pillar in his way) atsome object behind. 

'What's that?' said Mr Dombey. 'Who is that? I think you have made somemistake in the door, Sir. '

'Oh, I'm very sorry to intrude with anyone, Sir, ' cried Walter, hastily:'but this is--this is Captain Cuttle, Sir. '

'Wal'r, my lad, ' observed the Captain in a deep voice: 'stand by!'

At the same time the Captain, coming a little further in, brought outhis wide suit of blue, his conspicuous shirt-collar, and his knobbynose in full relief, and stood bowing to Mr Dombey, and waving his hookpolitely to the ladies, with the hard glazed hat in his one hand, and ared equator round his head which it had newly imprinted there. 

Mr Dombey regarded this phenomenon with amazement and indignation, andseemed by his looks to appeal to Mrs Chick and Miss Tox against it. Little Paul, who had come in after Florence, backed towards Miss Tox asthe Captain waved his book, and stood on the defensive. 

'Now, Gay, ' said Mr Dombey. 'What have you got to say to me?'

Again the Captain observed, as a general opening of the conversationthat could not fail to propitiate all parties, 'Wal'r, standby!'

'I am afraid, Sir, ' began Walter, trembling, and looking down at theground, 'that I take a very great liberty in coming--indeed, I am sureI do. I should hardly have had the courage to ask to see you, Sir, evenafter coming down, I am afraid, if I had not overtaken Miss Dombey, and--'

'Well!' said Mr Dombey, following his eyes as he glanced at theattentive Florence, and frowning unconsciously as she encouraged himwith a smile. 'Go on, if you please. '

'Ay, ay, ' observed the Captain, considering it incumbent on him, as apoint of good breeding, to support Mr Dombey. 'Well said! Go on, Wal'r. '

Captain Cuttle ought to have been withered by the look which Mr Dombeybestowed upon him in acknowledgment of his patronage. But quite innocentof this, he closed one eye in reply, and gave Mr Dombey to understand, by certain significant motions of his hook, that Walter was a littlebashful at first, and might be expected to come out shortly. 

'It is entirely a private and personal matter, that has brought me here, Sir, ' continued Walter, faltering, 'and Captain Cuttle--'

'Here!' interposed the Captain, as an assurance that he was at hand, andmight be relied upon. 

'Who is a very old friend of my poor Uncle's, and a most excellent man, Sir, ' pursued Walter, raising his eyes with a look of entreaty in theCaptain's behalf, 'was so good as to offer to come with me, which Icould hardly refuse. '

'No, no, no;' observed the Captain complacently. 'Of course not. No callfor refusing. Go on, Wal'r. '

'And therefore, Sir, ' said Walter, venturing to meet Mr Dombey's eye, and proceeding with better courage in the very desperation of the case, now that there was no avoiding it, 'therefore I have come, with him, Sir, to say that my poor old Uncle is in very great affliction anddistress. That, through the gradual loss of his business, and not beingable to make a payment, the apprehension of which has weighed veryheavily upon his mind, months and months, as indeed I know, Sir, he hasan execution in his house, and is in danger of losing all he has, andbreaking his heart. And that if you would, in your kindness, and in yourold knowledge of him as a respectable man, do anything to help him outof his difficulty, Sir, we never could thank you enough for it. '

Walter's eyes filled with tears as he spoke; and so did those ofFlorence. Her father saw them glistening, though he appeared to look atWalter only. 

'It is a very large sum, Sir, ' said Walter. 'More than three hundredpounds. My Uncle is quite beaten down by his misfortune, it lies soheavy on him; and is quite unable to do anything for his own relief. Hedoesn't even know yet, that I have come to speak to you. You would wishme to say, Sir, ' added Walter, after a moment's hesitation, 'exactlywhat it is I want. I really don't know, Sir. There is my Uncle's stock, on which I believe I may say, confidently, there are no other demands, and there is Captain Cuttle, who would wish to be security too. I--Ihardly like to mention, ' said Walter, 'such earnings as mine; but ifyou would allow them--accumulate--payment--advance--Uncle--frugal, honourable, old man. ' Walter trailed off, through these brokensentences, into silence: and stood with downcast head, before hisemployer. 

Considering this a favourable moment for the display of the valuables, Captain Cuttle advanced to the table; and clearing a space among thebreakfast-cups at Mr Dombey's elbow, produced the silver watch, theready money, the teaspoons, and the sugar-tongs; and piling them up intoa heap that they might look as precious as possible, delivered himselfof these words:

'Half a loaf's better than no bread, and the same remark holds good withcrumbs. There's a few. Annuity of one hundred pound premium also readyto be made over. If there is a man chock full of science in the world, it's old Sol Gills. If there is a lad of promise--one flowing, ' addedthe Captain, in one of his happy quotations, 'with milk and honey--it'shis nevy!'

The Captain then withdrew to his former place, where he stood arranginghis scattered locks with the air of a man who had given the finishingtouch to a difficult performance. 

When Walter ceased to speak, Mr Dombey's eyes were attracted to littlePaul, who, seeing his sister hanging down her head and silently weepingin her commiseration for the distress she had heard described, went overto her, and tried to comfort her: looking at Walter and his father as hedid so, with a very expressive face. After the momentary distraction ofCaptain Cuttle's address, which he regarded with lofty indifference, MrDombey again turned his eyes upon his son, and sat steadily regardingthe child, for some moments, in silence. 

'What was this debt contracted for?' asked Mr Dombey, at length. 'Who isthe creditor?'

'He don't know, ' replied the Captain, putting his hand on Walter'sshoulder. 'I do. It came of helping a man that's dead now, and that'scost my friend Gills many a hundred pound already. More particulars inprivate, if agreeable. '

'People who have enough to do to hold their own way, ' said Mr Dombey, unobservant of the Captain's mysterious signs behind Walter, and stilllooking at his son, 'had better be content with their own obligationsand difficulties, and not increase them by engaging for other men. Itis an act of dishonesty and presumption, too, ' said Mr Dombey, sternly;'great presumption; for the wealthy could do no more. Paul, come here!'

The child obeyed: and Mr Dombey took him on his knee. 

'If you had money now--' said Mr Dombey. 'Look at me!'

Paul, whose eyes had wandered to his sister, and to Walter, looked hisfather in the face. 

'If you had money now, ' said Mr Dombey; 'as much money as young Gay hastalked about; what would you do?'

'Give it to his old Uncle, ' returned Paul. 

'Lend it to his old Uncle, eh?' retorted Mr Dombey. 'Well! When youare old enough, you know, you will share my money, and we shall use ittogether. '

'Dombey and Son, ' interrupted Paul, who had been tutored early in thephrase. 

'Dombey and Son, ' repeated his father. 'Would you like to begin to beDombey and Son, now, and lend this money to young Gay's Uncle?'

'Oh! if you please, Papa!' said Paul: 'and so would Florence. '

'Girls, ' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son. Wouldyou like it?'

'Yes, Papa, yes!'

'Then you shall do it, ' returned his father. 'And you see, Paul, ' headded, dropping his voice, 'how powerful money is, and how anxiouspeople are to get it. Young Gay comes all this way to beg for money, and you, who are so grand and great, having got it, are going to let himhave it, as a great favour and obligation. '

Paul turned up the old face for a moment, in which there was a sharpunderstanding of the reference conveyed in these words: but it was ayoung and childish face immediately afterwards, when he slipped downfrom his father's knee, and ran to tell Florence not to cry any more, for he was going to let young Gay have the money. 

Mr Dombey then turned to a side-table, and wrote a note and sealed it. During the interval, Paul and Florence whispered to Walter, andCaptain Cuttle beamed on the three, with such aspiring and ineffablypresumptuous thoughts as Mr Dombey never could have believed in. Thenote being finished, Mr Dombey turned round to his former place, andheld it out to Walter. 

'Give that, ' he said, 'the first thing to-morrow morning, to Mr Carker. He will immediately take care that one of my people releases your Unclefrom his present position, by paying the amount at issue; and that sucharrangements are made for its repayment as may be consistent with yourUncle's circumstances. You will consider that this is done for you byMaster Paul. '

Walter, in the emotion of holding in his hand the means of releasing hisgood Uncle from his trouble, would have endeavoured to express somethingof his gratitude and joy. But Mr Dombey stopped him short. 

'You will consider that it is done, ' he repeated, 'by Master Paul. Ihave explained that to him, and he understands it. I wish no more to besaid. '

As he motioned towards the door, Walter could only bow his head andretire. Miss Tox, seeing that the Captain appeared about to do the same, interposed. 

'My dear Sir, ' she said, addressing Mr Dombey, at whose munificenceboth she and Mrs Chick were shedding tears copiously; 'I think you haveoverlooked something. Pardon me, Mr Dombey, I think, in the nobilityof your character, and its exalted scope, you have omitted a matter ofdetail. '

'Indeed, Miss Tox!' said Mr Dombey. 

'The gentleman with the--Instrument, ' pursued Miss Tox, glancing atCaptain Cuttle, 'has left upon the table, at your elbow--'

'Good Heaven!' said Mr Dombey, sweeping the Captain's property fromhim, as if it were so much crumb indeed. 'Take these things away. I amobliged to you, Miss Tox; it is like your usual discretion. Have thegoodness to take these things away, Sir!'

Captain Cuttle felt he had no alternative but to comply. But he was somuch struck by the magnanimity of Mr Dombey, in refusing treasures lyingheaped up to his hand, that when he had deposited the teaspoons andsugar-tongs in one pocket, and the ready money in another, and hadlowered the great watch down slowly into its proper vault, he could notrefrain from seizing that gentleman's right hand in his own solitaryleft, and while he held it open with his powerful fingers, bringing thehook down upon its palm in a transport of admiration. At this touch ofwarm feeling and cold iron, Mr Dombey shivered all over. 

Captain Cuttle then kissed his hook to the ladies several times, withgreat elegance and gallantry; and having taken a particular leave ofPaul and Florence, accompanied Walter out of the room. Florence wasrunning after them in the earnestness of her heart, to send some messageto old Sol, when Mr Dombey called her back, and bade her stay where shewas. 

'Will you never be a Dombey, my dear child!' said Mrs Chick, withpathetic reproachfulness. 

'Dear aunt, ' said Florence. 'Don't be angry with me. I am so thankful toPapa!'

She would have run and thrown her arms about his neck if she had dared;but as she did not dare, she glanced with thankful eyes towards him, ashe sat musing; sometimes bestowing an uneasy glance on her, but, for themost part, watching Paul, who walked about the room with the new-blowndignity of having let young Gay have the money. 

And young Gay--Walter--what of him?

He was overjoyed to purge the old man's hearth from bailiffs andbrokers, and to hurry back to his Uncle with the good tidings. He wasoverjoyed to have it all arranged and settled next day before noon;and to sit down at evening in the little back parlour with old Sol andCaptain Cuttle; and to see the Instrument-maker already reviving, andhopeful for the future, and feeling that the wooden Midshipman was hisown again. But without the least impeachment of his gratitude to MrDombey, it must be confessed that Walter was humbled and cast down. Itis when our budding hopes are nipped beyond recovery by some rough wind, that we are the most disposed to picture to ourselves what flowers theymight have borne, if they had flourished; and now, when Walter foundhimself cut off from that great Dombey height, by the depth of a newand terrible tumble, and felt that all his old wild fancies had beenscattered to the winds in the fall, he began to suspect that they mighthave led him on to harmless visions of aspiring to Florence in theremote distance of time. 

The Captain viewed the subject in quite a different light. He appearedto entertain a belief that the interview at which he had assisted was sovery satisfactory and encouraging, as to be only a step or two removedfrom a regular betrothal of Florence to Walter; and that the latetransaction had immensely forwarded, if not thoroughly established, the Whittingtonian hopes. Stimulated by this conviction, and by theimprovement in the spirits of his old friend, and by his own consequentgaiety, he even attempted, in favouring them with the ballad of 'LovelyPeg' for the third time in one evening, to make an extemporaneoussubstitution of the name 'Florence;' but finding this difficult, onaccount of the word Peg invariably rhyming to leg (in which personalbeauty the original was described as having excelled all competitors), he hit upon the happy thought of changing it to Fle-e-eg; which heaccordingly did, with an archness almost supernatural, and a voice quitevociferous, notwithstanding that the time was close at band when he mustseek the abode of the dreadful Mrs MacStinger. 

That same evening the Major was diffuse at his club, on the subject ofhis friend Dombey in the City. 'Damme, Sir, ' said the Major, 'he's aprince, is my friend Dombey in the City. I tell you what, Sir. If youhad a few more men among you like old Joe Bagstock and my friend Dombeyin the City, Sir, you'd do!'

CHAPTER 11. Paul's Introduction to a New Scene

Mrs Pipchin's constitution was made of such hard metal, in spite of itsliability to the fleshly weaknesses of standing in need of repose afterchops, and of requiring to be coaxed to sleep by the soporific agencyof sweet-breads, that it utterly set at naught the predictions of MrsWickam, and showed no symptoms of decline. Yet, as Paul's rapt interestin the old lady continued unbated, Mrs Wickam would not budge an inchfrom the position she had taken up. Fortifying and entrenching herselfon the strong ground of her Uncle's Betsey Jane, she advised Miss Berry, as a friend, to prepare herself for the worst; and forewarned her thather aunt might, at any time, be expected to go off suddenly, like apowder-mill. 

'I hope, Miss Berry, ' Mrs Wickam would observe, 'that you'll come intowhatever little property there may be to leave. You deserve it, I amsure, for yours is a trying life. Though there don't seem much worthcoming into--you'll excuse my being so open--in this dismal den. '

Poor Berry took it all in good part, and drudged and slaved awayas usual; perfectly convinced that Mrs Pipchin was one of the mostmeritorious persons in the world, and making every day innumerablesacrifices of herself upon the altar of that noble old woman. But allthese immolations of Berry were somehow carried to the credit ofMrs Pipchin by Mrs Pipchin's friends and admirers; and were made toharmonise with, and carry out, that melancholy fact of the deceased MrPipchin having broken his heart in the Peruvian mines. 

For example, there was an honest grocer and general dealer in theretail line of business, between whom and Mrs Pipchin there was a smallmemorandum book, with a greasy red cover, perpetually in question, andconcerning which divers secret councils and conferences were continuallybeing held between the parties to that register, on the mat in thepassage, and with closed doors in the parlour. Nor were there wantingdark hints from Master Bitherstone (whose temper had been maderevengeful by the solar heats of India acting on his blood), of balancesunsettled, and of a failure, on one occasion within his memory, in thesupply of moist sugar at tea-time. This grocer being a bachelor and nota man who looked upon the surface for beauty, had once made honourableoffers for the hand of Berry, which Mrs Pipchin had, with contumely andscorn, rejected. Everybody said how laudable this was in Mrs Pipchin, relict of a man who had died of the Peruvian mines; and what a staunch, high, independent spirit the old lady had. But nobody said anythingabout poor Berry, who cried for six weeks (being soundly rated byher good aunt all the time), and lapsed into a state of hopelessspinsterhood. 

'Berry's very fond of you, ain't she?' Paul once asked Mrs Pipchin whenthey were sitting by the fire with the cat. 

'Yes, ' said Mrs Pipchin. 

'Why?' asked Paul. 

'Why!' returned the disconcerted old lady. 'How can you ask such things, Sir! why are you fond of your sister Florence?'

'Because she's very good, ' said Paul. 'There's nobody like Florence. '

'Well!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, shortly, 'and there's nobody like me, Isuppose. '

'Ain't there really though?' asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair, and looking at her very hard. 

'No, ' said the old lady. 

'I am glad of that, ' observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully. 'That's a very good thing. '

Mrs Pipchin didn't dare to ask him why, lest she should receive someperfectly annihilating answer. But as a compensation to her woundedfeelings, she harassed Master Bitherstone to that extent until bed-time, that he began that very night to make arrangements for an overlandreturn to India, by secreting from his supper a quarter of a round ofbread and a fragment of moist Dutch cheese, as the beginning of a stockof provision to support him on the voyage. 

Mrs Pipchin had kept watch and ward over little Paul and his sister fornearly twelve months. They had been home twice, but only for a few days;and had been constant in their weekly visits to Mr Dombey at the hotel. By little and little Paul had grown stronger, and had become able todispense with his carriage; though he still looked thin and delicate;and still remained the same old, quiet, dreamy child that he had beenwhen first consigned to Mrs Pipchin's care. One Saturday afternoon, at dusk, great consternation was occasioned in the Castle by theunlooked-for announcement of Mr Dombey as a visitor to Mrs Pipchin. Thepopulation of the parlour was immediately swept upstairs as on the wingsof a whirlwind, and after much slamming of bedroom doors, and tramplingoverhead, and some knocking about of Master Bitherstone by Mrs Pipchin, as a relief to the perturbation of her spirits, the black bombazeengarments of the worthy old lady darkened the audience-chamber where MrDombey was contemplating the vacant arm-chair of his son and heir. 

'Mrs Pipchin, ' said Mr Dombey, 'How do you do?'

'Thank you, Sir, ' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I am pretty well, considering. '

Mrs Pipchin always used that form of words. It meant, considering hervirtues, sacrifices, and so forth. 

'I can't expect, Sir, to be very well, ' said Mrs Pipchin, taking a chairand fetching her breath; 'but such health as I have, I am grateful for. '

Mr Dombey inclined his head with the satisfied air of a patron, who feltthat this was the sort of thing for which he paid so much a quarter. After a moment's silence he went on to say:

'Mrs Pipchin, I have taken the liberty of calling, to consult you inreference to my son. I have had it in my mind to do so for some timepast; but have deferred it from time to time, in order that his healthmight be thoroughly re-established. You have no misgivings on thatsubject, Mrs Pipchin?'

'Brighton has proved very beneficial, Sir, ' returned Mrs Pipchin. 'Verybeneficial, indeed. '

'I purpose, ' said Mr Dombey, 'his remaining at Brighton. '

Mrs Pipchin rubbed her hands, and bent her grey eyes on the fire. 

'But, ' pursued Mr Dombey, stretching out his forefinger, 'but possiblythat he should now make a change, and lead a different kind of lifehere. In short, Mrs Pipchin, that is the object of my visit. My son isgetting on, Mrs Pipchin. Really, he is getting on. '

There was something melancholy in the triumphant air with which MrDombey said this. It showed how long Paul's childish life had been tohim, and how his hopes were set upon a later stage of his existence. Pity may appear a strange word to connect with anyone so haughty and socold, and yet he seemed a worthy subject for it at that moment. 

'Six years old!' said Mr Dombey, settling his neckcloth--perhaps to hidean irrepressible smile that rather seemed to strike upon the surfaceof his face and glance away, as finding no resting-place, than to playthere for an instant. 'Dear me, six will be changed to sixteen, beforewe have time to look about us. '

'Ten years, ' croaked the unsympathetic Pipchin, with a frosty glisteningof her hard grey eye, and a dreary shaking of her bent head, 'is a longtime. '

'It depends on circumstances, returned Mr Dombey; 'at all events, MrsPipchin, my son is six years old, and there is no doubt, I fear, that inhis studies he is behind many children of his age--or his youth, ' saidMr Dombey, quickly answering what he mistrusted was a shrewd twinkle ofthe frosty eye, 'his youth is a more appropriate expression. Now, MrsPipchin, instead of being behind his peers, my son ought to be beforethem; far before them. There is an eminence ready for him to mount upon. There is nothing of chance or doubt in the course before my son. His wayin life was clear and prepared, and marked out before he existed. Theeducation of such a young gentleman must not be delayed. It must not beleft imperfect. It must be very steadily and seriously undertaken, MrsPipchin. '

'Well, Sir, ' said Mrs Pipchin, 'I can say nothing to the contrary. '

'I was quite sure, Mrs Pipchin, ' returned Mr Dombey, approvingly, 'thata person of your good sense could not, and would not. '

'There is a great deal of nonsense--and worse--talked about young peoplenot being pressed too hard at first, and being tempted on, and all therest of it, Sir, ' said Mrs Pipchin, impatiently rubbing her hookednose. 'It never was thought of in my time, and it has no business to bethought of now. My opinion is "keep 'em at it". '

'My good madam, ' returned Mr Dombey, 'you have not acquired yourreputation undeservedly; and I beg you to believe, Mrs Pipchin, thatI am more than satisfied with your excellent system of management, and shall have the greatest pleasure in commending it whenever my poorcommendation--' Mr Dombey's loftiness when he affected to disparage hisown importance, passed all bounds--'can be of any service. I have beenthinking of Doctor Blimber's, Mrs Pipchin. '

'My neighbour, Sir?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'I believe the Doctor's is anexcellent establishment. I've heard that it's very strictly conducted, and there is nothing but learning going on from morning to night. '

'And it's very expensive, ' added Mr Dombey. 

'And it's very expensive, Sir, ' returned Mrs Pipchin, catching at thefact, as if in omitting that, she had omitted one of its leading merits. 

'I have had some communication with the Doctor, Mrs Pipchin, ' said MrDombey, hitching his chair anxiously a little nearer to the fire, 'andhe does not consider Paul at all too young for his purpose. He mentionedseveral instances of boys in Greek at about the same age. If I have anylittle uneasiness in my own mind, Mrs Pipchin, on the subject of thischange, it is not on that head. My son not having known a mother hasgradually concentrated much--too much--of his childish affection onhis sister. Whether their separation--' Mr Dombey said no more, but satsilent. 

'Hoity-toity!' exclaimed Mrs Pipchin, shaking out her black bombazeenskirts, and plucking up all the ogress within her. 'If she don't likeit, Mr Dombey, she must be taught to lump it. ' The good lady apologisedimmediately afterwards for using so common a figure of speech, but said(and truly) that that was the way she reasoned with 'em. 

Mr Dombey waited until Mrs Pipchin had done bridling and shaking herhead, and frowning down a legion of Bitherstones and Pankeys; and thensaid quietly, but correctively, 'He, my good madam, he. '

Mrs Pipchin's system would have applied very much the same mode of cureto any uneasiness on the part of Paul, too; but as the hard grey eye wassharp enough to see that the recipe, however Mr Dombey might admit itsefficacy in the case of the daughter, was not a sovereign remedy for theson, she argued the point; and contended that change, and new society, and the different form of life he would lead at Doctor Blimber's, andthe studies he would have to master, would very soon prove sufficientalienations. As this chimed in with Mr Dombey's own hope and belief, it gave that gentleman a still higher opinion of Mrs Pipchin'sunderstanding; and as Mrs Pipchin, at the same time, bewailed the lossof her dear little friend (which was not an overwhelming shock to her, as she had long expected it, and had not looked, in the beginning, forhis remaining with her longer than three months), he formed an equallygood opinion of Mrs Pipchin's disinterestedness. It was plain that hehad given the subject anxious consideration, for he had formed a plan, which he announced to the ogress, of sending Paul to the Doctor's as aweekly boarder for the first half year, during which time Florencewould remain at the Castle, that she might receive her brother there, onSaturdays. This would wean him by degrees, Mr Dombey said; possiblywith a recollection of his not having been weaned by degrees on a formeroccasion. 

Mr Dombey finished the interview by expressing his hope that Mrs Pipchinwould still remain in office as general superintendent and overseer ofhis son, pending his studies at Brighton; and having kissed Paul, andshaken hands with Florence, and beheld Master Bitherstone in his collarof state, and made Miss Pankey cry by patting her on the head (in whichregion she was uncommonly tender, on account of a habit Mrs Pipchin hadof sounding it with her knuckles, like a cask), he withdrew to his hoteland dinner: resolved that Paul, now that he was getting so old and well, should begin a vigorous course of education forthwith, to qualify himfor the position in which he was to shine; and that Doctor Blimbershould take him in hand immediately. 

Whenever a young gentleman was taken in hand by Doctor Blimber, hemight consider himself sure of a pretty tight squeeze. The Doctor onlyundertook the charge of ten young gentlemen, but he had, always ready, asupply of learning for a hundred, on the lowest estimate; and it was atonce the business and delight of his life to gorge the unhappy ten withit. 

In fact, Doctor Blimber's establishment was a great hot-house, in whichthere was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work. All the boys blewbefore their time. Mental green-peas were produced at Christmas, andintellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries(very sour ones too) were common at untimely seasons, and from meresprouts of bushes, under Doctor Blimber's cultivation. Every descriptionof Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys, underthe frostiest circumstances. Nature was of no consequence at all. Nomatter what a young gentleman was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber madehim bear to pattern, somehow or other. 

This was all very pleasant and ingenious, but the system of forcing wasattended with its usual disadvantages. There was not the right tasteabout the premature productions, and they didn't keep well. Moreover, one young gentleman, with a swollen nose and an excessively large head(the oldest of the ten who had 'gone through' everything), suddenly leftoff blowing one day, and remained in the establishment a mere stalk. Andpeople did say that the Doctor had rather overdone it with young Toots, and that when he began to have whiskers he left off having brains. 

There young Toots was, at any rate; possessed of the gruffest of voicesand the shrillest of minds; sticking ornamental pins into his shirt, andkeeping a ring in his waistcoat pocket to put on his little finger bystealth, when the pupils went out walking; constantly falling in love bysight with nurserymaids, who had no idea of his existence; and lookingat the gas-lighted world over the little iron bars in the left-handcorner window of the front three pairs of stairs, after bed-time, like agreatly overgrown cherub who had sat up aloft much too long. 

The Doctor was a portly gentleman in a suit of black, with stringsat his knees, and stockings below them. He had a bald head, highlypolished; a deep voice; and a chin so very double, that it was a wonderhow he ever managed to shave into the creases. He had likewise a pair oflittle eyes that were always half shut up, and a mouth that was alwayshalf expanded into a grin, as if he had, that moment, posed a boy, andwere waiting to convict him from his own lips. Insomuch, that when theDoctor put his right hand into the breast of his coat, and with hisother hand behind him, and a scarcely perceptible wag of his head, madethe commonest observation to a nervous stranger, it was like a sentimentfrom the sphynx, and settled his business. 

The Doctor's was a mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyfulstyle of house within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains, whose proportions were spare and lean, hid themselves despondentlybehind the windows. The tables and chairs were put away in rows, likefigures in a sum; fires were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; thedining-room seemed the last place in the world where any eating ordrinking was likely to occur; there was no sound through all the housebut the ticking of a great clock in the hall, which made itself audiblein the very garrets; and sometimes a dull cooing of young gentlemenat their lessons, like the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholypigeons. 

Miss Blimber, too, although a slim and graceful maid, did no softviolence to the gravity of the house. There was no light nonsense aboutMiss Blimber. She kept her hair short and crisp, and wore spectacles. She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead--stonedead--and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul. 

Mrs Blimber, her Mama, was not learned herself, but she pretended tobe, and that did quite as well. She said at evening parties, that if shecould have known Cicero, she thought she could have died contented. Itwas the steady joy of her life to see the Doctor's young gentlemen goout walking, unlike all other young gentlemen, in the largest possibleshirt-collars, and the stiffest possible cravats. It was so classical, she said. 

As to Mr Feeder, B. A. , Doctor Blimber's assistant, he was a kindof human barrel-organ, with a little list of tunes at which he wascontinually working, over and over again, without any variation. Hemight have been fitted up with a change of barrels, perhaps, in earlylife, if his destiny had been favourable; but it had not been; and hehad only one, with which, in a monotonous round, it was his occupationto bewilder the young ideas of Doctor Blimber's young gentlemen. Theyoung gentlemen were prematurely full of carking anxieties. They knew norest from the pursuit of stony-hearted verbs, savage noun-substantives, inflexible syntactic passages, and ghosts of exercises that appearedto them in their dreams. Under the forcing system, a young gentlemanusually took leave of his spirits in three weeks. He had all the caresof the world on his head in three months. He conceived bitter sentimentsagainst his parents or guardians in four; he was an old misanthrope, infive; envied Curtius that blessed refuge in the earth, in six; and atthe end of the first twelvemonth had arrived at the conclusion, fromwhich he never afterwards departed, that all the fancies of the poets, and lessons of the sages, were a mere collection of words and grammar, and had no other meaning in the world. 

But he went on blow, blow, blowing, in the Doctor's hothouse, all thetime; and the Doctor's glory and reputation were great, when he took hiswintry growth home to his relations and friends. 

Upon the Doctor's door-steps one day, Paul stood with a flutteringheart, and with his small right hand in his father's. His other hand waslocked in that of Florence. How tight the tiny pressure of that one; andhow loose and cold the other!

Mrs Pipchin hovered behind the victim, with her sable plumage and herhooked beak, like a bird of ill-omen. She was out of breath--forMr Dombey, full of great thoughts, had walked fast--and she croakedhoarsely as she waited for the opening of the door. 

'Now, Paul, ' said Mr Dombey, exultingly. 'This is the way indeed to beDombey and Son, and have money. You are almost a man already. '

'Almost, ' returned the child. 

Even his childish agitation could not master the sly and quaint yettouching look, with which he accompanied the reply. 

It brought a vague expression of dissatisfaction into Mr Dombey's face;but the door being opened, it was quickly gone. 

'Doctor Blimber is at home, I believe?' said Mr Dombey. 

The man said yes; and as they passed in, looked at Paul as if he were alittle mouse, and the house were a trap. He was a weak-eyed young man, with the first faint streaks or early dawn of a grin on his countenance. It was mere imbecility; but Mrs Pipchin took it into her head that itwas impudence, and made a snap at him directly. 

'How dare you laugh behind the gentleman's back?' said Mrs Pipchin. 'Andwhat do you take me for?'

'I ain't a laughing at nobody, and I'm sure I don't take you fornothing, Ma'am, ' returned the young man, in consternation. 

'A pack of idle dogs!' said Mrs Pipchin, 'only fit to be turnspits. Goand tell your master that Mr Dombey's here, or it'll be worse for you!'

The weak-eyed young man went, very meekly, to discharge himself of thiscommission; and soon came back to invite them to the Doctor's study. 

'You're laughing again, Sir, ' said Mrs Pipchin, when it came to herturn, bringing up the rear, to pass him in the hall. 

'I ain't, ' returned the young man, grievously oppressed. 'I never seesuch a thing as this!'

'What is the matter, Mrs Pipchin?' said Mr Dombey, looking round. 'Softly! Pray!'

Mrs Pipchin, in her deference, merely muttered at the young man as shepassed on, and said, 'Oh! he was a precious fellow'--leaving the youngman, who was all meekness and incapacity, affected even to tears by theincident. But Mrs Pipchin had a way of falling foul of all meek people;and her friends said who could wonder at it, after the Peruvian mines!

The Doctor was sitting in his portentous study, with a globe at eachknee, books all round him, Homer over the door, and Minerva on themantel-shelf. 'And how do you do, Sir?' he said to Mr Dombey, 'and howis my little friend?' Grave as an organ was the Doctor's speech; andwhen he ceased, the great clock in the hall seemed (to Paul at least) totake him up, and to go on saying, 'how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?' over and over and over again. 

The little friend being something too small to be seen at all from wherethe Doctor sat, over the books on his table, the Doctor made severalfutile attempts to get a view of him round the legs; which Mr Dombeyperceiving, relieved the Doctor from his embarrassment by taking Paul upin his arms, and sitting him on another little table, over against theDoctor, in the middle of the room. 

'Ha!' said the Doctor, leaning back in his chair with his hand in hisbreast. 'Now I see my little friend. How do you do, my little friend?'

The clock in the hall wouldn't subscribe to this alteration in the formof words, but continued to repeat how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?'

'Very well, I thank you, Sir, ' returned Paul, answering the clock quiteas much as the Doctor. 

'Ha!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Shall we make a man of him?'

'Do you hear, Paul?' added Mr Dombey; Paul being silent. 

'Shall we make a man of him?' repeated the Doctor. 

'I had rather be a child, ' replied Paul. 

'Indeed!' said the Doctor. 'Why?'

The child sat on the table looking at him, with a curious expression ofsuppressed emotion in his face, and beating one hand proudly on hisknee as if he had the rising tears beneath it, and crushed them. Buthis other hand strayed a little way the while, a little farther--fartherfrom him yet--until it lighted on the neck of Florence. 'This is why, 'it seemed to say, and then the steady look was broken up and gone; theworking lip was loosened; and the tears came streaming forth. 

'Mrs Pipchin, ' said his father, in a querulous manner, 'I am really verysorry to see this. '

'Come away from him, do, Miss Dombey, ' quoth the matron. 

'Never mind, ' said the Doctor, blandly nodding his head, to keepMrs Pipchin back. 'Never mind; we shall substitute new cares and newimpressions, Mr Dombey, very shortly. You would still wish my littlefriend to acquire--'

'Everything, if you please, Doctor, ' returned Mr Dombey, firmly. 

'Yes, ' said the Doctor, who, with his half-shut eyes, and his usualsmile, seemed to survey Paul with the sort of interest that might attachto some choice little animal he was going to stuff. 'Yes, exactly. Ha!We shall impart a great variety of information to our little friend, andbring him quickly forward, I daresay. I daresay. Quite a virgin soil, Ibelieve you said, Mr Dombey?'

'Except some ordinary preparation at home, and from this lady, ' repliedMr Dombey, introducing Mrs Pipchin, who instantly communicated arigidity to her whole muscular system, and snorted defiance beforehand, in case the Doctor should disparage her; 'except so far, Paul has, asyet, applied himself to no studies at all. '

Doctor Blimber inclined his head, in gentle tolerance of suchinsignificant poaching as Mrs Pipchin's, and said he was glad to hearit. It was much more satisfactory, he observed, rubbing his hands, tobegin at the foundation. And again he leered at Paul, as if he wouldhave liked to tackle him with the Greek alphabet, on the spot. 

'That circumstance, indeed, Doctor Blimber, ' pursued Mr Dombey, glancingat his little son, 'and the interview I have already had the pleasure ofholding with you, renders any further explanation, and consequently, anyfurther intrusion on your valuable time, so unnecessary, that--'

'Now, Miss Dombey!' said the acid Pipchin. 

'Permit me, ' said the Doctor, 'one moment. Allow me to present MrsBlimber and my daughter; who will be associated with the domestic lifeof our young Pilgrim to Parnassus Mrs Blimber, ' for the lady, who hadperhaps been in waiting, opportunely entered, followed by her daughter, that fair Sexton in spectacles, 'Mr Dombey. My daughter Cornelia, MrDombey. Mr Dombey, my love, ' pursued the Doctor, turning to his wife, 'is so confiding as to--do you see our little friend?'

Mrs Blimber, in an excess of politeness, of which Mr Dombey was theobject, apparently did not, for she was backing against the littlefriend, and very much endangering his position on the table. But, on this hint, she turned to admire his classical and intellectuallineaments, and turning again to Mr Dombey, said, with a sigh, that sheenvied his dear son. 

'Like a bee, Sir, ' said Mrs Blimber, with uplifted eyes, 'about toplunge into a garden of the choicest flowers, and sip the sweets for thefirst time Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Terence, Plautus, Cicero. What a worldof honey have we here. It may appear remarkable, Mr Dombey, in one whois a wife--the wife of such a husband--'

'Hush, hush, ' said Doctor Blimber. 'Fie for shame. '

'Mr Dombey will forgive the partiality of a wife, ' said Mrs Blimber, with an engaging smile. 

Mr Dombey answered 'Not at all:' applying those words, it is to bepresumed, to the partiality, and not to the forgiveness. 

'And it may seem remarkable in one who is a mother also, ' resumed MrsBlimber. 

'And such a mother, ' observed Mr Dombey, bowing with some confused ideaof being complimentary to Cornelia. 

'But really, ' pursued Mrs Blimber, 'I think if I could have knownCicero, and been his friend, and talked with him in his retirement atTusculum (beau-ti-ful Tusculum!), I could have died contented. '

A learned enthusiasm is so very contagious, that Mr Dombey half believedthis was exactly his case; and even Mrs Pipchin, who was not, as we haveseen, of an accommodating disposition generally, gave utterance to alittle sound between a groan and a sigh, as if she would have said thatnobody but Cicero could have proved a lasting consolation under thatfailure of the Peruvian MInes, but that he indeed would have been a veryDavy-lamp of refuge. 

Cornelia looked at Mr Dombey through her spectacles, as if she wouldhave liked to crack a few quotations with him from the authority inquestion. But this design, if she entertained it, was frustrated by aknock at the room-door. 

'Who is that?' said the Doctor. 'Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr Dombey, Sir. ' Toots bowed. 'Quite a coincidence!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Herewe have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega Our head boy, MrDombey. '

The Doctor might have called him their head and shoulders boy, for hewas at least that much taller than any of the rest. He blushed very muchat finding himself among strangers, and chuckled aloud. 

'An addition to our little Portico, Toots, ' said the Doctor; 'MrDombey's son. '

Young Toots blushed again; and finding, from a solemn silence whichprevailed, that he was expected to say something, said to Paul, 'How areyou?' in a voice so deep, and a manner so sheepish, that if a lamb hadroared it couldn't have been more surprising. 

'Ask Mr Feeder, if you please, Toots, ' said the Doctor, 'to preparea few introductory volumes for Mr Dombey's son, and to allot him aconvenient seat for study. My dear, I believe Mr Dombey has not seen thedormitories. '

'If Mr Dombey will walk upstairs, ' said Mrs Blimber, 'I shall be morethan proud to show him the dominions of the drowsy god. '

With that, Mrs Blimber, who was a lady of great suavity, and a wiryfigure, and who wore a cap composed of sky-blue materials, pied upstairswith Mr Dombey and Cornelia; Mrs Pipchin following, and looking outsharp for her enemy the footman. 

While they were gone, Paul sat upon the table, holding Florence by thehand, and glancing timidly from the Doctor round and round the room, while the Doctor, leaning back in his chair, with his hand in his breastas usual, held a book from him at arm's length, and read. Therewas something very awful in this manner of reading. It was such adetermined, unimpassioned, inflexible, cold-blooded way of going towork. It left the Doctor's countenance exposed to view; and when theDoctor smiled suspiciously at his author, or knit his brows, or shookhis head and made wry faces at him, as much as to say, 'Don't tell me, Sir; I know better, ' it was terrific. 

Toots, too, had no business to be outside the door, ostentatiouslyexamining the wheels in his watch, and counting his half-crowns. Butthat didn't last long; for Doctor Blimber, happening to change theposition of his tight plump legs, as if he were going to get up, Tootsswiftly vanished, and appeared no more. 

Mr Dombey and his conductress were soon heard coming downstairs again, talking all the way; and presently they re-entered the Doctor's study. 

'I hope, Mr Dombey, ' said the Doctor, laying down his book, 'that thearrangements meet your approval. '

'They are excellent, Sir, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Very fair, indeed, ' said Mrs Pipchin, in a low voice; never disposed togive too much encouragement. 

'Mrs Pipchin, ' said Mr Dombey, wheeling round, 'will, with yourpermission, Doctor and Mrs Blimber, visit Paul now and then. '

'Whenever Mrs Pipchin pleases, ' observed the Doctor. 

'Always happy to see her, ' said Mrs Blimber. 

'I think, ' said Mr Dombey, 'I have given all the trouble I need, and maytake my leave. Paul, my child, ' he went close to him, as he sat upon thetable. 'Good-bye. '

'Good-bye, Papa. '

The limp and careless little hand that Mr Dombey took in his, wassingularly out of keeping with the wistful face. But he had no partin its sorrowful expression. It was not addressed to him. No, no. ToFlorence--all to Florence. 

If Mr Dombey in his insolence of wealth, had ever made an enemy, hardto appease and cruelly vindictive in his hate, even such an enemy mighthave received the pang that wrung his proud heart then, as compensationfor his injury. 

He bent down, over his boy, and kissed him. If his sight were dimmed ashe did so, by something that for a moment blurred the little face, andmade it indistinct to him, his mental vision may have been, for thatshort time, the clearer perhaps. 

'I shall see you soon, Paul. You are free on Saturdays and Sundays, youknow. '

'Yes, Papa, ' returned Paul: looking at his sister. 'On Saturdays andSundays. '

'And you'll try and learn a great deal here, and be a clever man, ' saidMr Dombey; 'won't you?'

'I'll try, ' returned the child, wearily. 

'And you'll soon be grown up now!' said Mr Dombey. 

'Oh! very soon!' replied the child. Once more the old, old look passedrapidly across his features like a strange light. It fell on MrsPipchin, and extinguished itself in her black dress. That excellentogress stepped forward to take leave and to bear off Florence, which shehad long been thirsting to do. The move on her part roused Mr Dombey, whose eyes were fixed on Paul. After patting him on the head, andpressing his small hand again, he took leave of Doctor Blimber, MrsBlimber, and Miss Blimber, with his usual polite frigidity, and walkedout of the study. 

Despite his entreaty that they would not think of stirring, DoctorBlimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber all pressed forward to attend himto the hall; and thus Mrs Pipchin got into a state of entanglement withMiss Blimber and the Doctor, and was crowded out of the study beforeshe could clutch Florence. To which happy accident Paul stood afterwardsindebted for the dear remembrance, that Florence ran back to throw herarms round his neck, and that hers was the last face in the doorway:turned towards him with a smile of encouragement, the brighter for thetears through which it beamed. 

It made his childish bosom heave and swell when it was gone; and sentthe globes, the books, blind Homer and Minerva, swimming round the room. But they stopped, all of a sudden; and then he heard the loud clock inthe hall still gravely inquiring 'how, is, my, lit, tle, friend? how, is, my, lit, tle, friend?' as it had done before. 

He sat, with folded hands, upon his pedestal, silently listening. Buthe might have answered 'weary, weary! very lonely, very sad!' And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, andbare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and theupholsterer were never coming. 

CHAPTER 12. Paul's Education

After the lapse of some minutes, which appeared an immense time tolittle Paul Dombey on the table, Doctor Blimber came back. The Doctor'swalk was stately, and calculated to impress the juvenile mind withsolemn feelings. It was a sort of march; but when the Doctor put out hisright foot, he gravely turned upon his axis, with a semi-circular sweeptowards the left; and when he put out his left foot, he turned in thesame manner towards the right. So that he seemed, at every stride hetook, to look about him as though he were saying, 'Can anybody havethe goodness to indicate any subject, in any direction, on which I amuninformed? I rather think not. '

Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber came back in the Doctor's company; and theDoctor, lifting his new pupil off the table, delivered him over to MissBlimber. 

'Cornelia, ' said the Doctor, 'Dombey will be your charge at first. Bringhim on, Cornelia, bring him on. '

Miss Blimber received her young ward from the Doctor's hands; and Paul, feeling that the spectacles were surveying him, cast down his eyes. 

'How old are you, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber. 

'Six, ' answered Paul, wondering, as he stole a glance at the young lady, why her hair didn't grow long like Florence's, and why she was like aboy. 

'How much do you know of your Latin Grammar, Dombey?' said Miss Blimber. 

'None of it, ' answered Paul. Feeling that the answer was a shock to MissBlimber's sensibility, he looked up at the three faces that were lookingdown at him, and said:

'I have'n't been well. I have been a weak child. I couldn't learn aLatin Grammar when I was out, every day, with old Glubb. I wish you'dtell old Glubb to come and see me, if you please. '

'What a dreadfully low name' said Mrs Blimber. 'Unclassical to a degree!Who is the monster, child?'

'What monster?' inquired Paul. 

'Glubb, ' said Mrs Blimber, with a great disrelish. 

'He's no more a monster than you are, ' returned Paul. 

'What!' cried the Doctor, in a terrible voice. 'Ay, ay, ay? Aha! What'sthat?'

Paul was dreadfully frightened; but still he made a stand for the absentGlubb, though he did it trembling. 

'He's a very nice old man, Ma'am, ' he said. 'He used to draw my couch. He knows all about the deep sea, and the fish that are in it, and thegreat monsters that come and lie on rocks in the sun, and dive into thewater again when they're startled, blowing and splashing so, that theycan be heard for miles. There are some creatures, said Paul, warmingwith his subject, 'I don't know how many yards long, and I forget theirnames, but Florence knows, that pretend to be in distress; and when aman goes near them, out of compassion, they open their great jaws, andattack him. But all he has got to do, ' said Paul, boldly tendering thisinformation to the very Doctor himself, 'is to keep on turning as heruns away, and then, as they turn slowly, because they are so long, andcan't bend, he's sure to beat them. And though old Glubb don't know whythe sea should make me think of my Mama that's dead, or what it is thatit is always saying--always saying! he knows a great deal about it. AndI wish, ' the child concluded, with a sudden falling of his countenance, and failing in his animation, as he looked like one forlorn, upon thethree strange faces, 'that you'd let old Glubb come here to see me, forI know him very well, and he knows me. 

'Ha!' said the Doctor, shaking his head; 'this is bad, but study will domuch. '

Mrs Blimber opined, with something like a shiver, that he was anunaccountable child; and, allowing for the difference of visage, lookedat him pretty much as Mrs Pipchin had been used to do. 

'Take him round the house, Cornelia, ' said the Doctor, 'and familiarisehim with his new sphere. Go with that young lady, Dombey. '

Dombey obeyed; giving his hand to the abstruse Cornelia, and looking ather sideways, with timid curiosity, as they went away together. Forher spectacles, by reason of the glistening of the glasses, made herso mysterious, that he didn't know where she was looking, and was notindeed quite sure that she had any eyes at all behind them. 

Cornelia took him first to the schoolroom, which was situated at theback of the hall, and was approached through two baize doors, whichdeadened and muffled the young gentlemen's voices. Here, there wereeight young gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all veryhard at work, and very grave indeed. Toots, as an old hand, had a deskto himself in one corner: and a magnificent man, of immense age, helooked, in Paul's young eyes, behind it. 

Mr Feeder, B. A. , who sat at another little desk, had his Virgil stopon, and was slowly grinding that tune to four young gentlemen. Of theremaining four, two, who grasped their foreheads convulsively, wereengaged in solving mathematical problems; one with his face like adirty window, from much crying, was endeavouring to flounder through ahopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at histask in stony stupefaction and despair--which it seemed had been hiscondition ever since breakfast time. 

The appearance of a new boy did not create the sensation that might havebeen expected. Mr Feeder, B. A. (who was in the habit of shaving his headfor coolness, and had nothing but little bristles on it), gave him abony hand, and told him he was glad to see him--which Paul would havebeen very glad to have told him, if he could have done so with the leastsincerity. Then Paul, instructed by Cornelia, shook hands with the fouryoung gentlemen at Mr Feeder's desk; then with the two young gentlemenat work on the problems, who were very feverish; then with the younggentleman at work against time, who was very inky; and lastly with theyoung gentleman in a state of stupefaction, who was flabby and quitecold. 

Paul having been already introduced to Toots, that pupil merely chuckledand breathed hard, as his custom was, and pursued the occupation inwhich he was engaged. It was not a severe one; for on account of hishaving 'gone through' so much (in more senses than one), and also of hishaving, as before hinted, left off blowing in his prime, Toots now hadlicence to pursue his own course of study: which was chiefly to writelong letters to himself from persons of distinction, adds 'P. Toots, Esquire, Brighton, Sussex, ' and to preserve them in his desk with greatcare. 

These ceremonies passed, Cornelia led Paul upstairs to the top of thehouse; which was rather a slow journey, on account of Paul being obligedto land both feet on every stair, before he mounted another. But theyreached their journey's end at last; and there, in a front room, lookingover the wild sea, Cornelia showed him a nice little bed with whitehangings, close to the window, on which there was already beautifullywritten on a card in round text--down strokes very thick, and up strokesvery fine--DOMBEY; while two other little bedsteads in the same roomwere announced, through like means, as respectively appertaining untoBRIGGS and TOZER. 

Just as they got downstairs again into the hall, Paul saw the weak-eyedyoung man who had given that mortal offence to Mrs Pipchin, suddenlyseize a very large drumstick, and fly at a gong that was hanging up, asif he had gone mad, or wanted vengeance. Instead of receiving warning, however, or being instantly taken into custody, the young man left offunchecked, after having made a dreadful noise. Then Cornelia Blimbersaid to Dombey that dinner would be ready in a quarter of an hour, andperhaps he had better go into the schoolroom among his 'friends. '

So Dombey, deferentially passing the great clock which was still asanxious as ever to know how he found himself, opened the schoolroom doora very little way, and strayed in like a lost boy: shutting it afterhim with some difficulty. His friends were all dispersed about theroom except the stony friend, who remained immoveable. Mr Feeder wasstretching himself in his grey gown, as if, regardless of expense, hewere resolved to pull the sleeves off. 

'Heigh ho hum!' cried Mr Feeder, shaking himself like a cart-horse. 'Ohdear me, dear me! Ya-a-a-ah!'

Paul was quite alarmed by Mr Feeder's yawning; it was done on such agreat scale, and he was so terribly in earnest. All the boys too (Tootsexcepted) seemed knocked up, and were getting ready for dinner--somenewly tying their neckcloths, which were very stiff indeed; andothers washing their hands or brushing their hair, in an adjoiningante-chamber--as if they didn't think they should enjoy it at all. 

Young Toots who was ready beforehand, and had therefore nothing to do, and had leisure to bestow upon Paul, said, with heavy good nature:

'Sit down, Dombey. '

'Thank you, Sir, ' said Paul. 

His endeavouring to hoist himself on to a very high window-seat, and hisslipping down again, appeared to prepare Toots's mind for the receptionof a discovery. 

'You're a very small chap;' said Mr Toots. 

'Yes, Sir, I'm small, ' returned Paul. 'Thank you, Sir. '

For Toots had lifted him into the seat, and done it kindly too. 

'Who's your tailor?' inquired Toots, after looking at him for somemoments. 

'It's a woman that has made my clothes as yet, ' said Paul. 'My sister'sdressmaker. '

'My tailor's Burgess and Co. , ' said Toots. 'Fash'nable. But very dear. '

Paul had wit enough to shake his head, as if he would have said it waseasy to see that; and indeed he thought so. 

'Your father's regularly rich, ain't he?' inquired Mr Toots. 

'Yes, Sir, ' said Paul. 'He's Dombey and Son. '

'And which?' demanded Toots. 

'And Son, Sir, ' replied Paul. 

Mr Toots made one or two attempts, in a low voice, to fix the Firm inhis mind; but not quite succeeding, said he would get Paul to mentionthe name again to-morrow morning, as it was rather important. And indeedhe purposed nothing less than writing himself a private and confidentialletter from Dombey and Son immediately. 

By this time the other pupils (always excepting the stony boy) gatheredround. They were polite, but pale; and spoke low; and they were sodepressed in their spirits, that in comparison with the general tone ofthat company, Master Bitherstone was a perfect Miller, or complete JestBook. ' And yet he had a sense of injury upon him, too, had Bitherstone. 

'You sleep in my room, don't you?' asked a solemn young gentleman, whoseshirt-collar curled up the lobes of his ears. 

'Master Briggs?' inquired Paul. 

'Tozer, ' said the young gentleman. 

Paul answered yes; and Tozer pointing out the stony pupil, said that wasBriggs. Paul had already felt certain that it must be either Briggs orTozer, though he didn't know why. 

'Is yours a strong constitution?' inquired Tozer. 

Paul said he thought not. Tozer replied that he thought not also, judging from Paul's looks, and that it was a pity, for it need be. Hethen asked Paul if he were going to begin with Cornelia; and on Paulsaying 'yes, ' all the young gentlemen (Briggs excepted) gave a lowgroan. 

It was drowned in the tintinnabulation of the gong, which sounding againwith great fury, there was a general move towards the dining-room; stillexcepting Briggs the stony boy, who remained where he was, and as hewas; and on its way to whom Paul presently encountered a round of bread, genteelly served on a plate and napkin, and with a silver fork lyingcrosswise on the top of it. 

Doctor Blimber was already in his place in the dining-room, at the topof the table, with Miss Blimber and Mrs Blimber on either side of him. Mr Feeder in a black coat was at the bottom. Paul's chair was next toMiss Blimber; but it being found, when he sat in it, that his eyebrowswere not much above the level of the table-cloth, some books werebrought in from the Doctor's study, on which he was elevated, and onwhich he always sat from that time--carrying them in and out himself onafter occasions, like a little elephant and castle. '

Grace having been said by the Doctor, dinner began. There was some nicesoup; also roast meat, boiled meat, vegetables, pie, and cheese. Everyyoung gentleman had a massive silver fork, and a napkin; and all thearrangements were stately and handsome. In particular, there was abutler in a blue coat and bright buttons, who gave quite a winey flavourto the table beer; he poured it out so superbly. 

Nobody spoke, unless spoken to, except Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, andMiss Blimber, who conversed occasionally. Whenever a young gentleman wasnot actually engaged with his knife and fork or spoon, his eye, with anirresistible attraction, sought the eye of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, or Miss Blimber, and modestly rested there. Toots appeared to be theonly exception to this rule. He sat next Mr Feeder on Paul's side of thetable, and frequently looked behind and before the intervening boys tocatch a glimpse of Paul. 

Only once during dinner was there any conversation that included theyoung gentlemen. It happened at the epoch of the cheese, when theDoctor, having taken a glass of port wine, and hemmed twice or thrice, said:

'It is remarkable, Mr Feeder, that the Romans--'

At the mention of this terrible people, their implacable enemies, everyyoung gentleman fastened his gaze upon the Doctor, with an assumption ofthe deepest interest. One of the number who happened to be drinking, and who caught the Doctor's eye glaring at him through the side of histumbler, left off so hastily that he was convulsed for some moments, andin the sequel ruined Doctor Blimber's point. 

'It is remarkable, Mr Feeder, ' said the Doctor, beginning again slowly, 'that the Romans, in those gorgeous and profuse entertainments of whichwe read in the days of the Emperors, when luxury had attained a heightunknown before or since, and when whole provinces were ravaged to supplythe splendid means of one Imperial Banquet--'

Here the offender, who had been swelling and straining, and waiting invain for a full stop, broke out violently. 

'Johnson, ' said Mr Feeder, in a low reproachful voice, 'take somewater. '

The Doctor, looking very stern, made a pause until the water wasbrought, and then resumed:

'And when, Mr Feeder--'

But Mr Feeder, who saw that Johnson must break out again, and who knewthat the Doctor would never come to a period before the young gentlemenuntil he had finished all he meant to say, couldn't keep his eye offJohnson; and thus was caught in the fact of not looking at the Doctor, who consequently stopped. 

'I beg your pardon, Sir, ' said Mr Feeder, reddening. 'I beg your pardon, Doctor Blimber. '

'And when, ' said the Doctor, raising his voice, 'when, Sir, as weread, and have no reason to doubt--incredible as it may appear to thevulgar--of our time--the brother of Vitellius prepared for him a feast, in which were served, of fish, two thousand dishes--'

'Take some water, Johnson--dishes, Sir, ' said Mr Feeder. 

'Of various sorts of fowl, five thousand dishes. '

'Or try a crust of bread, ' said Mr Feeder. 

'And one dish, ' pursued Doctor Blimber, raising his voice still higheras he looked all round the table, 'called, from its enormous dimensions, the Shield of Minerva, and made, among other costly ingredients, of thebrains of pheasants--'

'Ow, ow, ow!' (from Johnson. )

'Woodcocks--'

'Ow, ow, ow!'

'The sounds of the fish called scari--'

'You'll burst some vessel in your head, ' said Mr Feeder. 'You had betterlet it come. '

'And the spawn of the lamprey, brought from the Carpathian Sea, 'pursued the Doctor, in his severest voice; 'when we read of costlyentertainments such as these, and still remember, that we have aTitus--'

'What would be your mother's feelings if you died of apoplexy!' said MrFeeder. 

'A Domitian--'

'And you're blue, you know, ' said Mr Feeder. 

'A Nero, a Tiberius, a Caligula, a Heliogabalus, and many more, pursuedthe Doctor; 'it is, Mr Feeder--if you are doing me the honour toattend--remarkable; VERY remarkable, Sir--'

But Johnson, unable to suppress it any longer, burst at that moment intosuch an overwhelming fit of coughing, that although both his immediateneighbours thumped him on the back, and Mr Feeder himself held a glassof water to his lips, and the butler walked him up and down severaltimes between his own chair and the sideboard, like a sentry, it was afull five minutes before he was moderately composed. Then there was aprofound silence. 

'Gentlemen, ' said Doctor Blimber, 'rise for Grace! Cornelia, lift Dombeydown'--nothing of whom but his scalp was accordingly seen abovethe tablecloth. 'Johnson will repeat to me tomorrow morning beforebreakfast, without book, and from the Greek Testament, the first chapterof the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians. We will resume ourstudies, Mr Feeder, in half-an-hour. '

The young gentlemen bowed and withdrew. Mr Feeder did likewise. During the half-hour, the young gentlemen, broken into pairs, loiteredarm-in-arm up and down a small piece of ground behind the house, orendeavoured to kindle a spark of animation in the breast of Briggs. Butnothing happened so vulgar as play. Punctually at the appointed time, the gong was sounded, and the studies, under the joint auspices ofDoctor Blimber and Mr Feeder, were resumed. 

As the Olympic game of lounging up and down had been cut shorter thanusual that day, on Johnson's account, they all went out for a walkbefore tea. Even Briggs (though he hadn't begun yet) partook of thisdissipation; in the enjoyment of which he looked over the cliff two orthree times darkly. Doctor Blimber accompanied them; and Paul had thehonour of being taken in tow by the Doctor himself: a distinguishedstate of things, in which he looked very little and feeble. 

Tea was served in a style no less polite than the dinner; and after tea, the young gentlemen rising and bowing as before, withdrew to fetch upthe unfinished tasks of that day, or to get up the already looming tasksof to-morrow. In the meantime Mr Feeder withdrew to his own room; andPaul sat in a corner wondering whether Florence was thinking of him, andwhat they were all about at Mrs Pipchin's. 

Mr Toots, who had been detained by an important letter from the Duke ofWellington, found Paul out after a time; and having looked at him for along while, as before, inquired if he was fond of waistcoats. 

Paul said 'Yes, Sir. '

'So am I, ' said Toots. 

No word more spoke Toots that night; but he stood looking at Paul asif he liked him; and as there was company in that, and Paul was notinclined to talk, it answered his purpose better than conversation. 

At eight o'clock or so, the gong sounded again for prayers in thedining-room, where the butler afterwards presided over a side-table, onwhich bread and cheese and beer were spread for such young gentlemen asdesired to partake of those refreshments. The ceremonies concluded bythe Doctor's saying, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at sevento-morrow;' and then, for the first time, Paul saw Cornelia Blimber'seye, and saw that it was upon him. When the Doctor had said these words, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies at seven tomorrow, ' the pupilsbowed again, and went to bed. 

In the confidence of their own room upstairs, Briggs said his head achedready to split, and that he should wish himself dead if it wasn't forhis mother, and a blackbird he had at home Tozer didn't say much, but hesighed a good deal, and told Paul to look out, for his turn would cometo-morrow. After uttering those prophetic words, he undressed himselfmoodily, and got into bed. Briggs was in his bed too, and Paul inhis bed too, before the weak-eyed young man appeared to take away thecandle, when he wished them good-night and pleasant dreams. Buthis benevolent wishes were in vain, as far as Briggs and Tozer wereconcerned; for Paul, who lay awake for a long while, and often wokeafterwards, found that Briggs was ridden by his lesson as a nightmare:and that Tozer, whose mind was affected in his sleep by similar causes, in a minor degree talked unknown tongues, or scraps of Greek andLatin--it was all one to Paul--which, in the silence of night, had aninexpressibly wicked and guilty effect. 

Paul had sunk into a sweet sleep, and dreamed that he was walking handin hand with Florence through beautiful gardens, when they came to alarge sunflower which suddenly expanded itself into a gong, and beganto sound. Opening his eyes, he found that it was a dark, windy morning, with a drizzling rain: and that the real gong was giving dreadful noteof preparation, down in the hall. 

So he got up directly, and found Briggs with hardly any eyes, fornightmare and grief had made his face puffy, putting his boots on: whileTozer stood shivering and rubbing his shoulders in a very bad humour. Poor Paul couldn't dress himself easily, not being used to it, and askedthem if they would have the goodness to tie some strings for him; but asBriggs merely said 'Bother!' and Tozer, 'Oh yes!' he went down when hewas otherwise ready, to the next storey, where he saw a pretty youngwoman in leather gloves, cleaning a stove. The young woman seemedsurprised at his appearance, and asked him where his mother was. WhenPaul told her she was dead, she took her gloves off, and did what hewanted; and furthermore rubbed his hands to warm them; and gave him akiss; and told him whenever he wanted anything of that sort--meaning inthe dressing way--to ask for 'Melia; which Paul, thanking her verymuch, said he certainly would. He then proceeded softly on his journeydownstairs, towards the room in which the young gentlemen resumed theirstudies, when, passing by a door that stood ajar, a voice from withincried, 'Is that Dombey?' On Paul replying, 'Yes, Ma'am:' for he knew thevoice to be Miss Blimber's: Miss Blimber said, 'Come in, Dombey. ' And inhe went. Miss Blimber presented exactly the appearance she had presentedyesterday, except that she wore a shawl. Her little light curls were ascrisp as ever, and she had already her spectacles on, which madePaul wonder whether she went to bed in them. She had a cool littlesitting-room of her own up there, with some books in it, and no fire ButMiss Blimber was never cold, and never sleepy. 

Now, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber, 'I am going out for a constitutional. '

Paul wondered what that was, and why she didn't send the footman out toget it in such unfavourable weather. But he made no observation on thesubject: his attention being devoted to a little pile of new books, onwhich Miss Blimber appeared to have been recently engaged. 

'These are yours, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber. 

'All of 'em, Ma'am?' said Paul. 

'Yes, ' returned Miss Blimber; 'and Mr Feeder will look you out some morevery soon, if you are as studious as I expect you will be, Dombey. '

'Thank you, Ma'am, ' said Paul. 

'I am going out for a constitutional, ' resumed Miss Blimber; 'and whileI am gone, that is to say in the interval between this and breakfast, Dombey, I wish you to read over what I have marked in these books, andto tell me if you quite understand what you have got to learn. Don'tlose time, Dombey, for you have none to spare, but take them downstairs, and begin directly. '

'Yes, Ma'am, ' answered Paul. 

There were so many of them, that although Paul put one hand under thebottom book and his other hand and his chin on the top book, and huggedthem all closely, the middle book slipped out before he reached thedoor, and then they all tumbled down on the floor. Miss Blimber said, 'Oh, Dombey, Dombey, this is really very careless!' and piled them upafresh for him; and this time, by dint of balancing them with greatnicety, Paul got out of the room, and down a few stairs before two ofthem escaped again. But he held the rest so tight, that he only left onemore on the first floor, and one in the passage; and when he had got themain body down into the schoolroom, he set off upstairs again to collectthe stragglers. Having at last amassed the whole library, and climbedinto his place, he fell to work, encouraged by a remark from Tozer tothe effect that he 'was in for it now;' which was the only interruptionhe received till breakfast time. At that meal, for which he had noappetite, everything was quite as solemn and genteel as at the others;and when it was finished, he followed Miss Blimber upstairs. 

'Now, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber. 'How have you got on with thosebooks?'

They comprised a little English, and a deal of Latin--names of things, declensions of articles and substantives, exercises thereon, andpreliminary rules--a trifle of orthography, a glance at ancient history, a wink or two at modern ditto, a few tables, two or three weights andmeasures, and a little general information. When poor Paul had speltout number two, he found he had no idea of number one; fragments whereofafterwards obtruded themselves into number three, which slided intonumber four, which grafted itself on to number two. So that whethertwenty Romuluses made a Remus, or hic haec hoc was troy weight, ora verb always agreed with an ancient Briton, or three times four wasTaurus a bull, were open questions with him. 

'Oh, Dombey, Dombey!' said Miss Blimber, 'this is very shocking. '

'If you please, ' said Paul, 'I think if I might sometimes talk a littleto old Glubb, I should be able to do better. '

'Nonsense, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't hear of it. This isnot the place for Glubbs of any kind. You must take the books down, I suppose, Dombey, one by one, and perfect yourself in the day'sinstalment of subject A, before you turn at all to subject B. I amsorry to say, Dombey, that your education appears to have been very muchneglected. '

'So Papa says, ' returned Paul; 'but I told you--I have been a weakchild. Florence knows I have. So does Wickam. '

'Who is Wickam?' asked Miss Blimber. 

'She has been my nurse, ' Paul answered. 

'I must beg you not to mention Wickam to me, then, ' said Miss Blimber. 'Icouldn't allow it'. 

'You asked me who she was, ' said Paul. 

'Very well, ' returned Miss Blimber; 'but this is all very differentindeed from anything of that sort, Dombey, and I couldn't think ofpermitting it. As to having been weak, you must begin to be strong. Andnow take away the top book, if you please, Dombey, and return when youare master of the theme. '

Miss Blimber expressed her opinions on the subject of Paul'suninstructed state with a gloomy delight, as if she had expectedthis result, and were glad to find that they must be in constantcommunication. Paul withdrew with the top task, as he was told, andlaboured away at it, down below: sometimes remembering every word of it, and sometimes forgetting it all, and everything else besides: until atlast he ventured upstairs again to repeat the lesson, when it was nearlyall driven out of his head before he began, by Miss Blimber's shuttingup the book, and saying, 'Good, Dombey!' a proceeding so suggestive ofthe knowledge inside of her, that Paul looked upon the young lady withconsternation, as a kind of learned Guy Faux, or artificial Bogle, stuffed full of scholastic straw. 

He acquitted himself very well, nevertheless; and Miss Blimber, commending him as giving promise of getting on fast, immediatelyprovided him with subject B; from which he passed to C, and even Dbefore dinner. It was hard work, resuming his studies, soon afterdinner; and he felt giddy and confused and drowsy and dull. But all theother young gentlemen had similar sensations, and were obliged to resumetheir studies too, if there were any comfort in that. It was a wonderthat the great clock in the hall, instead of being constant to its firstinquiry, never said, 'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies, ' forthat phrase was often enough repeated in its neighbourhood. The studieswent round like a mighty wheel, and the young gentlemen were alwaysstretched upon it. 

After tea there were exercises again, and preparations for next dayby candlelight. And in due course there was bed; where, but for thatresumption of the studies which took place in dreams, were rest andsweet forgetfulness. 

Oh Saturdays! Oh happy Saturdays, when Florence always came at noon, andnever would, in any weather, stay away, though Mrs Pipchin snarled andgrowled, and worried her bitterly. Those Saturdays were Sabbaths for atleast two little Christians among all the Jews, and did the holy Sabbathwork of strengthening and knitting up a brother's and a sister's love. 

Not even Sunday nights--the heavy Sunday nights, whose shadow darkenedthe first waking burst of light on Sunday mornings--could mar thoseprecious Saturdays. Whether it was the great sea-shore, where they sat, and strolled together; or whether it was only Mrs Pipchin's dull backroom, in which she sang to him so softly, with his drowsy head upon herarm; Paul never cared. It was Florence. That was all he thought of. So, on Sunday nights, when the Doctor's dark door stood agape to swallow himup for another week, the time was come for taking leave of Florence; noone else. 

Mrs Wickam had been drafted home to the house in town, and Miss Nipper, now a smart young woman, had come down. To many a single combat withMrs Pipchin, did Miss Nipper gallantly devote herself, and if ever MrsPipchin in all her life had found her match, she had found it now. Miss Nipper threw away the scabbard the first morning she arose in MrsPipchin's house. She asked and gave no quarter. She said it must be war, and war it was; and Mrs Pipchin lived from that time in the midst ofsurprises, harassings, and defiances, and skirmishing attacks that camebouncing in upon her from the passage, even in unguarded moments ofchops, and carried desolation to her very toast. 

Miss Nipper had returned one Sunday night with Florence, from walkingback with Paul to the Doctor's, when Florence took from her bosom alittle piece of paper, on which she had pencilled down some words. 

'See here, Susan, ' she said. 'These are the names of the little booksthat Paul brings home to do those long exercises with, when he is sotired. I copied them last night while he was writing. '

'Don't show 'em to me, Miss Floy, if you please, ' returned Nipper, 'I'das soon see Mrs Pipchin. '

'I want you to buy them for me, Susan, if you will, tomorrow morning. Ihave money enough, ' said Florence. 

'Why, goodness gracious me, Miss Floy, ' returned Miss Nipper, 'howcan you talk like that, when you have books upon books already, andmasterses and mississes a teaching of you everything continual, thoughmy belief is that your Pa, Miss Dombey, never would have learnt younothing, never would have thought of it, unless you'd asked him--when hecouldn't well refuse; but giving consent when asked, and offering whenunasked, Miss, is quite two things; I may not have my objections to ayoung man's keeping company with me, and when he puts the question, maysay "yes, " but that's not saying "would you be so kind as like me. "'

'But you can buy me the books, Susan; and you will, when you know why Iwant them. '

'Well, Miss, and why do you want 'em?' replied Nipper; adding, ina lower voice, 'If it was to fling at Mrs Pipchin's head, I'd buy acart-load. '

'Paul has a great deal too much to do, Susan, ' said Florence, 'I am sureof it. '

'And well you may be, Miss, ' returned her maid, 'and make your mindquite easy that the willing dear is worked and worked away. If those isLatin legs, ' exclaimed Miss Nipper, with strong feeling--in allusion toPaul's; 'give me English ones. '

'I am afraid he feels lonely and lost at Doctor Blimber's, Susan, 'pursued Florence, turning away her face. 

'Ah, ' said Miss Nipper, with great sharpness, 'Oh, them "Blimbers"'

'Don't blame anyone, ' said Florence. 'It's a mistake. '

'I say nothing about blame, Miss, ' cried Miss Nipper, 'for I know thatyou object, but I may wish, Miss, that the family was set to workto make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front and had thepickaxe. '

After this speech, Miss Nipper, who was perfectly serious, wiped hereyes. 

'I think I could perhaps give Paul some help, Susan, if I had thesebooks, ' said Florence, 'and make the coming week a little easier tohim. At least I want to try. So buy them for me, dear, and I will neverforget how kind it was of you to do it!'

It must have been a harder heart than Susan Nipper's that could haverejected the little purse Florence held out with these words, or thegentle look of entreaty with which she seconded her petition. Susan putthe purse in her pocket without reply, and trotted out at once upon hererrand. 

The books were not easy to procure; and the answer at several shops was, either that they were just out of them, or that they never kept them, orthat they had had a great many last month, or that they expected a greatmany next week But Susan was not easily baffled in such an enterprise;and having entrapped a white-haired youth, in a black calico apron, froma library where she was known, to accompany her in her quest, she ledhim such a life in going up and down, that he exerted himself to theutmost, if it were only to get rid of her; and finally enabled her toreturn home in triumph. 

With these treasures then, after her own daily lessons were over, Florence sat down at night to track Paul's footsteps through the thornyways of learning; and being possessed of a naturally quick and soundcapacity, and taught by that most wonderful of masters, love, it was notlong before she gained upon Paul's heels, and caught and passed him. 

Not a word of this was breathed to Mrs Pipchin: but many a night whenthey were all in bed, and when Miss Nipper, with her hair in papers andherself asleep in some uncomfortable attitude, reposed unconscious byher side; and when the chinking ashes in the grate were cold and grey;and when the candles were burnt down and guttering out;--Florence triedso hard to be a substitute for one small Dombey, that her fortitude andperseverance might have almost won her a free right to bear the nameherself. 

And high was her reward, when one Saturday evening, as little Paul wassitting down as usual to 'resume his studies, ' she sat down by his side, and showed him all that was so rough, made smooth, and all that was sodark, made clear and plain, before him. It was nothing but a startledlook in Paul's wan face--a flush--a smile--and then a close embrace--butGod knows how her heart leapt up at this rich payment for her trouble. 

'Oh, Floy!' cried her brother, 'how I love you! How I love you, Floy!'

'And I you, dear!'

'Oh! I am sure of that, Floy. '

He said no more about it, but all that evening sat close by her, veryquiet; and in the night he called out from his little room within hers, three or four times, that he loved her. 

Regularly, after that, Florence was prepared to sit down with Paul onSaturday night, and patiently assist him through so much as they couldanticipate together of his next week's work. The cheering thought thathe was labouring on where Florence had just toiled before him, would, ofitself, have been a stimulant to Paul in the perpetual resumption of hisstudies; but coupled with the actual lightening of his load, consequenton this assistance, it saved him, possibly, from sinking underneath theburden which the fair Cornelia Blimber piled upon his back. 

It was not that Miss Blimber meant to be too hard upon him, or thatDoctor Blimber meant to bear too heavily on the young gentlemen ingeneral. Cornelia merely held the faith in which she had been bred; andthe Doctor, in some partial confusion of his ideas, regarded the younggentlemen as if they were all Doctors, and were born grown up. Comfortedby the applause of the young gentlemen's nearest relations, and urgedon by their blind vanity and ill-considered haste, it would have beenstrange if Doctor Blimber had discovered his mistake, or trimmed hisswelling sails to any other tack. 

Thus in the case of Paul. When Doctor Blimber said he made greatprogress and was naturally clever, Mr Dombey was more bent than ever onhis being forced and crammed. In the case of Briggs, when Doctor Blimberreported that he did not make great progress yet, and was not naturallyclever, Briggs senior was inexorable in the same purpose. In short, however high and false the temperature at which the Doctor kept hishothouse, the owners of the plants were always ready to lend a helpinghand at the bellows, and to stir the fire. 

Such spirits as he had in the outset, Paul soon lost of course. But heretained all that was strange, and old, and thoughtful in his character:and under circumstances so favourable to the development of thosetendencies, became even more strange, and old, and thoughtful, thanbefore. 

The only difference was, that he kept his character to himself. He grewmore thoughtful and reserved, every day; and had no such curiosityin any living member of the Doctor's household, as he had had in MrsPipchin. He loved to be alone; and in those short intervals when he wasnot occupied with his books, liked nothing so well as wandering aboutthe house by himself, or sitting on the stairs, listening to the greatclock in the hall. He was intimate with all the paperhanging in thehouse; saw things that no one else saw in the patterns; found outminiature tigers and lions running up the bedroom walls, and squintingfaces leering in the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth. 

The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of hismusing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him 'odd, 'and sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey'moped;' but that was all. 

Unless young Toots had some idea on the subject, to the expression ofwhich he was wholly unequal. Ideas, like ghosts (according to the commonnotion of ghosts), must be spoken to a little before they will explainthemselves; and Toots had long left off asking any questions of his ownmind. Some mist there may have been, issuing from that leaden casket, his cranium, which, if it could have taken shape and form, would havebecome a genie; but it could not; and it only so far followed theexample of the smoke in the Arabian story, as to roll out in a thickcloud, and there hang and hover. But it left a little figure visibleupon a lonely shore, and Toots was always staring at it. 

'How are you?' he would say to Paul, fifty times a day. 'Quite well, Sir, thank you, ' Paul would answer. 'Shake hands, ' would be Toots's nextadvance. 

Which Paul, of course, would immediately do. Mr Toots generally saidagain, after a long interval of staring and hard breathing, 'How areyou?' To which Paul again replied, 'Quite well, Sir, thank you. '

One evening Mr Toots was sitting at his desk, oppressed bycorrespondence, when a great purpose seemed to flash upon him. He laiddown his pen, and went off to seek Paul, whom he found at last, after along search, looking through the window of his little bedroom. 

'I say!' cried Toots, speaking the moment he entered the room, lest heshould forget it; 'what do you think about?'

'Oh! I think about a great many things, ' replied Paul. 

'Do you, though?' said Toots, appearing to consider that fact in itselfsurprising. 'If you had to die, ' said Paul, looking up into his face--MrToots started, and seemed much disturbed. 

'Don't you think you would rather die on a moonlight night, when the skywas quite clear, and the wind blowing, as it did last night?'

Mr Toots said, looking doubtfully at Paul, and shaking his head, that hedidn't know about that. 

'Not blowing, at least, ' said Paul, 'but sounding in the air like thesea sounds in the shells. It was a beautiful night. When I had listenedto the water for a long time, I got up and looked out. There was a boatover there, in the full light of the moon; a boat with a sail. '

The child looked at him so steadfastly, and spoke so earnestly, thatMr Toots, feeling himself called upon to say something about this boat, said, 'Smugglers. ' But with an impartial remembrance of there being twosides to every question, he added, 'or Preventive. '

'A boat with a sail, ' repeated Paul, 'in the full light of the moon. Thesail like an arm, all silver. It went away into the distance, and whatdo you think it seemed to do as it moved with the waves?'

'Pitch, ' said Mr Toots. 

'It seemed to beckon, ' said the child, 'to beckon me to come!--There sheis! There she is!'

Toots was almost beside himself with dismay at this sudden exclamation, after what had gone before, and cried 'Who?'

'My sister Florence!' cried Paul, 'looking up here, and waving her hand. She sees me--she sees me! Good-night, dear, good-night, good-night. '

His quick transition to a state of unbounded pleasure, as he stood athis window, kissing and clapping his hands: and the way in which thelight retreated from his features as she passed out of his view, andleft a patient melancholy on the little face: were too remarkable whollyto escape even Toots's notice. Their interview being interrupted at thismoment by a visit from Mrs Pipchin, who usually brought her black skirtsto bear upon Paul just before dusk, once or twice a week, Toots hadno opportunity of improving the occasion: but it left so marked animpression on his mind that he twice returned, after having exchangedthe usual salutations, to ask Mrs Pipchin how she did. This theirascible old lady conceived to be a deeply devised and long-meditatedinsult, originating in the diabolical invention of the weak-eyed youngman downstairs, against whom she accordingly lodged a formal complaintwith Doctor Blimber that very night; who mentioned to the young man thatif he ever did it again, he should be obliged to part with him. 

The evenings being longer now, Paul stole up to his window every eveningto look out for Florence. She always passed and repassed at a certaintime, until she saw him; and their mutual recognition was a gleam ofsunshine in Paul's daily life. Often after dark, one other figure walkedalone before the Doctor's house. He rarely joined them on the Saturdaysnow. He could not bear it. He would rather come unrecognised, and lookup at the windows where his son was qualifying for a man; and wait, andwatch, and plan, and hope. 

Oh! could he but have seen, or seen as others did, the slight spare boyabove, watching the waves and clouds at twilight, with his earnest eyes, and breasting the window of his solitary cage when birds flew by, as ifhe would have emulated them, and soared away!

CHAPTER 13. Shipping Intelligence and Office Business

Mr Dombey's offices were in a court where there was an old-establishedstall of choice fruit at the corner: where perambulating merchants, ofboth sexes, offered for sale at any time between the hours of ten andfive, slippers, pocket-books, sponges, dogs' collars, and Windsor soap;and sometimes a pointer or an oil-painting. 

The pointer always came that way, with a view to the Stock Exchange, where a sporting taste (originating generally in bets of new hats)is much in vogue. The other commodities were addressed to the generalpublic; but they were never offered by the vendors to Mr Dombey. Whenhe appeared, the dealers in those wares fell off respectfully. Theprincipal slipper and dogs' collar man--who considered himself a publiccharacter, and whose portrait was screwed on to an artist's door inCheapside--threw up his forefinger to the brim of his hat as Mr Dombeywent by. The ticket-porter, if he were not absent on a job, always ranofficiously before, to open Mr Dombey's office door as wide as possible, and hold it open, with his hat off, while he entered. 

The clerks within were not a whit behind-hand in their demonstrations ofrespect. A solemn hush prevailed, as Mr Dombey passed through the outeroffice. The wit of the Counting-House became in a moment as mute as therow of leathern fire-buckets hanging up behind him. Such vapid and flatdaylight as filtered through the ground-glass windows and skylights, leaving a black sediment upon the panes, showed the books and papers, and the figures bending over them, enveloped in a studious gloom, and asmuch abstracted in appearance, from the world without, as if they wereassembled at the bottom of the sea; while a mouldy little strong room inthe obscure perspective, where a shaded lamp was always burning, mighthave represented the cavern of some ocean monster, looking on with a redeye at these mysteries of the deep. 

When Perch the messenger, whose place was on a little bracket, like atimepiece, saw Mr Dombey come in--or rather when he felt that he wascoming, for he had usually an instinctive sense of his approach--hehurried into Mr Dombey's room, stirred the fire, carried fresh coalsfrom the bowels of the coal-box, hung the newspaper to air upon thefender, put the chair ready, and the screen in its place, and wasround upon his heel on the instant of Mr Dombey's entrance, to take hisgreat-coat and hat, and hang them up. Then Perch took the newspaper, and gave it a turn or two in his hands before the fire, and laid it, deferentially, at Mr Dombey's elbow. And so little objection had Perchto being deferential in the last degree, that if he might have laidhimself at Mr Dombey's feet, or might have called him by some such titleas used to be bestowed upon the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, he would havebeen all the better pleased. 

As this honour would have been an innovation and an experiment, Perchwas fain to content himself by expressing as well as he could, in hismanner, You are the light of my Eyes. You are the Breath of my Soul. Youare the commander of the Faithful Perch! With this imperfect happinessto cheer him, he would shut the door softly, walk away on tiptoe, andleave his great chief to be stared at, through a dome-shaped window inthe leads, by ugly chimney-pots and backs of houses, and especially bythe bold window of a hair-cutting saloon on a first floor, where a waxeneffigy, bald as a Mussulman in the morning, and covered, after eleveno'clock in the day, with luxuriant hair and whiskers in the latestChristian fashion, showed him the wrong side of its head for ever. 

Between Mr Dombey and the common world, as it was accessible throughthe medium of the outer office--to which Mr Dombey's presence in his ownroom may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air--there were twodegrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step;Mr Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemenoccupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passageoutside Mr Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the roomthat was nearest to the Sultan. Mr Morfin, as an officer of inferiorstate, inhabited the room that was nearest to the clerks. 

The gentleman last mentioned was a cheerful-looking, hazel-eyed elderlybachelor: gravely attired, as to his upper man, in black; and as to hislegs, in pepper-and-salt colour. His dark hair was just touched here andthere with specks of gray, as though the tread of Time had splashedit; and his whiskers were already white. He had a mighty respect for MrDombey, and rendered him due homage; but as he was of a genial temperhimself, and never wholly at his ease in that stately presence, he wasdisquieted by no jealousy of the many conferences enjoyed by Mr Carker, and felt a secret satisfaction in having duties to discharge, whichrarely exposed him to be singled out for such distinction. He was agreat musical amateur in his way--after business; and had a paternalaffection for his violoncello, which was once in every week transportedfrom Islington, his place of abode, to a certain club-room hard by theBank, where quartettes of the most tormenting and excruciating naturewere executed every Wednesday evening by a private party. 

Mr Carker was a gentleman thirty-eight or forty years old, of a floridcomplexion, and with two unbroken rows of glistening teeth, whoseregularity and whiteness were quite distressing. It was impossible toescape the observation of them, for he showed them whenever he spoke;and bore so wide a smile upon his countenance (a smile, however, veryrarely, indeed, extending beyond his mouth), that there was something init like the snarl of a cat. He affected a stiff white cravat, after theexample of his principal, and was always closely buttoned up and tightlydressed. His manner towards Mr Dombey was deeply conceived and perfectlyexpressed. He was familiar with him, in the very extremity of his senseof the distance between them. 'Mr Dombey, to a man in your positionfrom a man in mine, there is no show of subservience compatible with thetransaction of business between us, that I should think sufficient. Ifrankly tell you, Sir, I give it up altogether. I feel that I couldnot satisfy my own mind; and Heaven knows, Mr Dombey, you can afford todispense with the endeavour. ' If he had carried these words about withhim printed on a placard, and had constantly offered it to Mr Dombey'sperusal on the breast of his coat, he could not have been more explicitthan he was. 

This was Carker the Manager. Mr Carker the Junior, Walter's friend, washis brother; two or three years older than he, but widely removed instation. The younger brother's post was on the top of the officialladder; the elder brother's at the bottom. The elder brother nevergained a stave, or raised his foot to mount one. Young men passed abovehis head, and rose and rose; but he was always at the bottom. He wasquite resigned to occupy that low condition: never complained of it: andcertainly never hoped to escape from it. 

'How do you do this morning?' said Mr Carker the Manager, entering MrDombey's room soon after his arrival one day: with a bundle of papers inhis hand. 

'How do you do, Carker?' said Mr Dombey. 

'Coolish!' observed Carker, stirring the fire. 

'Rather, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Any news of the young gentleman who is so important to us all?' askedCarker, with his whole regiment of teeth on parade. 

'Yes--not direct news--I hear he's very well, ' said Mr Dombey. Who hadcome from Brighton over-night. But no one knew It. 

'Very well, and becoming a great scholar, no doubt?' observed theManager. 

'I hope so, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

'Egad!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head, 'Time flies!'

'I think so, sometimes, ' returned Mr Dombey, glancing at his newspaper. 

'Oh! You! You have no reason to think so, ' observed Carker. 'One whosits on such an elevation as yours, and can sit there, unmoved, in allseasons--hasn't much reason to know anything about the flight oftime. It's men like myself, who are low down and are not superior incircumstances, and who inherit new masters in the course of Time, thathave cause to look about us. I shall have a rising sun to worship, soon. '

'Time enough, time enough, Carker!' said Mr Dombey, rising from hischair, and standing with his back to the fire. 'Have you anything therefor me?'

'I don't know that I need trouble you, ' returned Carker, turning overthe papers in his hand. 'You have a committee today at three, you know. '

'And one at three, three-quarters, ' added Mr Dombey. 

'Catch you forgetting anything!' exclaimed Carker, still turning overhis papers. 'If Mr Paul inherits your memory, he'll be a troublesomecustomer in the House. One of you is enough. '

'You have an accurate memory of your own, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Oh! I!' returned the manager. 'It's the only capital of a man like me. '

Mr Dombey did not look less pompous or at all displeased, as he stoodleaning against the chimney-piece, surveying his (of course unconscious)clerk, from head to foot. The stiffness and nicety of Mr Carker's dress, and a certain arrogance of manner, either natural to him or imitatedfrom a pattern not far off, gave great additional effect to hishumility. He seemed a man who would contend against the power thatvanquished him, if he could, but who was utterly borne down by thegreatness and superiority of Mr Dombey. 

'Is Morfin here?' asked Mr Dombey after a short pause, during which MrCarker had been fluttering his papers, and muttering little abstracts oftheir contents to himself. 

'Morfin's here, ' he answered, looking up with his widest and almostsudden smile; 'humming musical recollections--of his last night'squartette party, I suppose--through the walls between us, and drivingme half mad. I wish he'd make a bonfire of his violoncello, and burn hismusic-books in it. '

'You respect nobody, Carker, I think, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'No?' inquired Carker, with another wide and most feline show of histeeth. 'Well! Not many people, I believe. I wouldn't answer perhaps, ' hemurmured, as if he were only thinking it, 'for more than one. '

A dangerous quality, if real; and a not less dangerous one, if feigned. But Mr Dombey hardly seemed to think so, as he still stood with his backto the fire, drawn up to his full height, and looking at his head-clerkwith a dignified composure, in which there seemed to lurk a strongerlatent sense of power than usual. 

'Talking of Morfin, ' resumed Mr Carker, taking out one paper from therest, 'he reports a junior dead in the agency at Barbados, and proposesto reserve a passage in the Son and Heir--she'll sail in a month orso--for the successor. You don't care who goes, I suppose? We havenobody of that sort here. '

Mr Dombey shook his head with supreme indifference. 

'It's no very precious appointment, ' observed Mr Carker, taking up apen, with which to endorse a memorandum on the back of the paper. 'Ihope he may bestow it on some orphan nephew of a musical friend. It mayperhaps stop his fiddle-playing, if he has a gift that way. Who's that?Come in!'

'I beg your pardon, Mr Carker. I didn't know you were here, Sir, 'answered Walter; appearing with some letters in his hand, unopened, andnewly arrived. 'Mr Carker the junior, Sir--'

At the mention of this name, Mr Carker the Manager was or affected tobe, touched to the quick with shame and humiliation. He cast his eyesfull on Mr Dombey with an altered and apologetic look, abased them onthe ground, and remained for a moment without speaking. 

'I thought, Sir, ' he said suddenly and angrily, turning on Walter, 'thatyou had been before requested not to drag Mr Carker the Junior into yourconversation. '

'I beg your pardon, ' returned Walter. 'I was only going to say that MrCarker the Junior had told me he believed you were gone out, or I shouldnot have knocked at the door when you were engaged with Mr Dombey. Theseare letters for Mr Dombey, Sir. '

'Very well, Sir, ' returned Mr Carker the Manager, plucking them sharplyfrom his hand. 'Go about your business. '

But in taking them with so little ceremony, Mr Carker dropped one on thefloor, and did not see what he had done; neither did Mr Dombey observethe letter lying near his feet. Walter hesitated for a moment, thinkingthat one or other of them would notice it; but finding that neither did, he stopped, came back, picked it up, and laid it himself on Mr Dombey'sdesk. The letters were post-letters; and it happened that the one inquestion was Mrs Pipchin's regular report, directed as usual--for MrsPipchin was but an indifferent penwoman--by Florence. Mr Dombey, havinghis attention silently called to this letter by Walter, started, andlooked fiercely at him, as if he believed that he had purposely selectedit from all the rest. 

'You can leave the room, Sir!' said Mr Dombey, haughtily. 

He crushed the letter in his hand; and having watched Walter out at thedoor, put it in his pocket without breaking the seal. 

'These continual references to Mr Carker the Junior, ' Mr Carkerthe Manager began, as soon as they were alone, 'are, to a man in myposition, uttered before one in yours, so unspeakably distressing--'

'Nonsense, Carker, ' Mr Dombey interrupted. 'You are too sensitive. '

'I am sensitive, ' he returned. 'If one in your position could by anypossibility imagine yourself in my place: which you cannot: you would beso too. '

As Mr Dombey's thoughts were evidently pursuing some other subject, hisdiscreet ally broke off here, and stood with his teeth ready to presentto him, when he should look up. 

'You want somebody to send to the West Indies, you were saying, 'observed Mr Dombey, hurriedly. 

'Yes, ' replied Carker. 

'Send young Gay. '

'Good, very good indeed. Nothing easier, ' said Mr Carker, without anyshow of surprise, and taking up the pen to re-endorse the letter, ascoolly as he had done before. '"Send young Gay. "'

'Call him back, ' said Mr Dombey. 

Mr Carker was quick to do so, and Walter was quick to return. 

'Gay, ' said Mr Dombey, turning a little to look at him over hisshoulder. 'Here is a--

'An opening, ' said Mr Carker, with his mouth stretched to the utmost. 

'In the West Indies. At Barbados. I am going to send you, ' saidMr Dombey, scorning to embellish the bare truth, 'to fill a juniorsituation in the counting-house at Barbados. Let your Uncle know fromme, that I have chosen you to go to the West Indies. '

Walter's breath was so completely taken away by his astonishment, that he could hardly find enough for the repetition of the words 'WestIndies. '

'Somebody must go, ' said Mr Dombey, 'and you are young and healthy, andyour Uncle's circumstances are not good. Tell your Uncle that you areappointed. You will not go yet. There will be an interval of a month--ortwo perhaps. '

'Shall I remain there, Sir?' inquired Walter. 

'Will you remain there, Sir!' repeated Mr Dombey, turning a little moreround towards him. 'What do you mean? What does he mean, Carker?'

'Live there, Sir, ' faltered Walter. 

'Certainly, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

Walter bowed. 

'That's all, ' said Mr Dombey, resuming his letters. 'You will explain tohim in good time about the usual outfit and so forth, Carker, of course. He needn't wait, Carker. '

'You needn't wait, Gay, ' observed Mr Carker: bare to the gums. 

'Unless, ' said Mr Dombey, stopping in his reading without looking offthe letter, and seeming to listen. 'Unless he has anything to say. '

'No, Sir, ' returned Walter, agitated and confused, and almost stunned, as an infinite variety of pictures presented themselves to hismind; among which Captain Cuttle, in his glazed hat, transfixed withastonishment at Mrs MacStinger's, and his uncle bemoaning his loss inthe little back parlour, held prominent places. 'I hardly know--I--I ammuch obliged, Sir. '

'He needn't wait, Carker, ' said Mr Dombey. 

And as Mr Carker again echoed the words, and also collected his papersas if he were going away too, Walter felt that his lingering any longerwould be an unpardonable intrusion--especially as he had nothing tosay--and therefore walked out quite confounded. 

Going along the passage, with the mingled consciousness and helplessnessof a dream, he heard Mr Dombey's door shut again, as Mr Carker came out:and immediately afterwards that gentleman called to him. 

'Bring your friend Mr Carker the Junior to my room, Sir, if you please. '

Walter went to the outer office and apprised Mr Carker the Junior of hiserrand, who accordingly came out from behind a partition where he satalone in one corner, and returned with him to the room of Mr Carker theManager. 

That gentleman was standing with his back to the fire, and his handsunder his coat-tails, looking over his white cravat, as unpromisingly asMr Dombey himself could have looked. He received them without any changein his attitude or softening of his harsh and black expression: merelysigning to Walter to close the door. 

'John Carker, ' said the Manager, when this was done, turning suddenlyupon his brother, with his two rows of teeth bristling as if he wouldhave bitten him, 'what is the league between you and this young man, invirtue of which I am haunted and hunted by the mention of your name? Isit not enough for you, John Carker, that I am your near relation, andcan't detach myself from that--'

'Say disgrace, James, ' interposed the other in a low voice, finding thathe stammered for a word. 'You mean it, and have reason, say disgrace. '

'From that disgrace, ' assented his brother with keen emphasis, 'but isthe fact to be blurted out and trumpeted, and proclaimed continuallyin the presence of the very House! In moments of confidence too? Do youthink your name is calculated to harmonise in this place with trust andconfidence, John Carker?'

'No, ' returned the other. 'No, James. God knows I have no such thought. '

'What is your thought, then?' said his brother, 'and why do you thrustyourself in my way? Haven't you injured me enough already?'

'I have never injured you, James, wilfully. '

'You are my brother, ' said the Manager. 'That's injury enough. '

'I wish I could undo it, James. '

'I wish you could and would. '

During this conversation, Walter had looked from one brother to theother, with pain and amazement. He who was the Senior in years, andJunior in the House, stood, with his eyes cast upon the ground, andhis head bowed, humbly listening to the reproaches of the other. Thoughthese were rendered very bitter by the tone and look with which theywere accompanied, and by the presence of Walter whom they so muchsurprised and shocked, he entered no other protest against them than byslightly raising his right hand in a deprecatory manner, as if he wouldhave said, 'Spare me!' So, had they been blows, and he a brave man, under strong constraint, and weakened by bodily suffering, he might havestood before the executioner. 

Generous and quick in all his emotions, and regarding himself as theinnocent occasion of these taunts, Walter now struck in, with all theearnestness he felt. 

'Mr Carker, ' he said, addressing himself to the Manager. 'Indeed, indeed, this is my fault solely. In a kind of heedlessness, for which Icannot blame myself enough, I have, I have no doubt, mentioned Mr Carkerthe Junior much oftener than was necessary; and have allowed his namesometimes to slip through my lips, when it was against your expressedwish. But it has been my own mistake, Sir. We have never exchanged oneword upon the subject--very few, indeed, on any subject. And it has notbeen, ' added Walter, after a moment's pause, 'all heedlessness on mypart, Sir; for I have felt an interest in Mr Carker ever since I havebeen here, and have hardly been able to help speaking of him sometimes, when I have thought of him so much!'

Walter said this from his soul, and with the very breath of honour. Forhe looked upon the bowed head, and the downcast eyes, and upraised hand, and thought, 'I have felt it; and why should I not avow it in behalf ofthis unfriended, broken man!'

Mr Carker the Manager looked at him, as he spoke, and when he hadfinished speaking, with a smile that seemed to divide his face into twoparts. 

'You are an excitable youth, Gay, ' he said; 'and should endeavour tocool down a little now, for it would be unwise to encourage feverishpredispositions. Be as cool as you can, Gay. Be as cool as you can. You might have asked Mr John Carker himself (if you have not done so)whether he claims to be, or is, an object of such strong interest. '

'James, do me justice, ' said his brother. 'I have claimed nothing; and Iclaim nothing. Believe me, on my--

'Honour?' said his brother, with another smile, as he warmed himselfbefore the fire. 

'On my Me--on my fallen life!' returned the other, in the same lowvoice, but with a deeper stress on his words than he had yet seemedcapable of giving them. 'Believe me, I have held myself aloof, and keptalone. This has been unsought by me. I have avoided him and everyone. 

'Indeed, you have avoided me, Mr Carker, ' said Walter, with the tearsrising to his eyes; so true was his compassion. 'I know it, to mydisappointment and regret. When I first came here, and ever since, Iam sure I have tried to be as much your friend, as one of my age couldpresume to be; but it has been of no use. 

'And observe, ' said the Manager, taking him up quickly, 'it will be ofstill less use, Gay, if you persist in forcing Mr John Carker's name onpeople's attention. That is not the way to befriend Mr John Carker. Askhim if he thinks it is. '

'It is no service to me, ' said the brother. 'It only leads to such aconversation as the present, which I need not say I could have wellspared. No one can be a better friend to me:' he spoke here verydistinctly, as if he would impress it upon Walter: 'than in forgettingme, and leaving me to go my way, unquestioned and unnoticed. '

'Your memory not being retentive, Gay, of what you are told by others, 'said Mr Carker the Manager, warming himself with great and increasedsatisfaction, 'I thought it well that you should be told this from thebest authority, ' nodding towards his brother. 'You are not likely toforget it now, I hope. That's all, Gay. You can go. 

Walter passed out at the door, and was about to close it after him, when, hearing the voices of the brothers again, and also the mention ofhis own name, he stood irresolutely, with his hand upon the lock, andthe door ajar, uncertain whether to return or go away. In this positionhe could not help overhearing what followed. 

'Think of me more leniently, if you can, James, ' said John Carker, 'whenI tell you I have had--how could I help having, with my history, writtenhere'--striking himself upon the breast--'my whole heart awakened bymy observation of that boy, Walter Gay. I saw in him when he first camehere, almost my other self. '

'Your other self!' repeated the Manager, disdainfully. 

'Not as I am, but as I was when I first came here too; as sanguine, giddy, youthful, inexperienced; flushed with the same restless andadventurous fancies; and full of the same qualities, fraught with thesame capacity of leading on to good or evil. '

'I hope not, ' said his brother, with some hidden and sarcastic meaningin his tone. 

'You strike me sharply; and your hand is steady, and your thrust is verydeep, ' returned the other, speaking (or so Walter thought) as if somecruel weapon actually stabbed him as he spoke. 'I imagined all this whenhe was a boy. I believed it. It was a truth to me. I saw him lightlywalking on the edge of an unseen gulf where so many others walk withequal gaiety, and from which--'

'The old excuse, ' interrupted his brother, as he stirred the fire. 'Somany. Go on. Say, so many fall. '

'From which ONE traveller fell, ' returned the other, 'who set forward, on his way, a boy like him, and missed his footing more and more, andslipped a little and a little lower; and went on stumbling still, untilhe fell headlong and found himself below a shattered man. Think what Isuffered, when I watched that boy. '

'You have only yourself to thank for it, ' returned the brother. 

'Only myself, ' he assented with a sigh. 'I don't seek to divide theblame or shame. '

'You have divided the shame, ' James Carker muttered through his teeth. And, through so many and such close teeth, he could mutter well. 

'Ah, James, ' returned his brother, speaking for the first time in anaccent of reproach, and seeming, by the sound of his voice, to havecovered his face with his hands, 'I have been, since then, a useful foilto you. You have trodden on me freely in your climbing up. Don't spurnme with your heel!'

A silence ensued. After a time, Mr Carker the Manager was heard rustlingamong his papers, as if he had resolved to bring the interview to aconclusion. At the same time his brother withdrew nearer to the door. 

'That's all, ' he said. 'I watched him with such trembling and such fear, as was some little punishment to me, until he passed the place where Ifirst fell; and then, though I had been his father, I believe I nevercould have thanked God more devoutly. I didn't dare to warn him, andadvise him; but if I had seen direct cause, I would have shown him myexample. I was afraid to be seen speaking with him, lest it should bethought I did him harm, and tempted him to evil, and corrupted him: orlest I really should. There may be such contagion in me; I don't know. Piece out my history, in connexion with young Walter Gay, and what hehas made me feel; and think of me more leniently, James, if you can. 

With these words he came out to where Walter was standing. He turned alittle paler when he saw him there, and paler yet when Walter caught himby the hand, and said in a whisper:

'Mr Carker, pray let me thank you! Let me say how much I feel for you!How sorry I am, to have been the unhappy cause of all this! How I almostlook upon you now as my protector and guardian! How very, very much, I feel obliged to you and pity you!' said Walter, squeezing both hishands, and hardly knowing, in his agitation, what he did or said. 

Mr Morfin's room being close at hand and empty, and the door wide open, they moved thither by one accord: the passage being seldom free fromsomeone passing to or fro. When they were there, and Walter saw in MrCarker's face some traces of the emotion within, he almost felt as if hehad never seen the face before; it was so greatly changed. 

'Walter, ' he said, laying his hand on his shoulder. 'I am far removedfrom you, and may I ever be. Do you know what I am?'

'What you are!' appeared to hang on Walter's lips, as he regarded himattentively. 

'It was begun, ' said Carker, 'before my twenty-first birthday--led upto, long before, but not begun till near that time. I had robbed themwhen I came of age. I robbed them afterwards. Before my twenty-secondbirthday, it was all found out; and then, Walter, from all men'ssociety, I died. '

Again his last few words hung trembling upon Walter's lips, but he couldneither utter them, nor any of his own. 

'The House was very good to me. May Heaven reward the old man for hisforbearance! This one, too, his son, who was then newly in the Firm, where I had held great trust! I was called into that room which is nowhis--I have never entered it since--and came out, what you know me. Formany years I sat in my present seat, alone as now, but then a knownand recognised example to the rest. They were all merciful to me, andI lived. Time has altered that part of my poor expiation; and I think, except the three heads of the House, there is no one here who knows mystory rightly. Before the little boy grows up, and has it told to him, my corner may be vacant. I would rather that it might be so! This is theonly change to me since that day, when I left all youth, and hope, andgood men's company, behind me in that room. God bless you, Walter! Keepyou, and all dear to you, in honesty, or strike them dead!'

Some recollection of his trembling from head to foot, as if withexcessive cold, and of his bursting into tears, was all that Waltercould add to this, when he tried to recall exactly what had passedbetween them. 

When Walter saw him next, he was bending over his desk in his oldsilent, drooping, humbled way. Then, observing him at his work, andfeeling how resolved he evidently was that no further intercourse shouldarise between them, and thinking again and again on all he had seen andheard that morning in so short a time, in connexion with the history ofboth the Carkers, Walter could hardly believe that he was under ordersfor the West Indies, and would soon be lost to Uncle Sol, and CaptainCuttle, and to glimpses few and far between of Florence Dombey--no, hemeant Paul--and to all he loved, and liked, and looked for, in his dailylife. 

But it was true, and the news had already penetrated to the outeroffice; for while he sat with a heavy heart, pondering on these things, and resting his head upon his arm, Perch the messenger, descending fromhis mahogany bracket, and jogging his elbow, begged his pardon, butwished to say in his ear, Did he think he could arrange to send home toEngland a jar of preserved Ginger, cheap, for Mrs Perch's own eating, inthe course of her recovery from her next confinement?

CHAPTER 14. Paul grows more and more Old-fashioned, and goes Home forthe Holidays

When the Midsummer vacation approached, no indecent manifestationsof joy were exhibited by the leaden-eyed young gentlemen assembled atDoctor Blimber's. Any such violent expression as 'breaking up, ' wouldhave been quite inapplicable to that polite establishment. The younggentlemen oozed away, semi-annually, to their own homes; but they neverbroke up. They would have scorned the action. 

Tozer, who was constantly galled and tormented by a starched whitecambric neckerchief, which he wore at the express desire of Mrs Tozer, his parent, who, designing him for the Church, was of opinion that hecouldn't be in that forward state of preparation too soon--Tozer said, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he thought he would rather staywhere he was, than go home. However inconsistent this declaration mightappear with that passage in Tozer's Essay on the subject, wherein he hadobserved 'that the thoughts of home and all its recollections, awakenedin his mind the most pleasing emotions of anticipation and delight, 'and had also likened himself to a Roman General, flushed with a recentvictory over the Iceni, or laden with Carthaginian spoil, advancingwithin a few hours' march of the Capitol, presupposed, for the purposesof the simile, to be the dwelling-place of Mrs Tozer, still it was verysincerely made. For it seemed that Tozer had a dreadful Uncle, whonot only volunteered examinations of him, in the holidays, on abstrusepoints, but twisted innocent events and things, and wrenched them to thesame fell purpose. So that if this Uncle took him to the Play, or, on asimilar pretence of kindness, carried him to see a Giant, or a Dwarf, or a Conjuror, or anything, Tozer knew he had read up some classicalallusion to the subject beforehand, and was thrown into a state ofmortal apprehension: not foreseeing where he might break out, or whatauthority he might not quote against him. 

As to Briggs, his father made no show of artifice about it. He neverwould leave him alone. So numerous and severe were the mental trials ofthat unfortunate youth in vacation time, that the friends of the family(then resident near Bayswater, London) seldom approached the ornamentalpiece of water in Kensington Gardens, ' without a vague expectation ofseeing Master Briggs's hat floating on the surface, and an unfinishedexercise lying on the bank. Briggs, therefore, was not at all sanguineon the subject of holidays; and these two sharers of little Paul'sbedroom were so fair a sample of the young gentlemen in general, thatthe most elastic among them contemplated the arrival of those festiveperiods with genteel resignation. 

It was far otherwise with little Paul. The end of these first holidayswas to witness his separation from Florence, but who ever looked forwardto the end of holidays whose beginning was not yet come! Not Paul, assuredly. As the happy time drew near, the lions and tigers climbing upthe bedroom walls became quite tame and frolicsome. The grim sly facesin the squares and diamonds of the floor-cloth, relaxed and peeped outat him with less wicked eyes. The grave old clock had more of personalinterest in the tone of its formal inquiry; and the restless sea wentrolling on all night, to the sounding of a melancholy strain--yet it waspleasant too--that rose and fell with the waves, and rocked him, as itwere, to sleep. 

Mr Feeder, B. A. , seemed to think that he, too, would enjoy the holidaysvery much. Mr Toots projected a life of holidays from that time forth;for, as he regularly informed Paul every day, it was his 'last half' atDoctor Blimber's, and he was going to begin to come into his propertydirectly. 

It was perfectly understood between Paul and Mr Toots, that they wereintimate friends, notwithstanding their distance in point of years andstation. As the vacation approached, and Mr Toots breathed harder andstared oftener in Paul's society, than he had done before, Paul knewthat he meant he was sorry they were going to lose sight of each other, and felt very much obliged to him for his patronage and good opinion. 

It was even understood by Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber, as well as by the young gentlemen in general, that Toots had somehowconstituted himself protector and guardian of Dombey, and thecircumstance became so notorious, even to Mrs Pipchin, that the good oldcreature cherished feelings of bitterness and jealousy against Toots;and, in the sanctuary of her own home, repeatedly denounced him as a'chuckle-headed noodle. ' Whereas the innocent Toots had no more ideaof awakening Mrs Pipchin's wrath, than he had of any other definitepossibility or proposition. On the contrary, he was disposed to considerher rather a remarkable character, with many points of interest abouther. For this reason he smiled on her with so much urbanity, and askedher how she did, so often, in the course of her visits to little Paul, that at last she one night told him plainly, she wasn't used to it, whatever he might think; and she could not, and she would not bearit, either from himself or any other puppy then existing: at whichunexpected acknowledgment of his civilities, Mr Toots was so alarmedthat he secreted himself in a retired spot until she had gone. Nor didhe ever again face the doughty Mrs Pipchin, under Doctor Blimber's roof. 

They were within two or three weeks of the holidays, when, one day, Cornelia Blimber called Paul into her room, and said, 'Dombey, I amgoing to send home your analysis. '

'Thank you, Ma'am, ' returned Paul. 

'You know what I mean, do you, Dombey?' inquired Miss Blimber, lookinghard at him, through the spectacles. 

'No, Ma'am, ' said Paul. 

'Dombey, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber, 'I begin to be afraid you are asad boy. When you don't know the meaning of an expression, why don't youseek for information?'

'Mrs Pipchin told me I wasn't to ask questions, ' returned Paul. 

'I must beg you not to mention Mrs Pipchin to me, on any account, Dombey, ' returned Miss Blimber. 'I couldn't think of allowing it. Thecourse of study here, is very far removed from anything of that sort. Arepetition of such allusions would make it necessary for me to requestto hear, without a mistake, before breakfast-time to-morrow morning, from Verbum personale down to simillimia cygno. '

'I didn't mean, Ma'am--' began little Paul. 

'I must trouble you not to tell me that you didn't mean, if you please, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber, who preserved an awful politeness inher admonitions. 'That is a line of argument I couldn't dream ofpermitting. '

Paul felt it safest to say nothing at all, so he only looked at MissBlimber's spectacles. Miss Blimber having shaken her head at himgravely, referred to a paper lying before her. 

'"Analysis of the character of P. Dombey. " If my recollection servesme, ' said Miss Blimber breaking off, 'the word analysis as opposed tosynthesis, is thus defined by Walker. "The resolution of an object, whether of the senses or of the intellect, into its first elements. "As opposed to synthesis, you observe. Now you know what analysis is, Dombey. '

Dombey didn't seem to be absolutely blinded by the light let in upon hisintellect, but he made Miss Blimber a little bow. 

'"Analysis, "' resumed Miss Blimber, casting her eye over the paper, '"ofthe character of P. Dombey. " I find that the natural capacity of Dombeyis extremely good; and that his general disposition to study may bestated in an equal ratio. Thus, taking eight as our standard andhighest number, I find these qualities in Dombey stated each at sixthree-fourths!'

Miss Blimber paused to see how Paul received this news. Being undecidedwhether six three-fourths meant six pounds fifteen, or sixpence threefarthings, or six foot three, or three quarters past six, or sixsomethings that he hadn't learnt yet, with three unknown something elsesover, Paul rubbed his hands and looked straight at Miss Blimber. Ithappened to answer as well as anything else he could have done; andCornelia proceeded. 

'"Violence two. Selfishness two. Inclination to low company, as evincedin the case of a person named Glubb, originally seven, but sincereduced. Gentlemanly demeanour four, and improving with advancingyears. " Now what I particularly wish to call your attention to, Dombey, is the general observation at the close of this analysis. '

Paul set himself to follow it with great care. 

'"It may be generally observed of Dombey, "' said Miss Blimber, readingin a loud voice, and at every second word directing her spectaclestowards the little figure before her: '"that his abilities andinclinations are good, and that he has made as much progress as underthe circumstances could have been expected. But it is to be lamentedof this young gentleman that he is singular (what is usually termedold-fashioned) in his character and conduct, and that, withoutpresenting anything in either which distinctly calls for reprobation, he is often very unlike other young gentlemen of his age and socialposition. " Now, Dombey, ' said Miss Blimber, laying down the paper, 'doyou understand that?'

'I think I do, Ma'am, ' said Paul. 

'This analysis, you see, Dombey, ' Miss Blimber continued, 'is going tobe sent home to your respected parent. It will naturally be very painfulto him to find that you are singular in your character and conduct. Itis naturally painful to us; for we can't like you, you know, Dombey, aswell as we could wish. '

She touched the child upon a tender point. He had secretly become moreand more solicitous from day to day, as the time of his departure drewmore near, that all the house should like him. From some hidden reason, very imperfectly understood by himself--if understood at all--he felt agradually increasing impulse of affection, towards almost everything andeverybody in the place. He could not bear to think that they would bequite indifferent to him when he was gone. He wanted them to rememberhim kindly; and he had made it his business even to conciliate agreat hoarse shaggy dog, chained up at the back of the house, who hadpreviously been the terror of his life: that even he might miss him whenhe was no longer there. 

Little thinking that in this, he only showed again the differencebetween himself and his compeers, poor tiny Paul set it forth to MissBlimber as well as he could, and begged her, in despite of the officialanalysis, to have the goodness to try and like him. To Mrs Blimber, who had joined them, he preferred the same petition: and when that ladycould not forbear, even in his presence, from giving utterance to heroften-repeated opinion, that he was an odd child, Paul told her that hewas sure she was quite right; that he thought it must be his bones, buthe didn't know; and that he hoped she would overlook it, for he was fondof them all. 

'Not so fond, ' said Paul, with a mixture of timidity and perfectfrankness, which was one of the most peculiar and most engagingqualities of the child, 'not so fond as I am of Florence, of course;that could never be. You couldn't expect that, could you, Ma'am?'

'Oh! the old-fashioned little soul!' cried Mrs Blimber, in a whisper. 

'But I like everybody here very much, ' pursued Paul, 'and I shouldgrieve to go away, and think that anyone was glad that I was gone, ordidn't care. '

Mrs Blimber was now quite sure that Paul was the oddest child in theworld; and when she told the Doctor what had passed, the Doctor did notcontrovert his wife's opinion. But he said, as he had said before, whenPaul first came, that study would do much; and he also said, as he hadsaid on that occasion, 'Bring him on, Cornelia! Bring him on!'

Cornelia had always brought him on as vigorously as she could; and Paulhad had a hard life of it. But over and above the getting through histasks, he had long had another purpose always present to him, and towhich he still held fast. It was, to be a gentle, useful, quiet littlefellow, always striving to secure the love and attachment of the rest;and though he was yet often to be seen at his old post on the stairs, orwatching the waves and clouds from his solitary window, he was oftenerfound, too, among the other boys, modestly rendering them some littlevoluntary service. Thus it came to pass, that even among those rigid andabsorbed young anchorites, who mortified themselves beneath the roof ofDoctor Blimber, Paul was an object of general interest; a fragile littleplaything that they all liked, and that no one would have thought oftreating roughly. But he could not change his nature, or rewrite theanalysis; and so they all agreed that Dombey was old-fashioned. 

There were some immunities, however, attaching to the character enjoyedby no one else. They could have better spared a newer-fashioned child, and that alone was much. When the others only bowed to Doctor Blimberand family on retiring for the night, Paul would stretch out his morselof a hand, and boldly shake the Doctor's; also Mrs Blimber's; alsoCornelia's. If anybody was to be begged off from impending punishment, Paul was always the delegate. The weak-eyed young man himself had onceconsulted him, in reference to a little breakage of glass and china. Andit was darkly rumoured that the butler, regarding him with favour suchas that stern man had never shown before to mortal boy, had sometimesmingled porter with his table-beer to make him strong. 

Over and above these extensive privileges, Paul had free right of entryto Mr Feeder's room, from which apartment he had twice led Mr Tootsinto the open air in a state of faintness, consequent on an unsuccessfulattempt to smoke a very blunt cigar: one of a bundle which that younggentleman had covertly purchased on the shingle from a most desperatesmuggler, who had acknowledged, in confidence, that two hundred poundswas the price set upon his head, dead or alive, by the Custom House. Itwas a snug room, Mr Feeder's, with his bed in another little room insideof it; and a flute, which Mr Feeder couldn't play yet, but was going tomake a point of learning, he said, hanging up over the fireplace. Therewere some books in it, too, and a fishing-rod; for Mr Feeder said heshould certainly make a point of learning to fish, when he could findtime. Mr Feeder had amassed, with similar intentions, a beautiful littlecurly secondhand key-bugle, a chess-board and men, a Spanish Grammar, a set of sketching materials, and a pair of boxing-gloves. The artof self-defence Mr Feeder said he should undoubtedly make a point oflearning, as he considered it the duty of every man to do; for it mightlead to the protection of a female in distress. But Mr Feeder's greatpossession was a large green jar of snuff, which Mr Toots had broughtdown as a present, at the close of the last vacation; and for which hehad paid a high price, having been the genuine property of the PrinceRegent. Neither Mr Toots nor Mr Feeder could partake of this or anyother snuff, even in the most stinted and moderate degree, without beingseized with convulsions of sneezing. Nevertheless it was their greatdelight to moisten a box-full with cold tea, stir it up on a piece ofparchment with a paper-knife, and devote themselves to its consumptionthen and there. In the course of which cramming of their noses, theyendured surprising torments with the constancy of martyrs: and, drinkingtable-beer at intervals, felt all the glories of dissipation. 

To little Paul sitting silent in their company, and by the side ofhis chief patron, Mr Toots, there was a dread charm in these recklessoccasions: and when Mr Feeder spoke of the dark mysteries of London, andtold Mr Toots that he was going to observe it himself closely in all itsramifications in the approaching holidays, and for that purpose hadmade arrangements to board with two old maiden ladies at Peckham, Paulregarded him as if he were the hero of some book of travels or wildadventure, and was almost afraid of such a slashing person. 

Going into this room one evening, when the holidays were very near, Paulfound Mr Feeder filling up the blanks in some printed letters, whilesome others, already filled up and strewn before him, were being foldedand sealed by Mr Toots. Mr Feeder said, 'Aha, Dombey, there you are, areyou?'--for they were always kind to him, and glad to see him--and thensaid, tossing one of the letters towards him, 'And there you are, too, Dombey. That's yours. '

'Mine, Sir?' said Paul. 

'Your invitation, ' returned Mr Feeder. 

Paul, looking at it, found, in copper-plate print, with the exceptionof his own name and the date, which were in Mr Feeder's penmanship, thatDoctor and Mrs Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr P. Dombey's companyat an early party on Wednesday Evening the Seventeenth Instant; andthat the hour was half-past seven o'clock; and that the object wasQuadrilles. Mr Toots also showed him, by holding up a companion sheet ofpaper, that Doctor and Mrs Blimber requested the pleasure of Mr Toots'scompany at an early party on Wednesday Evening the Seventeenth Instant, when the hour was half-past seven o'clock, and when the object wasQuadrilles. He also found, on glancing at the table where Mr Feeder sat, that the pleasure of Mr Briggs's company, and of Mr Tozer's company, and of every young gentleman's company, was requested by Doctor and MrsBlimber on the same genteel Occasion. 

Mr Feeder then told him, to his great joy, that his sister was invited, and that it was a half-yearly event, and that, as the holidays beganthat day, he could go away with his sister after the party, if he liked, which Paul interrupted him to say he would like, very much. Mr Feederthen gave him to understand that he would be expected to inform Doctorand Mrs Blimber, in superfine small-hand, that Mr P. Dombey would behappy to have the honour of waiting on them, in accordance with theirpolite invitation. Lastly, Mr Feeder said, he had better not refer tothe festive occasion, in the hearing of Doctor and Mrs Blimber; as thesepreliminaries, and the whole of the arrangements, were conducted onprinciples of classicality and high breeding; and that Doctor and MrsBlimber on the one hand, and the young gentlemen on the other, weresupposed, in their scholastic capacities, not to have the least idea ofwhat was in the wind. 

Paul thanked Mr Feeder for these hints, and pocketing his invitation, sat down on a stool by the side of Mr Toots, as usual. But Paul's head, which had long been ailing more or less, and was sometimes very heavyand painful, felt so uneasy that night, that he was obliged to supportit on his hand. And yet it dropped so, that by little and little it sunkon Mr Toots's knee, and rested there, as if it had no care to be everlifted up again. 

That was no reason why he should be deaf; but he must have been, hethought, for, by and by, he heard Mr Feeder calling in his ear, andgently shaking him to rouse his attention. And when he raised his head, quite scared, and looked about him, he found that Doctor Blimber hadcome into the room; and that the window was open, and that his foreheadwas wet with sprinkled water; though how all this had been done withouthis knowledge, was very curious indeed. 

'Ah! Come, come! That's well! How is my little friend now?' said DoctorBlimber, encouragingly. 

'Oh, quite well, thank you, Sir, ' said Paul. 

But there seemed to be something the matter with the floor, for hecouldn't stand upon it steadily; and with the walls too, for they wereinclined to turn round and round, and could only be stopped by beinglooked at very hard indeed. Mr Toots's head had the appearance of beingat once bigger and farther off than was quite natural; and when he tookPaul in his arms, to carry him upstairs, Paul observed with astonishmentthat the door was in quite a different place from that in which he hadexpected to find it, and almost thought, at first, that Mr Toots wasgoing to walk straight up the chimney. 

It was very kind of Mr Toots to carry him to the top of the house sotenderly; and Paul told him that it was. But Mr Toots said he would doa great deal more than that, if he could; and indeed he did more asit was: for he helped Paul to undress, and helped him to bed, in thekindest manner possible, and then sat down by the bedside and chuckledvery much; while Mr Feeder, B. A. , leaning over the bottom of thebedstead, set all the little bristles on his head bolt upright with hisbony hands, and then made believe to spar at Paul with great science, onaccount of his being all right again, which was so uncommonly facetious, and kind too in Mr Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mindwhether it was best to laugh or cry at him, did both at once. 

How Mr Toots melted away, and Mr Feeder changed into Mrs Pipchin, Paulnever thought of asking; neither was he at all curious to know; butwhen he saw Mrs Pipchin standing at the bottom of the bed, instead of MrFeeder, he cried out, 'Mrs Pipchin, don't tell Florence!'

'Don't tell Florence what, my little Paul?' said Mrs Pipchin, cominground to the bedside, and sitting down in the chair. 

'About me, ' said Paul. 

'No, no, ' said Mrs Pipchin. 

'What do you think I mean to do when I grow up, Mrs Pipchin?' inquiredPaul, turning his face towards her on his pillow, and resting his chinwistfully on his folded hands. 

Mrs Pipchin couldn't guess. 

'I mean, ' said Paul, 'to put my money all together in one Bank, nevertry to get any more, go away into the country with my darling Florence, have a beautiful garden, fields, and woods, and live there with her allmy life!'

'Indeed!' cried Mrs Pipchin. 

'Yes, ' said Paul. 'That's what I mean to do, when I--' He stopped, andpondered for a moment. 

Mrs Pipchin's grey eye scanned his thoughtful face. 

'If I grow up, ' said Paul. Then he went on immediately to tell MrsPipchin all about the party, about Florence's invitation, about thepride he would have in the admiration that would be felt for her by allthe boys, about their being so kind to him and fond of him, about hisbeing so fond of them, and about his being so glad of it. Then hetold Mrs Pipchin about the analysis, and about his being certainlyold-fashioned, and took Mrs Pipchin's opinion on that point, and whethershe knew why it was, and what it meant. Mrs Pipchin denied the factaltogether, as the shortest way of getting out of the difficulty; butPaul was far from satisfied with that reply, and looked so searchinglyat Mrs Pipchin for a truer answer, that she was obliged to get up andlook out of the window to avoid his eyes. 

There was a certain calm Apothecary, 'who attended at the establishmentwhen any of the young gentlemen were ill, and somehow he got into theroom and appeared at the bedside, with Mrs Blimber. How they came there, or how long they had been there, Paul didn't know; but when he saw them, he sat up in bed, and answered all the Apothecary's questions at fulllength, and whispered to him that Florence was not to know anythingabout it, if he pleased, and that he had set his mind upon her comingto the party. He was very chatty with the Apothecary, and they partedexcellent friends. Lying down again with his eyes shut, he heard theApothecary say, out of the room and quite a long way off--or he dreamedit--that there was a want of vital power (what was that, Paul wondered!)and great constitutional weakness. That as the little fellow had set hisheart on parting with his school-mates on the seventeenth, it would bebetter to indulge the fancy if he grew no worse. That he was glad tohear from Mrs Pipchin, that the little fellow would go to his friendsin London on the eighteenth. That he would write to Mr Dombey, when heshould have gained a better knowledge of the case, and before that day. That there was no immediate cause for--what? Paul lost that word Andthat the little fellow had a fine mind, but was an old-fashioned boy. 

What old fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so visibly expressed in him; so plainly seen by so many people!

He could neither make it out, nor trouble himself long with the effort. Mrs Pipchin was again beside him, if she had ever been away (he thoughtshe had gone out with the Doctor, but it was all a dream perhaps), and presently a bottle and glass got into her hands magically, andshe poured out the contents for him. After that, he had some real goodjelly, which Mrs Blimber brought to him herself; and then he was sowell, that Mrs Pipchin went home, at his urgent solicitation, and Briggsand Tozer came to bed. Poor Briggs grumbled terribly about his ownanalysis, which could hardly have discomposed him more if it had been achemical process; but he was very good to Paul, and so was Tozer, and sowere all the rest, for they every one looked in before going to bed, and said, 'How are you now, Dombey?' 'Cheer up, little Dombey!' andso forth. After Briggs had got into bed, he lay awake for a long time, still bemoaning his analysis, and saying he knew it was all wrong, andthey couldn't have analysed a murderer worse, and--how would DoctorBlimber like it if his pocket-money depended on it? It was very easy, Briggs said, to make a galley-slave of a boy all the half-year, and thenscore him up idle; and to crib two dinners a-week out of his board, andthen score him up greedy; but that wasn't going to be submitted to, hebelieved, was it? Oh! Ah!

Before the weak-eyed young man performed on the gong next morning, hecame upstairs to Paul and told him he was to lie still, which Paul verygladly did. Mrs Pipchin reappeared a little before the Apothecary, and alittle after the good young woman whom Paul had seen cleaning the stoveon that first morning (how long ago it seemed now!) had brought him hisbreakfast. There was another consultation a long way off, or else Pauldreamed it again; and then the Apothecary, coming back with Doctor andMrs Blimber, said:

'Yes, I think, Doctor Blimber, we may release this young gentleman fromhis books just now; the vacation being so very near at hand. '

'By all means, ' said Doctor Blimber. 'My love, you will inform Cornelia, if you please. '

'Assuredly, ' said Mrs Blimber. 

The Apothecary bending down, looked closely into Paul's eyes, and felthis head, and his pulse, and his heart, with so much interest and care, that Paul said, 'Thank you, Sir. '

'Our little friend, ' observed Doctor Blimber, 'has never complained. '

'Oh no!' replied the Apothecary. 'He was not likely to complain. '

'You find him greatly better?' said Doctor Blimber. 

'Oh! he is greatly better, Sir, ' returned the Apothecary. 

Paul had begun to speculate, in his own odd way, on the subject thatmight occupy the Apothecary's mind just at that moment; so musinglyhad he answered the two questions of Doctor Blimber. But the Apothecaryhappening to meet his little patient's eyes, as the latter set off onthat mental expedition, and coming instantly out of his abstraction witha cheerful smile, Paul smiled in return and abandoned it. 

He lay in bed all that day, dozing and dreaming, and looking at MrToots; but got up on the next, and went downstairs. Lo and behold, therewas something the matter with the great clock; and a workman on a pairof steps had taken its face off, and was poking instruments into theworks by the light of a candle! This was a great event for Paul, who satdown on the bottom stair, and watched the operation attentively: nowand then glancing at the clock face, leaning all askew, against the wallhard by, and feeling a little confused by a suspicion that it was oglinghim. 

The workman on the steps was very civil; and as he said, when heobserved Paul, 'How do you do, Sir?' Paul got into conversation withhim, and told him he hadn't been quite well lately. The ice being thusbroken, Paul asked him a multitude of questions about chimes and clocks:as, whether people watched up in the lonely church steeples by nightto make them strike, and how the bells were rung when people died, andwhether those were different bells from wedding bells, or only soundeddismal in the fancies of the living. Finding that his new acquaintancewas not very well informed on the subject of the Curfew Bell of ancientdays, Paul gave him an account of that institution; and also askedhim, as a practical man, what he thought about King Alfred's idea ofmeasuring time by the burning of candles; to which the workman replied, that he thought it would be the ruin of the clock trade if it wasto come up again. In fine, Paul looked on, until the clock had quiterecovered its familiar aspect, and resumed its sedate inquiry; when theworkman, putting away his tools in a long basket, bade him good day, and went away. Though not before he had whispered something, onthe door-mat, to the footman, in which there was the phrase'old-fashioned'--for Paul heard it. What could that old fashion be, thatseemed to make the people sorry! What could it be!

Having nothing to learn now, he thought of this frequently; though notso often as he might have done, if he had had fewer things to think of. But he had a great many; and was always thinking, all day long. 

First, there was Florence coming to the party. Florence would see thatthe boys were fond of him; and that would make her happy. This was hisgreat theme. Let Florence once be sure that they were gentle and good tohim, and that he had become a little favourite among them, and then thewould always think of the time he had passed there, without being verysorry. Florence might be all the happier too for that, perhaps, when hecame back. 

When he came back! Fifty times a day, his noiseless little feet went upthe stairs to his own room, as he collected every book, and scrap, andtrifle that belonged to him, and put them all together there, down tothe minutest thing, for taking home! There was no shade of coming backon little Paul; no preparation for it, or other reference to it, grewout of anything he thought or did, except this slight one in connexionwith his sister. On the contrary, he had to think of everything familiarto him, in his contemplative moods and in his wanderings about thehouse, as being to be parted with; and hence the many things he had tothink of, all day long. 

He had to peep into those rooms upstairs, and think how solitary theywould be when he was gone, and wonder through how many silent days, weeks, months, and years, they would continue just as grave andundisturbed. He had to think--would any other child (old-fashioned, likehimself) stray there at any time, to whom the same grotesque distortionsof pattern and furniture would manifest themselves; and would anybodytell that boy of little Dombey, who had been there once? He had to thinkof a portrait on the stairs, which always looked earnestly after him ashe went away, eyeing it over his shoulder; and which, when he passed itin the company of anyone, still seemed to gaze at him, and not at hiscompanion. He had much to think of, in association with a print thathung up in another place, where, in the centre of a wondering group, onefigure that he knew, a figure with a light about its head--benignant, mild, and merciful--stood pointing upward. 

At his own bedroom window, there were crowds of thoughts that mixedwith these, and came on, one upon another, like the rolling waves. Wherethose wild birds lived, that were always hovering out at sea in troubledweather; where the clouds rose and first began; whence the wind issuedon its rushing flight, and where it stopped; whether the spot wherehe and Florence had so often sat, and watched, and talked about thesethings, could ever be exactly as it used to be without them; whether itcould ever be the same to Florence, if he were in some distant place, and she were sitting there alone. 

He had to think, too, of Mr Toots, and Mr Feeder, B. A. , of all the boys;and of Doctor Blimber, Mrs Blimber, and Miss Blimber; of home, and ofhis aunt and Miss Tox; of his father; Dombey and Son, Walter with thepoor old Uncle who had got the money he wanted, and that gruff-voicedCaptain with the iron hand. Besides all this, he had a number of littlevisits to pay, in the course of the day; to the schoolroom, to DoctorBlimber's study, to Mrs Blimber's private apartment, to Miss Blimber's, and to the dog. For he was free of the whole house now, to range itas he chose; and, in his desire to part with everybody on affectionateterms, he attended, in his way, to them all. Sometimes he found placesin books for Briggs, who was always losing them; sometimes he looked upwords in dictionaries for other young gentlemen who were in extremity;sometimes he held skeins of silk for Mrs Blimber to wind; sometimes heput Cornelia's desk to rights; sometimes he would even creep into theDoctor's study, and, sitting on the carpet near his learned feet, turnthe globes softly, and go round the world, or take a flight among thefar-off stars. 

In those days immediately before the holidays, in short, when theother young gentlemen were labouring for dear life through a generalresumption of the studies of the whole half-year, Paul was such aprivileged pupil as had never been seen in that house before. He couldhardly believe it himself; but his liberty lasted from hour to hour, and from day to day; and little Dombey was caressed by everyone. DoctorBlimber was so particular about him, that he requested Johnson to retirefrom the dinner-table one day, for having thoughtlessly spoken to him as'poor little Dombey;' which Paul thought rather hard and severe, thoughhe had flushed at the moment, and wondered why Johnson should pity him. It was the more questionable justice, Paul thought, in the Doctor, fromhis having certainly overheard that great authority give his assent onthe previous evening, to the proposition (stated by Mrs Blimber) thatpoor dear little Dombey was more old-fashioned than ever. And now itwas that Paul began to think it must surely be old-fashioned to bevery thin, and light, and easily tired, and soon disposed to lie downanywhere and rest; for he couldn't help feeling that these were more andmore his habits every day. 

At last the party-day arrived; and Doctor Blimber said at breakfast, 'Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of nextmonth. ' Mr Toots immediately threw off his allegiance, and put onhis ring: and mentioning the Doctor in casual conversation shortlyafterwards, spoke of him as 'Blimber'! This act of freedom inspiredthe older pupils with admiration and envy; but the younger spirits wereappalled, and seemed to marvel that no beam fell down and crushed him. 

Not the least allusion was made to the ceremonies of the evening, eitherat breakfast or at dinner; but there was a bustle in the house all day, and in the course of his perambulations, Paul made acquaintance withvarious strange benches and candlesticks, and met a harp in a greengreatcoat standing on the landing outside the drawing-room door. Therewas something queer, too, about Mrs Blimber's head at dinner-time, as ifshe had screwed her hair up too tight; and though Miss Blimber showeda graceful bunch of plaited hair on each temple, she seemed to have herown little curls in paper underneath, and in a play-bill too; forPaul read 'Theatre Royal' over one of her sparkling spectacles, and'Brighton' over the other. 

There was a grand array of white waistcoats and cravats in the younggentlemen's bedrooms as evening approached; and such a smell of singedhair, that Doctor Blimber sent up the footman with his compliments, andwished to know if the house was on fire. But it was only the hairdressercurling the young gentlemen, and over-heating his tongs in the ardour ofbusiness. 

When Paul was dressed--which was very soon done, for he felt unwell anddrowsy, and was not able to stand about it very long--he went down intothe drawing-room; where he found Doctor Blimber pacing up and down theroom full dressed, but with a dignified and unconcerned demeanour, asif he thought it barely possible that one or two people might drop in byand by. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Blimber appeared, looking lovely, Paulthought; and attired in such a number of skirts that it was quite anexcursion to walk round her. Miss Blimber came down soon after her Mama;a little squeezed in appearance, but very charming. 

Mr Toots and Mr Feeder were the next arrivals. Each of these gentlemenbrought his hat in his hand, as if he lived somewhere else; and whenthey were announced by the butler, Doctor Blimber said, 'Ay, ay, ay! Godbless my soul!' and seemed extremely glad to see them. Mr Toots wasone blaze of jewellery and buttons; and he felt the circumstance sostrongly, that when he had shaken hands with the Doctor, and had bowedto Mrs Blimber and Miss Blimber, he took Paul aside, and said, 'What doyou think of this, Dombey?'

But notwithstanding this modest confidence in himself, Mr Toots appearedto be involved in a good deal of uncertainty whether, on the whole, itwas judicious to button the bottom button of his waistcoat, and whether, on a calm revision of all the circumstances, it was best to wear hiswaistbands turned up or turned down. Observing that Mr Feeder's wereturned up, Mr Toots turned his up; but the waistbands of the nextarrival being turned down, Mr Toots turned his down. The differencesin point of waistcoat-buttoning, not only at the bottom, but at the toptoo, became so numerous and complicated as the arrivals thickened, thatMr Toots was continually fingering that article of dress, as if hewere performing on some instrument; and appeared to find the incessantexecution it demanded, quite bewildering. All the young gentlemen, tightly cravatted, curled, and pumped, and with their best hats in theirhands, having been at different times announced and introduced, Mr Baps, the dancing-master, came, accompanied by Mrs Baps, to whom MrsBlimber was extremely kind and condescending. Mr Baps was a very gravegentleman, with a slow and measured manner of speaking; and before hehad stood under the lamp five minutes, he began to talk to Toots (whohad been silently comparing pumps with him) about what you were to dowith your raw materials when they came into your ports in return foryour drain of gold. Mr Toots, to whom the question seemed perplexing, suggested 'Cook 'em. ' But Mr Baps did not appear to think that would do. 

Paul now slipped away from the cushioned corner of a sofa, which hadbeen his post of observation, and went downstairs into the tea-room tobe ready for Florence, whom he had not seen for nearly a fortnight, ashe had remained at Doctor Blimber's on the previous Saturday and Sunday, lest he should take cold. Presently she came: looking so beautiful inher simple ball dress, with her fresh flowers in her hand, that when sheknelt down on the ground to take Paul round the neck and kiss him (forthere was no one there, but his friend and another young woman waitingto serve out the tea), he could hardly make up his mind to let her goagain, or to take away her bright and loving eyes from his face. 

'But what is the matter, Floy?' asked Paul, almost sure that he saw atear there. 

'Nothing, darling; nothing, ' returned Florence. 

Paul touched her cheek gently with his finger--and it was a tear! 'Why, Floy!' said he. 

'We'll go home together, and I'll nurse you, love, ' said Florence. 

'Nurse me!' echoed Paul. 

Paul couldn't understand what that had to do with it, nor why the twoyoung women looked on so seriously, nor why Florence turned away herface for a moment, and then turned it back, lighted up again withsmiles. 

'Floy, ' said Paul, holding a ringlet of her dark hair in his hand. 'Tellme, dear, Do you think I have grown old-fashioned?'

His sister laughed, and fondled him, and told him 'No. '

'Because I know they say so, ' returned Paul, 'and I want to know whatthey mean, Floy. ' But a loud double knock coming at the door, andFlorence hurrying to the table, there was no more said between them. Paul wondered again when he saw his friend whisper to Florence, as ifshe were comforting her; but a new arrival put that out of his headspeedily. 

It was Sir Barnet Skettles, Lady Skettles, and Master Skettles. MasterSkettles was to be a new boy after the vacation, and Fame had been busy, in Mr Feeder's room, with his father, who was in the House of Commons, and of whom Mr Feeder had said that when he did catch the Speaker'seye (which he had been expected to do for three or four years), it wasanticipated that he would rather touch up the Radicals. 

'And what room is this now, for instance?' said Lady Skettles to Paul'sfriend, 'Melia. 

'Doctor Blimber's study, Ma'am, ' was the reply. 

Lady Skettles took a panoramic survey of it through her glass, and saidto Sir Barnet Skettles, with a nod of approval, 'Very good. ' Sir Barnetassented, but Master Skettles looked suspicious and doubtful. 

'And this little creature, now, ' said Lady Skettles, turning to Paul. 'Is he one of the--'

'Young gentlemen, Ma'am; yes, Ma'am, ' said Paul's friend. 

'And what is your name, my pale child?' said Lady Skettles. 

'Dombey, ' answered Paul. 

Sir Barnet Skettles immediately interposed, and said that he had had thehonour of meeting Paul's father at a public dinner, and that he hopedhe was very well. Then Paul heard him say to Lady Skettles, 'City--veryrich--most respectable--Doctor mentioned it. ' And then he said to Paul, 'Will you tell your good Papa that Sir Barnet Skettles rejoiced to hearthat he was very well, and sent him his best compliments?'

'Yes, Sir, ' answered Paul. 

'That is my brave boy, ' said Sir Barnet Skettles. 'Barnet, ' to MasterSkettles, who was revenging himself for the studies to come, on theplum-cake, 'this is a young gentleman you ought to know. This is ayoung gentleman you may know, Barnet, ' said Sir Barnet Skettles, with anemphasis on the permission. 

'What eyes! What hair! What a lovely face!' exclaimed Lady Skettlessoftly, as she looked at Florence through her glass. 'My sister, ' saidPaul, presenting her. 

The satisfaction of the Skettleses was now complex And as Lady Skettleshad conceived, at first sight, a liking for Paul, they all went upstairstogether: Sir Barnet Skettles taking care of Florence, and young Barnetfollowing. 

Young Barnet did not remain long in the background after they hadreached the drawing-room, for Dr Blimber had him out in no time, dancingwith Florence. He did not appear to Paul to be particularly happy, orparticularly anything but sulky, or to care much what he was about; butas Paul heard Lady Skettles say to Mrs Blimber, while she beat time withher fan, that her dear boy was evidently smitten to death by that angelof a child, Miss Dombey, it would seem that Skettles Junior was in astate of bliss, without showing it. 

Little Paul thought it a singular coincidence that nobody had occupiedhis place among the pillows; and that when he came into the room again, they should all make way for him to go back to it, remembering it washis. Nobody stood before him either, when they observed that he liked tosee Florence dancing, but they left the space in front quite clear, sothat he might follow her with his eyes. They were so kind, too, eventhe strangers, of whom there were soon a great many, that they came andspoke to him every now and then, and asked him how he was, and if hishead ached, and whether he was tired. He was very much obliged to themfor all their kindness and attention, and reclining propped up inhis corner, with Mrs Blimber and Lady Skettles on the same sofa, andFlorence coming and sitting by his side as soon as every dance wasended, he looked on very happily indeed. 

Florence would have sat by him all night, and would not have danced atall of her own accord, but Paul made her, by telling her how muchit pleased him. And he told her the truth, too; for his small heartswelled, and his face glowed, when he saw how much they all admired her, and how she was the beautiful little rosebud of the room. 

From his nest among the pillows, Paul could see and hear almosteverything that passed as if the whole were being done for hisamusement. Among other little incidents that he observed, he observed MrBaps the dancing-master get into conversation with Sir Barnet Skettles, and very soon ask him, as he had asked Mr Toots, what you were to dowith your raw materials, when they came into your ports in return foryour drain of gold--which was such a mystery to Paul that he was quitedesirous to know what ought to be done with them. Sir Barnet Skettleshad much to say upon the question, and said it; but it did not appearto solve the question, for Mr Baps retorted, Yes, but supposing Russiastepped in with her tallows; which struck Sir Barnet almost dumb, forhe could only shake his head after that, and say, Why then you must fallback upon your cottons, he supposed. 

Sir Barnet Skettles looked after Mr Baps when he went to cheer upMrs Baps (who, being quite deserted, was pretending to look over themusic-book of the gentleman who played the harp), as if he thought him aremarkable kind of man; and shortly afterwards he said so in those wordsto Doctor Blimber, and inquired if he might take the liberty of askingwho he was, and whether he had ever been in the Board of Trade. Doctor Blimber answered no, he believed not; and that in fact he was aProfessor of--'

'Of something connected with statistics, I'll swear?' observed SirBarnet Skettles. 

'Why no, Sir Barnet, ' replied Doctor Blimber, rubbing his chin. 'No, notexactly. '

'Figures of some sort, I would venture a bet, ' said Sir Barnet Skettles. 

'Why yes, ' said Doctor Blimber, yes, but not of that sort. Mr Baps is avery worthy sort of man, Sir Barnet, and--in fact he's our Professor ofdancing. '

Paul was amazed to see that this piece of information quite altered SirBarnet Skettles's opinion of Mr Baps, and that Sir Barnet flew intoa perfect rage, and glowered at Mr Baps over on the other side of theroom. He even went so far as to D Mr Baps to Lady Skettles, in tellingher what had happened, and to say that it was like his most con-sum-mateand con-foun-ded impudence. 

There was another thing that Paul observed. Mr Feeder, after imbibingseveral custard-cups of negus, began to enjoy himself. The dancing ingeneral was ceremonious, and the music rather solemn--a little likechurch music in fact--but after the custard-cups, Mr Feeder told MrToots that he was going to throw a little spirit into the thing. Afterthat, Mr Feeder not only began to dance as if he meant dancing andnothing else, but secretly to stimulate the music to perform wild tunes. Further, he became particular in his attentions to the ladies; anddancing with Miss Blimber, whispered to her--whispered to her!--thoughnot so softly but that Paul heard him say this remarkable poetry, 'Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure You!'

This, Paul heard him repeat to four young ladies, in succession. Wellmight Mr Feeder say to Mr Toots, that he was afraid he should be theworse for it to-morrow!

Mrs Blimber was a little alarmed by this--comparativelyspeaking--profligate behaviour; and especially by the alteration in thecharacter of the music, which, beginning to comprehend low melodies thatwere popular in the streets, might not unnaturally be supposed to giveoffence to Lady Skettles. But Lady Skettles was so very kind as to begMrs Blimber not to mention it; and to receive her explanation thatMr Feeder's spirits sometimes betrayed him into excesses on theseoccasions, with the greatest courtesy and politeness; observing, thathe seemed a very nice sort of person for his situation, and that sheparticularly liked the unassuming style of his hair--which (as alreadyhinted) was about a quarter of an inch long. 

Once, when there was a pause in the dancing, Lady Skettles told Paulthat he seemed very fond of music. Paul replied, that he was; and ifshe was too, she ought to hear his sister, Florence, sing. Lady Skettlespresently discovered that she was dying with anxiety to have thatgratification; and though Florence was at first very much frightened atbeing asked to sing before so many people, and begged earnestly to beexcused, yet, on Paul calling her to him, and saying, 'Do, Floy! Please!For me, my dear!' she went straight to the piano, and began. When theyall drew a little away, that Paul might see her; and when he saw hersitting there all alone, so young, and good, and beautiful, and kindto him; and heard her thrilling voice, so natural and sweet, and sucha golden link between him and all his life's love and happiness, risingout of the silence; he turned his face away, and hid his tears. Not, as he told them when they spoke to him, not that the music was tooplaintive or too sorrowful, but it was so dear to him. 

They all loved Florence. How could they help it! Paul had knownbeforehand that they must and would; and sitting in his cushionedcorner, with calmly folded hands; and one leg loosely doubled under him, few would have thought what triumph and delight expanded his childishbosom while he watched her, or what a sweet tranquillity he felt. Lavishencomiums on 'Dombey's sister' reached his ears from all the boys:admiration of the self-possessed and modest little beauty was on everylip: reports of her intelligence and accomplishments floated past him, constantly; and, as if borne in upon the air of the summer night, therewas a half intelligible sentiment diffused around, referring to Florenceand himself, and breathing sympathy for both, that soothed and touchedhim. 

He did not know why. For all that the child observed, and felt, andthought, that night--the present and the absent; what was then andwhat had been--were blended like the colours in the rainbow, or inthe plumage of rich birds when the sun is shining on them, or in thesoftening sky when the same sun is setting. The many things he had hadto think of lately, passed before him in the music; not as claiminghis attention over again, or as likely evermore to occupy it, but aspeacefully disposed of and gone. A solitary window, gazed through yearsago, looked out upon an ocean, miles and miles away; upon its waters, fancies, busy with him only yesterday, were hushed and lulled to restlike broken waves. The same mysterious murmur he had wondered at, whenlying on his couch upon the beach, he thought he still heard soundingthrough his sister's song, and through the hum of voices, and the treadof feet, and having some part in the faces flitting by, and even in theheavy gentleness of Mr Toots, who frequently came up to shake him bythe hand. Through the universal kindness he still thought he heard it, speaking to him; and even his old-fashioned reputation seemed to beallied to it, he knew not how. Thus little Paul sat musing, listening, looking on, and dreaming; and was very happy. 

Until the time arrived for taking leave: and then, indeed, there was asensation in the party. Sir Barnet Skettles brought up Skettles Juniorto shake hands with him, and asked him if he would remember to tell hisgood Papa, with his best compliments, that he, Sir Barnet Skettles, had said he hoped the two young gentlemen would become intimatelyacquainted. Lady Skettles kissed him, and patted his hair upon his brow, and held him in her arms; and even Mrs Baps--poor Mrs Baps! Paul wasglad of that--came over from beside the music-book of the gentleman whoplayed the harp, and took leave of him quite as heartily as anybody inthe room. 

'Good-bye, Doctor Blimber, ' said Paul, stretching out his hand. 

'Good-bye, my little friend, ' returned the Doctor. 

'I'm very much obliged to you, Sir, ' said Paul, looking innocently upinto his awful face. 'Ask them to take care of Diogenes, if you please. '

Diogenes was the dog: who had never in his life received a friend intohis confidence, before Paul. The Doctor promised that every attentionshould be paid to Diogenes in Paul's absence, and Paul having againthanked him, and shaken hands with him, bade adieu to Mrs Blimber andCornelia with such heartfelt earnestness that Mrs Blimber forgot fromthat moment to mention Cicero to Lady Skettles, though she had fullyintended it all the evening. Cornelia, taking both Paul's hands in hers, said, 'Dombey, Dombey, you have always been my favourite pupil. God blessyou!' And it showed, Paul thought, how easily one might do injustice toa person; for Miss Blimber meant it--though she was a Forcer--and feltit. 

A boy then went round among the young gentlemen, of 'Dombey's going!''Little Dombey's going!' and there was a general move after Paul andFlorence down the staircase and into the hall, in which the wholeBlimber family were included. Such a circumstance, Mr Feeder said aloud, as had never happened in the case of any former young gentleman withinhis experience; but it would be difficult to say if this were sober factor custard-cups. The servants, with the butler at their head, had all aninterest in seeing Little Dombey go; and even the weak-eyed young man, taking out his books and trunks to the coach that was to carry him andFlorence to Mrs Pipchin's for the night, melted visibly. 

Not even the influence of the softer passion on the young gentlemen--andthey all, to a boy, doted on Florence--could restrain them from takingquite a noisy leave of Paul; waving hats after him, pressing downstairsto shake hands with him, crying individually 'Dombey, don't forget me!'and indulging in many such ebullitions of feeling, uncommon among thoseyoung Chesterfields. Paul whispered Florence, as she wrapped him upbefore the door was opened, Did she hear them? Would she ever forgetit? Was she glad to know it? And a lively delight was in his eyes as hespoke to her. 

Once, for a last look, he turned and gazed upon the faces thus addressedto him, surprised to see how shining and how bright, and numerous theywere, and how they were all piled and heaped up, as faces are at crowdedtheatres. They swam before him as he looked, like faces in an agitatedglass; and next moment he was in the dark coach outside, holding closeto Florence. From that time, whenever he thought of Doctor Blimber's, itcame back as he had seen it in this last view; and it never seemed to bea real place again, but always a dream, full of eyes. 

This was not quite the last of Doctor Blimber's, however. There wassomething else. There was Mr Toots. Who, unexpectedly letting downone of the coach-windows, and looking in, said, with a most egregiouschuckle, 'Is Dombey there?' and immediately put it up again, withoutwaiting for an answer. Nor was this quite the last of Mr Toots, even;for before the coachman could drive off, he as suddenly let down theother window, and looking in with a precisely similar chuckle, said ina precisely similar tone of voice, 'Is Dombey there?' and disappearedprecisely as before. 

How Florence laughed! Paul often remembered it, and laughed himselfwhenever he did so. 

But there was much, soon afterwards--next day, and after that--whichPaul could only recollect confusedly. As, why they stayed at MrsPipchin's days and nights, instead of going home; why he lay in bed, with Florence sitting by his side; whether that had been his father inthe room, or only a tall shadow on the wall; whether he had heard hisdoctor say, of someone, that if they had removed him before the occasionon which he had built up fancies, strong in proportion to his ownweakness, it was very possible he might have pined away. 

He could not even remember whether he had often said to Florence, 'OhFloy, take me home, and never leave me!' but he thought he had. Hefancied sometimes he had heard himself repeating, 'Take me home, Floy!take me home!'

But he could remember, when he got home, and was carried up thewell-remembered stairs, that there had been the rumbling of a coach formany hours together, while he lay upon the seat, with Florence stillbeside him, and old Mrs Pipchin sitting opposite. He remembered his oldbed too, when they laid him down in it: his aunt, Miss Tox, and Susan:but there was something else, and recent too, that still perplexed him. 

'I want to speak to Florence, if you please, ' he said. 'To Florence byherself, for a moment!'

She bent down over him, and the others stood away. 

'Floy, my pet, wasn't that Papa in the hall, when they brought me fromthe coach?'

'Yes, dear. '

'He didn't cry, and go into his room, Floy, did he, when he saw mecoming in?'

Florence shook her head, and pressed her lips against his cheek. 

'I'm very glad he didn't cry, ' said little Paul. 'I thought he did. Don't tell them that I asked. '

CHAPTER 15. Amazing Artfulness of Captain Cuttle, and a new Pursuit forWalter Gay

Walter could not, for several days, decide what to do in the Barbadosbusiness; and even cherished some faint hope that Mr Dombey might nothave meant what he had said, or that he might change his mind, and tellhim he was not to go. But as nothing occurred to give this idea (whichwas sufficiently improbable in itself) any touch of confirmation, and astime was slipping by, and he had none to lose, he felt that he must act, without hesitating any longer. 

Walter's chief difficulty was, how to break the change in his affairs toUncle Sol, to whom he was sensible it would be a terrible blow. Hehad the greater difficulty in dashing Uncle Sol's spirits with such anastounding piece of intelligence, because they had lately recoveredvery much, and the old man had become so cheerful, that the little backparlour was itself again. Uncle Sol had paid the first appointed portionof the debt to Mr Dombey, and was hopeful of working his way throughthe rest; and to cast him down afresh, when he had sprung up so manfullyfrom his troubles, was a very distressing necessity. 

Yet it would never do to run away from him. He must know of itbeforehand; and how to tell him was the point. As to the question ofgoing or not going, Walter did not consider that he had any power ofchoice in the matter. Mr Dombey had truly told him that he was young, and that his Uncle's circumstances were not good; and Mr Dombey hadplainly expressed, in the glance with which he had accompanied thatreminder, that if he declined to go he might stay at home if he chose, but not in his counting-house. His Uncle and he lay under a greatobligation to Mr Dombey, which was of Walter's own soliciting. He mighthave begun in secret to despair of ever winning that gentleman's favour, and might have thought that he was now and then disposed to put a slightupon him, which was hardly just. But what would have been duty withoutthat, was still duty with it--or Walter thought so--and duty must bedone. 

When Mr Dombey had looked at him, and told him he was young, and thathis Uncle's circumstances were not good, there had been an expression ofdisdain in his face; a contemptuous and disparaging assumption that hewould be quite content to live idly on a reduced old man, which stungthe boy's generous soul. Determined to assure Mr Dombey, in so far as itwas possible to give him the assurance without expressing it in words, that indeed he mistook his nature, Walter had been anxious to show evenmore cheerfulness and activity after the West Indian interview than hehad shown before: if that were possible, in one of his quick and zealousdisposition. He was too young and inexperienced to think, that possiblythis very quality in him was not agreeable to Mr Dombey, and that itwas no stepping-stone to his good opinion to be elastic and hopeful ofpleasing under the shadow of his powerful displeasure, whether it wereright or wrong. But it may have been--it may have been--that the greatman thought himself defied in this new exposition of an honest spirit, and purposed to bring it down. 

'Well! at last and at least, Uncle Sol must be told, ' thought Walter, with a sigh. And as Walter was apprehensive that his voice might perhapsquaver a little, and that his countenance might not be quite as hopefulas he could wish it to be, if he told the old man himself, and saw thefirst effects of his communication on his wrinkled face, he resolved toavail himself of the services of that powerful mediator, Captain Cuttle. Sunday coming round, he set off therefore, after breakfast, once more tobeat up Captain Cuttle's quarters. 

It was not unpleasant to remember, on the way thither, that MrsMacStinger resorted to a great distance every Sunday morning, to attendthe ministry of the Reverend Melchisedech Howler, who, having been oneday discharged from the West India Docks on a false suspicion (got upexpressly against him by the general enemy) of screwing gimlets intopuncheons, and applying his lips to the orifice, had announced thedestruction of the world for that day two years, at ten in the morning, and opened a front parlour for the reception of ladies and gentlemenof the Ranting persuasion, upon whom, on the first occasion of theirassemblage, the admonitions of the Reverend Melchisedech had producedso powerful an effect, that, in their rapturous performance of a sacredjig, which closed the service, the whole flock broke through into akitchen below, and disabled a mangle belonging to one of the fold. 

This the Captain, in a moment of uncommon conviviality, had confidedto Walter and his Uncle, between the repetitions of lovely Peg, on thenight when Brogley the broker was paid out. The Captain himself waspunctual in his attendance at a church in his own neighbourhood, whichhoisted the Union Jack every Sunday morning; and where he was goodenough--the lawful beadle being infirm--to keep an eye upon the boys, over whom he exercised great power, in virtue of his mysterious hook. Knowing the regularity of the Captain's habits, Walter made all thehaste he could, that he might anticipate his going out; and he made suchgood speed, that he had the pleasure, on turning into Brig Place, tobehold the broad blue coat and waistcoat hanging out of the Captain'sopen window, to air in the sun. 

It appeared incredible that the coat and waistcoat could be seen bymortal eyes without the Captain; but he certainly was not in them, otherwise his legs--the houses in Brig Place not being lofty--would haveobstructed the street door, which was perfectly clear. Quite wonderingat this discovery, Walter gave a single knock. 

'Stinger, ' he distinctly heard the Captain say, up in his room, as ifthat were no business of his. Therefore Walter gave two knocks. 

'Cuttle, ' he heard the Captain say upon that; and immediately afterwardsthe Captain, in his clean shirt and braces, with his neckerchief hangingloosely round his throat like a coil of rope, and his glazed haton, appeared at the window, leaning out over the broad blue coat andwaistcoat. 

'Wal'r!' cried the Captain, looking down upon him in amazement. 

'Ay, ay, Captain Cuttle, ' returned Walter, 'only me'

'What's the matter, my lad?' inquired the Captain, with great concern. 'Gills an't been and sprung nothing again?'

'No, no, ' said Walter. 'My Uncle's all right, Captain Cuttle. '

The Captain expressed his gratification, and said he would come downbelow and open the door, which he did. 

'Though you're early, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, eyeing him stilldoubtfully, when they got upstairs:

'Why, the fact is, Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter, sitting down, 'I wasafraid you would have gone out, and I want to benefit by your friendlycounsel. '

'So you shall, ' said the Captain; 'what'll you take?'

'I want to take your opinion, Captain Cuttle, ' returned Walter, smiling. 'That's the only thing for me. '

'Come on then, ' said the Captain. 'With a will, my lad!'

Walter related to him what had happened; and the difficulty in which hefelt respecting his Uncle, and the relief it would be to him if CaptainCuttle, in his kindness, would help him to smooth it away; CaptainCuttle's infinite consternation and astonishment at the prospectunfolded to him, gradually swallowing that gentleman up, until it lefthis face quite vacant, and the suit of blue, the glazed hat, and thehook, apparently without an owner. 

'You see, Captain Cuttle, ' pursued Walter, 'for myself, I am young, asMr Dombey said, and not to be considered. I am to fight my way throughthe world, I know; but there are two points I was thinking, as I camealong, that I should be very particular about, in respect to my Uncle. I don't mean to say that I deserve to be the pride and delight of hislife--you believe me, I know--but I am. Now, don't you think I am?'

The Captain seemed to make an endeavour to rise from the depths ofhis astonishment, and get back to his face; but the effort beingineffectual, the glazed hat merely nodded with a mute, unutterablemeaning. 

'If I live and have my health, ' said Walter, 'and I am not afraid ofthat, still, when I leave England I can hardly hope to see my Uncleagain. He is old, Captain Cuttle; and besides, his life is a life ofcustom--'

'Steady, Wal'r! Of a want of custom?' said the Captain, suddenlyreappearing. 

'Too true, ' returned Walter, shaking his head: 'but I meant a life ofhabit, Captain Cuttle--that sort of custom. And if (as you very trulysaid, I am sure) he would have died the sooner for the loss of thestock, and all those objects to which he has been accustomed for so manyyears, don't you think he might die a little sooner for the loss of--'

'Of his Nevy, ' interposed the Captain. 'Right!'

'Well then, ' said Walter, trying to speak gaily, 'we must do our best tomake him believe that the separation is but a temporary one, after all;but as I know better, or dread that I know better, Captain Cuttle, andas I have so many reasons for regarding him with affection, and duty, and honour, I am afraid I should make but a very poor hand at that, ifI tried to persuade him of it. That's my great reason for wishing you tobreak it out to him; and that's the first point. '

'Keep her off a point or so!' observed the Captain, in a comtemplativevoice. 

'What did you say, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter. 

'Stand by!' returned the Captain, thoughtfully. 

Walter paused to ascertain if the Captain had any particular informationto add to this, but as he said no more, went on. 

'Now, the second point, Captain Cuttle. I am sorry to say, I am not afavourite with Mr Dombey. I have always tried to do my best, and I havealways done it; but he does not like me. He can't help his likings anddislikings, perhaps. I say nothing of that. I only say that I am certainhe does not like me. He does not send me to this post as a good one; hedisclaims to represent it as being better than it is; and I doubt verymuch if it will ever lead me to advancement in the House--whether itdoes not, on the contrary, dispose of me for ever, and put me out of theway. Now, we must say nothing of this to my Uncle, Captain Cuttle, butmust make it out to be as favourable and promising as we can; and when Itell you what it really is, I only do so, that in case any means shouldever arise of lending me a hand, so far off, I may have one friend athome who knows my real situation. 

'Wal'r, my boy, ' replied the Captain, 'in the Proverbs of Solomon youwill find the following words, "May we never want a friend in need, nora bottle to give him!" When found, make a note of. '

Here the Captain stretched out his hand to Walter, with an air ofdownright good faith that spoke volumes; at the same time repeating (forhe felt proud of the accuracy and pointed application of his quotation), 'When found, make a note of. '

'Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter, taking the immense fist extended to himby the Captain in both his hands, which it completely filled, next tomy Uncle Sol, I love you. There is no one on earth in whom I can moresafely trust, I am sure. As to the mere going away, Captain Cuttle, Idon't care for that; why should I care for that! If I were free to seekmy own fortune--if I were free to go as a common sailor--if I were freeto venture on my own account to the farthest end of the world--I wouldgladly go! I would have gladly gone, years ago, and taken my chance ofwhat might come of it. But it was against my Uncle's wishes, and againstthe plans he had formed for me; and there was an end of that. But what Ifeel, Captain Cuttle, is that we have been a little mistaken all along, and that, so far as any improvement in my prospects is concerned, Iam no better off now than I was when I first entered Dombey'sHouse--perhaps a little worse, for the House may have been kindlyinclined towards me then, and it certainly is not now. '

'Turn again, Whittington, ' muttered the disconsolate Captain, afterlooking at Walter for some time. 

'Ay, ' replied Walter, laughing, 'and turn a great many times, too, Captain Cuttle, I'm afraid, before such fortune as his ever turnsup again. Not that I complain, ' he added, in his lively, animated, energetic way. 'I have nothing to complain of. I am provided for. I canlive. When I leave my Uncle, I leave him to you; and I can leave himto no one better, Captain Cuttle. I haven't told you all this becauseI despair, not I; it's to convince you that I can't pick and choose inDombey's House, and that where I am sent, there I must go, and what Iam offered, that I must take. It's better for my Uncle that I shouldbe sent away; for Mr Dombey is a valuable friend to him, as he provedhimself, you know when, Captain Cuttle; and I am persuaded he won't beless valuable when he hasn't me there, every day, to awaken his dislike. So hurrah for the West Indies, Captain Cuttle! How does that tune gothat the sailors sing?

 'For the Port of Barbados, Boys!

 Cheerily!

 Leaving old England behind us, Boys!

 Cheerily!'Here the Captain roared in chorus--

 'Oh cheerily, cheerily!

 Oh cheer-i-ly!'

The last line reaching the quick ears of an ardent skipper not quitesober, who lodged opposite, and who instantly sprung out of bed, threwup his window, and joined in, across the street, at the top of hisvoice, produced a fine effect. When it was impossible to sustain theconcluding note any longer, the skipper bellowed forth a terrific'ahoy!' intended in part as a friendly greeting, and in part to showthat he was not at all breathed. That done, he shut down his window, andwent to bed again. 

'And now, Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter, handing him the blue coat andwaistcoat, and bustling very much, 'if you'll come and break the news toUncle Sol (which he ought to have known, days upon days ago, byrights), I'll leave you at the door, you know, and walk about until theafternoon. '

The Captain, however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or tobe by any means confident of his powers of executing it. He had arrangedthe future life and adventures of Walter so very differently, and soentirely to his own satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so often onthe sagacity and foresight displayed in that arrangement, and had foundit so complete and perfect in all its parts; that to suffer it to goto pieces all at once, and even to assist in breaking it up, required agreat effort of his resolution. The Captain, too, found it difficult tounload his old ideas upon the subject, and to take a perfectly newcargo on board, with that rapidity which the circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two. Consequently, instead ofputting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like the impetuositythat could alone have kept pace with Walter's mood, he declined toinvest himself with those garments at all at present; and informedWalter that on such a serious matter, he must be allowed to 'bite hisnails a bit'. 

'It's an old habit of mine, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, 'any time thesefifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal'r, then you mayknow that Ned Cuttle's aground. '

Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if itwere a hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the veryconcentration and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and graveinquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in itsvarious branches. 

'There's a friend of mine, ' murmured the Captain, in an absent manner, 'but he's at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver suchan opinion on this subject, or any other that could be named, as wouldgive Parliament six and beat 'em. Been knocked overboard, that man, 'said the Captain, 'twice, and none the worse for it. Was beat in hisapprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on), about the head with aring-bolt. And yet a clearer-minded man don't walk. '

Despite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not helpinwardly rejoicing at the absence of this sage, and devoutly hoping thathis limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on his difficultiesuntil they were quite settled. 

'If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore, ' saidCaptain Cuttle in the same tone, 'and ask him his opinion of it, Wal'r, he'd give you an opinion that was no more like that buoy than yourUncle's buttons are. There ain't a man that walks--certainly not on twolegs--that can come near him. Not near him!'

'What's his name, Captain Cuttle?' inquired Walter, determined to beinterested in the Captain's friend. 

'His name's Bunsby, said the Captain. 'But Lord, it might be anythingfor the matter of that, with such a mind as his!'

The exact idea which the Captain attached to this concluding piece ofpraise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to drawit forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural tohimself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, hesoon discovered that the Captain had relapsed into his former profoundstate of mind; and that while he eyed him steadfastly from beneath hisbushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remainedimmersed in cogitation. 

In fact, Captain Cuttle was labouring with such great designs, that farfrom being aground, he soon got off into the deepest of water, and couldfind no bottom to his penetration. By degrees it became perfectly plainto the Captain that there was some mistake here; that it was undoubtedlymuch more likely to be Walter's mistake than his; that if there werereally any West India scheme afoot, it was a very different one fromwhat Walter, who was young and rash, supposed; and could only be somenew device for making his fortune with unusual celerity. 'Or if thereshould be any little hitch between 'em, ' thought the Captain, meaningbetween Walter and Mr Dombey, 'it only wants a word in season from afriend of both parties, to set it right and smooth, and make all tautagain. ' Captain Cuttle's deduction from these considerations was, thatas he already enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey, from havingspent a very agreeable half-hour in his company at Brighton (on themorning when they borrowed the money); and that, as a couple of men ofthe world, who understood each other, and were mutually disposed to makethings comfortable, could easily arrange any little difficulty of thissort, and come at the real facts; the friendly thing for him to do wouldbe, without saying anything about it to Walter at present, just to stepup to Mr Dombey's house--say to the servant 'Would ye be so good, mylad, as report Cap'en Cuttle here?'--meet Mr Dombey in a confidentialspirit--hook him by the button-hole--talk it over--make it allright--and come away triumphant!

As these reflections presented themselves to the Captain's mind, andby slow degrees assumed this shape and form, his visage cleared likea doubtful morning when it gives place to a bright noon. His eyebrows, which had been in the highest degree portentous, smoothed their ruggedbristling aspect, and became serene; his eyes, which had been nearlyclosed in the severity of his mental exercise, opened freely; a smilewhich had been at first but three specks--one at the right-hand cornerof his mouth, and one at the corner of each eye--gradually overspreadhis whole face, and, rippling up into his forehead, lifted the glazedhat: as if that too had been aground with Captain Cuttle, and were now, like him, happily afloat again. 

Finally, the Captain left off biting his nails, and said, 'Now, Wal'r, my boy, you may help me on with them slops. ' By which the Captain meanthis coat and waistcoat. 

Walter little imagined why the Captain was so particular in thearrangement of his cravat, as to twist the pendent ends into a sort ofpigtail, and pass them through a massive gold ring with a picture ofa tomb upon it, and a neat iron railing, and a tree, in memory of somedeceased friend. Nor why the Captain pulled up his shirt-collar tothe utmost limits allowed by the Irish linen below, and by so doingdecorated himself with a complete pair of blinkers; nor why he changedhis shoes, and put on an unparalleled pair of ankle-jacks, which he onlywore on extraordinary occasions. The Captain being at length attired tohis own complete satisfaction, and having glanced at himself fromhead to foot in a shaving-glass which he removed from a nail for thatpurpose, took up his knotted stick, and said he was ready. 

The Captain's walk was more complacent than usual when they got outinto the street; but this Walter supposed to be the effect of theankle-jacks, and took little heed of. Before they had gone very far, they encountered a woman selling flowers; when the Captain stoppingshort, as if struck by a happy idea, made a purchase of the largestbundle in her basket: a most glorious nosegay, fan-shaped, some two feetand a half round, and composed of all the jolliest-looking flowers thatblow. 

Armed with this little token which he designed for Mr Dombey, CaptainCuttle walked on with Walter until they reached the Instrument-maker'sdoor, before which they both paused. 

'You're going in?' said Walter. 

'Yes, ' returned the Captain, who felt that Walter must be got ridof before he proceeded any further, and that he had better time hisprojected visit somewhat later in the day. 

'And you won't forget anything?'

'No, ' returned the Captain. 

'I'll go upon my walk at once, ' said Walter, 'and then I shall be out ofthe way, Captain Cuttle. '

'Take a good long 'un, my lad!' replied the Captain, calling after him. Walter waved his hand in assent, and went his way. 

His way was nowhere in particular; but he thought he would go out intothe fields, where he could reflect upon the unknown life before him, andresting under some tree, ponder quietly. He knew no better fields thanthose near Hampstead, and no better means of getting at them than bypassing Mr Dombey's house. 

It was as stately and as dark as ever, when he went by and glanced upat its frowning front. The blinds were all pulled down, but the upperwindows stood wide open, and the pleasant air stirring those curtainsand waving them to and fro was the only sign of animation in the wholeexterior. Walter walked softly as he passed, and was glad when he hadleft the house a door or two behind. 

He looked back then; with the interest he had always felt for the placesince the adventure of the lost child, years ago; and looked especiallyat those upper windows. While he was thus engaged, a chariot drove tothe door, and a portly gentleman in black, with a heavy watch-chain, alighted, and went in. When he afterwards remembered this gentleman andhis equipage together, Walter had no doubt be was a physician; and thenhe wondered who was ill; but the discovery did not occur to him until hehad walked some distance, thinking listlessly of other things. 

Though still, of what the house had suggested to him; for Walterpleased himself with thinking that perhaps the time might come, when thebeautiful child who was his old friend and had always been so gratefulto him and so glad to see him since, might interest her brother in hisbehalf and influence his fortunes for the better. He liked to imaginethis--more, at that moment, for the pleasure of imagining her continuedremembrance of him, than for any worldly profit he might gain: butanother and more sober fancy whispered to him that if he were alivethen, he would be beyond the sea and forgotten; she married, rich, proud, happy. There was no more reason why she should remember him withany interest in such an altered state of things, than any plaything sheever had. No, not so much. 

Yet Walter so idealised the pretty child whom he had found wandering inthe rough streets, and so identified her with her innocent gratitudeof that night and the simplicity and truth of its expression, that heblushed for himself as a libeller when he argued that she could evergrow proud. On the other hand, his meditations were of that fantasticorder that it seemed hardly less libellous in him to imagine her grown awoman: to think of her as anything but the same artless, gentle, winninglittle creature, that she had been in the days of Good Mrs Brown. Ina word, Walter found out that to reason with himself about Florence atall, was to become very unreasonable indeed; and that he could dono better than preserve her image in his mind as something precious, unattainable, unchangeable, and indefinite--indefinite in all but itspower of giving him pleasure, and restraining him like an angel's handfrom anything unworthy. 

It was a long stroll in the fields that Walter took that day, listeningto the birds, and the Sunday bells, and the softened murmur of thetown--breathing sweet scents; glancing sometimes at the dim horizonbeyond which his voyage and his place of destination lay; then lookinground on the green English grass and the home landscape. But he hardlyonce thought, even of going away, distinctly; and seemed to put offreflection idly, from hour to hour, and from minute to minute, while heyet went on reflecting all the time. 

Walter had left the fields behind him, and was plodding homeward inthe same abstracted mood, when he heard a shout from a man, and thena woman's voice calling to him loudly by name. Turning quickly in hissurprise, he saw that a hackney-coach, going in the contrary direction, had stopped at no great distance; that the coachman was looking backfrom his box and making signals to him with his whip; and that a youngwoman inside was leaning out of the window, and beckoning with immenseenergy. Running up to this coach, he found that the young woman wasMiss Nipper, and that Miss Nipper was in such a flutter as to be almostbeside herself. 

'Staggs's Gardens, Mr Walter!' said Miss Nipper; 'if you please, oh do!'

'Eh?' cried Walter; 'what is the matter?'

'Oh, Mr Walter, Staggs's Gardens, if you please!' said Susan. 

'There!' cried the coachman, appealing to Walter, with a sort ofexalting despair; 'that's the way the young lady's been a goin' onfor up'ards of a mortal hour, and me continivally backing out of nothoroughfares, where she would drive up. I've had a many fares in thiscoach, first and last, but never such a fare as her. '

'Do you want to go to Staggs's Gardens, Susan?' inquired Walter. 

'Ah! She wants to go there! WHERE IS IT?' growled the coachman. 

'I don't know where it is!' exclaimed Susan, wildly. 'Mr Walter, I wasthere once myself, along with Miss Floy and our poor darling MasterPaul, on the very day when you found Miss Floy in the City, for we losther coming home, Mrs Richards and me, and a mad bull, and Mrs Richards'seldest, and though I went there afterwards, I can't remember where itis, I think it's sunk into the ground. Oh, Mr Walter, don't desertme, Staggs's Gardens, if you please! Miss Floy's darling--all ourdarlings--little, meek, meek Master Paul! Oh Mr Walter!'

'Good God!' cried Walter. 'Is he very ill?'

'The pretty flower!' cried Susan, wringing her hands, 'has took thefancy that he'd like to see his old nurse, and I've come to bring her tohis bedside, Mrs Staggs, of Polly Toodle's Gardens, someone pray!'

Greatly moved by what he heard, and catching Susan's earnestnessimmediately, Walter, now that he understood the nature of her errand, dashed into it with such ardour that the coachman had enough to doto follow closely as he ran before, inquiring here and there andeverywhere, the way to Staggs's Gardens. 

There was no such place as Staggs's Gardens. It had vanished from theearth. Where the old rotten summer-houses once had stood, palaces nowreared their heads, and granite columns of gigantic girth opened avista to the railway world beyond. The miserable waste ground, where therefuse-matter had been heaped of yore, was swallowed up and gone; and inits frowsy stead were tiers of warehouses, crammed with rich goods andcostly merchandise. The old by-streets now swarmed with passengers andvehicles of every kind: the new streets that had stopped disheartenedin the mud and waggon-ruts, formed towns within themselves, originatingwholesome comforts and conveniences belonging to themselves, and nevertried nor thought of until they sprung into existence. Bridges that hadled to nothing, led to villas, gardens, churches, healthy public walks. The carcasses of houses, and beginnings of new thoroughfares, hadstarted off upon the line at steam's own speed, and shot away into thecountry in a monster train. '

As to the neighbourhood which had hesitated to acknowledge the railroadin its straggling days, that had grown wise and penitent, as anyChristian might in such a case, and now boasted of its powerful andprosperous relation. There were railway patterns in its drapers' shops, and railway journals in the windows of its newsmen. There were railwayhotels, office-houses, lodging-houses, boarding-houses; railway plans, maps, views, wrappers, bottles, sandwich-boxes, and time-tables;railway hackney-coach and stands; railway omnibuses, railway streets andbuildings, railway hangers-on and parasites, and flatterers out of allcalculation. There was even railway time observed in clocks, as ifthe sun itself had given in. Among the vanquished was the masterchimney-sweeper, whilom incredulous at Staggs's Gardens, who now livedin a stuccoed house three stories high, and gave himself out, withgolden flourishes upon a varnished board, as contractor for thecleansing of railway chimneys by machinery. 

To and from the heart of this great change, all day and night, throbbingcurrents rushed and returned incessantly like its life's blood. Crowdsof people and mountains of goods, departing and arriving scores uponscores of times in every four-and-twenty hours, produced a fermentationin the place that was always in action. The very houses seemed disposedto pack up and take trips. Wonderful Members of Parliament, who, littlemore than twenty years before, had made themselves merry with the wildrailroad theories of engineers, and given them the liveliest rubs incross-examination, went down into the north with their watches in theirhands, and sent on messages before by the electric telegraph, to saythat they were coming. Night and day the conquering engines rumbled attheir distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their journey's end, andgliding like tame dragons into the allotted corners grooved out to theinch for their reception, stood bubbling and trembling there, making thewalls quake, as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of greatpowers yet unsuspected in them, and strong purposes not yet achieved. 

But Staggs's Gardens had been cut up root and branch. Oh woe the daywhen 'not a rood of English ground'--laid out in Staggs's Gardens--issecure!

At last, after much fruitless inquiry, Walter, followed by the coach andSusan, found a man who had once resided in that vanished land, and whowas no other than the master sweep before referred to, grown stout, and knocking a double knock at his own door. He knowed Toodle, he said, well. Belonged to the Railroad, didn't he?

'Yes' sir, yes!' cried Susan Nipper from the coach window. 

Where did he live now? hastily inquired Walter. 

He lived in the Company's own Buildings, second turning to the right, down the yard, cross over, and take the second on the right again. Itwas number eleven; they couldn't mistake it; but if they did, they hadonly to ask for Toodle, Engine Fireman, and any one would show themwhich was his house. At this unexpected stroke of success Susan Nipperdismounted from the coach with all speed, took Walter's arm, and setoff at a breathless pace on foot; leaving the coach there to await theirreturn. 

'Has the little boy been long ill, Susan?' inquired Walter, as theyhurried on. 

'Ailing for a deal of time, but no one knew how much, ' said Susan;adding, with excessive sharpness, 'Oh, them Blimbers!'

'Blimbers?' echoed Walter. 

'I couldn't forgive myself at such a time as this, Mr Walter, ' saidSusan, 'and when there's so much serious distress to think about, ifI rested hard on anyone, especially on them that little darling Paulspeaks well of, but I may wish that the family was set to work in astony soil to make new roads, and that Miss Blimber went in front, andhad the pickaxe!'

Miss Nipper then took breath, and went on faster than before, as if thisextraordinary aspiration had relieved her. Walter, who had by this timeno breath of his own to spare, hurried along without asking any morequestions; and they soon, in their impatience, burst in at a little doorand came into a clean parlour full of children. 

'Where's Mrs Richards?' exclaimed Susan Nipper, looking round. 'Oh MrsRichards, Mrs Richards, come along with me, my dear creetur!'

'Why, if it ain't Susan!' cried Polly, rising with her honest face andmotherly figure from among the group, in great surprise. 

'Yes, Mrs Richards, it's me, ' said Susan, 'and I wish it wasn't, thoughI may not seem to flatter when I say so, but little Master Paul is veryill, and told his Pa today that he would like to see the face of hisold nurse, and him and Miss Floy hope you'll come along with me--and MrWalter, Mrs Richards--forgetting what is past, and do a kindness to thesweet dear that is withering away. Oh, Mrs Richards, withering away!'Susan Nipper crying, Polly shed tears to see her, and to hear what shehad said; and all the children gathered round (including numbers of newbabies); and Mr Toodle, who had just come home from Birmingham, and waseating his dinner out of a basin, laid down his knife and fork, and puton his wife's bonnet and shawl for her, which were hanging up behind thedoor; then tapped her on the back; and said, with more fatherly feelingthan eloquence, 'Polly! cut away!'

So they got back to the coach, long before the coachman expected them;and Walter, putting Susan and Mrs Richards inside, took his seat on thebox himself that there might be no more mistakes, and deposited themsafely in the hall of Mr Dombey's house--where, by the bye, he saw amighty nosegay lying, which reminded him of the one Captain Cuttle hadpurchased in his company that morning. He would have lingered to knowmore of the young invalid, or waited any length of time to see ifhe could render the least service; but, painfully sensible that suchconduct would be looked upon by Mr Dombey as presumptuous and forward, he turned slowly, sadly, anxiously, away. 

He had not gone five minutes' walk from the door, when a man camerunning after him, and begged him to return. Walter retraced his stepsas quickly as he could, and entered the gloomy house with a sorrowfulforeboding. 

CHAPTER 16. What the Waves were always saying

Paul had never risen from his little bed. He lay there, listening tothe noises in the street, quite tranquilly; not caring much how the timewent, but watching it and watching everything about him with observingeyes. 

When the sunbeams struck into his room through the rustling blinds, andquivered on the opposite wall like golden water, he knew that eveningwas coming on, and that the sky was red and beautiful. As the reflectiondied away, and a gloom went creeping up the wall, he watched it deepen, deepen, deepen, into night. Then he thought how the long streets weredotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars were shining overhead. Hisfancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river, which he knew wasflowing through the great city; and now he thought how black it was, and how deep it would look, reflecting the hosts of stars--and more thanall, how steadily it rolled away to meet the sea. 

As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in the street became sorare that he could hear them coming, count them as they passed, and losethem in the hollow distance, he would lie and watch the many-colouredring about the candle, and wait patiently for day. His only trouble was, the swift and rapid river. He felt forced, sometimes, to try to stopit--to stem it with his childish hands--or choke its way with sand--andwhen he saw it coming on, resistless, he cried out! But a word fromFlorence, who was always at his side, restored him to himself; andleaning his poor head upon her breast, he told Floy of his dream, andsmiled. 

When day began to dawn again, he watched for the sun; and whenits cheerful light began to sparkle in the room, he pictured tohimself--pictured! he saw--the high church towers rising up into themorning sky, the town reviving, waking, starting into life once more, the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and thecountry bright with dew. Familiar sounds and cries came by degrees intothe street below; the servants in the house were roused and busy; faceslooked in at the door, and voices asked his attendants softly how hewas. Paul always answered for himself, 'I am better. I am a great dealbetter, thank you! Tell Papa so!'

By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day, the noiseof carriages and carts, and people passing and repassing; and would fallasleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy sense again--thechild could hardly tell whether this were in his sleeping or his wakingmoments--of that rushing river. 'Why, will it never stop, Floy?' hewould sometimes ask her. 'It is bearing me away, I think!'

But Floy could always soothe and reassure him; and it was his dailydelight to make her lay her head down on his pillow, and take some rest. 

'You are always watching me, Floy, let me watch you, now!' They wouldprop him up with cushions in a corner of his bed, and there he wouldrecline the while she lay beside him: bending forward oftentimes to kissher, and whispering to those who were near that she was tired, and howshe had sat up so many nights beside him. 

Thus, the flush of the day, in its heat and light, would graduallydecline; and again the golden water would be dancing on the wall. 

He was visited by as many as three grave doctors--they used to assembledownstairs, and come up together--and the room was so quiet, and Paulwas so observant of them (though he never asked of anybody what theysaid), that he even knew the difference in the sound of their watches. But his interest centred in Sir Parker Peps, who always took his seaton the side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say long ago, that thatgentleman had been with his Mama when she clasped Florence in her arms, and died. And he could not forget it, now. He liked him for it. He wasnot afraid. 

The people round him changed as unaccountably as on that first night atDoctor Blimber's--except Florence; Florence never changed--and what hadbeen Sir Parker Peps, was now his father, sitting with his head uponhis hand. Old Mrs Pipchin dozing in an easy chair, often changed to MissTox, or his aunt; and Paul was quite content to shut his eyes again, andsee what happened next, without emotion. But this figure with its headupon its hand returned so often, and remained so long, and sat so stilland solemn, never speaking, never being spoken to, and rarely lifting upits face, that Paul began to wonder languidly, if it were real; and inthe night-time saw it sitting there, with fear. 

'Floy!' he said. 'What is that?'

'Where, dearest?'

'There! at the bottom of the bed. '

'There's nothing there, except Papa!'

The figure lifted up its head, and rose, and coming to the bedside, said:

'My own boy! Don't you know me?'

Paul looked it in the face, and thought, was this his father? But theface so altered to his thinking, thrilled while he gazed, as if it werein pain; and before he could reach out both his hands to take it betweenthem, and draw it towards him, the figure turned away quickly from thelittle bed, and went out at the door. 

Paul looked at Florence with a fluttering heart, but he knew what shewas going to say, and stopped her with his face against her lips. Thenext time he observed the figure sitting at the bottom of the bed, hecalled to it. 

'Don't be sorry for me, dear Papa! Indeed I am quite happy!'

His father coming and bending down to him--which he did quickly, andwithout first pausing by the bedside--Paul held him round the neck, andrepeated those words to him several times, and very earnestly; and Paulnever saw him in his room again at any time, whether it were day ornight, but he called out, 'Don't be sorry for me! Indeed I am quitehappy!' This was the beginning of his always saying in the morning thathe was a great deal better, and that they were to tell his father so. 

How many times the golden water danced upon the wall; how many nightsthe dark, dark river rolled towards the sea in spite of him; Paul nevercounted, never sought to know. If their kindness, or his sense of it, could have increased, they were more kind, and he more grateful everyday; but whether they were many days or few, appeared of little momentnow, to the gentle boy. 

One night he had been thinking of his mother, and her picture in thedrawing-room downstairs, and thought she must have loved sweet Florencebetter than his father did, to have held her in her arms when she feltthat she was dying--for even he, her brother, who had such dear lovefor her, could have no greater wish than that. The train of thoughtsuggested to him to inquire if he had ever seen his mother? for he couldnot remember whether they had told him, yes or no, the river runningvery fast, and confusing his mind. 

'Floy, did I ever see Mama?'

'No, darling, why?'

'Did I ever see any kind face, like Mama's, looking at me when I was ababy, Floy?'

He asked, incredulously, as if he had some vision of a face before him. 

'Oh yes, dear!'

'Whose, Floy?'

'Your old nurse's. Often. '

'And where is my old nurse?' said Paul. 'Is she dead too? Floy, are weall dead, except you?'

There was a hurry in the room, for an instant--longer, perhaps; but itseemed no more--then all was still again; and Florence, with her facequite colourless, but smiling, held his head upon her arm. Her armtrembled very much. 

'Show me that old nurse, Floy, if you please!'

'She is not here, darling. She shall come to-morrow. '

'Thank you, Floy!'

Paul closed his eyes with those words, and fell asleep. When he awoke, the sun was high, and the broad day was clear and He lay a little, looking at the windows, which were open, and the curtains rustling inthe air, and waving to and fro: then he said, 'Floy, is it tomorrow? Isshe come?'

Someone seemed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it was Susan. Paul thoughthe heard her telling him when he had closed his eyes again, that shewould soon be back; but he did not open them to see. She kept herword--perhaps she had never been away--but the next thing that happenedwas a noise of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke--woke mindand body--and sat upright in his bed. He saw them now about him. Therewas no grey mist before them, as there had been sometimes in the night. He knew them every one, and called them by their names. 

'And who is this? Is this my old nurse?' said the child, regarding witha radiant smile, a figure coming in. 

Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those tears at sight ofhim, and called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her own poor blightedchild. No other woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken uphis wasted hand, and put it to her lips and breast, as one who had someright to fondle it. No other woman would have so forgotten everybodythere but him and Floy, and been so full of tenderness and pity. 

'Floy! this is a kind good face!' said Paul. 'I am glad to see it again. Don't go away, old nurse! Stay here. '

His senses were all quickened, and he heard a name he knew. 

'Who was that, who said "Walter"?' he asked, looking round. 'Someonesaid Walter. Is he here? I should like to see him very much. '

Nobody replied directly; but his father soon said to Susan, 'Call himback, then: let him come up!' Alter a short pause of expectation, duringwhich he looked with smiling interest and wonder, on his nurse, and sawthat she had not forgotten Floy, Walter was brought into the room. His open face and manner, and his cheerful eyes, had always made him afavourite with Paul; and when Paul saw him' he stretched Out his hand, and said 'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, my child!' said Mrs Pipchin, hurrying to his bed's head. 'Notgood-bye?'

For an instant, Paul looked at her with the wistful face with which hehad so often gazed upon her in his corner by the fire. 'Yes, ' he saidplacidly, 'good-bye! Walter dear, good-bye!'--turning his head to wherehe stood, and putting out his hand again. 'Where is Papa?'

He felt his father's breath upon his cheek, before the words had partedfrom his lips. 

'Remember Walter, dear Papa, ' he whispered, looking in his face. 'Remember Walter. I was fond of Walter!' The feeble hand waved in theair, as if it cried 'good-bye!' to Walter once again. 

'Now lay me down, ' he said, 'and, Floy, come close to me, and let me seeyou!'

Sister and brother wound their arms around each other, and the goldenlight came streaming in, and fell upon them, locked together. 

'How fast the river runs, between its green banks and the rushes, 'Floy!But it's very near the sea. I hear the waves! They always said so!'

Presently he told her the motion of the boat upon the stream was lullinghim to rest. How green the banks were now, how bright the flowersgrowing on them, and how tall the rushes! Now the boat was out at sea, but gliding smoothly on. And now there was a shore before him. Who stoodon the bank--!

He put his hands together, as he had been used to do at his prayers. Hedid not remove his arms to do it; but they saw him fold them so, behindher neck. 

'Mama is like you, Floy. I know her by the face! But tell them that theprint upon the stairs at school is not divine enough. The light aboutthe head is shining on me as I go!'

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, and nothing else stirredin the room. The old, old fashion! The fashion that came in with ourfirst garments, and will last unchanged until our race has run itscourse, and the wide firmament is rolled up like a scroll. The old, oldfashion--Death!

Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashion yet, ofImmortality! And look upon us, angels of young children, with regardsnot quite estranged, when the swift river bears us to the ocean!

'Dear me, dear me! To think, ' said Miss Tox, bursting out afresh thatnight, as if her heart were broken, 'that Dombey and Son should be aDaughter after all!'

CHAPTER 17. Captain Cuttle does a little Business for the Young People

Captain Cuttle, in the exercise of that surprising talent for deep-laidand unfathomable scheming, with which (as is not unusual in men oftransparent simplicity) he sincerely believed himself to be endowed bynature, had gone to Mr Dombey's house on the eventful Sunday, winkingall the way as a vent for his superfluous sagacity, and had presentedhimself in the full lustre of the ankle-jacks before the eyes ofTowlinson. Hearing from that individual, to his great concern, of theimpending calamity, Captain Cuttle, in his delicacy, sheered offagain confounded; merely handing in the nosegay as a small mark of hissolicitude, and leaving his respectful compliments for the family ingeneral, which he accompanied with an expression of his hope that theywould lay their heads well to the wind under existing circumstances, anda friendly intimation that he would 'look up again' to-morrow. 

The Captain's compliments were never heard of any more. The Captain'snosegay, after lying in the hall all night, was swept into the dust-binnext morning; and the Captain's sly arrangement, involved in onecatastrophe with greater hopes and loftier designs, was crushed topieces. So, when an avalanche bears down a mountain-forest, twigs andbushes suffer with the trees, and all perish together. 

When Walter returned home on the Sunday evening from his long walk, andits memorable close, he was too much occupied at first by the tidings hehad to give them, and by the emotions naturally awakened in his breastby the scene through which he had passed, to observe either that hisUncle was evidently unacquainted with the intelligence the Captain hadundertaken to impart, or that the Captain made signals with his hook, warning him to avoid the subject. Not that the Captain's signals werecalculated to have proved very comprehensible, however attentivelyobserved; for, like those Chinese sages who are said in theirconferences to write certain learned words in the air that are whollyimpossible of pronunciation, the Captain made such waves and flourishesas nobody without a previous knowledge of his mystery, would have beenat all likely to understand. 

Captain Cuttle, however, becoming cognisant of what had happened, relinquished these attempts, as he perceived the slender chance that nowexisted of his being able to obtain a little easy chat with Mr Dombeybefore the period of Walter's departure. But in admitting to himself, with a disappointed and crestfallen countenance, that Sol Gills mustbe told, and that Walter must go--taking the case for the present as hefound it, and not having it enlightened or improved beforehand by theknowing management of a friend--the Captain still felt an unabatedconfidence that he, Ned Cuttle, was the man for Mr Dombey; and that, toset Walter's fortunes quite square, nothing was wanted but that they twoshould come together. For the Captain never could forget how well he andMr Dombey had got on at Brighton; with what nicety each of them had putin a word when it was wanted; how exactly they had taken one another'smeasure; nor how Ned Cuttle had pointed out that resources in the firstextremity, and had brought the interview to the desired termination. Onall these grounds the Captain soothed himself with thinking that thoughNed Cuttle was forced by the pressure of events to 'stand by' almostuseless for the present, Ned would fetch up with a wet sail in goodtime, and carry all before him. 

Under the influence of this good-natured delusion, Captain Cuttle evenwent so far as to revolve in his own bosom, while he sat looking atWalter and listening with a tear on his shirt-collar to what he related, whether it might not be at once genteel and politic to give Mr Dombey averbal invitation, whenever they should meet, to come and cut his muttonin Brig Place on some day of his own naming, and enter on the questionof his young friend's prospects over a social glass. But the uncertaintemper of Mrs MacStinger, and the possibility of her setting up her restin the passage during such an entertainment, and there deliveringsome homily of an uncomplimentary nature, operated as a check on theCaptain's hospitable thoughts, and rendered him timid of giving themencouragement. 

One fact was quite clear to the Captain, as Walter, sitting thoughtfullyover his untasted dinner, dwelt on all that had happened; namely, thathowever Walter's modesty might stand in the way of his perceiving ithimself, he was, as one might say, a member of Mr Dombey's family. He had been, in his own person, connected with the incident he sopathetically described; he had been by name remembered and commendedin close association with it; and his fortunes must have a particularinterest in his employer's eyes. If the Captain had any lurking doubtwhatever of his own conclusions, he had not the least doubt that theywere good conclusions for the peace of mind of the Instrument-maker. Therefore he availed himself of so favourable a moment for breakingthe West Indian intelligence to his friend, as a piece of extraordinarypreferment; declaring that for his part he would freely give a hundredthousand pounds (if he had it) for Walter's gain in the long-run, andthat he had no doubt such an investment would yield a handsome premium. 

Solomon Gills was at first stunned by the communication, which fellupon the little back-parlour like a thunderbolt, and tore up the hearthsavagely. But the Captain flashed such golden prospects before his dimsight: hinted so mysteriously at 'Whittingtonian consequences; laid suchemphasis on what Walter had just now told them: and appealed to it soconfidently as a corroboration of his predictions, and a great advancetowards the realisation of the romantic legend of Lovely Peg: that hebewildered the old man. Walter, for his part, feigned to be so full ofhope and ardour, and so sure of coming home again soon, and backed upthe Captain with such expressive shakings of his head and rubbings ofhis hands, that Solomon, looking first at him then at Captain Cuttle, began to think he ought to be transported with joy. 

'But I'm behind the time, you understand, ' he observed in apology, passing his hand nervously down the whole row of bright buttons on hiscoat, and then up again, as if they were beads and he were tellingthem twice over: 'and I would rather have my dear boy here. It'san old-fashioned notion, I daresay. He was always fond of the seaHe's'--and he looked wistfully at Walter--'he's glad to go. '

'Uncle Sol!' cried Walter, quickly, 'if you say that, I won't go. No, Captain Cuttle, I won't. If my Uncle thinks I could be glad to leavehim, though I was going to be made Governor of all the Islands in theWest Indies, that's enough. I'm a fixture. '

'Wal'r, my lad, ' said the Captain. 'Steady! Sol Gills, take anobservation of your nevy. 

Following with his eyes the majestic action of the Captain's hook, theold man looked at Walter. 

'Here is a certain craft, ' said the Captain, with a magnificent sense ofthe allegory into which he was soaring, 'a-going to put out on a certainvoyage. What name is wrote upon that craft indelibly? Is it The Gay?or, ' said the Captain, raising his voice as much as to say, observe thepoint of this, 'is it The Gills?'

'Ned, ' said the old man, drawing Walter to his side, and taking hisarm tenderly through his, 'I know. I know. Of course I know that Wallyconsiders me more than himself always. That's in my mind. When I sayhe is glad to go, I mean I hope he is. Eh? look you, Ned and you too, Wally, my dear, this is new and unexpected to me; and I'm afraid mybeing behind the time, and poor, is at the bottom of it. Is it reallygood fortune for him, do you tell me, now?' said the old man, lookinganxiously from one to the other. 'Really and truly? Is it? I canreconcile myself to almost anything that advances Wally, but I won'thave Wally putting himself at any disadvantage for me, or keepinganything from me. You, Ned Cuttle!' said the old man, fastening on theCaptain, to the manifest confusion of that diplomatist; 'are you dealingplainly by your old friend? Speak out, Ned Cuttle. Is there anythingbehind? Ought he to go? How do you know it first, and why?'

As it was a contest of affection and self-denial, Walter struck inwith infinite effect, to the Captain's relief; and between them theytolerably reconciled old Sol Gills, by continued talking, to theproject; or rather so confused him, that nothing, not even the pain ofseparation, was distinctly clear to his mind. 

He had not much time to balance the matter; for on the very next day, Walter received from Mr Carker the Manager, the necessary credentialsfor his passage and outfit, together with the information that the Sonand Heir would sail in a fortnight, or within a day or two afterwards atlatest. In the hurry of preparation: which Walter purposely enhanced asmuch as possible: the old man lost what little self-possession he everhad; and so the time of departure drew on rapidly. 

The Captain, who did not fail to make himself acquainted with all thatpassed, through inquiries of Walter from day to day, found the timestill tending on towards his going away, without any occasion offeringitself, or seeming likely to offer itself, for a better understandingof his position. It was after much consideration of this fact, and muchpondering over such an unfortunate combination of circumstances, thata bright idea occurred to the Captain. Suppose he made a call on MrCarker, and tried to find out from him how the land really lay!

Captain Cuttle liked this idea very much. It came upon him in a momentof inspiration, as he was smoking an early pipe in Brig Place afterbreakfast; and it was worthy of the tobacco. It would quiet hisconscience, which was an honest one, and was made a little uneasy bywhat Walter had confided to him, and what Sol Gills had said; and itwould be a deep, shrewd act of friendship. He would sound Mr Carkercarefully, and say much or little, just as he read that gentleman'scharacter, and discovered that they got on well together or the reverse. 

Accordingly, without the fear of Walter before his eyes (who he knewwas at home packing), Captain Cuttle again assumed his ankle-jacksand mourning brooch, and issued forth on this second expedition. Hepurchased no propitiatory nosegay on the present occasion, as he wasgoing to a place of business; but he put a small sunflower in hisbutton-hole to give himself an agreeable relish of the country; andwith this, and the knobby stick, and the glazed hat, bore down upon theoffices of Dombey and Son. 

After taking a glass of warm rum-and-water at a tavern close by, tocollect his thoughts, the Captain made a rush down the court, lest itsgood effects should evaporate, and appeared suddenly to Mr Perch. 

'Matey, ' said the Captain, in persuasive accents. 'One of your Governorsis named Carker. ' Mr Perch admitted it; but gave him to understand, asin official duty bound, that all his Governors were engaged, and neverexpected to be disengaged any more. 

'Look'ee here, mate, ' said the Captain in his ear; 'my name's Cap'enCuttle. '

The Captain would have hooked Perch gently to him, but Mr Perch eludedthe attempt; not so much in design, as in starting at the sudden thoughtthat such a weapon unexpectedly exhibited to Mrs Perch might, in herthen condition, be destructive to that lady's hopes. 

'If you'll be so good as just report Cap'en Cuttle here, when you get achance, ' said the Captain, 'I'll wait. '

Saying which, the Captain took his seat on Mr Perch's bracket, anddrawing out his handkerchief from the crown of the glazed hat which hejammed between his knees (without injury to its shape, for nothing humancould bend it), rubbed his head well all over, and appeared refreshed. He subsequently arranged his hair with his hook, and sat looking roundthe office, contemplating the clerks with a serene respect. 

The Captain's equanimity was so impenetrable, and he was altogether somysterious a being, that Perch the messenger was daunted. 

'What name was it you said?' asked Mr Perch, bending down over him as hesat on the bracket. 

'Cap'en, ' in a deep hoarse whisper. 

'Yes, ' said Mr Perch, keeping time with his head. 

'Cuttle. '

'Oh!' said Mr Perch, in the same tone, for he caught it, and couldn'thelp it; the Captain, in his diplomacy, was so impressive. 'I'll see ifhe's disengaged now. I don't know. Perhaps he may be for a minute. '

'Ay, ay, my lad, I won't detain him longer than a minute, ' said theCaptain, nodding with all the weighty importance that he felt withinhim. Perch, soon returning, said, 'Will Captain Cuttle walk this way?'

Mr Carker the Manager, standing on the hearth-rug before the emptyfireplace, which was ornamented with a castellated sheet of brown paper, looked at the Captain as he came in, with no very special encouragement. 

'Mr Carker?' said Captain Cuttle. 

'I believe so, ' said Mr Carker, showing all his teeth. 

The Captain liked his answering with a smile; it looked pleasant. 'Yousee, ' began the Captain, rolling his eyes slowly round the littleroom, and taking in as much of it as his shirt-collar permitted; 'I'm aseafaring man myself, Mr Carker, and Wal'r, as is on your books here, isalmost a son of mine. '

'Walter Gay?' said Mr Carker, showing all his teeth again. 

'Wal'r Gay it is, ' replied the Captain, 'right!' The Captain's mannerexpressed a warm approval of Mr Carker's quickness of perception. 'I'm aintimate friend of his and his Uncle's. Perhaps, ' said the Captain, 'youmay have heard your head Governor mention my name?--Captain Cuttle. '

'No!' said Mr Carker, with a still wider demonstration than before. 

'Well, ' resumed the Captain, 'I've the pleasure of his acquaintance. I waited upon him down on the Sussex coast there, with my young friendWal'r, when--in short, when there was a little accommodation wanted. 'The Captain nodded his head in a manner that was at once comfortable, easy, and expressive. 'You remember, I daresay?'

'I think, ' said Mr Carker, 'I had the honour of arranging the business. '

'To be sure!' returned the Captain. 'Right again! you had. Now I've tookthe liberty of coming here--

'Won't you sit down?' said Mr Carker, smiling. 

'Thank'ee, ' returned the Captain, availing himself of the offer. 'A mandoes get more way upon himself, perhaps, in his conversation, when hesits down. Won't you take a cheer yourself?'

'No thank you, ' said the Manager, standing, perhaps from the force ofwinter habit, with his back against the chimney-piece, and looking downupon the Captain with an eye in every tooth and gum. 'You have taken theliberty, you were going to say--though it's none--'

'Thank'ee kindly, my lad, ' returned the Captain: 'of coming here, onaccount of my friend Wal'r. Sol Gills, his Uncle, is a man of science, and in science he may be considered a clipper; but he ain't what Ishould altogether call a able seaman--not man of practice. Wal'r is astrim a lad as ever stepped; but he's a little down by the head in onerespect, and that is, modesty. Now what I should wish to put toyou, ' said the Captain, lowering his voice, and speaking in a kind ofconfidential growl, 'in a friendly way, entirely between you and me, andfor my own private reckoning, 'till your head Governor has wore round abit, and I can come alongside of him, is this--Is everything right andcomfortable here, and is Wal'r out'ard bound with a pretty fair wind?'

'What do you think now, Captain Cuttle?' returned Carker, gathering uphis skirts and settling himself in his position. 'You are a practicalman; what do you think?'

The acuteness and the significance of the Captain's eye as he cockedit in reply, no words short of those unutterable Chinese words beforereferred to could describe. 

'Come!' said the Captain, unspeakably encouraged, 'what do you say? Am Iright or wrong?'

So much had the Captain expressed in his eye, emboldened and incitedby Mr Carker's smiling urbanity, that he felt himself in as fair acondition to put the question, as if he had expressed his sentimentswith the utmost elaboration. 

'Right, ' said Mr Carker, 'I have no doubt. '

'Out'ard bound with fair weather, then, I say, ' cried Captain Cuttle. 

Mr Carker smiled assent. 

'Wind right astarn, and plenty of it, ' pursued the Captain. 

Mr Carker smiled assent again. 

'Ay, ay!' said Captain Cuttle, greatly relieved and pleased. 'I know'dhow she headed, well enough; I told Wal'r so. Thank'ee, thank'ee. '

'Gay has brilliant prospects, ' observed Mr Carker, stretching his mouthwider yet: 'all the world before him. '

'All the world and his wife too, as the saying is, ' returned thedelighted Captain. 

At the word 'wife' (which he had uttered without design), the Captainstopped, cocked his eye again, and putting the glazed hat on the topof the knobby stick, gave it a twirl, and looked sideways at his alwayssmiling friend. 

'I'd bet a gill of old Jamaica, ' said the Captain, eyeing himattentively, 'that I know what you're a smiling at. '

Mr Carker took his cue, and smiled the more. 

'It goes no farther?' said the Captain, making a poke at the door withthe knobby stick to assure himself that it was shut. 

'Not an inch, ' said Mr Carker. 

'You're thinking of a capital F perhaps?' said the Captain. 

Mr Carker didn't deny it. 

'Anything about a L, ' said the Captain, 'or a O?'

Mr Carker still smiled. 

'Am I right, again?' inquired the Captain in a whisper, with the scarletcircle on his forehead swelling in his triumphant joy. 

Mr Carker, in reply, still smiling, and now nodding assent, CaptainCuttle rose and squeezed him by the hand, assuring him, warmly, thatthey were on the same tack, and that as for him (Cuttle) he had laid hiscourse that way all along. 'He know'd her first, ' said the Captain, withall the secrecy and gravity that the subject demanded, 'in an uncommonmanner--you remember his finding her in the street when she was a'mosta babby--he has liked her ever since, and she him, as much as twoyoungsters can. We've always said, Sol Gills and me, that they was cutout for each other. '

A cat, or a monkey, or a hyena, or a death's-head, could not have shownthe Captain more teeth at one time, than Mr Carker showed him at thisperiod of their interview. 

'There's a general indraught that way, ' observed the happy Captain. 'Wind and water sets in that direction, you see. Look at his beingpresent t'other day!'

'Most favourable to his hopes, ' said Mr Carker. 

'Look at his being towed along in the wake of that day!' pursued theCaptain. 'Why what can cut him adrift now?'

'Nothing, ' replied Mr Carker. 

'You're right again, ' returned the Captain, giving his hand anothersqueeze. 'Nothing it is. So! steady! There's a son gone: pretty littlecreetur. Ain't there?'

'Yes, there's a son gone, ' said the acquiescent Carker. 

'Pass the word, and there's another ready for you, ' quoth the Captain. 'Nevy of a scientific Uncle! Nevy of Sol Gills! Wal'r! Wal'r, as isalready in your business! And'--said the Captain, rising gradually toa quotation he was preparing for a final burst, 'who--comes from SolGills's daily, to your business, and your buzzums. ' The Captain'scomplacency as he gently jogged Mr Carker with his elbow, on concludingeach of the foregoing short sentences, could be surpassed by nothing butthe exultation with which he fell back and eyed him when he had finishedthis brilliant display of eloquence and sagacity; his great bluewaistcoat heaving with the throes of such a masterpiece, and his nose ina state of violent inflammation from the same cause. 

'Am I right?' said the Captain. 

'Captain Cuttle, ' said Mr Carker, bending down at the knees, for amoment, in an odd manner, as if he were falling together to hug thewhole of himself at once, 'your views in reference to Walter Gay arethoroughly and accurately right. I understand that we speak together inconfidence. 

'Honour!' interposed the Captain. 'Not a word. '

'To him or anyone?' pursued the Manager. 

Captain Cuttle frowned and shook his head. 

'But merely for your own satisfaction and guidance--and guidance, ofcourse, ' repeated Mr Carker, 'with a view to your future proceedings. '

'Thank'ee kindly, I am sure, ' said the Captain, listening with greatattention. 

'I have no hesitation in saying, that's the fact. You have hit theprobabilities exactly. '

'And with regard to your head Governor, ' said the Captain, 'why aninterview had better come about nat'ral between us. There's timeenough. '

Mr Carker, with his mouth from ear to ear, repeated, 'Time enough. ' Notarticulating the words, but bowing his head affably, and forming themwith his tongue and lips. 

'And as I know--it's what I always said--that Wal'r's in a way to makehis fortune, ' said the Captain. 

'To make his fortune, ' Mr Carker repeated, in the same dumb manner. 

'And as Wal'r's going on this little voyage is, as I may say, in hisday's work, and a part of his general expectations here, ' said theCaptain. 

'Of his general expectations here, ' assented Mr Carker, dumbly asbefore. 

'Why, so long as I know that, ' pursued the Captain, 'there's no hurry, and my mind's at ease. 

Mr Carker still blandly assenting in the same voiceless manner, CaptainCuttle was strongly confirmed in his opinion that he was one of the mostagreeable men he had ever met, and that even Mr Dombey might improvehimself on such a model. With great heartiness, therefore, the Captainonce again extended his enormous hand (not unlike an old block incolour), and gave him a grip that left upon his smoother flesh a proofimpression of the chinks and crevices with which the Captain's palm wasliberally tattooed. 

'Farewell!' said the Captain. 'I ain't a man of many words, but I takeit very kind of you to be so friendly, and above-board. You'll excuse meif I've been at all intruding, will you?' said the Captain. 

'Not at all, ' returned the other. 

'Thank'ee. My berth ain't very roomy, ' said the Captain, turning backagain, 'but it's tolerably snug; and if you was to find yourself nearBrig Place, number nine, at any time--will you make a note of it?--andwould come upstairs, without minding what was said by the person at thedoor, I should be proud to see you. 

With that hospitable invitation, the Captain said 'Good day!' and walkedout and shut the door; leaving Mr Carker still reclining against thechimney-piece. In whose sly look and watchful manner; in whose falsemouth, stretched but not laughing; in whose spotless cravat and verywhiskers; even in whose silent passing of his soft hand over his whitelinen and his smooth face; there was something desperately cat-like. 

The unconscious Captain walked out in a state of self-glorification thatimparted quite a new cut to the broad blue suit. 'Stand by, Ned!'said the Captain to himself. 'You've done a little business for theyoungsters today, my lad!'

In his exultation, and in his familiarity, present and prospective, with the House, the Captain, when he reached the outer office, couldnot refrain from rallying Mr Perch a little, and asking him whether hethought everybody was still engaged. But not to be bitter on a man whohad done his duty, the Captain whispered in his ear, that if he feltdisposed for a glass of rum-and-water, and would follow, he would behappy to bestow the same upon him. 

Before leaving the premises, the Captain, somewhat to the astonishmentof the clerks, looked round from a central point of view, and took ageneral survey of the officers part and parcel of a project in which hisyoung friend was nearly interested. The strong-room excited his especialadmiration; but, that he might not appear too particular, he limitedhimself to an approving glance, and, with a graceful recognition of theclerks as a body, that was full of politeness and patronage, passedout into the court. Being promptly joined by Mr Perch, he conveyed thatgentleman to the tavern, and fulfilled his pledge--hastily, for Perch'stime was precious. 

'I'll give you for a toast, ' said the Captain, 'Wal'r!'

'Who?' submitted Mr Perch. 

'Wal'r!' repeated the Captain, in a voice of thunder. 

Mr Perch, who seemed to remember having heard in infancy that there wasonce a poet of that name, made no objection; but he was much astonishedat the Captain's coming into the City to propose a poet; indeed, ifhe had proposed to put a poet's statue up--say Shakespeare's forexample--in a civic thoroughfare, he could hardly have done a greateroutrage to Mr Perch's experience. On the whole, he was such a mysteriousand incomprehensible character, that Mr Perch decided not to mentionhim to Mrs Perch at all, in case of giving rise to any disagreeableconsequences. 

Mysterious and incomprehensible, the Captain, with that lively senseupon him of having done a little business for the youngsters, remainedall day, even to his most intimate friends; and but that Walterattributed his winks and grins, and other such pantomimic reliefs ofhimself, to his satisfaction in the success of their innocent deceptionupon old Sol Gills, he would assuredly have betrayed himself beforenight. As it was, however, he kept his own secret; and went home latefrom the Instrument-maker's house, wearing the glazed hat so much onone side, and carrying such a beaming expression in his eyes, that MrsMacStinger (who might have been brought up at Doctor Blimber's, she wassuch a Roman matron) fortified herself, at the first glimpse ofhim, behind the open street door, and refused to come out to thecontemplation of her blessed infants, until he was securely lodged inhis own room. 

CHAPTER 18. Father and Daughter

There is a hush through Mr Dombey's house. Servants gliding up anddown stairs rustle, but make no sound of footsteps. They talk togetherconstantly, and sit long at meals, making much of their meat and drink, and enjoying themselves after a grim unholy fashion. Mrs Wickam, withher eyes suffused with tears, relates melancholy anecdotes; and tellsthem how she always said at Mrs Pipchin's that it would be so, and takesmore table-ale than usual, and is very sorry but sociable. Cook's stateof mind is similar. She promises a little fry for supper, and strugglesabout equally against her feelings and the onions. Towlinson begins tothink there's a fate in it, and wants to know if anybody can tell himof any good that ever came of living in a corner house. It seems to allof them as having happened a long time ago; though yet the child lies, calm and beautiful, upon his little bed. 

After dark there come some visitors--noiseless visitors, with shoes offelt--who have been there before; and with them comes that bed ofrest which is so strange a one for infant sleepers. All this time, thebereaved father has not been seen even by his attendant; for he sitsin an inner corner of his own dark room when anyone is there, and neverseems to move at other times, except to pace it to and fro. But in themorning it is whispered among the household that he was heard to goupstairs in the dead night, and that he stayed there--in the room--untilthe sun was shining. 

At the offices in the City, the ground-glass windows are made moredim by shutters; and while the lighted lamps upon the desks are halfextinguished by the day that wanders in, the day is half extinguishedby the lamps, and an unusual gloom prevails. There is not much businessdone. The clerks are indisposed to work; and they make assignations toeat chops in the afternoon, and go up the river. Perch, the messenger, stays long upon his errands; and finds himself in bars of public-houses, invited thither by friends, and holding forth on the uncertainty ofhuman affairs. He goes home to Ball's Pond earlier in the evening thanusual, and treats Mrs Perch to a veal cutlet and Scotch ale. Mr Carkerthe Manager treats no one; neither is he treated; but alone in hisown room he shows his teeth all day; and it would seem that there issomething gone from Mr Carker's path--some obstacle removed--whichclears his way before him. 

Now the rosy children living opposite to Mr Dombey's house, peep fromtheir nursery windows down into the street; for there are four blackhorses at his door, with feathers on their heads; and feathers trembleon the carriage that they draw; and these, and an array of men withscarves and staves, attract a crowd. The juggler who was going to twirlthe basin, puts his loose coat on again over his fine dress; and histrudging wife, one-sided with her heavy baby in her arms, loiters tosee the company come out. But closer to her dingy breast she presses herbaby, when the burden that is so easily carried is borne forth; andthe youngest of the rosy children at the high window opposite, needsno restraining hand to check her in her glee, when, pointing with herdimpled finger, she looks into her nurse's face, and asks 'What's that?'

And now, among the knot of servants dressed in mourning, and the weepingwomen, Mr Dombey passes through the hall to the other carriage that iswaiting to receive him. He is not 'brought down, ' these observers think, by sorrow and distress of mind. His walk is as erect, his bearing is asstiff as ever it has been. He hides his face behind no handkerchief, andlooks before him. But that his face is something sunk and rigid, and ispale, it bears the same expression as of old. He takes his place withinthe carriage, and three other gentlemen follow. Then the grand funeralmoves slowly down the street. The feathers are yet nodding in thedistance, when the juggler has the basin spinning on a cane, and has thesame crowd to admire it. But the juggler's wife is less alert thanusual with the money-box, for a child's burial has set her thinking thatperhaps the baby underneath her shabby shawl may not grow up to be aman, and wear a sky-blue fillet round his head, and salmon-colouredworsted drawers, and tumble in the mud. 

The feathers wind their gloomy way along the streets, and come withinthe sound of a church bell. In this same church, the pretty boy receivedall that will soon be left of him on earth--a name. All of him that isdead, they lay there, near the perishable substance of his mother. Itis well. Their ashes lie where Florence in her walks--oh lonely, lonelywalks!--may pass them any day. 

The service over, and the clergyman withdrawn, Mr Dombey looks round, demanding in a low voice, whether the person who has been requested toattend to receive instructions for the tablet, is there?

Someone comes forward, and says 'Yes. '

Mr Dombey intimates where he would have it placed; and shows him, withhis hand upon the wall, the shape and size; and how it is to followthe memorial to the mother. Then, with his pencil, he writes out theinscription, and gives it to him: adding, 'I wish to have it done atonce. 

'It shall be done immediately, Sir. '

'There is really nothing to inscribe but name and age, you see. '

The man bows, glancing at the paper, but appears to hesitate. Mr Dombeynot observing his hesitation, turns away, and leads towards the porch. 

'I beg your pardon, Sir;' a touch falls gently on his mourning cloak;'but as you wish it done immediately, and it may be put in hand when Iget back--'

'Well?'

'Will you be so good as read it over again? I think there's a mistake. '

'Where?'

The statuary gives him back the paper, and points out, with his pocketrule, the words, 'beloved and only child. '

'It should be, "son, " I think, Sir?'

'You are right. Of course. Make the correction. '

The father, with a hastier step, pursues his way to the coach. When theother three, who follow closely, take their seats, his face is hiddenfor the first time--shaded by his cloak. Nor do they see it any morethat day. He alights first, and passes immediately into his own room. The other mourners (who are only Mr Chick, and two of the medicalattendants) proceed upstairs to the drawing-room, to be received byMrs Chick and Miss Tox. And what the face is, in the shut-up chamberunderneath: or what the thoughts are: what the heart is, what thecontest or the suffering: no one knows. 

The chief thing that they know, below stairs, in the kitchen, is that'it seems like Sunday. ' They can hardly persuade themselves but thatthere is something unbecoming, if not wicked, in the conduct of thepeople out of doors, who pursue their ordinary occupations, and weartheir everyday attire. It is quite a novelty to have the blinds up, andthe shutters open; and they make themselves dismally comfortable overbottles of wine, which are freely broached as on a festival. They aremuch inclined to moralise. Mr Towlinson proposes with a sigh, 'Amendmentto us all!' for which, as Cook says with another sigh, 'There's roomenough, God knows. ' In the evening, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox take toneedlework again. In the evening also, Mr Towlinson goes out to take theair, accompanied by the housemaid, who has not yet tried her mourningbonnet. They are very tender to each other at dusky street-corners, andTowlinson has visions of leading an altered and blameless existence as aserious greengrocer in Oxford Market. 

There is sounder sleep and deeper rest in Mr Dombey's house tonight, than there has been for many nights. The morning sun awakens the oldhousehold, settled down once more in their old ways. The rosy childrenopposite run past with hoops. There is a splendid wedding in the church. The juggler's wife is active with the money-box in another quarter ofthe town. The mason sings and whistles as he chips out P-A-U-L in themarble slab before him. 

And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weakcreature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing butthe width and depth of vast eternity can fill it up! Florence, in herinnocent affliction, might have answered, 'Oh my brother, oh my dearlyloved and loving brother! Only friend and companion of my slightedchildhood! Could any less idea shed the light already dawning on yourearly grave, or give birth to the softened sorrow that is springing intolife beneath this rain of tears!'

'My dear child, ' said Mrs Chick, who held it as a duty incumbent on her, to improve the occasion, 'when you are as old as I am--'

'Which will be the prime of life, ' observed Miss Tox. 

'You will then, ' pursued Mrs Chick, gently squeezing Miss Tox's handin acknowledgment of her friendly remark, 'you will then know that allgrief is unavailing, and that it is our duty to submit. '

'I will try, dear aunt I do try, ' answered Florence, sobbing. 

'I am glad to hear it, ' said Mrs Chick, 'because; my love, as our dearMiss Tox--of whose sound sense and excellent judgment, there cannotpossibly be two opinions--'

'My dear Louisa, I shall really be proud, soon, ' said Miss Tox--'willtell you, and confirm by her experience, ' pursued Mrs Chick, 'we arecalled upon on all occasions to make an effort It is required of us. Ifany--my dear, ' turning to Miss Tox, 'I want a word. Mis--Mis-'

'Demeanour?' suggested Miss Tox. 

'No, no, no, ' said Mrs Chic 'How can you! Goodness me, it's on, the endof my tongue. Mis-'

Placed affection?' suggested Miss Tox, timidly. 

'Good gracious, Lucretia!' returned Mrs Chick 'How very monstrous!Misanthrope, is the word I want. The idea! Misplaced affection! I say, if any misanthrope were to put, in my presence, the question "Why werewe born?" I should reply, "To make an effort". '

'Very good indeed, ' said Miss Tox, much impressed by the originality ofthe sentiment 'Very good. '

'Unhappily, ' pursued Mrs Chick, 'we have a warning under our own eyes. We have but too much reason to suppose, my dear child, that if an efforthad been made in time, in this family, a train of the most trying anddistressing circumstances might have been avoided. Nothing shall everpersuade me, ' observed the good matron, with a resolute air, 'but thatif that effort had been made by poor dear Fanny, the poor dear darlingchild would at least have had a stronger constitution. '

Mrs Chick abandoned herself to her feelings for half a moment; but, as apractical illustration of her doctrine, brought herself up short, in themiddle of a sob, and went on again. 

'Therefore, Florence, pray let us see that you have some strength ofmind, and do not selfishly aggravate the distress in which your poorPapa is plunged. '

'Dear aunt!' said Florence, kneeling quickly down before her, that shemight the better and more earnestly look into her face. 'Tell me moreabout Papa. Pray tell me about him! Is he quite heartbroken?'

Miss Tox was of a tender nature, and there was something in this appealthat moved her very much. Whether she saw it in a succession, on thepart of the neglected child, to the affectionate concern so oftenexpressed by her dead brother--or a love that sought to twine itselfabout the heart that had loved him, and that could not bear to be shutout from sympathy with such a sorrow, in such sad community of love andgrief--or whether the only recognised the earnest and devoted spiritwhich, although discarded and repulsed, was wrung with tenderness longunreturned, and in the waste and solitude of this bereavement criedto him to seek a comfort in it, and to give some, by some smallresponse--whatever may have been her understanding of it, it moved MissTox. For the moment she forgot the majesty of Mrs Chick, and, pattingFlorence hastily on the cheek, turned aside and suffered the tears togush from her eyes, without waiting for a lead from that wise matron. 

Mrs Chick herself lost, for a moment, the presence of mind on whichshe so much prided herself; and remained mute, looking on the beautifulyoung face that had so long, so steadily, and patiently, been turnedtowards the little bed. But recovering her voice--which was synonymouswith her presence of mind, indeed they were one and the same thing--shereplied with dignity:

'Florence, my dear child, your poor Papa is peculiar at times; and toquestion me about him, is to question me upon a subject which I reallydo not pretend to understand. I believe I have as much influence withyour Papa as anybody has. Still, all I can say is, that he has said verylittle to me; and that I have only seen him once or twice for a minuteat a time, and indeed have hardly seen him then, for his room has beendark. I have said to your Papa, "Paul!"--that is the exact expressionI used--"Paul! why do you not take something stimulating?" Your Papa'sreply has always been, "Louisa, have the goodness to leave me. Iwant nothing. I am better by myself. " If I was to be put upon my oathto-morrow, Lucretia, before a magistrate, ' said Mrs Chick, 'I have nodoubt I could venture to swear to those identical words. '

Miss Tox expressed her admiration by saying, 'My Louisa is evermethodical!'

'In short, Florence, ' resumed her aunt, 'literally nothing has passedbetween your poor Papa and myself, until to-day; when I mentioned toyour Papa that Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles had written exceedingly kindnotes--our sweet boy! Lady Skettles loved him like a--where's my pockethandkerchief?'

Miss Tox produced one. 

'Exceedingly kind notes, proposing that you should visit them for changeof scene. Mentioning to your Papa that I thought Miss Tox and myselfmight now go home (in which he quite agreed), I inquired if he had anyobjection to your accepting this invitation. He said, "No, Louisa, notthe least!"' Florence raised her tearful eye. 

'At the same time, if you would prefer staying here, Florence, to payingthis visit at present, or to going home with me--'

'I should much prefer it, aunt, ' was the faint rejoinder. 

'Why then, child, 'said Mrs Chick, 'you can. It's a strange choice, Imust say. But you always were strange. Anybody else at your time oflife, and after what has passed--my dear Miss Tox, I have lost my pockethandkerchief again--would be glad to leave here, one would suppose. 

'I should not like to feel, ' said Florence, 'as if the house wasavoided. I should not like to think that the--his--the rooms upstairswere quite empty and dreary, aunt. I would rather stay here, for thepresent. Oh my brother! oh my brother!'

It was a natural emotion, not to be suppressed; and it would make wayeven between the fingers of the hands with which she covered up herface. The overcharged and heavy-laden breast must some times have thatvent, or the poor wounded solitary heart within it would have flutteredlike a bird with broken wings, and sunk down in the dust. '

'Well, child!' said Mrs Chick, after a pause 'I wouldn't on any accountsay anything unkind to you, and that I'm sure you know. You will remainhere, then, and do exactly as you like. No one will interfere with you, Florence, or wish to interfere with you, I'm sure. 

Florence shook her head in sad assent'

'I had no sooner begun to advise your poor Papa that he really ought toseek some distraction and restoration in a temporary change, ' said MrsChick, 'than he told me he had already formed the intention of goinginto the country for a short time. I'm sure I hope he'll go verysoon. He can't go too soon. But I suppose there are some arrangementsconnected with his private papers and so forth, consequent on theaffliction that has tried us all so much--I can't think what's become ofmine: Lucretia, lend me yours, my dear--that may occupy him for one ortwo evenings in his own room. Your Papa's a Dombey, child, if ever therewas one, ' said Mrs Chick, drying both her eyes at once with great careon opposite corners of Miss Tox's handkerchief 'He'll make an effort. There's no fear of him. '

'Is there nothing, aunt, ' said Florence, trembling, 'I might do to--''Lord, my dear child, ' interposed Mrs Chick, hastily, 'what are youtalking about? If your Papa said to Me--I have given you his exactwords, "Louisa, I want nothing; I am better by myself"--what do youthink he'd say to you? You mustn't show yourself to him, child. Don'tdream of such a thing. '

'Aunt, ' said Florence, 'I will go and lie down on my bed. '

Mrs Chick approved of this resolution, and dismissed her with akiss. But Miss Tox, on a faint pretence of looking for the mislaidhandkerchief, went upstairs after her; and tried in a few stolen minutesto comfort her, in spite of great discouragement from Susan Nipper. ForMiss Nipper, in her burning zeal, disparaged Miss Tox as a crocodile;yet her sympathy seemed genuine, and had at least the vantage-ground ofdisinterestedness--there was little favour to be won by it. 

And was there no one nearer and dearer than Susan, to uphold thestriving heart in its anguish? Was there no other neck to clasp; noother face to turn to? no one else to say a soothing word to such deepsorrow? Was Florence so alone in the bleak world that nothing elseremained to her? Nothing. Stricken motherless and brotherless atonce--for in the loss of little Paul, that first and greatest loss fellheavily upon her--this was the only help she had. Oh, who can tell howmuch she needed help at first!

At first, when the house subsided into its accustomed course, and theyhad all gone away, except the servants, and her father shut up in hisown rooms, Florence could do nothing but weep, and wander up and down, and sometimes, in a sudden pang of desolate remembrance, fly to herown chamber, wring her hands, lay her face down on her bed, and knowno consolation: nothing but the bitterness and cruelty of grief. This commonly ensued upon the recognition of some spot or object verytenderly dated with him; and it made the ale house, at first, a place ofagony. 

But it is not in the nature of pure love to burn so fiercely andunkindly long. The flame that in its grosser composition has the taintof earth may prey upon the breast that gives it shelter; but the firefrom heaven is as gentle in the heart, as when it rested on the headsof the assembled twelve, and showed each man his brother, brightened andunhurt. The image conjured up, there soon returned the placid face, thesoftened voice, the loving looks, the quiet trustfulness and peace; andFlorence, though she wept still, wept more tranquilly, and courted theremembrance. 

It was not very long before the golden water, dancing on the wall, inthe old place, at the old serene time, had her calm eye fixed upon itas it ebbed away. It was not very long before that room again knewher, often; sitting there alone, as patient and as mild as when she hadwatched beside the little bed. When any sharp sense of its being emptysmote upon her, she could kneel beside it, and pray GOD--it was thepouring out of her full heart--to let one angel love her and rememberher. 

It was not very long before, in the midst of the dismal house sowide and dreary, her low voice in the twilight, slowly and stoppingsometimes, touched the old air to which he had so often listened, withhis drooping head upon her arm. And after that, and when it was quitedark, a little strain of music trembled in the room: so softly playedand sung, that it was more lIke the mournful recollection of what shehad done at his request on that last night, than the reality repeated. But it was repeated, often--very often, in the shadowy solitude; andbroken murmurs of the strain still trembled on the keys, when the sweetvoice was hushed in tears. 

Thus she gained heart to look upon the work with which her fingers hadbeen busy by his side on the sea-shore; and thus it was not very longbefore she took to it again--with something of a human love for it, asif it had been sentient and had known him; and, sitting in a window, near her mother's picture, in the unused room so long deserted, woreaway the thoughtful hours. 

Why did the dark eyes turn so often from this work to where the rosychildren lived? They were not immediately suggestive of her loss; forthey were all girls: four little sisters. But they were motherless likeher--and had a father. 

It was easy to know when he had gone out and was expected home, for theelder child was always dressed and waiting for him at the drawing-roomwindow, or on the balcony; and when he appeared, her expectant facelighted up with joy, while the others at the high window, and always onthe watch too, clapped their hands, and drummed them on the sill, andcalled to him. The elder child would come down to the hall, and puther hand in his, and lead him up the stairs; and Florence would see herafterwards sitting by his side, or on his knee, or hanging coaxinglyabout his neck and talking to him: and though they were always gaytogether, he would often watch her face as if he thought her like hermother that was dead. Florence would sometimes look no more at this, and bursting into tears would hide behind the curtain as if she werefrightened, or would hurry from the window. Yet she could not helpreturning; and her work would soon fall unheeded from her hands again. 

It was the house that had been empty, years ago. It had remained so fora long time. At last, and while she had been away from home, this familyhad taken it; and it was repaired and newly painted; and there werebirds and flowers about it; and it looked very different from its oldself. But she never thought of the house. The children and their fatherwere all in all. 

When he had dined, she could see them, through the open windows, go downwith their governess or nurse, and cluster round the table; and inthe still summer weather, the sound of their childish voices and clearlaughter would come ringing across the street, into the drooping air ofthe room in which she sat. Then they would climb and clamber upstairswith him, and romp about him on the sofa, or group themselves at hisknee, a very nosegay of little faces, while he seemed to tell themsome story. Or they would come running out into the balcony; and thenFlorence would hide herself quickly, lest it should check them in theirjoy, to see her in her black dress, sitting there alone. 

The elder child remained with her father when the rest had gone away, and made his tea for him--happy little house-keeper she was then!--andsat conversing with him, sometimes at the window, sometimes in the room, until the candles came. He made her his companion, though she was someyears younger than Florence; and she could be as staid and pleasantlydemure, with her little book or work-box, as a woman. When they hadcandles, Florence from her own dark room was not afraid to look again. But when the time came for the child to say 'Good-night, Papa, ' and goto bed, Florence would sob and tremble as she raised her face to him, and could look no more. 

Though still she would turn, again and again, before going to bedherself from the simple air that had lulled him to rest so often, longago, and from the other low soft broken strain of music, back to thathouse. But that she ever thought of it, or watched it, was a secretwhich she kept within her own young breast. 

And did that breast of Florence--Florence, so ingenuous and true--soworthy of the love that he had borne her, and had whispered in his lastfaint words--whose guileless heart was mirrored in the beauty of herface, and breathed in every accent of her gentle voice--did that youngbreast hold any other secret? Yes. One more. 

When no one in the house was stirring, and the lights were allextinguished, she would softly leave her own room, and with noiselessfeet descend the staircase, and approach her father's door. Againstit, scarcely breathing, she would rest her face and head, and pressher lips, in the yearning of her love. She crouched upon the cold stonefloor outside it, every night, to listen even for his breath; and inher one absorbing wish to be allowed to show him some affection, to be aconsolation to him, to win him over to the endurance of some tendernessfrom her, his solitary child, she would have knelt down at his feet, ifshe had dared, in humble supplication. 

No one knew it' No one thought of it. The door was ever closed, and heshut up within. He went out once or twice, and it was said in the housethat he was very soon going on his country journey; but he lived inthose rooms, and lived alone, and never saw her, or inquired for her. Perhaps he did not even know that she was in the house. 

One day, about a week after the funeral, Florence was sitting at herwork, when Susan appeared, with a face half laughing and half crying, toannounce a visitor. 

'A visitor! To me, Susan!' said Florence, looking up in astonishment. 

'Well, it is a wonder, ain't it now, Miss Floy?' said Susan; 'but I wishyou had a many visitors, I do, indeed, for you'd be all the better forit, and it's my opinion that the sooner you and me goes even to them oldSkettleses, Miss, the better for both, I may not wish to live in crowds, Miss Floy, but still I'm not a oyster. '

To do Miss Nipper justice, she spoke more for her young mistress thanherself; and her face showed it. 

'But the visitor, Susan, ' said Florence. 

Susan, with an hysterical explosion that was as much a laugh as a sob, and as much a sob as a laugh, answered, 'Mr Toots!'

The smile that appeared on Florence's face passed from it in a moment, and her eyes filled with tears. But at any rate it was a smile, and thatgave great satisfaction to Miss Nipper. 

'My own feelings exactly, Miss Floy, ' said Susan, putting her apron toher eyes, and shaking her head. 'Immediately I see that Innocent in theHall, Miss Floy, I burst out laughing first, and then I choked. '

Susan Nipper involuntarily proceeded to do the like again on thespot. In the meantime Mr Toots, who had come upstairs after her, allunconscious of the effect he produced, announced himself with hisknuckles on the door, and walked in very briskly. 

'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr Toots. 'I'm very well, I thank you;how are you?'

Mr Toots--than whom there were few better fellows in the world, thoughthere may have been one or two brighter spirits--had laboriouslyinvented this long burst of discourse with the view of relieving thefeelings both of Florence and himself. But finding that he hadrun through his property, as it were, in an injudicious manner, bysquandering the whole before taking a chair, or before Florence haduttered a word, or before he had well got in at the door, he deemed itadvisable to begin again. 

'How d'ye do, Miss Dombey?' said Mr Toots. 'I'm very well, I thank you;how are you?'

Florence gave him her hand, and said she was very well. 

'I'm very well indeed, ' said Mr Toots, taking a chair. 'Very wellindeed, I am. I don't remember, ' said Mr Toots, after reflecting alittle, 'that I was ever better, thank you. '

'It's very kind of you to come, ' said Florence, taking up her work, 'Iam very glad to see you. '

Mr Toots responded with a chuckle. Thinking that might be too lively, he corrected it with a sigh. Thinking that might be too melancholy, hecorrected it with a chuckle. Not thoroughly pleasing himself with eithermode of reply, he breathed hard. 

'You were very kind to my dear brother, ' said Florence, obeying herown natural impulse to relieve him by saying so. 'He often talked to meabout you. '

'Oh it's of no consequence, ' said Mr Toots hastily. 'Warm, ain't it?'

'It is beautiful weather, ' replied Florence. 

'It agrees with me!' said Mr Toots. 'I don't think I ever was so well asI find myself at present, I'm obliged to you. 

After stating this curious and unexpected fact, Mr Toots fell into adeep well of silence. 

'You have left Dr Blimber's, I think?' said Florence, trying to help himout. 

'I should hope so, ' returned Mr Toots. And tumbled in again. 

He remained at the bottom, apparently drowned, for at least ten minutes. At the expiration of that period, he suddenly floated, and said, 'Well! Good morning, Miss Dombey. '

'Are you going?' asked Florence, rising. 

'I don't know, though. No, not just at present, ' said Mr Toots, sittingdown again, most unexpectedly. 'The fact is--I say, Miss Dombey!'

'Don't be afraid to speak to me, ' said Florence, with a quiet smile, 'Ishould be very glad if you would talk about my brother. '

'Would you, though?' retorted Mr Toots, with sympathy in every fibreof his otherwise expressionless face. 'Poor Dombey! I'm sure I neverthought that Burgess and Co. --fashionable tailors (but very dear), that we used to talk about--would make this suit of clothes for such apurpose. ' Mr Toots was dressed in mourning. 'Poor Dombey! I say! MissDombey!' blubbered Toots. 

'Yes, ' said Florence. 

'There's a friend he took to very much at last. I thought you'd lIke tohave him, perhaps, as a sort of keepsake. You remember his rememberingDiogenes?'

'Oh yes! oh yes' cried Florence. 

'Poor Dombey! So do I, ' said Mr Toots. 

Mr Toots, seeing Florence in tears, had great difficulty in gettingbeyond this point, and had nearly tumbled into the well again. But achuckle saved him on the brink. 

'I say, ' he proceeded, 'Miss Dombey! I could have had him stolen for tenshillings, if they hadn't given him up: and I would: but they were gladto get rid of him, I think. If you'd like to have him, he's at the door. I brought him on purpose for you. He ain't a lady's dog, you know, ' saidMr Toots, 'but you won't mind that, will you?'

In fact, Diogenes was at that moment, as they presently ascertained fromlooking down into the street, staring through the window of a hackneycabriolet, into which, for conveyance to that spot, he had beenensnared, on a false pretence of rats among the straw. Sooth to say, hewas as unlike a lady's dog as might be; and in his gruff anxiety to getout, presented an appearance sufficiently unpromising, as he gave shortyelps out of one side of his mouth, and overbalancing himself by theintensity of every one of those efforts, tumbled down into the straw, and then sprung panting up again, putting out his tongue, as if he hadcome express to a Dispensary to be examined for his health. 

But though Diogenes was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with ona summer's day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headeddog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in theneighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was farfrom good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all overhis eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice;he was dearer to Florence, in virtue of that parting remembrance of him, and that request that he might be taken care of, than the most valuableand beautiful of his kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly Diogenes, and so welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand of Mr Toots andkissed it in her gratitude. And when Diogenes, released, came tearingup the stairs and bouncing into the room (such a business as there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!), dived under all the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his neck, round legsof chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his eyes becameunnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out of hishead; and when he growled at Mr Toots, who affected familiarity; andwent pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the enemywhom he had barked at round the corner all his life and had never seenyet; Florence was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle ofdiscretion. 

Mr Toots was so overjoyed by the success of his present, and was sodelighted to see Florence bending down over Diogenes, smoothing hiscoarse back with her little delicate hand--Diogenes graciously allowingit from the first moment of their acquaintance--that he felt itdifficult to take leave, and would, no doubt, have been a much longertime in making up his mind to do so, if he had not been assisted byDiogenes himself, who suddenly took it into his head to bay Mr Toots, and to make short runs at him with his mouth open. Not exactly seeinghis way to the end of these demonstrations, and sensible that theyplaced the pantaloons constructed by the art of Burgess and Co. Injeopardy, Mr Toots, with chuckles, lapsed out at the door: by which, after looking in again two or three times, without any object at all, and being on each occasion greeted with a fresh run from Diogenes, hefinally took himself off and got away. 

'Come, then, Di! Dear Di! Make friends with your new mistress. Let uslove each other, Di!'said Florence, fondling his shaggy head. And Di, the rough and gruff, as if his hairy hide were pervious to the tear thatdropped upon it, and his dog's heart melted as it fell, put his nose upto her face, and swore fidelity. 

Diogenes the man did not speak plainer to Alexander the Great thanDiogenes the dog spoke to Florence. ' He subscribed to the offer ofhis little mistress cheerfully, and devoted himself to her service. Abanquet was immediately provided for him in a corner; and when he hadeaten and drunk his fill, he went to the window where Florence wassitting, looking on, rose up on his hind legs, with his awkward forepaws on her shoulders, licked her face and hands, nestled his greathead against her heart, and wagged his tail till he was tired. Finally, Diogenes coiled himself up at her feet and went to sleep. 

Although Miss Nipper was nervous in regard of dogs, and felt itnecessary to come into the room with her skirts carefully collectedabout her, as if she were crossing a brook on stepping-stones; alsoto utter little screams and stand up on chairs when Diogenes stretchedhimself, she was in her own manner affected by the kindness of Mr Toots, and could not see Florence so alive to the attachment and societyof this rude friend of little Paul's, without some mental commentsthereupon that brought the water to her eyes. Mr Dombey, as a part ofher reflections, may have been, in the association of ideas, connectedwith the dog; but, at any rate, after observing Diogenes and hismistress all the evening, and after exerting herself with much good-willto provide Diogenes a bed in an ante-chamber outside his mistress'sdoor, she said hurriedly to Florence, before leaving her for the night:

'Your Pa's a going off, Miss Floy, tomorrow morning. '

'To-morrow morning, Susan?'

'Yes, Miss; that's the orders. Early. '

'Do you know, ' asked Florence, without looking at her, 'where Papa isgoing, Susan?'

'Not exactly, Miss. He's going to meet that precious Major first, andI must say if I was acquainted with any Major myself (which Heavensforbid), it shouldn't be a blue one!'

'Hush, Susan!' urged Florence gently. 

'Well, Miss Floy, ' returned Miss Nipper, who was full of burningindignation, and minded her stops even less than usual. 'I can't helpit, blue he is, and while I was a Christian, although humble, I wouldhave natural-coloured friends, or none. '

It appeared from what she added and had gleaned downstairs, that MrsChick had proposed the Major for Mr Dombey's companion, and that MrDombey, after some hesitation, had invited him. 

'Talk of him being a change, indeed!' observed Miss Nipper to herselfwith boundless contempt. 'If he's a change, give me a constancy. 

'Good-night, Susan, ' said Florence. 

'Good-night, my darling dear Miss Floy. '

Her tone of commiseration smote the chord so often roughly touched, butnever listened to while she or anyone looked on. Florence left alone, laid her head upon her hand, and pressing the other over her swellingheart, held free communication with her sorrows. 

It was a wet night; and the melancholy rain fell pattering and droppingwith a weary sound. A sluggish wind was blowing, and went moaning roundthe house, as if it were in pain or grief. A shrill noise quiveredthrough the trees. While she sat weeping, it grew late, and drearymidnight tolled out from the steeples. 

Florence was little more than a child in years--not yet fourteen-and theloneliness and gloom of such an hour in the great house where Deathhad lately made its own tremendous devastation, might have set an olderfancy brooding on vague terrors. But her innocent imagination was toofull of one theme to admit them. Nothing wandered in her thoughts butlove--a wandering love, indeed, and castaway--but turning always to herfather. There was nothing in the dropping of the rain, the moaningof the wind, the shuddering of the trees, the striking of the solemnclocks, that shook this one thought, or diminished its interest' Herrecollections of the dear dead boy--and they were never absent--wereitself, the same thing. And oh, to be shut out: to be so lost: never tohave looked into her father's face or touched him, since that hour!

She could not go to bed, poor child, and never had gone yet, since then, without making her nightly pilgrimage to his door. It would have beena strange sad sight, to see her' now, stealing lightly down the stairsthrough the thick gloom, and stopping at it with a beating heart, andblinded eyes, and hair that fell down loosely and unthought of; andtouching it outside with her wet cheek. But the night covered it, and noone knew. 

The moment that she touched the door on this night, Florence foundthat it was open. For the first time it stood open, though by but ahair's-breadth: and there was a light within. The first impulse of thetimid child--and she yielded to it--was to retire swiftly. Her next, togo back, and to enter; and this second impulse held her in irresolutionon the staircase. 

In its standing open, even by so much as that chink, there seemed tobe hope. There was encouragement in seeing a ray of light from within, stealing through the dark stern doorway, and falling in a thread uponthe marble floor. She turned back, hardly knowing what she did, buturged on by the love within her, and the trial they had undergonetogether, but not shared: and with her hands a little raised andtrembling, glided in. 

Her father sat at his old table in the middle room. He had beenarranging some papers, and destroying others, and the latter lay infragile ruins before him. The rain dripped heavily upon the glass panesin the outer room, where he had so often watched poor Paul, a baby; andthe low complainings of the wind were heard without. 

But not by him. He sat with his eyes fixed on the table, so immersed inthought, that a far heavier tread than the light foot of his child couldmake, might have failed to rouse him. His face was turned towardsher. By the waning lamp, and at that haggard hour, it looked worn anddejected; and in the utter loneliness surrounding him, there was anappeal to Florence that struck home. 

'Papa! Papa! speak to me, dear Papa!'

He started at her voice, and leaped up from his seat. She was closebefore him' with extended arms, but he fell back. 

'What is the matter?' he said, sternly. 'Why do you come here? What hasfrightened you?'

If anything had frightened her, it was the face he turned upon her. Theglowing love within the breast of his young daughter froze before it, and she stood and looked at him as if stricken into stone. 

There was not one touch of tenderness or pity in it. There was not onegleam of interest, parental recognition, or relenting in it. There wasa change in it, but not of that kind. The old indifference and coldconstraint had given place to something: what, she never thought and didnot dare to think, and yet she felt it in its force, and knew it wellwithout a name: that as it looked upon her, seemed to cast a shadow onher head. 

Did he see before him the successful rival of his son, in health andlife? Did he look upon his own successful rival in that son's affection?Did a mad jealousy and withered pride, poison sweet remembrances thatshould have endeared and made her precious to him? Could it be possiblethat it was gall to him to look upon her in her beauty and her promise:thinking of his infant boy!

Florence had no such thoughts. But love is quick to know when it isspurned and hopeless: and hope died out of hers, as she stood looking inher father's face. 

'I ask you, Florence, are you frightened? Is there anything the matter, that you come here?'

'I came, Papa--'

'Against my wishes. Why?'

She saw he knew why: it was written broadly on his face: and dropped herhead upon her hands with one prolonged low cry. 

Let him remember it in that room, years to come. It has faded fromthe air, before he breaks the silence. It may pass as quickly from hisbrain, as he believes, but it is there. Let him remember it in thatroom, years to come!

He took her by the arm. His hand was cold, and loose, and scarcelyclosed upon her. 

'You are tired, I daresay, ' he said, taking up the light, and leadingher towards the door, 'and want rest. We all want rest. Go, Florence. You have been dreaming. '

The dream she had had, was over then, God help her! and she felt that itcould never more come back. 

'I will remain here to light you up the stairs. The whole house isyours above there, ' said her father, slowly. 'You are its mistress now. Good-night!'

Still covering her face, she sobbed, and answered 'Good-night, dearPapa, ' and silently ascended. Once she looked back as if she would havereturned to him, but for fear. It was a momentary thought, toohopeless to encourage; and her father stood there with the light--hard, unresponsive, motionless--until the fluttering dress of his fair childwas lost in the darkness. 

Let him remember it in that room, years to come. The rain thatfalls upon the roof: the wind that mourns outside the door: may haveforeknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let him remember it in thatroom, years to come!

The last time he had watched her, from the same place, winding up thosestairs, she had had her brother in her arms. It did not move his hearttowards her now, it steeled it: but he went into his room, and lockedhis door, and sat down in his chair, and cried for his lost boy. 

Diogenes was broad awake upon his post, and waiting for his littlemistress. 

'Oh, Di! Oh, dear Di! Love me for his sake!'

Diogenes already loved her for her own, and didn't care how much heshowed it. So he made himself vastly ridiculous by performing a varietyof uncouth bounces in the ante-chamber, and concluded, when poorFlorence was at last asleep, and dreaming of the rosy children opposite, by scratching open her bedroom door: rolling up his bed into a pillow:lying down on the boards, at the full length of his tether, with hishead towards her: and looking lazily at her, upside down, out of thetops of his eyes, until from winking and winking he fell asleep himself, and dreamed, with gruff barks, of his enemy. 

CHAPTER 19. Walter goes away

The wooden Midshipman at the Instrument-maker's door, like thehard-hearted little Midshipman he was, remained supremely indifferent toWalter's going away, even when the very last day of his sojourn in theback parlour was on the decline. With his quadrant at his round blackknob of an eye, and his figure in its old attitude of indomitablealacrity, the Midshipman displayed his elfin small-clothes to the bestadvantage, and, absorbed in scientific pursuits, had no sympathy withworldly concerns. He was so far the creature of circumstances, that adry day covered him with dust, and a misty day peppered him with littlebits of soot, and a wet day brightened up his tarnished uniform forthe moment, and a very hot day blistered him; but otherwise he was acallous, obdurate, conceited Midshipman, intent on his own discoveries, and caring as little for what went on about him, terrestrially, asArchimedes at the taking of Syracuse. 

Such a Midshipman he seemed to be, at least, in the then position ofdomestic affairs. Walter eyed him kindly many a time in passing in andout; and poor old Sol, when Walter was not there, would come and leanagainst the doorpost, resting his weary wig as near the shoe-bucklesof the guardian genius of his trade and shop as he could. But no fierceidol with a mouth from ear to ear, and a murderous visage made ofparrot's feathers, was ever more indifferent to the appeals of itssavage votaries, than was the Midshipman to these marks of attachment. 

Walter's heart felt heavy as he looked round his old bedroom, up amongthe parapets and chimney-pots, and thought that one more night alreadydarkening would close his acquaintance with it, perhaps for ever. Dismantled of his little stock of books and pictures, it lookedcoldly and reproachfully on him for his desertion, and had already aforeshadowing upon it of its coming strangeness. 'A few hours more, 'thought Walter, 'and no dream I ever had here when I was a schoolboywill be so little mine as this old room. The dream may come back in mysleep, and I may return waking to this place, it may be: but the dreamat least will serve no other master, and the room may have a score, andevery one of them may change, neglect, misuse it. '

But his Uncle was not to be left alone in the little back parlour, wherehe was then sitting by himself; for Captain Cuttle, considerate in hisroughness, stayed away against his will, purposely that they should havesome talk together unobserved: so Walter, newly returned home from hislast day's bustle, descended briskly, to bear him company. 

'Uncle, ' he said gaily, laying his hand upon the old man's shoulder, 'what shall I send you home from Barbados?'

'Hope, my dear Wally. Hope that we shall meet again, on this side of thegrave. Send me as much of that as you can. '

'So I will, Uncle: I have enough and to spare, and I'll not be chary ofit! And as to lively turtles, and limes for Captain Cuttle's punch, andpreserves for you on Sundays, and all that sort of thing, why I'll sendyou ship-loads, Uncle: when I'm rich enough. '

Old Sol wiped his spectacles, and faintly smiled. 

'That's right, Uncle!' cried Walter, merrily, and clapping him half adozen times more upon the shoulder. 'You cheer up me! I'll cheer upyou! We'll be as gay as larks to-morrow morning, Uncle, and we'll fly ashigh! As to my anticipations, they are singing out of sight now. 

'Wally, my dear boy, ' returned the old man, 'I'll do my best, I'll do mybest. '

'And your best, Uncle, ' said Walter, with his pleasant laugh, 'is thebest best that I know. You'll not forget what you're to send me, Uncle?'

'No, Wally, no, ' replied the old man; 'everything I hear about MissDombey, now that she is left alone, poor lamb, I'll write. I fear itwon't be much though, Wally. '

'Why, I'll tell you what, Uncle, ' said Walter, after a moment'shesitation, 'I have just been up there. '

'Ay, ay, ay?' murmured the old man, raising his eyebrows, and hisspectacles with them. 

'Not to see her, ' said Walter, 'though I could have seen her, I daresay, if I had asked, Mr Dombey being out of town: but to say a parting wordto Susan. I thought I might venture to do that, you know, under thecircumstances, and remembering when I saw Miss Dombey last. '

'Yes, my boy, yes, ' replied his Uncle, rousing himself from a temporaryabstraction. 

'So I saw her, ' pursued Walter, 'Susan, I mean: and I told her I wasoff and away to-morrow. And I said, Uncle, that you had always had aninterest in Miss Dombey since that night when she was here, and alwayswished her well and happy, and always would be proud and glad to serveher in the least: I thought I might say that, you know, under thecircumstances. Don't you think so?'

'Yes, my boy, yes, ' replied his Uncle, in the tone as before. 

'And I added, ' pursued Walter, 'that if she--Susan, I mean--could everlet you know, either through herself, or Mrs Richards, or anybody elsewho might be coming this way, that Miss Dombey was well and happy, youwould take it very kindly, and would write so much to me, and I shouldtake it very kindly too. There! Upon my word, Uncle, ' said Walter, 'Iscarcely slept all last night through thinking of doing this; and couldnot make up my mind when I was out, whether to do it or not; and yet Iam sure it is the true feeling of my heart, and I should have been quitemiserable afterwards if I had not relieved it. '

His honest voice and manner corroborated what he said, and quiteestablished its ingenuousness. 

'So, if you ever see her, Uncle, ' said Walter, 'I mean Miss Dombeynow--and perhaps you may, who knows!--tell her how much I felt for her;how much I used to think of her when I was here; how I spoke of her, with the tears in my eyes, Uncle, on this last night before I went away. Tell her that I said I never could forget her gentle manner, or herbeautiful face, or her sweet kind disposition that was better than all. And as I didn't take them from a woman's feet, or a young lady's: onlya little innocent child's, ' said Walter: 'tell her, if you don't mind, Uncle, that I kept those shoes--she'll remember how often they fell off, that night--and took them away with me as a remembrance!'

They were at that very moment going out at the door in one of Walter'strunks. A porter carrying off his baggage on a truck for shipment at thedocks on board the Son and Heir, had got possession of them; and wheeledthem away under the very eye of the insensible Midshipman before theirowner had well finished speaking. 

But that ancient mariner might have been excused his insensibility tothe treasure as it rolled away. For, under his eye at the same moment, accurately within his range of observation, coming full into the sphereof his startled and intensely wide-awake look-out, were Florence andSusan Nipper: Florence looking up into his face half timidly, andreceiving the whole shock of his wooden ogling!

More than this, they passed into the shop, and passed in at the parlourdoor before they were observed by anybody but the Midshipman. AndWalter, having his back to the door, would have known nothing of theirapparition even then, but for seeing his Uncle spring out of his ownchair, and nearly tumble over another. 

'Why, Uncle!' exclaimed Walter. 'What's the matter?'

Old Solomon replied, 'Miss Dombey!'

'Is it possible?' cried Walter, looking round and starting up in histurn. 'Here!'

Why, It was so possible and so actual, that, while the words were on hislips, Florence hurried past him; took Uncle Sol's snuff-coloured lapels, one in each hand; kissed him on the cheek; and turning, gave her hand toWalter with a simple truth and earnestness that was her own, and no oneelse's in the world!

'Going away, Walter!' said Florence. 

'Yes, Miss Dombey, ' he replied, but not so hopefully as he endeavoured:'I have a voyage before me. '

'And your Uncle, ' said Florence, looking back at Solomon. 'He is sorryyou are going, I am sure. Ah! I see he is! Dear Walter, I am very sorrytoo. '

'Goodness knows, ' exclaimed Miss Nipper, 'there's a many we could spareinstead, if numbers is a object, Mrs Pipchin as a overseer would comecheap at her weight in gold, and if a knowledge of black slavery shouldbe required, them Blimbers is the very people for the sitiwation. '

With that Miss Nipper untied her bonnet strings, and alter lookingvacantly for some moments into a little black teapot that was set forthwith the usual homely service on the table, shook her head and a tincanister, and began unasked to make the tea. 

In the meantime Florence had turned again to the Instrument-maker, whowas as full of admiration as surprise. 'So grown!' said old Sol. 'Soimproved! And yet not altered! Just the same!'

'Indeed!' said Florence. 

'Ye--yes, ' returned old Sol, rubbing his hands slowly, and consideringthe matter half aloud, as something pensive in the bright eyes lookingat him arrested his attention. 'Yes, that expression was in the youngerface, too!'

'You remember me, ' said Florence with a smile, 'and what a littlecreature I was then?'

'My dear young lady, ' returned the Instrument-maker, 'how could I forgetyou, often as I have thought of you and heard of you since! At the verymoment, indeed, when you came in, Wally was talking about you to me, andleaving messages for you, and--'

'Was he?' said Florence. 'Thank you, Walter! Oh thank you, Walter! I wasafraid you might be going away and hardly thinking of me;' and again shegave him her little hand so freely and so faithfully that Walter held itfor some moments in his own, and could not bear to let it go. 

Yet Walter did not hold it as he might have held it once, nor did itstouch awaken those old day-dreams of his boyhood that had floated pasthim sometimes even lately, and confused him with their indistinct andbroken shapes. The purity and innocence of her endearing manner, andits perfect trustfulness, and the undisguised regard for him that layso deeply seated in her constant eyes, and glowed upon her fair facethrough the smile that shaded--for alas! it was a smile too sad tobrighten--it, were not of their romantic race. They brought back to histhoughts the early death-bed he had seen her tending, and the love thechild had borne her; and on the wings of such remembrances she seemed torise up, far above his idle fancies, into clearer and serener air. 

'I--I am afraid I must call you Walter's Uncle, Sir, ' said Florence tothe old man, 'if you'll let me. '

'My dear young lady, ' cried old Sol. 'Let you! Good gracious!'

'We always knew you by that name, and talked of you, ' said Florence, glancing round, and sighing gently. 'The nice old parlour! Just thesame! How well I recollect it!'

Old Sol looked first at her, then at his nephew, and then rubbed hishands, and rubbed his spectacles, and said below his breath, 'Ah! time, time, time!'

There was a short silence; during which Susan Nipper skilfully impoundedtwo extra cups and saucers from the cupboard, and awaited the drawing ofthe tea with a thoughtful air. 

'I want to tell Walter's Uncle, ' said Florence, laying her hand timidlyupon the old man's as it rested on the table, to bespeak his attention, 'something that I am anxious about. He is going to be left alone, andif he will allow me--not to take Walter's place, for that I couldn'tdo, but to be his true friend and help him if I ever can while Walteris away, I shall be very much obliged to him indeed. Will you? May I, Walter's Uncle?'

The Instrument-maker, without speaking, put her hand to his lips, and Susan Nipper, leaning back with her arms crossed, in the chair ofpresidency into which she had voted herself, bit one end of her bonnetstrings, and heaved a gentle sigh as she looked up at the skylight. 

'You will let me come to see you, ' said Florence, 'when I can; and youwill tell me everything about yourself and Walter; and you will have nosecrets from Susan when she comes and I do not, but will confide in us, and trust us, and rely upon us. And you'll try to let us be a comfort toyou? Will you, Walter's Uncle?'

The sweet face looking into his, the gentle pleading eyes, the softvoice, and the light touch on his arm made the more winning by a child'srespect and honour for his age, that gave to all an air of gracefuldoubt and modest hesitation--these, and her natural earnestness, soovercame the poor old Instrument-maker, that he only answered:

'Wally! say a word for me, my dear. I'm very grateful. '

'No, Walter, ' returned Florence with her quiet smile. 'Say nothing forhim, if you please. I understand him very well, and we must learn totalk together without you, dear Walter. '

The regretful tone in which she said these latter words, touched Waltermore than all the rest. 

'Miss Florence, ' he replied, with an effort to recover the cheerfulmanner he had preserved while talking with his Uncle, 'I know no morethan my Uncle, what to say in acknowledgment of such kindness, I amsure. But what could I say, after all, if I had the power of talking foran hour, except that it is like you?'

Susan Nipper began upon a new part of her bonnet string, and nodded atthe skylight, in approval of the sentiment expressed. 

'Oh! but, Walter, ' said Florence, 'there is something that I wish to sayto you before you go away, and you must call me Florence, if you please, and not speak like a stranger. '

'Like a stranger!' returned Walter, 'No. I couldn't speak so. I am sure, at least, I couldn't feel like one. '

'Ay, but that is not enough, and is not what I mean. For, Walter, ' addedFlorence, bursting into tears, 'he liked you very much, and said beforehe died that he was fond of you, and said "Remember Walter!" and ifyou'll be a brother to me, Walter, now that he is gone and I have noneon earth, I'll be your sister all my life, and think of you like onewherever we may be! This is what I wished to say, dear Walter, but Icannot say it as I would, because my heart is full. '

And in its fulness and its sweet simplicity, she held out both her handsto him. Walter taking them, stooped down and touched the tearful facethat neither shrunk nor turned away, nor reddened as he did so, butlooked up at him with confidence and truth. In that one moment, everyshadow of doubt or agitation passed away from Walter's soul. It seemedto him that he responded to her innocent appeal, beside the dead child'sbed: and, in the solemn presence he had seen there, pledged himself tocherish and protect her very image, in his banishment, with brotherlyregard; to garner up her simple faith, inviolate; and hold himselfdegraded if he breathed upon it any thought that was not in her ownbreast when she gave it to him. 

Susan Nipper, who had bitten both her bonnet strings at once, andimparted a great deal of private emotion to the skylight, during thistransaction, now changed the subject by inquiring who took milk and whotook sugar; and being enlightened on these points, poured out the tea. They all four gathered socially about the little table, and took teaunder that young lady's active superintendence; and the presence ofFlorence in the back parlour, brightened the Tartar frigate on the wall. 

Half an hour ago Walter, for his life, would have hardly called her byher name. But he could do so now when she entreated him. He could thinkof her being there, without a lurking misgiving that it would have beenbetter if she had not come. He could calmly think how beautiful she was, how full of promise, what a home some happy man would find in such aheart one day. He could reflect upon his own place in that heart, withpride; and with a brave determination, if not to deserve it--he stillthought that far above him--never to deserve it less. 

Some fairy influence must surely have hovered round the hands of SusanNipper when she made the tea, engendering the tranquil air that reignedin the back parlour during its discussion. Some counter-influence mustsurely have hovered round the hands of Uncle Sol's chronometer, andmoved them faster than the Tartar frigate ever went before the wind. Bethis as it may, the visitors had a coach in waiting at a quiet cornernot far off; and the chronometer, on being incidentally referred to, gave such a positive opinion that it had been waiting a long time, thatit was impossible to doubt the fact, especially when stated on suchunimpeachable authority. If Uncle Sol had been going to be hanged by hisown time, he never would have allowed that the chronometer was too fast, by the least fraction of a second. 

Florence at parting recapitulated to the old man all that she had saidbefore, and bound him to the compact. Uncle Sol attended her lovingly tothe legs of the wooden Midshipman, and there resigned her to Walter, whowas ready to escort her and Susan Nipper to the coach. 

'Walter, ' said Florence by the way, 'I have been afraid to ask beforeyour Uncle. Do you think you will be absent very long?'

'Indeed, ' said Walter, 'I don't know. I fear so. Mr Dombey signified asmuch, I thought, when he appointed me. '

'Is it a favour, Walter?' inquired Florence, after a moment'shesitation, and looking anxiously in his face. 

'The appointment?' returned Walter. 

'Yes. '

Walter would have given anything to have answered in the affirmative, but his face answered before his lips could, and Florence was tooattentive to it not to understand its reply. 

'I am afraid you have scarcely been a favourite with Papa, ' she said, timidly. 

'There is no reason, ' replied Walter, smiling, 'why I should be. '

'No reason, Walter!'

'There was no reason, ' said Walter, understanding what she meant. 'Thereare many people employed in the House. Between Mr Dombey and a young manlike me, there's a wide space of separation. If I do my duty, I do whatI ought, and do no more than all the rest. '

Had Florence any misgiving of which she was hardly conscious: anymisgiving that had sprung into an indistinct and undefined existencesince that recent night when she had gone down to her father's room:that Walter's accidental interest in her, and early knowledge of her, might have involved him in that powerful displeasure and dislike? HadWalter any such idea, or any sudden thought that it was in her mind atthat moment? Neither of them hinted at it. Neither of them spoke at all, for some short time. Susan, walking on the other side of Walter, eyedthem both sharply; and certainly Miss Nipper's thoughts travelled inthat direction, and very confidently too. 

'You may come back very soon, ' said Florence, 'perhaps, Walter. '

'I may come back, ' said Walter, 'an old man, and find you an old lady. But I hope for better things. '

'Papa, ' said Florence, after a moment, 'will--will recover from hisgrief, and--speak more freely to me one day, perhaps; and if he should, I will tell him how much I wish to see you back again, and ask him torecall you for my sake. '

There was a touching modulation in these words about her father, thatWalter understood too well. 

The coach being close at hand, he would have left her without speaking, for now he felt what parting was; but Florence held his hand when shewas seated, and then he found there was a little packet in her own. 

'Walter, ' she said, looking full upon him with her affectionate eyes, 'like you, I hope for better things. I will pray for them, and believethat they will arrive. I made this little gift for Paul. Pray take itwith my love, and do not look at it until you are gone away. And now, God bless you, Walter! never forget me. You are my brother, dear!'

He was glad that Susan Nipper came between them, or he might have lefther with a sorrowful remembrance of him. He was glad too that shedid not look out of the coach again, but waved the little hand to himinstead, as long as he could see it. 

In spite of her request, he could not help opening the packet that nightwhen he went to bed. It was a little purse: and there was was money init. 

Bright rose the sun next morning, from his absence in strange countriesand up rose Walter with it to receive the Captain, who was already atthe door: having turned out earlier than was necessary, in order toget under weigh while Mrs MacStinger was still slumbering. The Captainpretended to be in tip-top spirits, and brought a very smoky tongue inone of the pockets of the of the broad blue coat for breakfast. 

'And, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, when they took their seats at table, ifyour Uncle's the man I think him, he'll bring out the last bottle of theMadeira on the present occasion. '

'No, no, Ned, ' returned the old man. 'No! That shall be opened whenWalter comes home again. '

'Well said!' cried the Captain. 'Hear him!'

'There it lies, ' said Sol Gills, 'down in the little cellar, coveredwith dirt and cobwebs. There may be dirt and cobwebs over you and meperhaps, Ned, before it sees the light. '

'Hear him! 'cried the Captain. 'Good morality! Wal'r, my lad. Train upa fig-tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under theshade on it. Overhaul the--Well, ' said the Captain on second thoughts, 'I ain't quite certain where that's to be found, but when found, make anote of. Sol Gills, heave ahead again!'

'But there or somewhere, it shall lie, Ned, until Wally comes back toclaim it, ' said the old man. 'That's all I meant to say. '

'And well said too, ' returned the Captain; 'and if we three don't crackthat bottle in company, I'll give you two leave to. '

Notwithstanding the Captain's excessive joviality, he made but a poorhand at the smoky tongue, though he tried very hard, when anybody lookedat him, to appear as if he were eating with a vast appetite. He wasterribly afraid, likewise, of being left alone with either Uncle ornephew; appearing to consider that his only chance of safety as tokeeping up appearances, was in there being always three together. This terror on the part of the Captain, reduced him to such ingeniousevasions as running to the door, when Solomon went to put his coat on, under pretence of having seen an extraordinary hackney-coach pass: anddarting out into the road when Walter went upstairs to take leave of thelodgers, on a feint of smelling fire in a neighbouring chimney. Theseartifices Captain Cuttle deemed inscrutable by any uninspired observer. 

Walter was coming down from his parting expedition upstairs, and wascrossing the shop to go back to the little parlour, when he saw a fadedface he knew, looking in at the door, and darted towards it. 

'Mr Carker!' cried Walter, pressing the hand of John Carker the Junior. 'Pray come in! This is kind of you, to be here so early to say good-byeto me. You knew how glad it would make me to shake hands with you, once, before going away. I cannot say how glad I am to have this opportunity. Pray come in. '

'It is not likely that we may ever meet again, Walter, ' returnedthe other, gently resisting his invitation, 'and I am glad of thisopportunity too. I may venture to speak to you, and to take you by thehand, on the eve of separation. I shall not have to resist your frankapproaches, Walter, any more. 

There was a melancholy in his smile as he said it, that showed he hadfound some company and friendship for his thoughts even in that. 

'Ah, Mr Carker!' returned Walter. 'Why did you resist them? You couldhave done me nothing but good, I am very sure. 

He shook his head. 'If there were any good, ' he said, 'I could do onthis earth, I would do it, Walter, for you. The sight of you from day today, has been at once happiness and remorse to me. But the pleasure hasoutweighed the pain. I know that, now, by knowing what I lose. '

'Come in, Mr Carker, and make acquaintance with my good old Uncle, 'urged Walter. 'I have often talked to him about you, and he will be gladto tell you all he hears from me. I have not, ' said Walter, noticing hishesitation, and speaking with embarrassment himself: 'I have not toldhim anything about our last conversation, Mr Carker; not even him, believe me. 

The grey Junior pressed his hand, and tears rose in his eyes. 

'If I ever make acquaintance with him, Walter, ' he returned, 'it will bethat I may hear tidings of you. Rely on my not wronging your forbearanceand consideration. It would be to wrong it, not to tell him all thetruth, before I sought a word of confidence from him. But I have nofriend or acquaintance except you: and even for your sake, am littlelikely to make any. '

'I wish, ' said Walter, 'you had suffered me to be your friend indeed. Ialways wished it, Mr Carker, as you know; but never half so much as now, when we are going to part. '

'It is enough replied the other, 'that you have been the friend of myown breast, and that when I have avoided you most, my heart inclined themost towards you, and was fullest of you. Walter, good-bye!'

'Good-bye, Mr Carker. Heaven be with you, Sir!' cried Walter withemotion. 

'If, ' said the other, retaining his hand while he spoke; 'if when youcome back, you miss me from my old corner, and should hear from anyonewhere I am lying, come and look upon my grave. Think that I might havebeen as honest and as happy as you! And let me think, when I know timeis coming on, that some one like my former self may stand there, for amoment, and remember me with pity and forgiveness! Walter, good-bye!'

His figure crept like a shadow down the bright, sun-lighted street, socheerful yet so solemn in the early summer morning; and slowly passedaway. 

The relentless chronometer at last announced that Walter must turn hisback upon the wooden Midshipman: and away they went, himself, his Uncle, and the Captain, in a hackney-coach to a wharf, where they were to takesteam-boat for some Reach down the river, the name of which, as theCaptain gave it out, was a hopeless mystery to the ears of landsmen. Arrived at this Reach (whither the ship had repaired by last night'stide), they were boarded by various excited watermen, and among othersby a dirty Cyclops of the Captain's acquaintance, who, with his oneeye, had made the Captain out some mile and a half off, and had beenexchanging unintelligible roars with him ever since. Becoming the lawfulprize of this personage, who was frightfully hoarse and constitutionallyin want of shaving, they were all three put aboard the Son and Heir. Andthe Son and Heir was in a pretty state of confusion, with sails lyingall bedraggled on the wet decks, loose ropes tripping people up, men inred shirts running barefoot to and fro, casks blockading every foot ofspace, and, in the thickest of the fray, a black cook in a black cabooseup to his eyes in vegetables and blinded with smoke. 

The Captain immediately drew Walter into a corner, and with a greateffort, that made his face very red, pulled up the silver watch, whichwas so big, and so tight in his pocket, that it came out like a bung. 

'Wal'r, ' said the Captain, handing it over, and shaking him heartilyby the hand, 'a parting gift, my lad. Put it back half an hour everymorning, and about another quarter towards the arternoon, and it's awatch that'll do you credit. '

'Captain Cuttle! I couldn't think of it!' cried Walter, detaining him, for he was running away. 'Pray take it back. I have one already. '

'Then, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, suddenly diving into one of his pocketsand bringing up the two teaspoons and the sugar-tongs, with which hehad armed himself to meet such an objection, 'take this here trifle ofplate, instead. '

'No, no, I couldn't indeed!' cried Walter, 'a thousand thanks! Don'tthrow them away, Captain Cuttle!' for the Captain was about to jerk themoverboard. 'They'll be of much more use to you than me. Give me yourstick. I have often thought I should like to have it. There! Good-bye, Captain Cuttle! Take care of my Uncle! Uncle Sol, God bless you!'

They were over the side in the confusion, before Walter caught anotherglimpse of either; and when he ran up to the stern, and looked afterthem, he saw his Uncle hanging down his head in the boat, and CaptainCuttle rapping him on the back with the great silver watch (it must havebeen very painful), and gesticulating hopefully with the teaspoonsand sugar-tongs. Catching sight of Walter, Captain Cuttle dropped theproperty into the bottom of the boat with perfect unconcern, beingevidently oblivious of its existence, and pulling off the glazed hathailed him lustily. The glazed hat made quite a show in the sun with itsglistening, and the Captain continued to wave it until he could beseen no longer. Then the confusion on board, which had been rapidlyincreasing, reached its height; two or three other boats went away witha cheer; the sails shone bright and full above, as Walter watchedthem spread their surface to the favourable breeze; the water flew insparkles from the prow; and off upon her voyage went the Son and Heir, as hopefully and trippingly as many another son and heir, gone down, hadstarted on his way before her. 

Day after day, old Sol and Captain Cuttle kept her reckoning in thelittle hack parlour and worked out her course, with the chart spreadbefore them on the round table. At night, when old Sol climbed upstairs, so lonely, to the attic where it sometimes blew great guns, he lookedup at the stars and listened to the wind, and kept a longer watch thanwould have fallen to his lot on board the ship. The last bottle of theold Madeira, which had had its cruising days, and known its dangers ofthe deep, lay silently beneath its dust and cobwebs, in the meanwhile, undisturbed. 

CHAPTER 20. Mr Dombey goes upon a Journey

'Mr Dombey, Sir, ' said Major Bagstock, 'Joee' B. Is not in general a manof sentiment, for Joseph is tough. But Joe has his feelings, Sir, andwhen they are awakened--Damme, Mr Dombey, ' cried the Major with suddenferocity, 'this is weakness, and I won't submit to it!'

Major Bagstock delivered himself of these expressions on receivingMr Dombey as his guest at the head of his own staircase in Princess'sPlace. Mr Dombey had come to breakfast with the Major, previous to theirsetting forth on their trip; and the ill-starved Native had alreadyundergone a world of misery arising out of the muffins, while, inconnexion with the general question of boiled eggs, life was a burden tohim. 

'It is not for an old soldier of the Bagstock breed, ' observed theMajor, relapsing into a mild state, 'to deliver himself up, a prey tohis own emotions; but--damme, Sir, ' cried the Major, in another spasm offerocity, 'I condole with you!'

The Major's purple visage deepened in its hue, and the Major's lobstereyes stood out in bolder relief, as he shook Mr Dombey by the hand, imparting to that peaceful action as defiant a character as if it hadbeen the prelude to his immediately boxing Mr Dombey for a thousandpounds a side and the championship of England. With a rotatory motionof his head, and a wheeze very like the cough of a horse, the Majorthen conducted his visitor to the sitting-room, and there welcomed him(having now composed his feelings) with the freedom and frankness of atravelling companion. 

'Dombey, ' said the Major, 'I'm glad to see you. I'm proud to see you. There are not many men in Europe to whom J. Bagstock would say that--forJosh is blunt. Sir: it's his nature--but Joey B. Is proud to see you, Dombey. '

'Major, ' returned Mr Dombey, 'you are very obliging. '

'No, Sir, ' said the Major, 'Devil a bit! That's not my character. If that had been Joe's character, Joe might have been, by this time, Lieutenant-General Sir Joseph Bagstock, K. C. B. , and might have receivedyou in very different quarters. You don't know old Joe yet, I find. Butthis occasion, being special, is a source of pride to me. By the Lord, Sir, ' said the Major resolutely, 'it's an honour to me!'

Mr Dombey, in his estimation of himself and his money, felt thatthis was very true, and therefore did not dispute the point. But theinstinctive recognition of such a truth by the Major, and his plainavowal of it, were very able. It was a confirmation to Mr Dombey, ifhe had required any, of his not being mistaken in the Major. It wasan assurance to him that his power extended beyond his own immediatesphere; and that the Major, as an officer and a gentleman, had a no lessbecoming sense of it, than the beadle of the Royal Exchange. 

And if it were ever consolatory to know this, or the like of this, itwas consolatory then, when the impotence of his will, the instabilityof his hopes, the feebleness of wealth, had been so direfully impressedupon him. What could it do, his boy had asked him. Sometimes, thinkingof the baby question, he could hardly forbear inquiring, himself, whatcould it do indeed: what had it done?

But these were lonely thoughts, bred late at night in the sullendespondency and gloom of his retirement, and pride easily found itsreassurance in many testimonies to the truth, as unimpeachable andprecious as the Major's. Mr Dombey, in his friendlessness, inclined tothe Major. It cannot be said that he warmed towards him, but he thaweda little, The Major had had some part--and not too much--in the days bythe seaside. He was a man of the world, and knew some great people. Hetalked much, and told stories; and Mr Dombey was disposed to regard himas a choice spirit who shone in society, and who had not that poisonousingredient of poverty with which choice spirits in general are too muchadulterated. His station was undeniable. Altogether the Major was acreditable companion, well accustomed to a life of leisure, and tosuch places as that they were about to visit, and having an air ofgentlemanly ease about him that mixed well enough with his own Citycharacter, and did not compete with it at all. If Mr Dombey had anylingering idea that the Major, as a man accustomed, in the way of hiscalling, to make light of the ruthless hand that had lately crushed hishopes, might unconsciously impart some useful philosophy to him, andscare away his weak regrets, he hid it from himself, and left it lyingat the bottom of his pride, unexamined. 

'Where is my scoundrel?' said the Major, looking wrathfully round theroom. 

The Native, who had no particular name, but answered to any vituperativeepithet, presented himself instantly at the door and ventured to come nonearer. 

'You villain!' said the choleric Major, 'where's the breakfast?'

The dark servant disappeared in search of it, and was quickly heardreascending the stairs in such a tremulous state, that the plates anddishes on the tray he carried, trembling sympathetically as he came, rattled again, all the way up. 

'Dombey, ' said the Major, glancing at the Native as he arranged thetable, and encouraging him with an awful shake of his fist when he upseta spoon, 'here is a devilled grill, a savoury pie, a dish of kidneys, and so forth. Pray sit down. Old Joe can give you nothing but camp fare, you see. 

'Very excellent fare, Major, ' replied his guest; and not in merepoliteness either; for the Major always took the best possible care ofhimself, and indeed ate rather more of rich meats than was good for him, insomuch that his Imperial complexion was mainly referred by the facultyto that circumstance. 

'You have been looking over the way, Sir, ' observed the Major. 'Have youseen our friend?'

'You mean Miss Tox, ' retorted Mr Dombey. 'No. '

'Charming woman, Sir, ' said the Major, with a fat laugh rising in hisshort throat, and nearly suffocating him. 

'Miss Tox is a very good sort of person, I believe, ' replied Mr Dombey. 

The haughty coldness of the reply seemed to afford Major Bagstockinfinite delight. He swelled and swelled, exceedingly: and even laiddown his knife and fork for a moment, to rub his hands. 

'Old Joe, Sir, ' said the Major, 'was a bit of a favourite inthat quarter once. But Joe has had his day. J. Bagstock isextinguished--outrivalled--floored, Sir. '

'I should have supposed, ' Mr Dombey replied, 'that the lady's day forfavourites was over: but perhaps you are jesting, Major. '

'Perhaps you are jesting, Dombey?' was the Major's rejoinder. 

There never was a more unlikely possibility. It was so clearly expressedin Mr Dombey's face, that the Major apologised. 

'I beg your pardon, ' he said. 'I see you are in earnest. I tell youwhat, Dombey. ' The Major paused in his eating, and looked mysteriouslyindignant. 'That's a de-vilish ambitious woman, Sir. '

Mr Dombey said 'Indeed?' with frigid indifference: mingled perhaps withsome contemptuous incredulity as to Miss Tox having the presumption toharbour such a superior quality. 

'That woman, Sir, ' said the Major, 'is, in her way, a Lucifer. JoeyB. Has had his day, Sir, but he keeps his eyes. He sees, does Joe. HisRoyal Highness the late Duke of York observed of Joey, at a levee, thathe saw. '

The Major accompanied this with such a look, and, between eating, drinking, hot tea, devilled grill, muffins, and meaning, was altogetherso swollen and inflamed about the head, that even Mr Dombey showed someanxiety for him. 

'That ridiculous old spectacle, Sir, ' pursued the Major, 'aspires. Sheaspires sky-high, Sir. Matrimonially, Dombey. '

'I am sorry for her, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Don't say that, Dombey, ' returned the Major in a warning voice. 

'Why should I not, Major?' said Mr Dombey. 

The Major gave no answer but the horse's cough, and went on eatingvigorously. 

'She has taken an interest in your household, ' said the Major, stoppingshort again, 'and has been a frequent visitor at your house for sometime now. '

'Yes, ' replied Mr Dombey with great stateliness, 'Miss Tox wasoriginally received there, at the time of Mrs Dombey's death, as afriend of my sister's; and being a well-behaved person, and showing aliking for the poor infant, she was permitted--may I say encouraged--torepeat her visits with my sister, and gradually to occupy a kind offooting of familiarity in the family. I have, ' said Mr Dombey, in thetone of a man who was making a great and valuable concession, 'I have arespect for Miss Tox. She his been so obliging as to render many littleservices in my house: trifling and insignificant services perhaps, Major, but not to be disparaged on that account: and I hope I have hadthe good fortune to be enabled to acknowledge them by such attention andnotice as it has been in my power to bestow. I hold myself indebted toMiss Tox, Major, ' added Mr Dombey, with a slight wave of his hand, 'forthe pleasure of your acquaintance. '

'Dombey, ' said the Major, warmly: 'no! No, Sir! Joseph Bagstock cannever permit that assertion to pass uncontradicted. Your knowledge ofold Joe, Sir, such as he is, and old Joe's knowledge of you, Sir, hadits origin in a noble fellow, Sir--in a great creature, Sir. Dombey!'said the Major, with a struggle which it was not very difficult toparade, his whole life being a struggle against all kinds of apoplecticsymptoms, 'we knew each other through your boy. '

Mr Dombey seemed touched, as it is not improbable the Major designed heshould be, by this allusion. He looked down and sighed: and the Major, rousing himself fiercely, again said, in reference to the state of mindinto which he felt himself in danger of falling, that this was weakness, and nothing should induce him to submit to it. 

'Our friend had a remote connexion with that event, ' said the Major, 'and all the credit that belongs to her, J. B. Is willing to give her, Sir. Notwithstanding which, Ma'am, ' he added, raising his eyes from hisplate, and casting them across Princess's Place, to where Miss Tox wasat that moment visible at her window watering her flowers, 'you'rea scheming jade, Ma'am, and your ambition is a piece of monstrousimpudence. If it only made yourself ridiculous, Ma'am, ' said the Major, rolling his head at the unconscious Miss Tox, while his starting eyesappeared to make a leap towards her, 'you might do that to your heart'scontent, Ma'am, without any objection, I assure you, on the part ofBagstock. ' Here the Major laughed frightfully up in the tips of his earsand in the veins of his head. 'But when, Ma'am, ' said the Major, 'youcompromise other people, and generous, unsuspicious people too, as arepayment for their condescension, you stir the blood of old Joe in hisbody. '

'Major, ' said Mr Dombey, reddening, 'I hope you do not hint at anythingso absurd on the part of Miss Tox as--'

'Dombey, ' returned the Major, 'I hint at nothing. But Joey B. Has livedin the world, Sir: lived in the world with his eyes open, Sir, and hisears cocked: and Joe tells you, Dombey, that there's a devilish artfuland ambitious woman over the way. '

Mr Dombey involuntarily glanced over the way; and an angry glance hesent in that direction, too. 

'That's all on such a subject that shall pass the lips of JosephBagstock, ' said the Major firmly. 'Joe is not a tale-bearer, but thereare times when he must speak, when he will speak!--confound your arts, Ma'am, ' cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire, --'when the provocation is too strong to admit of hisremaining silent. '

The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse'scoughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:

'And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe--old Joe, who has no othermerit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty--to be your guest and guideat Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is whollyyours. I don't know, Sir, ' said the Major, wagging his double chin witha jocose air, 'what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him insuch great request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn'tpretty tough, and obstinate in his refusals, you'd kill him among youwith your invitations and so forth, in double-quick time. '

Mr Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference hereceived over those other distinguished members of society who wereclamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut himshort by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, 'J. B. , Dombey is the man for you to choose as a friend. '

The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence ofsavoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grilland kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching forthe departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they wereto leave town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immensedifficulty, and buttoned him up until his face looked staring andgasping, over the top of that garment, as if he were in a barrel. TheNative then handed him separately, and with a decent interval betweeneach supply, his washleather gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; whichlatter article the Major wore with a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his remarkable visage. The Native had previouslypacked, in all possible and impossible parts of Mr Dombey's chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual quantity of carpet-bags and smallportmanteaus, no less apoplectic in appearance than the Major himself:and having filled his own pockets with Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and newspapers, any or all ofwhich light baggage the Major might require at any instant of thejourney, he announced that everything was ready. To complete theequipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be aprince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by theside of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the Major's cloaks and great-coats washurled upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavementwith those great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that heproceeded, in a living tomb, to the railroad station. 

But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in theact of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhitehandkerchief. Mr Dombey received this parting salutation verycoldly--very coldly even for him--and honouring her with the slightestpossible inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with avery discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford theMajor (who was all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unboundedsatisfaction; and he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, andchoking, like an over-fed Mephistopheles. 

During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the Majorwalked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn andgloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, witha variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstockwas the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in thecourse of these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man whowas standing near the engine, and who touched his hat every time theypassed; for Mr Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd, not atthem; and the Major was looking, at the time, into the core of one ofhis stories. At length, however, this man stepped before them as theyturned round, and pulling his hat off, and keeping it off, ducked hishead to Mr Dombey. 

'Beg your pardon, Sir, ' said the man, 'but I hope you're a doin' prettywell, Sir. '

He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust andoil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashesall over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could befairly called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short, he was Mr Toodle, professionally clothed. 

'I shall have the honour of stokin' of you down, Sir, ' said Mr Toodle. 'Beg your pardon, Sir. --I hope you find yourself a coming round?'

Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a manlike that would make his very eyesight dirty. 

''Scuse the liberty, Sir, ' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearlyremembered, 'but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family--'

A change in Mr Dombey's face, which seemed to express recollection ofhim, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angrysense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short. 

'Your wife wants money, I suppose, ' said Mr Dombey, putting his hand inhis pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily. 

'No thank'ee, Sir, ' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't. '

Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with hishand in his pocket. 

'No, Sir, ' said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; 'we'rea doin' pretty well, Sir; we haven't no cause to complain in the worldlyway, Sir. We've had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on. '

Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doinghe had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention wasarrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly roundand round in the man's hand. 

'We lost one babby, ' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'. '

'Lately, ' added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap. 

'No, Sir, up'ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And inthe matter o readin', Sir, ' said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remindMr Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago, 'them boys o' mine, they learned me, among 'em, arter all. They've madea wery tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys. '

'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey. 

'Beg your pardon, Sir, ' resumed Toodle, taking a step before them anddeferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: 'I wouldn't havetroubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin' in the nameof my son Biler--christened Robin--him as you was so good as to make aCharitable Grinder on. '

'Well, man, ' said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. 'What about him?'

'Why, Sir, ' returned Toodle, shaking his head with a face of greatanxiety and distress, 'I'm forced to say, Sir, that he's gone wrong. 

'He has gone wrong, has he?' said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind ofsatisfaction. 

'He has fell into bad company, you see, genelmen, ' pursued the father, looking wistfully at both, and evidently taking the Major into theconversation with the hope of having his sympathy. 'He has got into badways. God send he may come to again, genelmen, but he's on the wrongtrack now! You could hardly be off hearing of it somehow, Sir, ' saidToodle, again addressing Mr Dombey individually; 'and it's better Ishould out and say my boy's gone rather wrong. Polly's dreadful downabout it, genelmen, ' said Toodle with the same dejected look, andanother appeal to the Major. 

'A son of this man's whom I caused to be educated, Major, ' said MrDombey, giving him his arm. 'The usual return!'

'Take advice from plain old Joe, and never educate that sort of people, Sir, ' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, it never does! It always fails!'

The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, thequondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught, as parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with asmuch fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on quitea right plan in some undiscovered respect, when Mr Dombey angrilyrepeating 'The usual return!' led the Major away. And the Major beingheavy to hoist into Mr Dombey's carriage, elevated in mid-air, andhaving to stop and swear that he would flay the Native alive, and breakevery bone in his skin, and visit other physical torments upon him, every time he couldn't get his foot on the step, and fell back on thatdark exile, had barely time before they started to repeat hoarsely thatit would never do: that it always failed: and that if he were to educate'his own vagabond, ' he would certainly be hanged. 

Mr Dombey assented bitterly; but there was something more in hisbitterness, and in his moody way of falling back in the carriage, andlooking with knitted brows at the changing objects without, than thefailure of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders'Company. He had seen upon the man's rough cap a piece of new crape, andhe had assured himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore itfor his son. 

Sol from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his greathouse to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking beforethem, everyone set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy, and was a bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman hadwept over his pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, wakingfrom his sleep, had asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed andbrightened when she came in!

To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going onbefore there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he daredto enter, even by a common show like that, into the trial anddisappointment of a proud gentleman's secret heart! To think thatthis lost child, who was to have divided with him his riches, and hisprojects, and his power, and allied with whom he was to have shut outall the world as with a double door of gold, should have let in such aherd to insult him with their knowledge of his defeated hopes, and theirboasts of claiming community of feeling with himself, so far removed:if not of having crept into the place wherein he would have lorded it, alone!

He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by thesethoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape, and hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but awilderness of blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed atwhich the train was whirled along, mocked the swift course of the younglife that had been borne away so steadily and so inexorably to itsforedoomed end. The power that forced itself upon its iron way--itsown--defiant of all paths and roads, piercing through the heart ofevery obstacle, and dragging living creatures of all classes, ages, anddegrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant monster, Death. 

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowingamong the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out intothe meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, boomingon in darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day sobright and wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, throughthe fields, through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk, through the mould, through the clay, through therock, among objects close at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flyingfrom the traveller, and a deceitful distance ever moving slowly withinhim: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!

Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by thepark, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheepare feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating, wherethe dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream isrunning, where the village clusters, where the great cathedral rises, where the bleak moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it atits inconstant will; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, andno trace to leave behind but dust and vapour: like as in the track ofthe remorseless monster, Death!

Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and stillaway, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, andgreat works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam ofshadow an inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and stillaway, onward and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of oldroads and paths that look deserted, small, and insignificant as they areleft behind: and so they do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in the track of the indomitable monster, Death!

Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging down into theearth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance, that amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, andto tend furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the Wet wall showsits surface flying past like a fierce stream, Away once more into theday, and through the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rattling, tearing on, spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute where a crowd of faces are, that in aminute more are not; sometimes lapping water greedily, and before thespout at which it drinks' has ceased to drip upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance!

Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing onresistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death, is strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There aredark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below. There are jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through thebattered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'wantand fever hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke andcrowded gables, and distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick andmortar penning up deformity of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his carriage window, it is never in histhoughts that the monster who has brought him there has let the lightof day in on these things: not made or caused them. It was the journey'sfitting end, and might have been the end of everything; it was soruinous and dreary. '

So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had the one relentlessmonster still before him. All things looked black, and cold, anddeadly upon him, and he on them. He found a likeness to his misfortuneeverywhere. There was a remorseless triumph going on about him, and itgalled and stung him in his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took:though most of all when it divided with him the love and memory of hislost boy. 

There was a face--he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and iton him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears, and hidden soon behind two quivering hands--that often had attendedhim in fancy, on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of lastnight, timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there wassomething of doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as heonce more saw that fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike, was like reproach. It was a trouble to him to think of this face ofFlorence. 

Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feelingit awakened in him--of which he had had some old foreshadowing in oldertimes--was full-formed now, and spoke out plainly, moving him too much, and threatening to grow too strong for his composure. Because the facewas abroad, in the expression of defeat and persecution that seemed toencircle him like the air. Because it barbed the arrow of that cruel andremorseless enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its grasp adouble-handed sword. Because he knew full well, in his own breast, as hestood there, tinging the scene of transition before him with the morbidcolours of his own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful change, and promise of better things, that life hadquite as much to do with his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was the object of his hope removed instead ofher?

The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to noreflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; shewas an aggravation of his bitterness now. If his son had been his onlychild, and the same blow had fallen on him, it would have been heavy tobear; but infinitely lighter than now, when it might have fallen on her(whom he could have lost, or he believed it, without a pang), and hadnot. Her loving and innocent face rising before him, had no softeningor winning influence. He rejected the angel, and took up with thetormenting spirit crouching in his bosom. Her patience, goodness, youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms in the ashes upon which he set hisheel. He saw her image in the blight and blackness all around him, notirradiating but deepening the gloom. More than once upon this journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this journey's end, tracingfigures in the dust with his stick, the thought came into his mind, whatwas there he could interpose between himself and it?

The Major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, likeanother engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper toleer at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited MissToxes pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over thefields to hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friendsby informing him that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriageready. 

'Dombey, ' said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, 'don'tbe thoughtful. It's a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as toughas you see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far above thatkind of thing. '

The Major even in his friendly remonstrances, thus consulting thedignity and honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of theirimportance, Mr Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to agentleman possessing so much good sense and such a well-regulated mind;accordingly he made an effort to listen to the Major's stories, as theytrotted along the turnpike road; and the Major, finding both the paceand the road a great deal better adapted to his conversational powersthan the mode of travelling they had just relinquished, came out of hisentertainment. 

But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was, and as he so very oftensaid he was, administered some palatable catering to his companion'sappetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him, accidentally, and as one might say, grudgingly and against his will, how there wasgreat curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of his friendDombey. How he was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old Joe Bagstockwas a greater man than ever, there, on the strength of Dombey. How theysaid, 'Bagstock, your friend Dombey now, what is the view he takes ofsuch and such a question? Though, by the Rood, Sir, ' said the Major, with a broad stare, 'how they discovered that J. B. Ever came to knowyou, is a mystery!'

In this flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usualplethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time bysome violent assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-ringsin his dark-brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with anoutlandish impossibility of adjustment--being, of their own accord, andwithout any reference to the tailor's art, long where they ought to beshort, short where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to beloose, and loose where they ought to be tight--and to which he imparteda new grace, whenever the Major attacked him, by shrinking into themlike a shrivelled nut, or a cold monkey--in this flow of spirits andconversation, the Major continued all day: so that when evening cameon, and found them trotting through the green and leafy road nearLeamington, the Major's voice, what with talking and eating andchuckling and choking, appeared to be in the box under the rumble, or insome neighbouring hay-stack. Nor did the Major improve it at theRoyal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been ordered, and where he sooppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when heretired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and couldonly make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him. 

He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, butconducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing. At thismeal they arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take theresponsibility of ordering everything to eat and drink; and they were tohave a late breakfast together every morning, and a late dinner togetherevery day. Mr Dombey would prefer remaining in his own room, or walkingin the country by himself, on that first day of their sojourn atLeamington; but next morning he would be happy to accompany the Major tothe Pump-room, and about the town. So they parted until dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his wholesome thoughts in his own way. TheMajor, attended by the Native carrying a camp-stool, a great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down through all the public places:looking into subscription books to find out who was there, looking upold ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting J. B. Tougher thanever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he went. There neverwas a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than the Major, when inpuffing him, he puffed himself. 

It was surprising how much new conversation the Major had to let off atdinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire his socialqualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the latestnewspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion withthem, on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of suchpower and might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. MrDombey, who had been so long shut up within himself, and who hadrarely, at any time, overstepped the enchanted circle within which theoperations of Dombey and Son were conducted, began to think this animprovement on his solitary life; and in place of excusing himself foranother day, as he had thought of doing when alone, walked out with theMajor arm-in-arm. 

CHAPTER 21. New Faces

The MAJOR, more blue-faced and staring--more over-ripe, as it were, thanever--and giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse's coughs, not so much of necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of importance, walked arm-in-arm with Mr Dombey up the sunny side of the way, with hischeeks swelling over his tight stock, his legs majestically wideapart, and his great head wagging from side to side, as if he wereremonstrating within himself for being such a captivating object. Theyhad not walked many yards, before the Major encountered somebody heknew, nor many yards farther before the Major encountered somebody elsehe knew, but he merely shook his fingers at them as he passed, and ledMr Dombey on: pointing out the localities as they went, and enliveningthe walk with any current scandal suggested by them. 

In this manner the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, muchto their own satisfaction, when they beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering hercarriage by a kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by someunseen power in the rear. Although the lady was not young, she wasvery blooming in the face--quite rosy--and her dress and attitude wereperfectly juvenile. Walking by the side of the chair, and carrying hergossamer parasol with a proud and weary air, as if so great an effortmust be soon abandoned and the parasol dropped, sauntered a much youngerlady, very handsome, very haughty, very wilful, who tossed her head anddrooped her eyelids, as though, if there were anything in all the worldworth looking into, save a mirror, it certainly was not the earth orsky. 

'Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!' cried the Major, stopping asthis little cavalcade drew near. 

'My dearest Edith!' drawled the lady in the chair, 'Major Bagstock!'

The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he relinquished Mr Dombey'sarm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the chair and pressedit to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded both his glovesupon his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the chairhaving stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of aflushed page pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and inpart out-pushed his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, andwan, and thin, and his plight appeared the more forlorn from his havinginjured the shape of his hat, by butting at the carriage with hishead to urge it forward, as is sometimes done by elephants in Orientalcountries. 

'Joe Bagstock, ' said the Major to both ladies, 'is a proud and happy manfor the rest of his life. '

'You false creature! said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. 'Wheredo you come from? I can't bear you. '

'Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, Ma'am, ' said the Major, promptly, 'as a reason for being tolerated. Mr Dombey, Mrs Skewton. ' Thelady in the chair was gracious. 'Mr Dombey, Mrs Granger. ' The lady withthe parasol was faintly conscious of Mr Dombey's taking off his hat, and bowing low. 'I am delighted, Sir, ' said the Major, 'to have thisopportunity. '

The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leeredin his ugliest manner. 

'Mrs Skewton, Dombey, ' said the Major, 'makes havoc in the heart of oldJosh. '

Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it. 

'You perfidious goblin, ' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! Howlong have you been here, bad man?'

'One day, ' replied the Major. 

'And can you be a day, or even a minute, ' returned the lady, slightlysettling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showingher false teeth, set off by her false complexion, 'in the garden ofwhat's-its-name. '

'Eden, I suppose, Mama, ' interrupted the younger lady, scornfully. 

'My dear Edith, ' said the other, 'I cannot help it. I never can rememberthose frightful names--without having your whole Soul and Being inspiredby the sight of Nature; by the perfume, ' said Mrs Skewton, rustling ahandkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, 'of her artlessbreath, you creature!'

The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton's fresh enthusiasm of words, andforlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that betweenher age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have beenyouthful for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which shenever varied) was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, somefifty years before, by a then fashionable artist who had appended to hispublished sketch the name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discoverymade by the critics of the time, that it bore an exact resemblance tothat Princess as she reclined on board her galley. Mrs Skewton was abeauty then, and bucks threw wine-glasses over their heads by dozens inher honour. The beauty and the barouche had both passed away, but shestill preserved the attitude, and for this reason expressly, maintainedthe wheeled chair and the butting page: there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from walking. 

'Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?' said Mrs Skewton, settlingher diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon thereputation of some diamonds, and her family connexions. 

'My friend Dombey, Ma'am, ' returned the Major, 'may be devoted to herin secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in theuniverse--

'No one can be a stranger, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immenseinfluence. '

As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, theyounger lady glancing at him, met his eyes. 

'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing her. 

'No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough, and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama likes change. '

'Edith of course does not, ' said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly archness. 

'I have not found that there is any change in such places, ' was theanswer, delivered with supreme indifference. 

'They libel me. There is only one change, Mr Dombey, ' observed MrsSkewton, with a mincing sigh, 'for which I really care, and that Ifear I shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. Butseclusion and contemplation are my what-his-name--'

'If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourselfintelligible, ' said the younger lady. 

'My dearest Edith, ' returned Mrs Skewton, 'you know that I am whollydependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr Dombey, Nature intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cowsare my passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to aSwiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows--and china. '

This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of thecelebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was receivedwith perfect gravity by Mr Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Naturewas, no doubt, a very respectable institution. 

'What I want, ' drawled Mrs Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, 'isheart. ' It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in whichshe used the phrase. 'What I want, is frankness, confidence, lessconventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfullyartificial. '

We were, indeed. 

'In short, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'I want Nature everywhere. It would be soextremely charming. '

'Nature is inviting us away now, Mama, if you are ready, ' said theyounger lady, curling her handsome lip. At this hint, the wan page, whohad been surveying the party over the top of the chair, vanished behindit, as if the ground had swallowed him up. 

'Stop a moment, Withers!' said Mrs Skewton, as the chair began to move;calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she hadcalled in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk stockings. 'Where are you staying, abomination?' The Major wasstaying at the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey. 

'You may come and see us any evening when you are good, ' lisped MrsSkewton. 'If Mr Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers, goon!'

The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingersthat were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with carefulcarelessness, after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elderlady honoured them both with a very gracious smile and a girlish waveof her hand; the younger lady with the very slightest inclination of herhead that common courtesy allowed. 

The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patchedcolour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismalthan any want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of thedaughter with her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered suchan involuntary disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombeyto look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet wasfluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and theBeauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, expressed in allher elegant form, from head to foot, the same supreme disregard ofeverything and everybody. 

'I tell you what, Sir, ' said the Major, as they resumed their walkagain. 'If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there's not a woman in theworld whom he'd prefer for Mrs Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!'said the Major, 'she's superb!'

'Do you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey. 

'Is Joey B. A turnip, Dombey, ' said the Major, 'that he should mean themother?'

'You were complimentary to the mother, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

'An ancient flame, Sir, ' chuckled Major Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. Ihumour her. '

'She impresses me as being perfectly genteel, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Genteel, Sir, ' said the Major, stopping short, and staring in hiscompanion's face. 'The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir, is sister to thelate Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are notwealthy--they're poor, indeed--and she lives upon a small jointure; butif you come to blood, Sir!' The Major gave a flourish with his stick andwalked on again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, ifyou came to that. 

'You addressed the daughter, I observed, ' said Mr Dombey, after a shortpause, 'as Mrs Granger. '

'Edith Skewton, Sir, ' returned the Major, stopping short again, andpunching a mark in the ground with his cane, to represent her, 'married(at eighteen) Granger of Ours;' whom the Major indicated by anotherpunch. 'Granger, Sir, ' said the Major, tapping the last ideal portrait, and rolling his head emphatically, 'was Colonel of Ours; a de-vilishhandsome fellow, Sir, of forty-one. He died, Sir, in the second year ofhis marriage. ' The Major ran the representative of the deceased Grangerthrough and through the body with his walking-stick, and went on again, carrying his stick over his shoulder. 

'How long is this ago?' asked Mr Dombey, making another halt. 

'Edith Granger, Sir, ' replied the Major, shutting one eye, putting hishead on one side, passing his cane into his left hand, and smoothing hisshirt-frill with his right, 'is, at this present time, not quite thirty. And damme, Sir, ' said the Major, shouldering his stick once more, andwalking on again, 'she's a peerless woman!'

'Was there any family?' asked Mr Dombey presently. 

'Yes, Sir, ' said the Major. 'There was a boy. '

Mr Dombey's eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face. 

'Who was drowned, Sir, ' pursued the Major. 'When a child of four or fiveyears old. '

'Indeed?' said Mr Dombey, raising his head. 

'By the upsetting of a boat in which his nurse had no business to haveput him, ' said the Major. 'That's his history. Edith Granger is EdithGranger still; but if tough old Joey B. , Sir, were a little younger anda little richer, the name of that immortal paragon should be Bagstock. '

The Major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more like anover-fed Mephistopheles than ever, as he said the words. 

'Provided the lady made no objection, I suppose?' said Mr Dombey coldly. 

'By Gad, Sir, ' said the Major, 'the Bagstock breed are not accustomedto that sort of obstacle. Though it's true enough that Edith might havemarried twenty times, but for being proud, Sir, proud. '

Mr Dombey seemed, by his face, to think no worse of her for that. 

'It's a great quality after all, ' said the Major. 'By the Lord, it's ahigh quality! Dombey! You are proud yourself, and your friend, Old Joe, respects you for it, Sir. '

With this tribute to the character of his ally, which seemed to be wrungfrom him by the force of circumstances and the irresistible tendencyof their conversation, the Major closed the subject, and glided into ageneral exposition of the extent to which he had been beloved and dotedon by splendid women and brilliant creatures. 

On the next day but one, Mr Dombey and the Major encountered theHonourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter in the Pump-room; on the dayafter, they met them again very near the place where they had met themfirst. After meeting them thus, three or four times in all, it becamea point of mere civility to old acquaintances that the Major should gothere one evening. Mr Dombey had not originally intended to pay visits, but on the Major announcing this intention, he said he would have thepleasure of accompanying him. So the Major told the Native to go roundbefore dinner, and say, with his and Mr Dombey's compliments, that theywould have the honour of visiting the ladies that same evening, if theladies were alone. In answer to which message, the Native brought back avery small note with a very large quantity of scent about it, indited bythe Honourable Mrs Skewton to Major Bagstock, and briefly saying, 'Youare a shocking bear and I have a great mind not to forgive you, butif you are very good indeed, ' which was underlined, 'you may come. Compliments (in which Edith unites) to Mr Dombey. '

The Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Granger, resided, whileat Leamington, in lodgings that were fashionable enough and dear enough, but rather limited in point of space and conveniences; so that theHonourable Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window andher head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid wasquartered in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged towrithe in and out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, thewan page, slept out of the house immediately under the tiles at aneighbouring milk-shop; and the wheeled chair, which was the stone ofthat young Sisyphus, passed the night in a shed belonging to the samedairy, where new-laid eggs were produced by the poultry connected withthe establishment, who roosted on a broken donkey-cart, persuaded, toall appearance, that it grew there, and was a species of tree. 

Mr Dombey and the Major found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among the cushions of a sofa: very airily dressed; and certainly notresembling Shakespeare's Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On theirway upstairs they had heard the sound of a harp, but it had ceasedon their being announced, and Edith now stood beside it handsomer andhaughtier than ever. It was a remarkable characteristic of this lady'sbeauty that it appeared to vaunt and assert itself without her aid, andagainst her will. She knew that she was beautiful: it was impossiblethat it could be otherwise: but she seemed with her own pride to defyher very self. 

Whether she held cheap attractions that could only call forth admirationthat was worthless to her, or whether she designed to render them moreprecious to admirers by this usage of them, those to whom they wereprecious seldom paused to consider. 

'I hope, Mrs Granger, ' said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her, 'weare not the cause of your ceasing to play?'

'You! oh no!'

'Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?' said Cleopatra. 

'I left off as I began--of my own fancy. '

The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an indifferencequite removed from dulness or insensibility, for it was pointed withproud purpose: was well set off by the carelessness with which she drewher hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room. 

'Do you know, Mr Dombey, ' said her languishing mother, playing with ahand-screen, 'that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actuallyalmost differ--'

'Not quite, sometimes, Mama?' said Edith. 

'Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart, 'returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with thescreen, which Edith made no movement to meet, '--about these oldconventionalities of manner that are observed in little things? Why arewe not more natural? Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings that we have implanted in our souls, and whichare so very charming, why are we not more natural?'

Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true. 

'We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?' said Mrs Skewton. 

Mr Dombey thought it possible. 

'Devil a bit, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 'We couldn't afford it. Unless theworld was peopled with J. B. 's--tough and blunt old Joes, Ma'am, plainred herrings with hard roes, Sir--we couldn't afford it. It wouldn'tdo. '

'You naughty Infidel, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'be mute. '

'Cleopatra commands, ' returned the Major, kissing his hand, 'and AntonyBagstock obeys. '

'The man has no sensitiveness, ' said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up thehand-screen so as to shut the Major out. 'No sympathy. And what do welive for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without thatgleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth, ' said Mrs Skewton, arrangingher lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare leanarm, looking upward from the wrist, 'how could we possibly bear it? Inshort, obdurate man!' glancing at the Major, round the screen, 'I wouldhave my world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that Iwon't allow you to disturb it, do you hear?'

The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world tobe all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of allthe world; which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery wasinsupportable to her, and that if he had the boldness to address her inthat strain any more, she would positively send him home. 

Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey againaddressed himself to Edith. 

'There is not much company here, it would seem?' said Mr Dombey, in hisown portentous gentlemanly way. 

'I believe not. We see none. '

'Why really, ' observed Mrs Skewton from her couch, 'there are no peoplehere just now with whom we care to associate. '

'They have not enough heart, ' said Edith, with a smile. The verytwilight of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended. 

'My dearest Edith rallies me, you see!' said her mother, shaking herhead: which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy Bed nowand then in opposition to the diamonds. 'Wicked one!'

'You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?' said Mr Dombey. Stillto Edith. 

'Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere. '

'A beautiful country!'

'I suppose it is. Everybody says so. '

'Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith, ' interposed her mother fromher couch. 

The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her eyebrowsby a hair's-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortalworld the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr Dombey. 

'I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of theneighbourhood, ' she said. 

'You have almost reason to be, Madam, ' he replied, glancing at a varietyof landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised severalas representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewnabundantly about the room, 'if these beautiful productions are from yourhand. '

She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing. 

'Have they that interest?' said Mr Dombey. 'Are they yours?'

'Yes. '

'And you play, I already know. '

'Yes. '

'And sing?'

'Yes. '

She answered all these questions with a strange reluctance; and withthat remarkable air of opposition to herself, already noticed asbelonging to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but whollyself-possessed. Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed her face, and--so far as she could--her manner also, to him; and continued to do so, when he was silent. 

'You have many resources against weariness at least, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Whatever their efficiency may be, ' she returned, 'you know them allnow. I have no more. 

'May I hope to prove them all?' said Mr Dombey, with solemn gallantry, laying down a drawing he had held, and motioning towards the harp. 

'Oh certainly! If you desire it!'

She rose as she spoke, and crossing by her mother's couch, and directinga stately look towards her, which was instantaneous in its duration, butinclusive (if anyone had seen it) of a multitude of expressions, amongwhich that of the twilight smile, without the smile itself, overshadowedall the rest, went out of the room. 

The Major, who was quite forgiven by this time, had wheeled a littletable up to Cleopatra, and was sitting down to play picquet with her. MrDombey, not knowing the game, sat down to watch them for his edificationuntil Edith should return. 

'We are going to have some music, Mr Dombey, I hope?' said Cleopatra. 

'Mrs Granger has been kind enough to promise so, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Ah! That's very nice. Do you propose, Major?'

'No, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 'Couldn't do it. '

'You're a barbarous being, ' replied the lady, 'and my hand's destroyed. You are fond of music, Mr Dombey?'

'Eminently so, ' was Mr Dombey's answer. 

'Yes. It's very nice, ' said Cleopatra, looking at her cards. 'Somuch heart in it--undeveloped recollections of a previous state ofexistence'--and all that--which is so truly charming. Do you know, 'simpered Cleopatra, reversing the knave of clubs, who had come into hergame with his heels uppermost, 'that if anything could tempt me to puta period to my life, it would be curiosity to find out what it's allabout, and what it means; there are so many provoking mysteries, really, that are hidden from us. Major, you to play. '

The Major played; and Mr Dombey, looking on for his instruction, would soon have been in a state of dire confusion, but that he gave noattention to the game whatever, and sat wondering instead when Edithwould come back. 

She came at last, and sat down to her harp, and Mr Dombey rose and stoodbeside her, listening. He had little taste for music, and no knowledgeof the strain she played, but he saw her bending over it, and perhapshe heard among the sounding strings some distant music of his own, thattamed the monster of the iron road, and made it less inexorable. 

Cleopatra had a sharp eye, verily, at picquet. It glistened like abird's, and did not fix itself upon the game, but pierced the room fromend to end, and gleamed on harp, performer, listener, everything. 

When the haughty beauty had concluded, she arose, and receiving MrDombey's thanks and compliments in exactly the same manner as before, went with scarcely any pause to the piano, and began there. 

Edith Granger, any song but that! Edith Granger, you are very handsome, and your touch upon the keys is brilliant, and your voice is deep andrich; but not the air that his neglected daughter sang to his dead son!

Alas, he knows it not; and if he did, what air of hers would stir him, rigid man! Sleep, lonely Florence, sleep! Peace in thy dreams, althoughthe night has turned dark, and the clouds are gathering, and threaten todischarge themselves in hail!

CHAPTER 22. A Trifle of Management by Mr Carker the Manager

Mr Carker the Manager sat at his desk, smooth and soft as usual, reading those letters which were reserved for him to open, backingthem occasionally with such memoranda and references as their businesspurport required, and parcelling them out into little heaps fordistribution through the several departments of the House. The post hadcome in heavy that morning, and Mr Carker the Manager had a good deal todo. 

The general action of a man so engaged--pausing to look over a bundleof papers in his hand, dealing them round in various portions, takingup another bundle and examining its contents with knitted brows andpursed-out lips--dealing, and sorting, and pondering by turns--wouldeasily suggest some whimsical resemblance to a player at cards. The faceof Mr Carker the Manager was in good keeping with such a fancy. It wasthe face of a man who studied his play, warily: who made himself masterof all the strong and weak points of the game: who registered the cardsin his mind as they fell about him, knew exactly what was on them, whatthey missed, and what they made: who was crafty to find out what theother players held, and who never betrayed his own hand. 

The letters were in various languages, but Mr Carker the Manager readthem all. If there had been anything in the offices of Dombey and Sonthat he could read, there would have been a card wanting in the pack. He read almost at a glance, and made combinations of one letter withanother and one business with another as he went on, adding new matterto the heaps--much as a man would know the cards at sight, and work outtheir combinations in his mind after they were turned. Something toodeep for a partner, and much too deep for an adversary, Mr Carkerthe Manager sat in the rays of the sun that came down slanting on himthrough the skylight, playing his game alone. 

And although it is not among the instincts wild or domestic of the cattribe to play at cards, feline from sole to crown was Mr Carker theManager, as he basked in the strip of summer-light and warmth that shoneupon his table and the ground as if they were a crooked dial-plate, and himself the only figure on it. With hair and whiskers deficient incolour at all times, but feebler than common in the rich sunshine, and more like the coat of a sandy tortoise-shell cat; with long nails, nicely pared and sharpened; with a natural antipathy to any speck ofdirt, which made him pause sometimes and watch the falling motes ofdust, and rub them off his smooth white hand or glossy linen: Mr Carkerthe Manager, sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot, watchful ofeye, oily of tongue, cruel of heart, nice of habit, sat with a daintysteadfastness and patience at his work, as if he were waiting at amouse's hole. 

At length the letters were disposed of, excepting one which hereserved for a particular audience. Having locked the more confidentialcorrespondence in a drawer, Mr Carker the Manager rang his bell. 

'Why do you answer it?' was his reception of his brother. 

'The messenger is out, and I am the next, ' was the submissive reply. 

'You are the next?' muttered the Manager. 'Yes! Creditable to me!There!'

Pointing to the heaps of opened letters, he turned disdainfully away, in his elbow-chair, and broke the seal of that one which he held in hishand. 

'I am sorry to trouble you, James, ' said the brother, gathering them up, 'but--'

'Oh! you have something to say. I knew that. Well?'

Mr Carker the Manager did not raise his eyes or turn them on hisbrother, but kept them on his letter, though without opening it. 

'Well?' he repeated sharply. 

'I am uneasy about Harriet. '

'Harriet who? what Harriet? I know nobody of that name. '

'She is not well, and has changed very much of late. '

'She changed very much, a great many years ago, ' replied the Manager;'and that is all I have to say. 

'I think if you would hear me--

'Why should I hear you, Brother John?' returned the Manager, laying asarcastic emphasis on those two words, and throwing up his head, but notlifting his eyes. 'I tell you, Harriet Carker made her choice many yearsago between her two brothers. She may repent it, but she must abide byit. '

'Don't mistake me. I do not say she does repent it. It would be blackingratitude in me to hint at such a thing, ' returned the other. 'Thoughbelieve me, James, I am as sorry for her sacrifice as you. '

'As I?' exclaimed the Manager. 'As I?'

'As sorry for her choice--for what you call her choice--as you are angryat it, ' said the Junior. 

'Angry?' repeated the other, with a wide show of his teeth. 

'Displeased. Whatever word you like best. You know my meaning. There isno offence in my intention. '

'There is offence in everything you do, ' replied his brother, glancingat him with a sudden scowl, which in a moment gave place to a widersmile than the last. 'Carry those papers away, if you please. I am busy. 

His politeness was so much more cutting than his wrath, that the Juniorwent to the door. But stopping at it, and looking round, he said:

'When Harriet tried in vain to plead for me with you, on your first justindignation, and my first disgrace; and when she left you, James, to follow my broken fortunes, and devote herself, in her mistakenaffection, to a ruined brother, because without her he had no one, andwas lost; she was young and pretty. I think if you could see hernow--if you would go and see her--she would move your admiration andcompassion. '

The Manager inclined his head, and showed his teeth, as who should say, in answer to some careless small-talk, 'Dear me! Is that the case?' butsaid never a word. 

'We thought in those days: you and I both: that she would marry young, and lead a happy and light-hearted life, ' pursued the other. 'Oh if youknew how cheerfully she cast those hopes away; how cheerfully she hasgone forward on the path she took, and never once looked back; you nevercould say again that her name was strange in your ears. Never!'

Again the Manager inclined his head and showed his teeth, and seemed tosay, 'Remarkable indeed! You quite surprise me!' And again he utterednever a word. 

'May I go on?' said John Carker, mildly. 

'On your way?' replied his smiling brother. 'If you will have thegoodness. 

John Carker, with a sigh, was passing slowly out at the door, when hisbrother's voice detained him for a moment on the threshold. 

'If she has gone, and goes, her own way cheerfully, ' he said, throwingthe still unfolded letter on his desk, and putting his hands firmly inhis pockets, 'you may tell her that I go as cheerfully on mine. If shehas never once looked back, you may tell her that I have, sometimes, torecall her taking part with you, and that my resolution is no easier towear away;' he smiled very sweetly here; 'than marble. '

'I tell her nothing of you. We never speak about you. Once a year, onyour birthday, Harriet says always, "Let us remember James by name, andwish him happy, " but we say no more. '

'Tell it then, if you please, ' returned the other, 'to yourself. Youcan't repeat it too often, as a lesson to you to avoid the subject inspeaking to me. I know no Harriet Carker. There is no such person. Youmay have a sister; make much of her. I have none. '

Mr Carker the Manager took up the letter again, and waved it with asmile of mock courtesy towards the door. Unfolding it as his brotherwithdrew, and looking darkly after him as he left the room, he oncemore turned round in his elbow-chair, and applied himself to a diligentperusal of its contents. 

It was in the writing of his great chief, Mr Dombey, and dated fromLeamington. Though he was a quick reader of all other letters, Mr Carkerread this slowly; weighing the words as he went, and bringing everytooth in his head to bear upon them. When he had read it through once, he turned it over again, and picked out these passages. 'I find myselfbenefited by the change, and am not yet inclined to name any time for myreturn. ' 'I wish, Carker, you would arrange to come down once and see mehere, and let me know how things are going on, in person. ' 'I omittedto speak to you about young Gay. If not gone per Son and Heir, or if Sonand Heir still lying in the Docks, appoint some other young man andkeep him in the City for the present. I am not decided. ' 'Now that'sunfortunate!' said Mr Carker the Manager, expanding his mouth, as if itwere made of India-rubber: 'for he's far away. '

Still that passage, which was in a postscript, attracted his attentionand his teeth, once more. 

'I think, ' he said, 'my good friend Captain Cuttle mentioned somethingabout being towed along in the wake of that day. What a pity he's so faraway!'

He refolded the letter, and was sitting trifling with it, standing itlong-wise and broad-wise on his table, and turning it over and overon all sides--doing pretty much the same thing, perhaps, by itscontents--when Mr Perch the messenger knocked softly at the door, andcoming in on tiptoe, bending his body at every step as if it were thedelight of his life to bow, laid some papers on the table. 

'Would you please to be engaged, Sir?' asked Mr Perch, rubbing hishands, and deferentially putting his head on one side, like a man whofelt he had no business to hold it up in such a presence, and would keepit as much out of the way as possible. 

'Who wants me?'

'Why, Sir, ' said Mr Perch, in a soft voice, 'really nobody, Sir, tospeak of at present. Mr Gills the Ship's Instrument-maker, Sir, haslooked in, about a little matter of payment, he says: but I mentioned tohim, Sir, that you was engaged several deep; several deep. '

Mr Perch coughed once behind his hand, and waited for further orders. 

'Anybody else?'

'Well, Sir, ' said Mr Perch, 'I wouldn't of my own self take the libertyof mentioning, Sir, that there was anybody else; but that same young ladthat was here yesterday, Sir, and last week, has been hanging about theplace; and it looks, Sir, ' added Mr Perch, stopping to shut the door, 'dreadful unbusiness-like to see him whistling to the sparrows down thecourt, and making of 'em answer him. '

'You said he wanted something to do, didn't you, Perch?' asked MrCarker, leaning back in his chair and looking at that officer. 

'Why, Sir, ' said Mr Perch, coughing behind his hand again, 'hisexpression certainly were that he was in wants of a sitiwation, and thathe considered something might be done for him about the Docks, beingused to fishing with a rod and line: but--' Mr Perch shook his head verydubiously indeed. 

'What does he say when he comes?' asked Mr Carker. 

'Indeed, Sir, ' said Mr Perch, coughing another cough behind his hand, which was always his resource as an expression of humility when nothingelse occurred to him, 'his observation generally air that he wouldhumbly wish to see one of the gentlemen, and that he wants to earn aliving. But you see, Sir, ' added Perch, dropping his voice to a whisper, and turning, in the inviolable nature of his confidence, to give thedoor a thrust with his hand and knee, as if that would shut it any morewhen it was shut already, 'it's hardly to be bore, Sir, that a commonlad like that should come a prowling here, and saying that his mothernursed our House's young gentleman, and that he hopes our House willgive him a chance on that account. I am sure, Sir, ' observed Mr Perch, 'that although Mrs Perch was at that time nursing as thriving a littlegirl, Sir, as we've ever took the liberty of adding to our family, I wouldn't have made so free as drop a hint of her being capable ofimparting nourishment, not if it was never so!'

Mr Carker grinned at him like a shark, but in an absent, thoughtfulmanner. 

'Whether, ' submitted Mr Perch, after a short silence, and another cough, 'it mightn't be best for me to tell him, that if he was seen here anymore he would be given into custody; and to keep to it! With respect tobodily fear, ' said Mr Perch, 'I'm so timid, myself, by nature, Sir, and my nerves is so unstrung by Mrs Perch's state, that I could take myaffidavit easy. '

'Let me see this fellow, Perch, ' said Mr Carker. 'Bring him in!'

'Yes, Sir. Begging your pardon, Sir, ' said Mr Perch, hesitating at thedoor, 'he's rough, Sir, in appearance. '

'Never mind. If he's there, bring him in. I'll see Mr Gills directly. Ask him to wait. '

Mr Perch bowed; and shutting the door, as precisely and carefully as ifhe were not coming back for a week, went on his quest among the sparrowsin the court. While he was gone, Mr Carker assumed his favouriteattitude before the fire-place, and stood looking at the door;presenting, with his under lip tucked into the smile that showed hiswhole row of upper teeth, a singularly crouching apace. 

The messenger was not long in returning, followed by a pair ofheavy boots that came bumping along the passage like boxes. With theunceremonious words 'Come along with you!'--a very unusual form ofintroduction from his lips--Mr Perch then ushered into the presence astrong-built lad of fifteen, with a round red face, a round sleek head, round black eyes, round limbs, and round body, who, to carry out thegeneral rotundity of his appearance, had a round hat in his hand, without a particle of brim to it. 

Obedient to a nod from Mr Carker, Perch had no sooner confronted thevisitor with that gentleman than he withdrew. The moment they were faceto face alone, Mr Carker, without a word of preparation, took him by thethroat, and shook him until his head seemed loose upon his shoulders. 

The boy, who in the midst of his astonishment could not help staringwildly at the gentleman with so many white teeth who was choking him, and at the office walls, as though determined, if he were choked, thathis last look should be at the mysteries for his intrusion into which hewas paying such a severe penalty, at last contrived to utter--

'Come, Sir! You let me alone, will you!'

'Let you alone!' said Mr Carker. 'What! I have got you, have I?' Therewas no doubt of that, and tightly too. 'You dog, ' said Mr Carker, through his set jaws, 'I'll strangle you!'

Biler whimpered, would he though? oh no he wouldn't--and what was hedoing of--and why didn't he strangle some--body of his own size and nothim: but Biler was quelled by the extraordinary nature of his reception, and, as his head became stationary, and he looked the gentleman in theface, or rather in the teeth, and saw him snarling at him, he so farforgot his manhood as to cry. 

'I haven't done nothing to you, Sir, ' said Biler, otherwise Rob, otherwise Grinder, and always Toodle. 

'You young scoundrel!' replied Mr Carker, slowly releasing him, andmoving back a step into his favourite position. 'What do you mean bydaring to come here?'

'I didn't mean no harm, Sir, ' whimpered Rob, putting one hand to histhroat, and the knuckles of the other to his eyes. 'I'll never comeagain, Sir. I only wanted work. '

'Work, young Cain that you are!' repeated Mr Carker, eyeing himnarrowly. 'Ain't you the idlest vagabond in London?'

The impeachment, while it much affected Mr Toodle Junior, attached tohis character so justly, that he could not say a word in denial. He stood looking at the gentleman, therefore, with a frightened, self-convicted, and remorseful air. As to his looking at him, it may beobserved that he was fascinated by Mr Carker, and never took his roundeyes off him for an instant. 

'Ain't you a thief?' said Mr Carker, with his hands behind him in hispockets. 

'No, sir, ' pleaded Rob. 

'You are!' said Mr Carker. 

'I ain't indeed, Sir, ' whimpered Rob. 'I never did such a thing asthieve, Sir, if you'll believe me. I know I've been a going wrong, Sir, ever since I took to bird-catching' and walking-matching. I'm sure acove might think, ' said Mr Toodle Junior, with a burst of penitence, 'that singing birds was innocent company, but nobody knows what harm isin them little creeturs and what they brings you down to. '

They seemed to have brought him down to a velveteen jacket and trousersvery much the worse for wear, a particularly small red waistcoat like agorget, an interval of blue check, and the hat before mentioned. 

'I ain't been home twenty times since them birds got their will of me, 'said Rob, 'and that's ten months. How can I go home when everybody'smiserable to see me! I wonder, ' said Biler, blubbering outright, andsmearing his eyes with his coat-cuff, 'that I haven't been and drowndedmyself over and over again. '

All of which, including his expression of surprise at not havingachieved this last scarce performance, the boy said, just as if theteeth of Mr Carker drew it out of him, and he had no power of concealinganything with that battery of attraction in full play. 

'You're a nice young gentleman!' said Mr Carker, shaking his head athim. 'There's hemp-seed sown for you, my fine fellow!'

'I'm sure, Sir, ' returned the wretched Biler, blubbering again, andagain having recourse to his coat-cuff: 'I shouldn't care, sometimes, if it was growed too. My misfortunes all began in wagging, Sir; but whatcould I do, exceptin' wag?'

'Excepting what?' said Mr Carker. 

'Wag, Sir. Wagging from school. '

'Do you mean pretending to go there, and not going?' said Mr Carker. 

'Yes, Sir, that's wagging, Sir, ' returned the quondam Grinder, muchaffected. 'I was chivied through the streets, Sir, when I went there, and pounded when I got there. So I wagged, and hid myself, and thatbegan it. '

'And you mean to tell me, ' said Mr Carker, taking him by the throatagain, holding him out at arm's-length, and surveying him in silence forsome moments, 'that you want a place, do you?'

'I should be thankful to be tried, Sir, ' returned Toodle Junior, faintly. 

Mr Carker the Manager pushed him backward into a corner--the boysubmitting quietly, hardly venturing to breathe, and never once removinghis eyes from his face--and rang the bell. 

'Tell Mr Gills to come here. '

Mr Perch was too deferential to express surprise or recognition of thefigure in the corner: and Uncle Sol appeared immediately. 

'Mr Gills!' said Carker, with a smile, 'sit down. How do you do? Youcontinue to enjoy your health, I hope?'

'Thank you, Sir, ' returned Uncle Sol, taking out his pocket-book, andhanding over some notes as he spoke. 'Nothing ails me in body but oldage. Twenty-five, Sir. '

'You are as punctual and exact, Mr Gills, ' replied the smiling Manager, taking a paper from one of his many drawers, and making an endorsementon it, while Uncle Sol looked over him, 'as one of your ownchronometers. Quite right. '

'The Son and Heir has not been spoken, I find by the list, Sir, ' saidUncle Sol, with a slight addition to the usual tremor in his voice. 

'The Son and Heir has not been spoken, ' returned Carker. 'There seemsto have been tempestuous weather, Mr Gills, and she has probably beendriven out of her course. '

'She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' said old Sol. 

'She is safe, I trust in Heaven!' assented Mr Carker in that voicelessmanner of his: which made the observant young Toodle tremble again. 'MrGills, ' he added aloud, throwing himself back in his chair, 'you mustmiss your nephew very much?'

Uncle Sol, standing by him, shook his head and heaved a deep sigh. 

'Mr Gills, ' said Carker, with his soft hand playing round his mouth, andlooking up into the Instrument-maker's face, 'it would be company to youto have a young fellow in your shop just now, and it would be obligingme if you would give one house-room for the present. No, to be sure, 'he added quickly, in anticipation of what the old man was going to say, 'there's not much business doing there, I know; but you can make himclean the place out, polish up the instruments; drudge, Mr Gills. That'sthe lad!'

Sol Gills pulled down his spectacles from his forehead to his eyes, and looked at Toodle Junior standing upright in the corner: his headpresenting the appearance (which it always did) of having been newlydrawn out of a bucket of cold water; his small waistcoat rising andfalling quickly in the play of his emotions; and his eyes intently fixedon Mr Carker, without the least reference to his proposed master. 

'Will you give him house-room, Mr Gills?' said the Manager. 

Old Sol, without being quite enthusiastic on the subject, replied thathe was glad of any opportunity, however slight, to oblige Mr Carker, whose wish on such a point was a command: and that the wooden Midshipmanwould consider himself happy to receive in his berth any visitor of MrCarker's selecting. 

Mr Carker bared himself to the tops and bottoms of his gums: makingthe watchful Toodle Junior tremble more and more: and acknowledged theInstrument-maker's politeness in his most affable manner. 

'I'll dispose of him so, then, Mr Gills, ' he answered, rising, andshaking the old man by the hand, 'until I make up my mind what to dowith him, and what he deserves. As I consider myself responsible forhim, Mr Gills, ' here he smiled a wide smile at Rob, who shook beforeit: 'I shall be glad if you'll look sharply after him, and report hisbehaviour to me. I'll ask a question or two of his parents as I ridehome this afternoon--respectable people--to confirm some particulars inhis own account of himself; and that done, Mr Gills, I'll send him roundto you to-morrow morning. Goodbye!'

His smile at parting was so full of teeth, that it confused old Sol, andmade him vaguely uncomfortable. He went home, thinking of raging seas, foundering ships, drowning men, an ancient bottle of Madeira neverbrought to light, and other dismal matters. 

'Now, boy!' said Mr Carker, putting his hand on young Toodle's shoulder, and bringing him out into the middle of the room. 'You have heard me?'

Rob said, 'Yes, Sir. '

'Perhaps you understand, ' pursued his patron, 'that if you ever deceiveor play tricks with me, you had better have drowned yourself, indeed, once for all, before you came here?'

There was nothing in any branch of mental acquisition that Rob seemed tounderstand better than that. 

'If you have lied to me, ' said Mr Carker, 'in anything, never come in myway again. If not, you may let me find you waiting for me somewhere nearyour mother's house this afternoon. I shall leave this at five o'clock, and ride there on horseback. Now, give me the address. '

Rob repeated it slowly, as Mr Carker wrote it down. Rob even spelt itover a second time, letter by letter, as if he thought that the omissionof a dot or scratch would lead to his destruction. Mr Carker then handedhim out of the room; and Rob, keeping his round eyes fixed upon hispatron to the last, vanished for the time being. 

Mr Carker the Manager did a great deal of business in the course of theday, and stowed his teeth upon a great many people. In the office, inthe court, in the street, and on 'Change, they glistened and bristledto a terrible extent. Five o'clock arriving, and with it Mr Carker's bayhorse, they got on horseback, and went gleaming up Cheapside. 

As no one can easily ride fast, even if inclined to do so, through thepress and throng of the City at that hour, and as Mr Carker was notinclined, he went leisurely along, picking his way among the carts andcarriages, avoiding whenever he could the wetter and more dirty placesin the over-watered road, and taking infinite pains to keep himself andhis steed clean. Glancing at the passersby while he was thus ambling onhis way, he suddenly encountered the round eyes of the sleek-headed Robintently fixed upon his face as if they had never been taken off, whilethe boy himself, with a pocket-handkerchief twisted up like a speckledeel and girded round his waist, made a very conspicuous demonstrationof being prepared to attend upon him, at whatever pace he might thinkproper to go. 

This attention, however flattering, being one of an unusual kind, and attracting some notice from the other passengers, Mr Carker tookadvantage of a clearer thoroughfare and a cleaner road, and broke into atrot. Rob immediately did the same. Mr Carker presently tried a canter;Rob Was still in attendance. Then a short gallop; it Was all one to theboy. Whenever Mr Carker turned his eyes to that side of the road, hestill saw Toodle Junior holding his course, apparently without distress, and working himself along by the elbows after the most approved mannerof professional gentlemen who get over the ground for wagers. 

Ridiculous as this attendance was, it was a sign of an influenceestablished over the boy, and therefore Mr Carker, affecting not tonotice it, rode away into the neighbourhood of Mr Toodle's house. Onhis slackening his pace here, Rob appeared before him to point out theturnings; and when he called to a man at a neighbouring gateway tohold his horse, pending his visit to the buildings that had succeededStaggs's Gardens, Rob dutifully held the stirrup, while the Managerdismounted. 

'Now, Sir, ' said Mr Carker, taking him by the shoulder, 'come along!'

The prodigal son was evidently nervous of visiting the parental abode;but Mr Carker pushing him on before, he had nothing for it but to openthe right door, and suffer himself to be walked into the midst of hisbrothers and sisters, mustered in overwhelming force round the familytea-table. At sight of the prodigal in the grasp of a stranger, these tender relations united in a general howl, which smote upon theprodigal's breast so sharply when he saw his mother stand up among them, pale and trembling, with the baby in her arms, that he lent his ownvoice to the chorus. 

Nothing doubting now that the stranger, if not Mr Ketch' in person, wasone of that company, the whole of the young family wailed the louder, while its more infantine members, unable to control the transports ofemotion appertaining to their time of life, threw themselves on theirbacks like young birds when terrified by a hawk, and kicked violently. At length, poor Polly making herself audible, said, with quivering lips, 'Oh Rob, my poor boy, what have you done at last!'

'Nothing, mother, ' cried Rob, in a piteous voice, 'ask the gentleman!'

'Don't be alarmed, ' said Mr Carker, 'I want to do him good. '

At this announcement, Polly, who had not cried yet, began to do so. Theelder Toodles, who appeared to have been meditating a rescue, unclenchedtheir fists. The younger Toodles clustered round their mother's gown, and peeped from under their own chubby arms at their desperado brotherand his unknown friend. Everybody blessed the gentleman with thebeautiful teeth, who wanted to do good. 

'This fellow, ' said Mr Carker to Polly, giving him a gentle shake, 'isyour son, eh, Ma'am?'

'Yes, Sir, ' sobbed Polly, with a curtsey; 'yes, Sir. '

'A bad son, I am afraid?' said Mr Carker. 

'Never a bad son to me, Sir, ' returned Polly. 

'To whom then?' demanded Mr Carker. 

'He has been a little wild, Sir, ' returned Polly, checking the baby, whowas making convulsive efforts with his arms and legs to launch himselfon Biler, through the ambient air, 'and has gone with wrong companions:but I hope he has seen the misery of that, Sir, and will do well again. '

Mr Carker looked at Polly, and the clean room, and the clean children, and the simple Toodle face, combined of father and mother, that wasreflected and repeated everywhere about him--and seemed to have achievedthe real purpose of his visit. 

'Your husband, I take it, is not at home?' he said. 

'No, Sir, ' replied Polly. 'He's down the line at present. '

The prodigal Rob seemed very much relieved to hear it: though still inthe absorption of all his faculties in his patron, he hardly took hiseyes from Mr Carker's face, unless for a moment at a time to steal asorrowful glance at his mother. 

'Then, ' said Mr Carker, 'I'll tell you how I have stumbled on this boyof yours, and who I am, and what I am going to do for him. '

This Mr Carker did, in his own way; saying that he at first intended tohave accumulated nameless terrors on his presumptuous head, forcoming to the whereabout of Dombey and Son. That he had relented, inconsideration of his youth, his professed contrition, and his friends. That he was afraid he took a rash step in doing anything for the boy, and one that might expose him to the censure of the prudent; but thathe did it of himself and for himself, and risked the consequencessingle-handed; and that his mother's past connexion with Mr Dombey'sfamily had nothing to do with it, and that Mr Dombey had nothing to dowith it, but that he, Mr Carker, was the be-all and the end-all of thisbusiness. Taking great credit to himself for his goodness, andreceiving no less from all the family then present, Mr Carker signified, indirectly but still pretty plainly, that Rob's implicit fidelity, attachment, and devotion, were for evermore his due, and the leasthomage he could receive. And with this great truth Rob himself was soimpressed, that, standing gazing on his patron with tears rolling downhis cheeks, he nodded his shiny head until it seemed almost as loose asit had done under the same patron's hands that morning. 

Polly, who had passed Heaven knows how many sleepless nights on accountof this her dissipated firstborn, and had not seen him for weeks andweeks, could have almost kneeled to Mr Carker the Manager, as to a GoodSpirit--in spite of his teeth. But Mr Carker rising to depart, she onlythanked him with her mother's prayers and blessings; thanks so rich whenpaid out of the Heart's mint, especially for any service Mr Carker hadrendered, that he might have given back a large amount of change, andyet been overpaid. 

As that gentleman made his way among the crowding children to the door, Rob retreated on his mother, and took her and the baby in the samerepentant hug. 

'I'll try hard, dear mother, now. Upon my soul I will!' said Rob. 

'Oh do, my dear boy! I am sure you will, for our sakes and your own!'cried Polly, kissing him. 'But you're coming back to speak to me, whenyou have seen the gentleman away?'

'I don't know, mother. ' Rob hesitated, and looked down. 'Father--when'she coming home?'

'Not till two o'clock to-morrow morning. '

'I'll come back, mother dear!' cried Rob. And passing through theshrill cry of his brothers and sisters in reception of this promise, hefollowed Mr Carker out. 

'What!' said Mr Carker, who had heard this. 'You have a bad father, haveyou?'

'No, Sir!' returned Rob, amazed. 'There ain't a better nor a kinderfather going, than mine is. '

'Why don't you want to see him then?' inquired his patron. 

'There's such a difference between a father and a mother, Sir, ' saidRob, after faltering for a moment. 'He couldn't hardly believe yet thatI was doing to do better--though I know he'd try to but a mother--shealways believes what's, ' good, Sir; at least I know my mother does, Godbless her!'

Mr Carker's mouth expanded, but he said no more until he was mountedon his horse, and had dismissed the man who held it, when, looking downfrom the saddle steadily into the attentive and watchful face of theboy, he said:

'You'll come to me tomorrow morning, and you shall be shown where thatold gentleman lives; that old gentleman who was with me this morning;where you are going, as you heard me say. '

'Yes, Sir, ' returned Rob. 

'I have a great interest in that old gentleman, and in serving him, youserve me, boy, do you understand? Well, ' he added, interrupting him, forhe saw his round face brighten when he was told that: 'I see you do. Iwant to know all about that old gentleman, and how he goes on from dayto day--for I am anxious to be of service to him--and especially whocomes there to see him. Do you understand?'

Rob nodded his steadfast face, and said 'Yes, Sir, ' again. 

'I should like to know that he has friends who are attentive to him, and that they don't desert him--for he lives very much alone now, poorfellow; but that they are fond of him, and of his nephew who has goneabroad. There is a very young lady who may perhaps come to see him. Iwant particularly to know all about her. '

'I'll take care, Sir, ' said the boy. 

'And take care, ' returned his patron, bending forward to advance hisgrinning face closer to the boy's, and pat him on the shoulder with thehandle of his whip: 'take care you talk about affairs of mine to nobodybut me. '

'To nobody in the world, Sir, ' replied Rob, shaking his head. 

'Neither there, ' said Mr Carker, pointing to the place they had justleft, 'nor anywhere else. I'll try how true and grateful you can be. I'll prove you!' Making this, by his display of teeth and by the actionof his head, as much a threat as a promise, he turned from Rob's eyes, which were nailed upon him as if he had won the boy by a charm, bodyand soul, and rode away. But again becoming conscious, after trotting ashort distance, that his devoted henchman, girt as before, was yieldinghim the same attendance, to the great amusement of sundry spectators, he reined up, and ordered him off. To ensure his obedience, he turnedin the saddle and watched him as he retired. It was curious to see thateven then Rob could not keep his eyes wholly averted from his patron'sface, but, constantly turning and turning again to look after him'involved himself in a tempest of buffetings and jostlings from the otherpassengers in the street: of which, in the pursuit of the one paramountidea, he was perfectly heedless. 

Mr Carker the Manager rode on at a foot-pace, with the easy air of onewho had performed all the business of the day in a satisfactory manner, and got it comfortably off his mind. Complacent and affable as man couldbe, Mr Carker picked his way along the streets and hummed a soft tune ashe went He seemed to purr, he was so glad. 

And in some sort, Mr Carker, in his fancy, basked upon a hearth too. Coiled up snugly at certain feet, he was ready for a spring, Or for atear, or for a scratch, or for a velvet touch, as the humour took himand occasion served. Was there any bird in a cage, that came in for ashare of his regards?

'A very young lady!' thought Mr Carker the Manager, through his song. 'Ay! when I saw her last, she was a little child. With dark eyes andhair, I recollect, and a good face; a very good face! I daresay she'spretty. '

More affable and pleasant yet, and humming his song until his many teethvibrated to it, Mr Carker picked his way along, and turned at last intothe shady street where Mr Dombey's house stood. He had been so busy, winding webs round good faces, and obscuring them with meshes, that hehardly thought of being at this point of his ride, until, glancing downthe cold perspective of tall houses, he reined in his horse quicklywithin a few yards of the door. But to explain why Mr Carker reined inhis horse quickly, and what he looked at in no small surprise, a fewdigressive words are necessary. 

Mr Toots, emancipated from the Blimber thraldom and coming into thepossession of a certain portion of his worldly wealth, 'which, ' as he hadbeen wont, during his last half-year's probation, to communicate to MrFeeder every evening as a new discovery, 'the executors couldn't keephim out of' had applied himself with great diligence, to the scienceof Life. Fired with a noble emulation to pursue a brilliant anddistinguished career, Mr Toots had furnished a choice set of apartments;had established among them a sporting bower, embellished with theportraits of winning horses, in which he took no particle of interest;and a divan, which made him poorly. In this delicious abode, Mr Tootsdevoted himself to the cultivation of those gentle arts which refineand humanise existence, his chief instructor in which was an interestingcharacter called the Game Chicken, who was always to be heard of at thebar of the Black Badger, wore a shaggy white great-coat in the warmestweather, and knocked Mr Toots about the head three times a week, for thesmall consideration of ten and six per visit. 

The Game Chicken, who was quite the Apollo of Mr Toots's Pantheon, hadintroduced to him a marker who taught billiards, a Life Guard who taughtfencing, a jobmaster who taught riding, a Cornish gentleman who wasup to anything in the athletic line, and two or three other friendsconnected no less intimately with the fine arts. Under whose auspicesMr Toots could hardly fail to improve apace, and under whose tuition hewent to work. 

But however it came about, it came to pass, even while these gentlemenhad the gloss of novelty upon them, that Mr Toots felt, he didn't knowhow, unsettled and uneasy. There were husks in his corn, that even GameChickens couldn't peck up; gloomy giants in his leisure, that even GameChickens couldn't knock down. Nothing seemed to do Mr Toots so much goodas incessantly leaving cards at Mr Dombey's door. No taxgatherer in theBritish Dominions--that wide-spread territory on which the sun neversets, and where the tax-gatherer never goes to bed--was more regular andpersevering in his calls than Mr Toots. 

Mr Toots never went upstairs; and always performed the same ceremonies, richly dressed for the purpose, at the hall door. 

'Oh! Good morning!' would be Mr Toots's first remark to the servant. 'For Mr Dombey, ' would be Mr Toots's next remark, as he handed in acard. 'For Miss Dombey, ' would be his next, as he handed in another. 

Mr Toots would then turn round as if to go away; but the man knew him bythis time, and knew he wouldn't. 

'Oh, I beg your pardon, ' Mr Toots would say, as if a thought hadsuddenly descended on him. 'Is the young woman at home?'

The man would rather think she was, but wouldn't quite know. Then hewould ring a bell that rang upstairs, and would look up the staircase, and would say, yes, she was at home, and was coming down. Then MissNipper would appear, and the man would retire. 

'Oh! How de do?' Mr Toots would say, with a chuckle and a blush. 

Susan would thank him, and say she was very well. 

'How's Diogenes going on?' would be Mr Toots's second interrogation. 

Very well indeed. Miss Florence was fonder and fonder of him everyday. Mr Toots was sure to hail this with a burst of chuckles, like theopening of a bottle of some effervescent beverage. 

'Miss Florence is quite well, Sir, ' Susan would add. 

Oh, it's of no consequence, thank'ee, ' was the invariable reply of MrToots; and when he had said so, he always went away very fast. 

Now it is certain that Mr Toots had a filmy something in his mind, whichled him to conclude that if he could aspire successfully in the fulnessof time, to the hand of Florence, he would be fortunate and blest. Itis certain that Mr Toots, by some remote and roundabout road, had gotto that point, and that there he made a stand. His heart was wounded; hewas touched; he was in love. He had made a desperate attempt, onenight, and had sat up all night for the purpose, to write an acrosticon Florence, which affected him to tears in the conception. But henever proceeded in the execution further than the words 'For when Igaze, '--the flow of imagination in which he had previously written downthe initial letters of the other seven lines, deserting him at thatpoint. 

Beyond devising that very artful and politic measure of leaving acard for Mr Dombey daily, the brain of Mr Toots had not worked muchin reference to the subject that held his feelings prisoner. But deepconsideration at length assured Mr Toots that an important step to gain, was, the conciliation of Miss Susan Nipper, preparatory to giving hersome inkling of his state of mind. 

A little light and playful gallantry towards this lady seemed the meansto employ in that early chapter of the history, for winning her tohis interests. Not being able quite to make up his mind about it, he consulted the Chicken--without taking that gentleman into hisconfidence; merely informing him that a friend in Yorkshire had writtento him (Mr Toots) for his opinion on such a question. The Chickenreplying that his opinion always was, 'Go in and win, ' and further, 'When your man's before you and your work cut out, go in and do it, ' MrToots considered this a figurative way of supporting his own view of thecase, and heroically resolved to kiss Miss Nipper next day. 

Upon the next day, therefore, Mr Toots, putting into requisition some ofthe greatest marvels that Burgess and Co. Had ever turned out, went offto Mr Dombey's upon this design. But his heart failed him so much as heapproached the scene of action, that, although he arrived on the groundat three o'clock in the afternoon, it was six before he knocked at thedoor. 

Everything happened as usual, down to the point where Susan said heryoung mistress was well, and Mr Toots said it was of no consequence. Toher amazement, Mr Toots, instead of going off, like a rocket, after thatobservation, lingered and chuckled. 

'Perhaps you'd like to walk upstairs, Sir!' said Susan. 

'Well, I think I will come in!' said Mr Toots. 

But instead of walking upstairs, the bold Toots made an awkward plungeat Susan when the door was shut, and embracing that fair creature, kissed her on the cheek. 

'Go along with you!' cried Susan, 'or Ill tear your eyes out. '

'Just another!' said Mr Toots. 

'Go along with you!' exclaimed Susan, giving him a push 'Innocents likeyou, too! Who'll begin next? Go along, Sir!'

Susan was not in any serious strait, for she could hardly speak forlaughing; but Diogenes, on the staircase, hearing a rustling againstthe wall, and a shuffling of feet, and seeing through the banisters thatthere was some contention going on, and foreign invasion in the house, formed a different opinion, dashed down to the rescue, and in thetwinkling of an eye had Mr Toots by the leg. 

Susan screamed, laughed, opened the street-door, and ran downstairs; thebold Toots tumbled staggering out into the street, with Diogenes holdingon to one leg of his pantaloons, as if Burgess and Co. Were his cooks, and had provided that dainty morsel for his holiday entertainment;Diogenes shaken off, rolled over and over in the dust, got up' again, whirled round the giddy Toots and snapped at him: and all this turmoilMr Carker, reigning up his horse and sitting a little at a distance, sawto his amazement, issue from the stately house of Mr Dombey. 

Mr Carker remained watching the discomfited Toots, when Diogenes wascalled in, and the door shut: and while that gentleman, taking refuge ina doorway near at hand, bound up the torn leg of his pantaloons with acostly silk handkerchief that had formed part of his expensive outfitfor the advent. 

'I beg your pardon, Sir, ' said Mr Carker, riding up, with his mostpropitiatory smile. 'I hope you are not hurt?'

'Oh no, thank you, ' replied Mr Toots, raising his flushed face, 'it'sof no consequence' Mr Toots would have signified, if he could, that heliked it very much. 

'If the dog's teeth have entered the leg, Sir--' began Carker, with adisplay of his own. 

'No, thank you, ' said Mr Toots, 'it's all quite right. It's verycomfortable, thank you. '

'I have the pleasure of knowing Mr Dombey, ' observed Carker. 

'Have you though?' rejoined the blushing Took

'And you will allow me, perhaps, to apologise, in his absence, ' said MrCarker, taking off his hat, 'for such a misadventure, and to wonder howit can possibly have happened. '

Mr Toots is so much gratified by this politeness, and the lucky chanceof making friends with a friend of Mr Dombey, that he pulls out hiscard-case which he never loses an opportunity of using, and hands hisname and address to Mr Carker: who responds to that courtesy by givinghim his own, and with that they part. 

As Mr Carker picks his way so softly past the house, looking up at thewindows, and trying to make out the pensive face behind the curtainlooking at the children opposite, the rough head of Diogenes cameclambering up close by it, and the dog, regardless of all soothing, barks and growls, and makes at him from that height, as if he wouldspring down and tear him limb from limb. 

Well spoken, Di, so near your Mistress! Another, and another with yourhead up, your eyes flashing, and your vexed mouth worrying itself, forwant of him! Another, as he picks his way along! You have a good scent, Di, --cats, boy, cats!

CHAPTER 23. Florence solitary, and the Midshipman mysterious

Florence lived alone in the great dreary house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone; and the blank walls looked down upon her witha vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth andbeauty into stone. 

No magic dwelling-place in magic story, shut up in the heart of a thickwood, was ever more solitary and deserted to the fancy, than was herfather's mansion in its grim reality, as it stood lowering on thestreet: always by night, when lights were shining from neighbouringwindows, a blot upon its scanty brightness; always by day, a frown uponits never-smiling face. 

There were not two dragon sentries keeping ward before the gate of thisabove, as in magic legend are usually found on duty over the wrongedinnocence imprisoned; but besides a glowering visage, with its thin lipsparted wickedly, that surveyed all comers from above the archway of thedoor, there was a monstrous fantasy of rusty iron, curling and twistinglike a petrifaction of an arbour over threshold, budding in spikesand corkscrew points, and bearing, one on either side, two ominousextinguishers, that seemed to say, 'Who enter here, leave light behind!'There were no talismanic characters engraven on the portal, but thehouse was now so neglected in appearance, that boys chalked the railingsand the pavement--particularly round the corner where the side wallwas--and drew ghosts on the stable door; and being sometimes driven offby Mr Towlinson, made portraits of him, in return, with his ears growingout horizontally from under his hat. Noise ceased to be, within theshadow of the roof. The brass band that came into the street once aweek, in the morning, never brayed a note in at those windows; but allsuch company, down to a poor little piping organ of weak intellect, with an imbecile party of automaton dancers, waltzing in and out atfolding-doors, fell off from it with one accord, and shunned it as ahopeless place. 

The spell upon it was more wasting than the spell that used to setenchanted houses sleeping once upon a time, but left their wakingfreshness unimpaired. The passive desolation of disuse was everywheresilently manifest about it. Within doors, curtains, drooping heavily, lost their old folds and shapes, and hung like cumbrous palls. Hecatombsof furniture, still piled and covered up, shrunk like imprisoned andforgotten men, and changed insensibly. Mirrors were dim as with thebreath of years. Patterns of carpets faded and became perplexed andfaint, like the memory of those years' trifling incidents. Boards, starting at unwonted footsteps, creaked and shook. Keys rusted in thelocks of doors. Damp started on the walls, and as the stains came out, the pictures seemed to go in and secrete themselves. Mildew and mouldbegan to lurk in closets. Fungus trees grew in corners of the cellars. Dust accumulated, nobody knew whence nor how; spiders, moths, and grubswere heard of every day. An exploratory blackbeetle now and then wasfound immovable upon the stairs, or in an upper room, as wonderinghow he got there. Rats began to squeak and scuffle in the night time, through dark galleries they mined behind the panelling. 

The dreary magnificence of the state rooms, seen imperfectly by thedoubtful light admitted through closed shutters, would have answeredwell enough for an enchanted abode. Such as the tarnished paws ofgilded lions, stealthily put out from beneath their wrappers; the marblelineaments of busts on pedestals, fearfully revealing themselves throughveils; the clocks that never told the time, or, if wound up by anychance, told it wrong, and struck unearthly numbers, which are notupon the dial; the accidental tinklings among the pendant lustres, morestartling than alarm-bells; the softened sounds and laggard air thatmade their way among these objects, and a phantom crowd of others, shrouded and hooded, and made spectral of shape. But, besides, there wasthe great staircase, where the lord of the place so rarely set his foot, and by which his little child had gone up to Heaven. There were otherstaircases and passages where no one went for weeks together; there weretwo closed rooms associated with dead members of the family, and withwhispered recollections of them; and to all the house but Florence, there was a gentle figure moving through the solitude and gloom, thatgave to every lifeless thing a touch of present human interest andwonder. 

For Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the cold walls looked down upon her witha vacant stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like mind to stare her youth andbeauty into stone. 

The grass began to grow upon the roof, and in the crevices of thebasement paving. A scaly crumbling vegetation sprouted round thewindow-sills. Fragments of mortar lost their hold upon the insides ofthe unused chimneys, and came dropping down. The two trees with thesmoky trunks were blighted high up, and the withered branches domineeredabove the leaves, Through the whole building white had turned yellow, yellow nearly black; and since the time when the poor lady died, it hadslowly become a dark gap in the long monotonous street. 

But Florence bloomed there, like the king's fair daughter in thestory. Her books, her music, and her daily teachers, were her only realcompanions, Susan Nipper and Diogenes excepted: of whom the former, inher attendance on the studies of her young mistress, began to growquite learned herself, while the latter, softened possibly by the sameinfluences, would lay his head upon the window-ledge, and placidlyopen and shut his eyes upon the street, all through a summer morning;sometimes pricking up his head to look with great significance aftersome noisy dog in a cart, who was barking his way along, and sometimes, with an exasperated and unaccountable recollection of his supposed enemyin the neighbourhood, rushing to the door, whence, after a deafeningdisturbance, he would come jogging back with a ridiculous complacencythat belonged to him, and lay his jaw upon the window-ledge again, withthe air of a dog who had done a public service. 

So Florence lived in her wilderness of a home, within the circle of herinnocent pursuits and thoughts, and nothing harmed her. She could godown to her father's rooms now, and think of him, and suffer her lovingheart humbly to approach him, without fear of repulse. She could lookupon the objects that had surrounded him in his sorrow, and could nestlenear his chair, and not dread the glance that she so well remembered. She could render him such little tokens of her duty and service' asputting everything in order for him with her own hands, binding littlenosegays for table, changing them as one by one they withered and he didnot come back, preparing something for him every' day, and leaving sometimid mark of her presence near his usual seat. To-day, it was a littlepainted stand for his watch; tomorrow she would be afraid to leave it, and would substitute some other trifle of her making not so likely toattract his eye. Waking in the night, perhaps, she would tremble at thethought of his coming home and angrily rejecting it, and would hurrydown with slippered feet and quickly beating heart, and bring it away. At another time, she would only lay her face upon his desk, and leave akiss there, and a tear. 

Still no one knew of this. Unless the household found it out when shewas not there--and they all held Mr Dombey's rooms in awe--it was asdeep a secret in her breast as what had gone before it. Florence stoleinto those rooms at twilight, early in the morning, and at times whenmeals were served downstairs. And although they were in every nook thebetter and the brighter for her care, she entered and passed out asquietly as any sunbeam, opting that she left her light behind. 

Shadowy company attended Florence up and down the echoing house, andsat with her in the dismantled rooms. As if her life were an enchantedvision, there arose out of her solitude ministering thoughts, that madeit fanciful and unreal. She imagined so often what her life would havebeen if her father could have loved her and she had been a favouritechild, that sometimes, for the moment, she almost believed it was so, and, borne on by the current of that pensive fiction, seemed to rememberhow they had watched her brother in his grave together; how they hadfreely shared his heart between them; how they were united in the dearremembrance of him; how they often spoke about him yet; and her kindfather, looking at her gently, told her of their common hope and trustin God. At other times she pictured to herself her mother yet alive. Andoh the happiness of falling on her neck, and clinging to her withthe love and confidence of all her soul! And oh the desolation of thesolitary house again, with evening coming on, and no one there!

But there was one thought, scarcely shaped out to herself, yet ferventand strong within her, that upheld Florence when she strove and filledher true young heart, so sorely tried, with constancy of purpose. Intoher mind, as 'into all others contending with the great affliction ofour mortal nature, there had stolen solemn wonderings and hopes, arisingin the dim world beyond the present life, and murmuring, like faintmusic, of recognition in the far-off land between her brother and hermother: of some present consciousness in both of her: some love andcommiseration for her: and some knowledge of her as she went her wayupon the earth. It was a soothing consolation to Florence to giveshelter to these thoughts, until one day--it was soon after she had lastseen her father in his own room, late at night--the fancy came upon her, that, in weeping for his alienated heart, she might stir the spirits ofthe dead against him' Wild, weak, childish, as it may have been to thinkso, and to tremble at the half-formed thought, it was the impulse ofher loving nature; and from that hour Florence strove against the cruelwound in her breast, and tried to think of him whose hand had made it, only with hope. 

Her father did not know--she held to it from that time--how much sheloved him. She was very young, and had no mother, and had never learned, by some fault or misfortune, how to express to him that she loved him. She would be patient, and would try to gain that art in time, and winhim to a better knowledge of his only child. 

This became the purpose of her life. The morning sun shone down upon thefaded house, and found the resolution bright and fresh within the bosomof its solitary mistress, Through all the duties of the day, itanimated her; for Florence hoped that the more she knew, and the moreaccomplished she became, the more glad he would be when he came to knowand like her. Sometimes she wondered, with a swelling heart and risingtear, whether she was proficient enough in anything to surprise him whenthey should become companions. Sometimes she tried to think if therewere any kind of knowledge that would bespeak his interest more readilythan another. Always: at her books, her music, and her work: in hermorning walks, and in her nightly prayers: she had her engrossing aimin view. Strange study for a child, to learn the road to a hard parent'sheart!

There were many careless loungers through the street, as the summerevening deepened into night, who glanced across the road at the sombrehouse, and saw the youthful figure at the window, such a contrast to it, looking upward at the stars as they began to shine, who would have sleptthe worse if they had known on what design she mused so steady. Thereputation of the mansion as a haunted house, would not have beenthe gayer with some humble dwellers elsewhere, who were struck by itsexternal gloom in passing and repassing on their daily avocations, andso named it, if they could have read its story in the darkening face. But Florence held her sacred purpose, unsuspected and unaided: andstudied only how to bring her father to the understanding that she lovedhim, and made no appeal against him in any wandering thought. 

Thus Florence lived alone in the deserted house, and day succeeded day, and still she lived alone, and the monotonous walls looked down upon herwith a stare, as if they had a Gorgon-like intent to stare her youth andbeauty into stone. 

Susan Nipper stood opposite to her young mistress one morning, as shefolded and sealed a note she had been writing: and showed in her looksan approving knowledge of its contents. 

'Better late than never, dear Miss Floy, ' said Susan, 'and I do say, that even a visit to them old Skettleses will be a Godsend. '

'It is very good of Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, Susan, ' returnedFlorence, with a mild correction of that young lady's familiar mentionof the family in question, 'to repeat their invitation so kindly. '

Miss Nipper, who was perhaps the most thoroughgoing partisan on the faceof the earth, and who carried her partisanship into all matters great orsmall, and perpetually waged war with it against society, screwed upher lips and shook her head, as a protest against any recognition ofdisinterestedness in the Skettleses, and a plea in bar that they wouldhave valuable consideration for their kindness, in the company ofFlorence. 

'They know what they're about, if ever people did, ' murmured MissNipper, drawing in her breath 'oh! trust them Skettleses for that!'

'I am not very anxious to go to Fulham, Susan, I confess, ' said Florencethoughtfully: 'but it will be right to go. I think it will be better. '

'Much better, ' interposed Susan, with another emphatic shake of herhead. 

'And so, ' said Florence, 'though I would prefer to have gone when therewas no one there, instead of in this vacation time, when it seems thereare some young people staying in the house, I have thankfully said yes. '

'For which I say, Miss Floy, Oh be joyful!' returned Susan, 'Ah!

This last ejaculation, with which Miss Nipper frequently wound up asentence, at about that epoch of time, was supposed below the level ofthe hall to have a general reference to Mr Dombey, and to be expressiveof a yearning in Miss Nipper to favour that gentleman with a piece ofher mind. But she never explained it; and it had, in consequence, the charm of mystery, in addition to the advantage of the sharpestexpression. 

'How long it is before we have any news of Walter, Susan!' observedFlorence, after a moment's silence. 

'Long indeed, Miss Floy!' replied her maid. 'And Perch said, when hecame just now to see for letters--but what signifies what he says!'exclaimed Susan, reddening and breaking off. 'Much he knows about it!'

Florence raised her eyes quickly, and a flush overspread her face. 

'If I hadn't, ' said Susan Nipper, evidently struggling with somelatent anxiety and alarm, and looking full at her young mistress, while endeavouring to work herself into a state of resentment with theunoffending Mr Perch's image, 'if I hadn't more manliness than thatinsipidest of his sex, I'd never take pride in my hair again, but turnit up behind my ears, and wear coarse caps, without a bit of border, until death released me from my insignificance. I may not be a Amazon, Miss Floy, and wouldn't so demean myself by such disfigurement, butanyways I'm not a giver up, I hope. '

'Give up! What?' cried Florence, with a face of terror. 

'Why, nothing, Miss, ' said Susan. 'Good gracious, nothing! It's onlythat wet curl-paper of a man, Perch, that anyone might almost makeaway with, with a touch, and really it would be a blessed event for allparties if someone would take pity on him, and would have the goodness!'

'Does he give up the ship, Susan?' inquired Florence, very pale. 

'No, Miss, ' returned Susan, 'I should like to see' him make so bold asdo it to my face! No, Miss, but he goes 'on about some bothering gingerthat Mr Walter was to send to Mrs Perch, and shakes his dismal head, andsays he hopes it may be coming; anyhow, he says, it can't come now intime for the intended occasion, but may do for next, which really, ' saidMiss Nipper, with aggravated scorn, 'puts me out of patience with theman, for though I can bear a great deal, I am not a camel, neither amI, ' added Susan, after a moment's consideration, 'if I know myself, adromedary neither. '

'What else does he say, Susan?' inquired Florence, earnestly. 'Won't youtell me?'

'As if I wouldn't tell you anything, Miss Floy, and everything!' saidSusan. 'Why, nothing Miss, he says that there begins to be a generaltalk about the ship, and that they have never had a ship on that voyagehalf so long unheard of, and that the Captain's wife was at the officeyesterday, and seemed a little put out about it, but anyone could saythat, we knew nearly that before. '

'I must visit Walter's uncle, ' said Florence, hurriedly, 'before I leavehome. I will go and see him this morning. Let us walk there, directly, Susan. 

Miss Nipper having nothing to urge against the proposal, but beingperfectly acquiescent, they were soon equipped, and in the streets, andon their way towards the little Midshipman. 

The state of mind in which poor Walter had gone to Captain Cuttle's, on the day when Brogley the broker came into possession, and when thereseemed to him to be an execution in the very steeples, was pretty muchthe same as that in which Florence now took her way to Uncle Sol's; withthis difference, that Florence suffered the added pain of thinking thatshe had been, perhaps, the innocent occasion of involving Walter inperil, and all to whom he was dear, herself included, in an agony ofsuspense. For the rest, uncertainty and danger seemed written uponeverything. The weathercocks on spires and housetops were mysteriouswith hints of stormy wind, and pointed, like so many ghostly fingers, out to dangerous seas, where fragments of great wrecks were drifting, perhaps, and helpless men were rocked upon them into a sleep as deep asthe unfathomable waters. When Florence came into the City, and passedgentlemen who were talking together, she dreaded to hear them speakingof the ship, an'd saying it was lost. Pictures and prints of vesselsfighting with the rolling waves filled her with alarm. The smoke andclouds, though moving gently, moved too fast for her apprehensions, andmade her fear there was a tempest blowing at that moment on the ocean. 

Susan Nipper may or may not have been affected similarly, but having herattention much engaged in struggles with boys, whenever there was anypress of people--for, between that grade of human kind and herself, there was some natural animosity that invariably broke out, wheneverthey came together--it would seem that she had not much leisure on theroad for intellectual operations. 

Arriving in good time abreast of the wooden Midshipman on the oppositeside of the way, and waiting for an opportunity to cross the street, they were a little surprised at first to see, at the Instrument-maker'sdoor, a round-headed lad, with his chubby face addressed towards thesky, who, as they looked at him, suddenly thrust into his capaciousmouth two fingers of each hand, and with the assistance of thatmachinery whistled, with astonishing shrillness, to some pigeons at aconsiderable elevation in the air. 

'Mrs Richards's eldest, Miss!' said Susan, 'and the worrit of MrsRichards's life!'

As Polly had been to tell Florence of the resuscitated prospects of herson and heir, Florence was prepared for the meeting: so, a favourablemoment presenting itself, they both hastened across, without anyfurther contemplation of Mrs Richards's bane' That sporting character, unconscious of their approach, again whistled with his utmost might, andthen yelled in a rapture of excitement, 'Strays! Whip! Strays!' whichidentification had such an effect upon the conscience-stricken pigeons, that instead of going direct to some town in the North of England, asappeared to have been their original intention, they began to wheel andfalter; whereupon Mrs Richards's first born pierced them with anotherwhistle, and again yelled, in a voice that rose above the turmoil of thestreet, 'Strays! Who-oop! Strays!'

From this transport, he was abruptly recalled to terrestrial objects, bya poke from Miss Nipper, which sent him into the shop. 

'Is this the way you show your penitence, when Mrs Richards has beenfretting for you months and months?' said Susan, following the poke. 'Where's Mr Gills?'

Rob, who smoothed his first rebellious glance at Miss Nipper when hesaw Florence following, put his knuckles to his hair, in honour of thelatter, and said to the former, that Mr Gills was out. '

'Fetch him home, ' said Miss Nipper, with authority, 'and say that myyoung lady's here. '

'I don't know where he's gone, ' said Rob. 

'Is that your penitence?' cried Susan, with stinging sharpness. 

'Why how can I go and fetch him when I don't know where to go?'whimpered the baited Rob. 'How can you be so unreasonable?'

'Did Mr Gills say when he should be home?' asked Florence. 

'Yes, Miss, ' replied Rob, with another application of his knuckles tohis hair. 'He said he should be home early in the afternoon; in about acouple of hours from now, Miss. '

'Is he very anxious about his nephew?' inquired Susan. 

'Yes, Miss, ' returned Rob, preferring to address himself to Florence andslighting Nipper; 'I should say he was, very much so. He ain't indoors, Miss, not a quarter of an hour together. He can't settle in one placefive minutes. He goes about, like a--just like a stray, ' said Rob, stooping to get a glimpse of the pigeons through the window, andchecking himself, with his fingers half-way to his mouth, on the vergeof another whistle. 

'Do you know a friend of Mr Gills, called Captain Cuttle?' inquiredFlorence, after a moment's reflection. 

'Him with a hook, Miss?' rejoined Rob, with an illustrative twist of hisleft hand. Yes, Miss. He was here the day before yesterday. '

'Has he not been here since?' asked Susan. 

'No, Miss, ' returned Rob, still addressing his reply to Florence. 

'Perhaps Walter's Uncle has gone there, Susan, ' observed Florence, turning to her. 

'To Captain Cuttle's, Miss?' interposed Rob; 'no, he's not gone there, Miss. Because he left particular word that if Captain Cuttle called, Ishould tell him how surprised he was, not to have seen him yesterday, and should make him stop till he came back. '

'Do you know where Captain Cuttle lives?' asked Florence. 

Rob replied in the affirmative, and turning to a greasy parchment bookon the shop desk, read the address aloud. 

Florence again turned to her maid and took counsel with her in a lowvoice, while Rob the round-eyed, mindful of his patron's secret charge, looked on and listened. Florence proposed that they could go to CaptainCuttle's house; hear from his own lips, what he thought of the absenceof any tidings ofthe Son and Heir; and bring him, if they could, tocomfort Uncle Sol. Susan at first objected slightly, on the score ofdistance; but a hackney-coach being mentioned by her mistress, withdrewthat opposition, and gave in her assent. There were some minutes ofdiscussion between them before they came to this conclusion, duringwhich the staring Rob paid close attention to both speakers, andinclined his ear to each by turns, as if he were appointed arbitrator ofthe argument. 

In time, Rob was despatched for a coach, the visitors keeping shopmeanwhile; and when he brought it, they got into it, leaving word forUncle Sol that they would be sure to call again, on their way back. Robhaving stared after the coach until it was as invisible as thepigeons had now become, sat down behind the desk with a most assiduousdemeanour; and in order that he might forget nothing of what hadtranspired, made notes of it on various small scraps of paper, witha vast expenditure of ink. There was no danger of these documentsbetraying anything, if accidentally lost; for long before a word wasdry, it became as profound a mystery to Rob, as if he had had no partwhatever in its production. 

While he was yet busy with these labours, the hackney-coach, afterencountering unheard-of difficulties from swivel-bridges, soft roads, impassable canals, caravans of casks, settlements of scarlet-beans andlittle wash-houses, and many such obstacles abounding in that country, stopped at the corner of Brig Place. Alighting here, Florence and SusanNipper walked down the street, and sought out the abode of CaptainCuttle. 

It happened by evil chance to be one of Mrs MacStinger's great cleaningdays. On these occasions, Mrs MacStinger was knocked up by the policemanat a quarter before three in the morning, and rarely such before twelveo'clock next night. The chief object of this institution appeared to be, that Mrs MacStinger should move all the furniture into the back gardenat early dawn, walk about the house in pattens all day, and move thefurniture back again after dark. These ceremonies greatly flutteredthose doves the young MacStingers, who were not only unable at suchtimes to find any resting-place for the soles of their feet, butgenerally came in for a good deal of pecking from the maternal birdduring the progress of the solemnities. 

At the moment when Florence and Susan Nipper presented themselves at MrsMacStinger's door, that worthy but redoubtable female was in the act ofconveying Alexander MacStinger, aged two years and three months, alongthe passage, for forcible deposition in a sitting posture on the streetpavement: Alexander being black in the face with holding his breathafter punishment, and a cool paving-stone being usually found to act asa powerful restorative in such cases. 

The feelings of Mrs MacStinger, as a woman and a mother, were outragedby the look of pity for Alexander which she observed on Florence's face. Therefore, Mrs MacStinger asserting those finest emotions of our nature, in preference to weakly gratifying her curiosity, shook and buffetedAlexander both before and during the application of the paving-stone, and took no further notice of the strangers. 

'I beg your pardon, Ma'am, ' said Florence, when the child had found hisbreath again, and was using it. 'Is this Captain Cuttle's house?'

'No, ' said Mrs MacStinger. 

'Not Number Nine?' asked Florence, hesitating. 

'Who said it wasn't Number Nine?' said Mrs MacStinger. 

Susan Nipper instantly struck in, and begged to inquire what MrsMacStinger meant by that, and if she knew whom she was talking to. 

Mrs MacStinger in retort, looked at her all over. 'What do you want withCaptain Cuttle, I should wish to know?' said Mrs MacStinger. 

'Should you? Then I'm sorry that you won't be satisfied, ' returned MissNipper. 

'Hush, Susan! If you please!' said Florence. 'Perhaps you can have thegoodness to tell us where Captain Cuttle lives, Ma'am as he don't livehere. '

'Who says he don't live here?' retorted the implacable MacStinger. 'Isaid it wasn't Cap'en Cuttle's house--and it ain't his house--and forbidit, that it ever should be his house--for Cap'en Cuttle don't know howto keep a house--and don't deserve to have a house--it's my house--andwhen I let the upper floor to Cap'en Cuttle, oh I do a thankless thing, and cast pearls before swine!'

Mrs MacStinger pitched her voice for the upper windows in offering theseremarks, and cracked off each clause sharply by itself as if froma rifle possessing an infinity of barrels. After the last shot, theCaptain's voice was heard to say, in feeble remonstrance from his ownroom, 'Steady below!'

'Since you want Cap'en Cuttle, there he is!' said Mrs MacStinger, withan angry motion of her hand. On Florence making bold to enter, withoutany more parley, and on Susan following, Mrs MacStinger recommenced herpedestrian exercise in pattens, and Alexander MacStinger (still onthe paving-stone), who had stopped in his crying to attend to theconversation, began to wail again, entertaining himself during thatdismal performance, which was quite mechanical, with a general survey ofthe prospect, terminating in the hackney-coach. 

The Captain in his own apartment was sitting with his hands in hispockets and his legs drawn up under his chair, on a very small desolateisland, lying about midway in an ocean of soap and water. The Captain'swindows had been cleaned, the walls had been cleaned, the stove had beencleaned, and everything the stove excepted, was wet, and shining withsoft soap and sand: the smell of which dry-saltery impregnated theair. In the midst of the dreary scene, the Captain, cast away upon hisisland, looked round on the waste of waters with a rueful countenance, and seemed waiting for some friendly bark to come that way, and take himoff. 

But when the Captain, directing his forlorn visage towards the door, sawFlorence appear with her maid, no words can describe his astonishment. Mrs MacStinger's eloquence having rendered all other sounds butimperfectly distinguishable, he had looked for no rarer visitor than thepotboy or the milkman; wherefore, when Florence appeared, and coming tothe confines of the island, put her hand in his, the Captain stood up, aghast, as if he supposed her, for the moment, to be some young memberof the Flying Dutchman's family. '

Instantly recovering his self-possession, however, the Captain's firstcare was to place her on dry land, which he happily accomplished, withone motion of his arm. Issuing forth, then, upon the main, CaptainCuttle took Miss Nipper round the waist, and bore her to the islandalso. Captain Cuttle, then, with great respect and admiration, raisedthe hand of Florence to his lips, and standing off a little (for theisland was not large enough for three), beamed on her from the soap andwater like a new description of Triton. 

'You are amazed to see us, I am sure, 'said Florence, with a smile. 

The inexpressibly gratified Captain kissed his hook in reply, andgrowled, as if a choice and delicate compliment were included in thewords, 'Stand by! Stand by!'

'But I couldn't rest, ' said Florence, 'without coming to ask you whatyou think about dear Walter--who is my brother now--and whether there isanything to fear, and whether you will not go and console his poor Uncleevery day, until we have some intelligence of him?'

At these words Captain Cuttle, as by an involuntary gesture, clappedhis hand to his head, on which the hard glazed hat was not, and lookeddiscomfited. 

'Have you any fears for Walter's safety?' inquired Florence, from whoseface the Captain (so enraptured he was with it) could not take his eyes:while she, in her turn, looked earnestly at him, to be assured of thesincerity of his reply. 

'No, Heart's-delight, ' said Captain Cuttle, 'I am not afeard. Wal'r is alad as'll go through a deal o' hard weather. Wal'r is a lad as'll bringas much success to that 'ere brig as a lad is capable on. Wal'r, ' saidthe Captain, his eyes glistening with the praise of his young friend, and his hook raised to announce a beautiful quotation, 'is what you maycall a out'ard and visible sign of an in'ard and spirited grasp, andwhen found make a note of. '

Florence, who did not quite understand this, though the Captainevidently thought it full of meaning, and highly satisfactory, mildlylooked to him for something more. 

'I am not afeard, my Heart's-delight, ' resumed the Captain, 'There'sbeen most uncommon bad weather in them latitudes, there's no denyin', and they have drove and drove and been beat off, may be t'other sidethe world. But the ship's a good ship, and the lad's a good lad; and itain't easy, thank the Lord, ' the Captain made a little bow, 'to breakup hearts of oak, whether they're in brigs or buzzums. Here we have 'emboth ways, which is bringing it up with a round turn, and so I ain't abit afeard as yet. '

'As yet?' repeated Florence. 

'Not a bit, ' returned the Captain, kissing his iron hand; 'and aforeI begin to be, my Hearts-delight, Wal'r will have wrote home fromthe island, or from some port or another, and made all taut andshipsahape. ' And with regard to old Sol Gills, here the Captain becamesolemn, 'who I'll stand by, and not desert until death do us part, and when the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow--overhaul theCatechism, ' said the Captain parenthetically, 'and there you'll findthem expressions--if it would console Sol Gills to have the opinion of aseafaring man as has got a mind equal to any undertaking that he putsit alongside of, and as was all but smashed in his 'prenticeship, and ofwhich the name is Bunsby, that 'ere man shall give him such an opinionin his own parlour as'll stun him. Ah!' said Captain Cuttle, vauntingly, 'as much as if he'd gone and knocked his head again a door!'

'Let us take this gentleman to see him, and let us hear what he says, 'cried Florence. 'Will you go with us now? We have a coach here. '

Again the Captain clapped his hand to his head, on which the hardglazed hat was not, and looked discomfited. But at this instant a mostremarkable phenomenon occurred. The door opening, without any note ofpreparation, and apparently of itself, the hard glazed hat in questionskimmed into the room like a bird, and alighted heavily at the Captain'sfeet. The door then shut as violently as it had opened, and nothingensued in explanation of the prodigy. 

Captain Cuttle picked up his hat, and having turned it over with a lookof interest and welcome, began to polish it on his sleeve' While doingso, the Captain eyed his visitors intently, and said in a low voice, 'You see I should have bore down on Sol Gills yesterday, and thismorning, but she--she took it away and kep it. That's the long and shortofthe subject. '

'Who did, for goodness sake?' asked Susan Nipper. 

'The lady of the house, my dear, 'returned the Captain, in a gruffwhisper, and making signals of secrecy. 'We had some words about theswabbing of these here planks, and she--In short, ' said the Captain, eyeing the door, and relieving himself with a long breath, 'she stoppedmy liberty. '

'Oh! I wish she had me to deal with!' said Susan, reddening with theenergy of the wish. 'I'd stop her!'

'Would you, do you, my dear?' rejoined the Captain, shaking his headdoubtfully, but regarding the desperate courage of the fair aspirantwith obvious admiration. 'I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She'svery hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon you next. And when she ina tartar, ' said the Captain, with the perspiration breaking out uponhis forehead. There was nothing but a whistle emphatic enough for theconclusion of the sentence, so the Captain whistled tremulously. Afterwhich he again shook his head, and recurring to his admiration of MissNipper's devoted bravery, timidly repeated, 'Would you, do you think, mydear?'

Susan only replied with a bridling smile, but that was so very full ofdefiance, that there is no knowing how long Captain Cuttle might havestood entranced in its contemplation, if Florence in her anxiety had notagain proposed their immediately resorting to the oracular Bunsby. Thusreminded of his duty, Captain Cuttle Put on the glazed hat firmly, tookup another knobby stick, with which he had supplied the place of thatone given to Walter, and offering his arm to Florence, prepared to cuthis way through the enemy. 

It turned out, however, that Mrs MacStinger had already changed hercourse, and that she headed, as the Captain had remarked she often did, in quite a new direction. For when they got downstairs, they found thatexemplary woman beating the mats on the doorsteps, with Alexander, still upon the paving-stone, dimly looming through a fog of dust; andso absorbed was Mrs MacStinger in her household occupation, that whenCaptain Cuttle and his visitors passed, she beat the harder, and neitherby word nor gesture showed any consciousness of their vicinity. TheCaptain was so well pleased with this easy escape--although the effectof the door-mats on him was like a copious administration of snuff, andmade him sneeze until the tears ran down his face--that he could hardlybelieve his good fortune; but more than once, between the door and thehackney-coach, looked over his shoulder, with an obvious apprehension ofMrs MacStinger's giving chase yet. 

However, they got to the corner of Brig Place without any molestationfrom that terrible fire-ship; and the Captain mounting thecoach-box--for his gallantry would not allow him to ride inside with theladies, though besought to do so--piloted the driver on his course forCaptain Bunsby's vessel, which was called the Cautious Clara, and waslying hard by Ratcliffe. 

Arrived at the wharf off which this great commander's ship was jammedin among some five hundred companions, whose tangled rigging lookedlike monstrous cobwebs half swept down, Captain Cuttle appeared at thecoach-window, and invited Florence and Miss Nipper to accompany himon board; observing that Bunsby was to the last degree soft-heartedin respect of ladies, and that nothing would so much tend to bring hisexpansive intellect into a state of harmony as their presentation to theCautious Clara. 

Florence readily consented; and the Captain, taking her little handin his prodigious palm, led her, with a mixed expression of patronage, paternity, pride, and ceremony, that was pleasant to see, over severalvery dirty decks, until, coming to the Clara, they found that cautiouscraft (which lay outside the tier) with her gangway removed, andhalf-a-dozen feet of river interposed between herself and her nearestneighbour. It appeared, from Captain Cuttle's explanation, that thegreat Bunsby, like himself, was cruelly treated by his landlady, andthat when her usage of him for the time being was so hard that he couldbear it no longer, he set this gulf between them as a last resource. 

'Clara a-hoy!' cried the Captain, putting a hand to each side of hismouth. 

'A-hoy!' cried a boy, like the Captain's echo, tumbling up from below. 

'Bunsby aboard?' cried the Captain, hailing the boy in a stentorianvoice, as if he were half-a-mile off instead of two yards. 

'Ay, ay!' cried the boy, in the same tone. 

The boy then shoved out a plank to Captain Cuttle, who adjusted itcarefully, and led Florence across: returning presently for Miss Nipper. So they stood upon the deck of the Cautious Clara, in whose standingrigging, divers fluttering articles of dress were curing, in companywith a few tongues and some mackerel. 

Immediately there appeared, coming slowly up above the bulk-head of thecabin, another bulk-head 'human, and very large--with one stationary eyein the mahogany face, and one revolving one, on the principle of somelighthouses. This head was decorated with shaggy hair, like oakum, 'which had no governing inclination towards the north, east, west, orsouth, but inclined to all four quarters of the compass, and to everypoint upon it. The head was followed by a perfect desert of chin, and bya shirt-collar and neckerchief, and by a dreadnought pilot-coat, and bya pair of dreadnought pilot-trousers, whereof the waistband was so verybroad and high, that it became a succedaneum for a waistcoat: beingornamented near the wearer's breastbone with some massive woodenbuttons, like backgammon men. As the lower portions of these pantaloonsbecame revealed, Bunsby stood confessed; his hands in their pockets, which were of vast size; and his gaze directed, not to Captain Cuttle orthe ladies, but the mast-head. 

The profound appearance of this philosopher, who was bulky and strong, and on whose extremely red face an expression of taciturnity satenthroned, not inconsistent with his character, in which that qualitywas proudly conspicuous, almost daunted Captain Cuttle, though onfamiliar terms with him. Whispering to Florence that Bunsby had neverin his life expressed surprise, and was considered not to know what itmeant, the Captain watched him as he eyed his mast-head, and afterwardsswept the horizon; and when the revolving eye seemed to be coming roundin his direction, said:

'Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?'

A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed to have no connexion withBunsby, and certainly had not the least effect upon his face, replied, 'Ay, ay, shipmet, how goes it?' At the same time Bunsby's right hand andarm, emerging from a pocket, shook the Captain's, and went back again. 

'Bunsby, ' said the Captain, striking home at once, 'here you are; a manof mind, and a man as can give an opinion. Here's a young lady as wantsto take that opinion, in regard of my friend Wal'r; likewise my t'otherfriend, Sol Gills, which is a character for you to come within hail of, being a man of science, which is the mother of invention, and knows nolaw. Bunsby, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?'

The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be alwayson the look-out for something in the extremest distance' and to have noocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply whatever. 

'Here is a man, ' said the Captain, addressing himself to his fairauditors, and indicating the commander with his outstretched hook, 'thathas fell down, more than any man alive; that has had more accidentshappen to his own self than the Seamen's Hospital to all hands; thattook as many spars and bars and bolts about the outside of his headwhen he was young, as you'd want a order for on Chatham-yard to builda pleasure yacht with; and yet that his opinions in that way, it's mybelief, for there ain't nothing like 'em afloat or ashore. '

The stolid commander appeared by a very slight vibration in his elbows, to express some satisfaction in this encomium; but if his face hadbeen as distant as his gaze was, it could hardly have enlightenedthe beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in histhoughts. 

'Shipmate, ' said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look outunder some interposing spar, 'what'll the ladies drink?'

Captain Cuttle, whose delicacy was shocked by such an inquiry inconnection with Florence, drew the sage aside, and seeming to explain inhis ear, accompanied him below; where, that he might not take offence, the Captain drank a dram himself' which Florence and Susan, glancingdown the open skylight, saw the sage, with difficulty finding room forhimself between his berth and a very little brass fireplace, serve outfor self and friend. They soon reappeared on deck, and Captain Cuttle, triumphing in the success of his enterprise, conducted Florence back tothe coach, while Bunsby followed, escorting Miss Nipper, whom hehugged upon the way (much to that young lady's indignation) with hispilot-coated arm, like a blue bear. 

The Captain put his oracle inside, and gloried so much in having securedhim, and having got that mind into a hackney-coach, that he could notrefrain from often peeping in at Florence through the little windowbehind the driver, and testifying his delight in smiles, and also intaps upon his forehead, to hint to her that the brain of Bunsby washard at it' In the meantime, Bunsby, still hugging Miss Nipper (for hisfriend, the Captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his heart), uniformly preserved his gravity of deportment, and showed no otherconsciousness of her or anything. 

Uncle Sol, who had come home, received them at the door, and usheredthem immediately into the little back parlour: strangely altered by theabsence of Walter. On the table, and about the room, were the chartsand maps on which the heavy-hearted Instrument-maker had again and againtracked the missing vessel across the sea, and on which, with a pair ofcompasses that he still had in his hand, he had been measuring, a minutebefore, how far she must have driven, to have driven here or there:and trying to demonstrate that a long time must elapse before hope wasexhausted. 

'Whether she can have run, ' said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over thechart; 'but no, that's almost impossible or whether she can have beenforced by stress of weather, --but that's not reasonably likely. Orwhether there is any hope she so far changed her course as--but even Ican hardly hope that!' With such broken suggestions, poor old Uncle Solroamed over the great sheet before him, and could not find a speck ofhopeful probability in it large enough to set one small point of thecompasses upon. 

Florence saw immediately--it would have been difficult to helpseeing--that there was a singular, indescribable change in the oldman, and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettledthan usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, thatperplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and atrandom; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when shehad been there before that morning, he at first replied that he hadbeen to see her, and directly afterwards seemed to wish to recall thatanswer. 

'You have been to see me?' said Florence. 'To-day?'

'Yes, my dear young lady, ' returned Uncle Sol, looking at her and awayfrom her in a confused manner. 'I wished to see you with my own eyes, and to hear you with my own ears, once more before--' There he stopped. 

'Before when? Before what?' said Florence, putting her hand upon hisarm. 

'Did I say "before?"' replied old Sol. 'If I did, I must have meantbefore we should have news of my dear boy. '

'You are not well, ' said Florence, tenderly. 'You have been so veryanxious I am sure you are not well. '

'I am as well, ' returned the old man, shutting up his right hand, andholding it out to show her: 'as well and firm as any man at my time oflife can hope to be. See! It's steady. Is its master not as capable ofresolution and fortitude as many a younger man? I think so. We shallsee. '

There was that in his manner more than in his words, though theyremained with her too, which impressed Florence so much, that she wouldhave confided her uneasiness to Captain Cuttle at that moment, ifthe Captain had not seized that moment for expounding the stateof circumstance, on which the opinion of the sagacious Bunsby wasrequested, and entreating that profound authority to deliver the same. 

Bunsby, whose eye continued to be addressed to somewhere about thehalf-way house between London and Gravesend, two or three times put outhis rough right arm, as seeking to wind it for inspiration roundthe fair form of Miss Nipper; but that young female having withdrawnherself, in displeasure, to the opposite side of the table, the softheart of the Commander of the Cautious Clara met with no response to itsimpulses. After sundry failures in this wise, the Commander, addressinghimself to nobody, thus spake; or rather the voice within him saidof its own accord, and quite independent of himself, as if he werepossessed by a gruff spirit:

'My name's Jack Bunsby!'

'He was christened John, ' cried the delighted Captain Cuttle. 'Hearhim!'

'And what I says, ' pursued the voice, after some deliberation, 'I standsto. 

The Captain, with Florence on his arm, nodded at the auditory, andseemed to say, 'Now he's coming out. This is what I meant when I broughthim. '

'Whereby, ' proceeded the voice, 'why not? If so, what odds? Can any mansay otherwise? No. Awast then!'

When it had pursued its train of argument to this point, the voicestopped, and rested. It then proceeded very slowly, thus:

'Do I believe that this here Son and Heir's gone down, my lads? Mayhap. Do I say so? Which? If a skipper stands out by Sen' George's Channel, making for the Downs, what's right ahead of him? The Goodwins. Heisn't forced to run upon the Goodwins, but he may. The bearings of thisobservation lays in the application on it. That ain't no part of myduty. Awast then, keep a bright look-out for'ard, and good luck to you!'

The voice here went out of the back parlour and into the street, takingthe Commander of the Cautious Clara with it, and accompanying him onboard again with all convenient expedition, where he immediately turnedin, and refreshed his mind with a nap. 

The students of the sage's precepts, left to their own applicationof his wisdom--upon a principle which was the main leg of the Bunsbytripod, as it is perchance of some other oracular stools--looked uponone another in a little uncertainty; while Rob the Grinder, who hadtaken the innocent freedom of peering in, and listening, through theskylight in the roof, came softly down from the leads, in a state ofvery dense confusion. Captain Cuttle, however, whose admiration ofBunsby was, if possible, enhanced by the splendid manner in which hehad justified his reputation and come through this solemn reference, proceeded to explain that Bunsby meant nothing but confidence; thatBunsby had no misgivings; and that such an opinion as that man hadgiven, coming from such a mind as his, was Hope's own anchor, with goodroads to cast it in. Florence endeavoured to believe that the Captainwas right; but the Nipper, with her arms tight folded, shook her headin resolute denial, and had no more trust in Bunsby than in Mr Perchhimself. 

The philosopher seemed to have left Uncle Sol pretty much where he hadfound him, for he still went roaming about the watery world, compassesin hand, and discovering no rest for them. It was in pursuance of awhisper in his ear from Florence, while the old man was absorbed in thispursuit, that Captain Cuttle laid his heavy hand upon his shoulder. 

'What cheer, Sol Gills?' cried the Captain, heartily. 

'But so-so, Ned, ' returned the Instrument-maker. 'I have beenremembering, all this afternoon, that on the very day when my boyentered Dombey's House, and came home late to dinner, sitting just therewhere you stand, we talked of storm and shipwreck, and I could hardlyturn him from the subject. '

But meeting the eyes of Florence, which were fixed with earnest scrutinyupon his face, the old man stopped and smiled. 

'Stand by, old friend!' cried the Captain. 'Look alive! I tell you what, Sol Gills; arter I've convoyed Heart's-delight safe home, ' here theCaptain kissed his hook to Florence, 'I'll come back and take you in towfor the rest of this blessed day. You'll come and eat your dinner alongwith me, Sol, somewheres or another. '

'Not to-day, Ned!' said the old man quickly, and appearing to beunaccountably startled by the proposition. 'Not to-day. I couldn't doit!'

'Why not?' returned the Captain, gazing at him in astonishment. 

'I--I have so much to do. I--I mean to think of, and arrange. I couldn'tdo it, Ned, indeed. I must go out again, and be alone, and turn my mindto many things to-day. '

The Captain looked at the Instrument-maker, and looked at Florence, andagain at the Instrument-maker. 'To-morrow, then, ' he suggested, at last. 

'Yes, yes. To-morrow, ' said the old man. 'Think of me to-morrow. Sayto-morrow. '

'I shall come here early, mind, Sol Gills, ' stipulated the Captain. 

'Yes, yes. The first thing tomorrow morning, ' said old Sol; 'and nowgood-bye, Ned Cuttle, and God bless you!'

Squeezing both the Captain's hands, with uncommon fervour, as he saidit, the old man turned to Florence, folded hers in his own, and putthem to his lips; then hurried her out to the coach with very singularprecipitation. Altogether, he made such an effect on Captain Cuttlethat the Captain lingered behind, and instructed Rob to be particularlygentle and attentive to his master until the morning: which injunctionhe strengthened with the payment of one shilling down, and the promiseof another sixpence before noon next day. This kind office performed, Captain Cuttle, who considered himself the natural and lawful body-guardof Florence, mounted the box with a mighty sense of his trust, andescorted her home. At parting, he assured her that he would stand by SolGills, close and true; and once again inquired of Susan Nipper, unableto forget her gallant words in reference to Mrs MacStinger, 'Would you, do you think my dear, though?'

When the desolate house had closed upon the two, the Captain's thoughtsreverted to the old Instrument-maker, and he felt uncomfortable. Therefore, instead of going home, he walked up and down the streetseveral times, and, eking out his leisure until evening, dined late at acertain angular little tavern in the City, with a public parlour likea wedge, to which glazed hats much resorted. The Captain's principalintention was to pass Sol Gills's, after dark, and look in through thewindow: which he did, The parlour door stood open, and he could see hisold friend writing busily and steadily at the table within, while thelittle Midshipman, already sheltered from the night dews, watchedhim from the counter; under which Rob the Grinder made his own bed, preparatory to shutting the shop. Reassured by the tranquillity thatreigned within the precincts of the wooden mariner, the Captain headedfor Brig Place, resolving to weigh anchor betimes in the morning. 

CHAPTER 24. The Study of a Loving Heart

Sir Barnet and Lady Skettles, very good people, resided in a prettyvilla at Fulham, on the banks of the Thames; which was one of the mostdesirable residences in the world when a rowing-match happened to begoing past, but had its little inconveniences at other times, amongwhich may be enumerated the occasional appearance of the river in thedrawing-room, and the contemporaneous disappearance of the lawn andshrubbery. 

Sir Barnet Skettles expressed his personal consequence chiefly throughan antique gold snuffbox, and a ponderous silk pocket-kerchief, whichhe had an imposing manner of drawing out of his pocket like a bannerand using with both hands at once. Sir Barnet's object in life wasconstantly to extend the range of his acquaintance. Like a heavy bodydropped into water--not to disparage so worthy a gentleman by thecomparison--it was in the nature of things that Sir Barnet must spreadan ever widening circle about him, until there was no room left. Or, like a sound in air, the vibration of which, according to thespeculation of an ingenious modern philosopher, may go on travelling forever through the interminable fields of space, nothing but coming to theend of his moral tether could stop Sir Barnet Skettles in his voyage ofdiscovery through the social system. 

Sir Barnet was proud of making people acquainted with people. He likedthe thing for its own sake, and it advanced his favourite object too. For example, if Sir Barnet had the good fortune to get hold of a lawrecruit, or a country gentleman, and ensnared him to his hospitablevilla, Sir Barnet would say to him, on the morning after his arrival, 'Now, my dear Sir, is there anybody you would like to know? Who is thereyou would wish to meet? Do you take any interest in writing people, orin painting or sculpturing people, or in acting people, or in anythingof that sort?' Possibly the patient answered yes, and mentionedsomebody, of whom Sir Barnet had no more personal knowledge than ofPtolemy the Great. Sir Barnet replied, that nothing on earth was easier, as he knew him very well: immediately called on the aforesaid somebody, left his card, wrote a short note, --'My dear Sir--penalty of youreminent position--friend at my house naturally desirous--Lady Skettlesand myself participate--trust that genius being superior to ceremonies, you will do us the distinguished favour of giving us the pleasure, ' etc, etc. --and so killed a brace of birds with one stone, dead as door-nails. 

With the snuff-box and banner in full force, Sir Barnet Skettlespropounded his usual inquiry to Florence on the first morning ofher visit. When Florence thanked him, and said there was no one inparticular whom she desired to see, it was natural she should think witha pang, of poor lost Walter. When Sir Barnet Skettles, urging his kindoffer, said, 'My dear Miss Dombey, are you sure you can remember no onewhom your good Papa--to whom I beg you present the best compliments ofmyself and Lady Skettles when you write--might wish you to know?' it wasnatural, perhaps, that her poor head should droop a little, and that hervoice should tremble as it softly answered in the negative. 

Skettles Junior, much stiffened as to his cravat, and sobered down as tohis spirits' was at home for the holidays, and appeared to feel himselfaggrieved by the solicitude of his excellent mother that he should beattentive to Florence. Another and a deeper injury under which the soulof young Barnet chafed, was the company of Dr and Mrs Blimber, who hadbeen invited on a visit to the paternal roof-tree, and of whom the younggentleman often said he would have preferred their passing the vacationat Jericho. 

'Is there anybody you can suggest now, Doctor Blimber?' said Sir BarnetSkettles, turning to that gentleman. 

'You are very kind, Sir Barnet, ' returned Doctor Blimber. 'Really I amnot aware that there is, in particular. I like to know my fellow-men ingeneral, Sir Barnet. What does Terence say? Anyone who is the parent ofa son is interesting to me. 

'Has Mrs Blimber any wish to see any remarkable person?' asked SirBarnet, courteously. 

Mrs Blimber replied, with a sweet smile and a shake of her sky-blue cap, that if Sir Barnet could have made her known to Cicero, she would havetroubled him; but such an introduction not being feasible, and shealready enjoying the friendship of himself and his amiable lady, andpossessing with the Doctor her husband their joint confidence in regardto their dear son--here young Barnet was observed to curl his nose--sheasked no more. 

Sir Barnet was fain, under these circumstances, to content himself forthe time with the company assembled. Florence was glad of that; for shehad a study to pursue among them, and it lay too near her heart, and wastoo precious and momentous, to yield to any other interest. 

There were some children staying in the house. Children who were asfrank and happy with fathers and with mothers as those rosy facesopposite home. Children who had no restraint upon their love, and freelyshowed it. Florence sought to learn their secret; sought to find outwhat it was she had missed; what simple art they knew, and she knew not;how she could be taught by them to show her father that she loved him, and to win his love again. 

Many a day did Florence thoughtfully observe these children. On manya bright morning did she leave her bed when the glorious sun rose, andwalking up and down upon the river's bank' before anyone in the housewas stirring, look up at the windows of their rooms, and think of them, asleep, so gently tended and affectionately thought of. Florence wouldfeel more lonely then, than in the great house all alone; and wouldthink sometimes that she was better there than here, and that there wasgreater peace in hiding herself than in mingling with others of her age, and finding how unlike them all she was. But attentive to her study, though it touched her to the quick at every little leaf she turned inthe hard book, Florence remained among them, and tried with patienthope, to gain the knowledge that she wearied for. 

Ah! how to gain it! how to know the charm in its beginning! There weredaughters here, who rose up in the morning, and lay down to rest atnight, possessed of fathers' hearts already. They had no repulse toovercome, no coldness to dread, no frown to smooth away. As the morningadvanced, and the windows opened one by one, and the dew began to dryupon the flowers and and youthful feet began to move upon the lawn, Florence, glancing round at the bright faces, thought what was thereshe could learn from these children? It was too late to learn from them;each could approach her father fearlessly, and put up her lips to meetthe ready kiss, and wind her arm about the neck that bent down to caressher. She could not begin by being so bold. Oh! could it be that therewas less and less hope as she studied more and more!

She remembered well, that even the old woman who had robbed her whena little child--whose image and whose house, and all she had said anddone, were stamped upon her recollection, with the enduring sharpnessof a fearful impression made at that early period of life--had spokenfondly of her daughter, and how terribly even she had cried out in thepain of hopeless separation from her child But her own mother, shewould think again, when she recalled this, had loved her well. Then, sometimes, when her thoughts reverted swiftly to the void betweenherself and her father, Florence would tremble, and the tears wouldstart upon her face, as she pictured to herself her mother living on, and coming also to dislike her, because of her wanting the unknown gracethat should conciliate that father naturally, and had never done sofrom her cradle She knew that this imagination did wrong to her mother'smemory, and had no truth in it, or base to rest upon; and yet she triedso hard to justify him, and to find the whole blame in herself, that shecould not resist its passing, like a wild cloud, through the distance ofher mind. 

There came among the other visitors, soon after Florence, one beautifulgirl, three or four years younger than she, who was an orphan child, andwho was accompanied by her aunt, a grey-haired lady, who spoke much toFlorence, and who greatly liked (but that they all did) to hear her singof an evening, and would always sit near her at that time, with motherlyinterest. They had only been two days in the house, when Florence, beingin an arbour in the garden one warm morning, musingly observant of ayouthful group upon the turf, through some intervening boughs, --andwreathing flowers for the head of one little creature among them who wasthe pet and plaything of the rest, heard this same lady and her niece, in pacing up and down a sheltered nook close by, speak of herself. 

'Is Florence an orphan like me, aunt?' said the child. 

'No, my love. She has no mother, but her father is living. '

'Is she in mourning for her poor Mama, now?' inquired the child quickly. 

'No; for her only brother. '

'Has she no other brother?'

'None. '

'No sister?'

'None, '

'I am very, very sorry!' said the little girl

As they stopped soon afterwards to watch some boats, and had been silentin the meantime, Florence, who had risen when she heard her name, andhad gathered up her flowers to go and meet them, that they might know ofher being within hearing, resumed her seat and work, expecting to hearno more; but the conversation recommenced next moment. 

'Florence is a favourite with everyone here, and deserves to be, I amsure, ' said the child, earnestly. 'Where is her Papa?'

The aunt replied, after a moment's pause, that she did not know. Hertone of voice arrested Florence, who had started from her seat again;and held her fastened to the spot, with her work hastily caught upto her bosom, and her two hands saving it from being scattered on theground. 

'He is in England, I hope, aunt?' said the child. 

'I believe so. Yes; I know he is, indeed. '

'Has he ever been here?'

'I believe not. No. '

'Is he coming here to see her?'

'I believe not. 

'Is he lame, or blind, or ill, aunt?' asked the child. 

The flowers that Florence held to her breast began to fall when sheheard those words, so wonderingly spoke She held them closer; and herface hung down upon them'

'Kate, ' said the lady, after another moment of silence, 'I will tell youthe whole truth about Florence as I have heard it, and believe it to be. Tell no one else, my dear, because it may be little known here, and yourdoing so would give her pain. '

'I never will!' exclaimed the child. 

'I know you never will, ' returned the lady. 'I can trust you as myself. I fear then, Kate, that Florence's father cares little for her, veryseldom sees her, never was kind to her in her life, and now quite shunsher and avoids her. She would love him dearly if he would suffer her, but he will not--though for no fault of hers; and she is greatly to beloved and pitied by all gentle hearts. '

More of the flowers that Florence held fell scattering on the ground;those that remained were wet, but not with dew; and her face droppedupon her laden hands. 

'Poor Florence! Dear, good Florence!' cried the child. 

'Do you know why I have told you this, Kate?' said the lady. 

'That I may be very kind to her, and take great care to try to pleaseher. Is that the reason, aunt?'

'Partly, ' said the lady, 'but not all. Though we see her so cheerful;with a pleasant smile for everyone; ready to oblige us all, and bearingher part in every amusement here: she can hardly be quite happy, do youthink she can, Kate?'

'I am afraid not, ' said the little girl. 

'And you can understand, ' pursued the lady, 'why her observation ofchildren who have parents who are fond of them, and proud of them--likemany here, just now--should make her sorrowful in secret?'

'Yes, dear aunt, ' said the child, 'I understand that very well. PoorFlorence!'

More flowers strayed upon the ground, and those she yet held to herbreast trembled as if a wintry wind were rustling them. 

'My Kate, ' said the lady, whose voice was serious, but very calm andsweet, and had so impressed Florence from the first moment of herhearing it, 'of all the youthful people here, you are her natural andharmless friend; you have not the innocent means, that happier childrenhave--'

'There are none happier, aunt!' exclaimed the child, who seemed to clingabout her. 

'As other children have, dear Kate, of reminding her of her misfortune. Therefore I would have you, when you try to be her little friend, try all the more for that, and feel that the bereavement yousustained--thank Heaven! before you knew its weight--gives you claim andhold upon poor Florence. '

'But I am not without a parent's love, aunt, and I never have been, 'said the child, 'with you. '

'However that may be, my dear, ' returned the lady, 'your misfortune is alighter one than Florence's; for not an orphan in the wide world can beso deserted as the child who is an outcast from a living parent's love. '

The flowers were scattered on the ground like dust; the empty hands werespread upon the face; and orphaned Florence, shrinking down upon theground, wept long and bitterly. 

But true of heart and resolute in her good purpose, Florence held to itas her dying mother held by her upon the day that gave Paul life. He didnot know how much she loved him. However long the time in coming, andhowever slow the interval, she must try to bring that knowledge to herfather's heart one day or other. Meantime she must be careful in nothoughtless word, or look, or burst of feeling awakened by any chancecircumstance, to complain against him, or to give occasion for thesewhispers to his prejudice. 

Even in the response she made the orphan child, to whom she wasattracted strongly, and whom she had such occasion to remember, Florencewas mindful of him' If she singled her out too plainly (Florencethought) from among the rest, she would confirm--in one mind certainly:perhaps in more--the belief that he was cruel and unnatural. Her owndelight was no set-off to this, 'What she had overheard was a reason, not for soothing herself, but for saving him; and Florence did it, inpursuance of the study of her heart. 

She did so always. If a book were read aloud, and there were anythingin the story that pointed at an unkind father, she was in pain for theirapplication of it to him; not for herself. So with any trifle of aninterlude that was acted, or picture that was shown, or game that wasplayed, among them. The occasions for such tenderness towards him wereso many, that her mind misgave her often, it would indeed be better togo back to the old house, and live again within the shadow of its dullwalls, undisturbed. How few who saw sweet Florence, in her spring ofwomanhood, the modest little queen of those small revels, imagined whata load of sacred care lay heavy in her breast! How few of those whostiffened in her father's freezing atmosphere, suspected what a heap offiery coals was piled upon his head!

Florence pursued her study patiently, and, failing to acquire the secretof the nameless grace she sought, among the youthful company who wereassembled in the house, often walked out alone, in the early morning, among the children of the poor. But still she found them all too faradvanced to learn from. They had won their household places long ago, and did not stand without, as she did, with a bar across the door. 

There was one man whom she several times observed at work very early, and often with a girl of about her own age seated near him' He was avery poor man, who seemed to have no regular employment, but now wentroaming about the banks of the river when the tide was low, looking outfor bits and scraps in the mud; and now worked at the unpromisinglittle patch of garden-ground before his cottage; and now tinkered upa miserable old boat that belonged to him; or did some job of that kindfor a neighbour, as chance occurred. Whatever the man's labour, thegirl was never employed; but sat, when she was with him, in a listless, moping state, and idle. 

Florence had often wished to speak to this man; yet she had never takencourage to do so, as he made no movement towards her. But one morningwhen she happened to come upon him suddenly, from a by-path among somepollard willows which terminated in the little shelving piece of stonyground that lay between his dwelling and the water, where he was bendingover a fire he had made to caulk the old boat which was lying bottomupwards, close by, he raised his head at the sound of her footstep, andgave her Good morning. 

'Good morning, ' said Florence, approaching nearer, 'you are at workearly. '

'I'd be glad to be often at work earlier, Miss, if I had work to do. '

'Is it so hard to get?' asked Florence. 

'I find it so, ' replied the man. 

Florence glanced to where the girl was sitting, drawn together, with herelbows on her knees, and her chin on her hands, and said:

'Is that your daughter?'

He raised his head quickly, and looking towards the girl with abrightened face, nodded to her, and said 'Yes, ' Florence looked towardsher too, and gave her a kind salutation; the girl muttered something inreturn, ungraciously and sullenly. 

'Is she in want of employment also?' said Florence. 

The man shook his head. 'No, Miss, ' he said. 'I work for both, '

'Are there only you two, then?' inquired Florence. 

'Only us two, ' said the man. 'Her mother his been dead these ten year. Martha!' lifted up his head again, and whistled to her) 'won't you say aword to the pretty young lady?'

The girl made an impatient gesture with her cowering shoulders, andturned her head another way. Ugly, misshapen, peevish, ill-conditioned, ragged, dirty--but beloved! Oh yes! Florence had seen her father's looktowards her, and she knew whose look it had no likeness to. 

'I'm afraid she's worse this morning, my poor girl!' said the man, suspending his work, and contemplating his ill-favoured child, with acompassion that was the more tender for being rougher. 

'She is ill, then!' said Florence. 

The man drew a deep sigh 'I don't believe my Martha's had five shortdays' good health, ' he answered, looking at her still, 'in as many longyears. '

'Ay! and more than that, John, ' said a neighbour, who had come down tohelp him with the boat. 

'More than that, you say, do you?' cried the other, pushing back hisbattered hat, and drawing his hand across his forehead. 'Very like. Itseems a long, long time. '

'And the more the time, ' pursued the neighbour, 'the more you'vefavoured and humoured her, John, till she's got to be a burden toherself, and everybody else. '

'Not to me, ' said her father, falling to his work. 'Not to me. '

Florence could feel--who better?--how truly he spoke. She drew a littlecloser to him, and would have been glad to touch his rugged hand, andthank him for his goodness to the miserable object that he looked uponwith eyes so different from any other man's. 

'Who would favour my poor girl--to call it favouring--if I didn't?' saidthe father. 

'Ay, ay, ' cried the neighbour. 'In reason, John. But you! You robyourself to give to her. You bind yourself hand and foot on her account. You make your life miserable along of her. And what does she care! Youdon't believe she knows it?'

The father lifted up his head again, and whistled to her. Martha madethe same impatient gesture with her crouching shoulders, in reply; andhe was glad and happy. 

'Only for that, Miss, ' said the neighbour, with a smile, in which therewas more of secret sympathy than he expressed; 'only to get that, henever lets her out of his sight!'

'Because the day'll come, and has been coming a long while, ' observedthe other, bending low over his work, 'when to get half as much fromthat unfort'nate child of mine--to get the trembling of a finger, or thewaving of a hair--would be to raise the dead. '

Florence softly put some money near his hand on the old boat, and lefthim. 

And now Florence began to think, if she were to fall ill, if she were tofade like her dear brother, would he then know that she had loved him;would she then grow dear to him; would he come to her bedside, when shewas weak and dim of sight, and take her into his embrace, and cancel allthe past? Would he so forgive her, in that changed condition, for nothaving been able to lay open her childish heart to him, as to make iteasy to relate with what emotions she had gone out of his room thatnight; what she had meant to say if she had had the courage; and how shehad endeavoured, afterwards, to learn the way she never knew in infancy?

Yes, she thought if she were dying, he would relent. She thought, thatif she lay, serene and not unwilling to depart, upon the bed that wascurtained round with recollections of their darling boy, he would betouched home, and would say, 'Dear Florence, live for me, and we willlove each other as we might have done, and be as happy as we might havebeen these many years!' She thought that if she heard such words fromhim, and had her arms clasped round him' she could answer with a smile, 'It is too late for anything but this; I never could be happier, dearfather!' and so leave him, with a blessing on her lips. 

The golden water she remembered on the wall, appeared to Florence, inthe light of such reflections, only as a current flowing on to rest, and to a region where the dear ones, gone before, were waiting, hand inhand; and often when she looked upon the darker river rippling at herfeet, she thought with awful wonder, but not terror, of that river whichher brother had so often said was bearing him away. 

The father and his sick daughter were yet fresh in Florence's mind, and, indeed, that incident was not a week old, when Sir Barnet and his ladygoing out walking in the lanes one afternoon, proposed to her to bearthem company. Florence readily consenting, Lady Skettles ordered outyoung Barnet as a matter of course. For nothing delighted Lady Skettlesso much, as beholding her eldest son with Florence on his arm. 

Barnet, to say the truth, appeared to entertain an opposite sentiment onthe subject, and on such occasions frequently expressed himself audibly, though indefinitely, in reference to 'a parcel of girls. ' As it was noteasy to ruffle her sweet temper, however, Florence generally reconciledthe young gentleman to his fate after a few minutes, and they strolledon amicably: Lady Skettles and Sir Barnet following, in a state ofperfect complacency and high gratification. 

This was the order of procedure on the afternoon in question; andFlorence had almost succeeded in overruling the present objectionsof Skettles Junior to his destiny, when a gentleman on horseback cameriding by, looked at them earnestly as he passed, drew in his rein, wheeled round, and came riding back again, hat in hand. 

The gentleman had looked particularly at Florence; and when the littleparty stopped, on his riding back, he bowed to her, before saluting SirBarnet and his lady. Florence had no remembrance of having ever seenhim, but she started involuntarily when he came near her, and drew back. 

'My horse is perfectly quiet, I assure you, ' said the gentleman. 

It was not that, but something in the gentleman himself--Florence couldnot have said what--that made her recoil as if she had been stung. 

'I have the honour to address Miss Dombey, I believe?' said thegentleman, with a most persuasive smile. On Florence inclining her head, he added, 'My name is Carker. I can hardly hope to be remembered by MissDombey, except by name. Carker. '

Florence, sensible of a strange inclination to shiver, though the daywas hot, presented him to her host and hostess; by whom he was verygraciously received. 

'I beg pardon, ' said Mr Carker, 'a thousand times! But I am going downtomorrow morning to Mr Dombey, at Leamington, and if Miss Dombey canentrust me with any commission, need I say how very happy I shall be?'

Sir Barnet immediately divining that Florence would desire to write aletter to her father, proposed to return, and besought Mr Carker to comehome and dine in his riding gear. Mr Carker had the misfortune to beengaged to dinner, but if Miss Dombey wished to write, nothing woulddelight him more than to accompany them back, and to be her faithfulslave in waiting as long as she pleased. As he said this with his widestsmile, and bent down close to her to pat his horse's neck, Florencemeeting his eyes, saw, rather than heard him say, 'There is no news ofthe ship!'

Confused, frightened, shrinking from him, and not even sure that hehad said those words, for he seemed to have shown them to her in someextraordinary manner through his smile, instead of uttering them, Florence faintly said that she was obliged to him, but she would notwrite; she had nothing to say. 

'Nothing to send, Miss Dombey?' said the man of teeth. 

'Nothing, ' said Florence, 'but my--but my dear love--if you please. '

Disturbed as Florence was, she raised her eyes to his face withan imploring and expressive look, that plainly besought him, if heknew--which he as plainly did--that any message between her and herfather was an uncommon charge, but that one most of all, to spare her. Mr Carker smiled and bowed low, and being charged by Sir Barnet with thebest compliments of himself and Lady Skettles, took his leave, and rodeaway: leaving a favourable impression on that worthy couple. Florencewas seized with such a shudder as he went, that Sir Barnet, adopting thepopular superstition, supposed somebody was passing over her grave. MrCarker turning a corner, on the instant, looked back, and bowed, anddisappeared, as if he rode off to the churchyard straight, to do it. 

CHAPTER 25. Strange News of Uncle Sol

Captain Cuttle, though no sluggard, did not turn out so early on themorning after he had seen Sol Gills, through the shop-window, writing inthe parlour, with the Midshipman upon the counter, and Rob the Grindermaking up his bed below it, but that the clocks struck six as he raisedhimself on his elbow, and took a survey of his little chamber. TheCaptain's eyes must have done severe duty, if he usually opened them aswide on awaking as he did that morning; and were but roughly rewardedfor their vigilance, if he generally rubbed them half as hard. But theoccasion was no common one, for Rob the Grinder had certainly neverstood in the doorway of Captain Cuttle's room before, and in it he stoodthen, panting at the Captain, with a flushed and touzled air of Bedabout him, that greatly heightened both his colour and expression. 

'Holloa!' roared the Captain. 'What's the matter?'

Before Rob could stammer a word in answer, Captain Cuttle turned out, all in a heap, and covered the boy's mouth with his hand. 

'Steady, my lad, ' said the Captain, 'don't ye speak a word to me asyet!'

The Captain, looking at his visitor in great consternation, gentlyshouldered him into the next room, after laying this injunction uponhim; and disappearing for a few moments, forthwith returned in the bluesuit. Holding up his hand in token of the injunction not yet being takenoff, Captain Cuttle walked up to the cupboard, and poured himself outa dram; a counterpart of which he handed to the messenger. The Captainthen stood himself up in a corner, against the wall, as if to forestallthe possibility of being knocked backwards by the communication that wasto be made to him; and having swallowed his liquor, with his eyes fixedon the messenger, and his face as pale as his face could be, requestedhim to 'heave ahead. '

'Do you mean, tell you, Captain?' asked Rob, who had been greatlyimpressed by these precautions. 

'Ay!' said the Captain. 

'Well, Sir, ' said Rob, 'I ain't got much to tell. But look here!'

Rob produced a bundle of keys. The Captain surveyed them, remained inhis corner, and surveyed the messenger. 

'And look here!' pursued Rob. 

The boy produced a sealed packet, which Captain Cuttle stared at as hehad stared at the keys. 

'When I woke this morning, Captain, ' said Rob, 'which was about aquarter after five, I found these on my pillow. The shop-door wasunbolted and unlocked, and Mr Gills gone. '

'Gone!' roared the Captain. 

'Flowed, Sir, ' returned Rob. 

The Captain's voice was so tremendous, and he came out of his cornerwith such way on him, that Rob retreated before him into another corner:holding out the keys and packet, to prevent himself from being run down. 

'"For Captain Cuttle, " Sir, ' cried Rob, 'is on the keys, and on thepacket too. Upon my word and honour, Captain Cuttle, I don't knowanything more about it. I wish I may die if I do! Here's a sitiwationfor a lad that's just got a sitiwation, ' cried the unfortunate Grinder, screwing his cuff into his face: 'his master bolted with his place, andhim blamed for it!'

These lamentations had reference to Captain Cuttle's gaze, orrather glare, which was full of vague suspicions, threatenings, anddenunciations. Taking the proffered packet from his hand, the Captainopened it and read as follows:-- 'My dear Ned Cuttle. Enclosed ismy will!' The Captain turned it over, with a doubtful look--'andTestament--Where's the Testament?' said the Captain, instantlyimpeaching the ill-fated Grinder. 'What have you done with that, mylad?'

'I never see it, ' whimpered Rob. 'Don't keep on suspecting an innocentlad, Captain. I never touched the Testament. '

Captain Cuttle shook his head, implying that somebody must be madeanswerable for it; and gravely proceeded:

'Which don't break open for a year, or until you have decisiveintelligence of my dear Walter, who is dear to you, Ned, too, I amsure. ' The Captain paused and shook his head in some emotion; then, asa re-establishment of his dignity in this trying position, looked withexceeding sternness at the Grinder. 'If you should never hear of me, orsee me more, Ned, remember an old friend as he will remember you tothe last--kindly; and at least until the period I have mentioned hasexpired, keep a home in the old place for Walter. There are no debts, the loan from Dombey's House is paid off and all my keys I send withthis. Keep this quiet, and make no inquiry for me; it is useless. So nomore, dear Ned, from your true friend, Solomon Gills. ' The Captain tooka long breath, and then read these words written below: '"The boy Rob, well recommended, as I told you, from Dombey's House. If all else shouldcome to the hammer, take care, Ned, of the little Midshipman. "'

To convey to posterity any idea of the manner in which the Captain, after turning this letter over and over, and reading it a score oftimes, sat down in his chair, and held a court-martial on the subject inhis own mind, would require the united genius of all the great men, who, discarding their own untoward days, have determined to go down toposterity, and have never got there. At first the Captain was too muchconfounded and distressed to think of anything but the letter itself;and even when his thoughts began to glance upon the various attendantfacts, they might, perhaps, as well have occupied themselves with theirformer theme, for any light they reflected on them. In this state ofmind, Captain Cuttle having the Grinder before the court, and no oneelse, found it a great relief to decide, generally, that he was anobject of suspicion: which the Captain so clearly expressed in hisvisage, that Rob remonstrated. 

'Oh, don't, Captain!' cried the Grinder. 'I wonder how you can! whathave I done to be looked at, like that?'

'My lad, ' said Captain Cuttle, 'don't you sing out afore you're hurt. And don't you commit yourself, whatever you do. '

'I haven't been and committed nothing, Captain!' answered Rob. 

'Keep her free, then, ' said the Captain, impressively, 'and ride easy. 

With a deep sense of the responsibility imposed upon him' and thenecessity of thoroughly fathoming this mysterious affair as became a manin his relations with the parties, Captain Cuttle resolved to go downand examine the premises, and to keep the Grinder with him. Consideringthat youth as under arrest at present, the Captain was in some doubtwhether it might not be expedient to handcuff him, or tie his anklestogether, or attach a weight to his legs; but not being clear as to thelegality of such formalities, the Captain decided merely to hold him bythe shoulder all the way, and knock him down if he made any objection. 

However, he made none, and consequently got to the Instrument-maker'shouse without being placed under any more stringent restraint. As theshutters were not yet taken down, the Captain's first care was tohave the shop opened; and when the daylight was freely admitted, heproceeded, with its aid, to further investigation. 

The Captain's first care was to establish himself in a chair in theshop, as President of the solemn tribunal that was sitting withinhim; and to require Rob to lie down in his bed under the counter, showexactly where he discovered the keys and packet when he awoke, howhe found the door when he went to try it, how he started off to BrigPlace--cautiously preventing the latter imitation from being carriedfarther than the threshold--and so on to the end of the chapter. Whenall this had been done several times, the Captain shook his head andseemed to think the matter had a bad look. 

Next, the Captain, with some indistinct idea of finding a body, instituted a strict search over the whole house; groping in the cellarswith a lighted candle, thrusting his hook behind doors, bringing hishead into violent contact with beams, and covering himself with cobwebs. Mounting up to the old man's bed-room, they found that he had not beenin bed on the previous night, but had merely lain down on the coverlet, as was evident from the impression yet remaining there. 

'And I think, Captain, ' said Rob, looking round the room, 'that when MrGills was going in and out so often, these last few days, he was takinglittle things away, piecemeal, not to attract attention. '

'Ay!' said the Captain, mysteriously. 'Why so, my lad?'

'Why, ' returned Rob, looking about, 'I don't see his shaving tackle. Norhis brushes, Captain. Nor no shirts. Nor yet his shoes. '

As each of these articles was mentioned, Captain Cuttle took particularnotice of the corresponding department of the Grinder, lest he shouldappear to have been in recent use, or should prove to be in presentpossession thereof. But Rob had no occasion to shave, was not brushed, and wore the clothes he had on for a long time past, beyond allpossibility of a mistake. 

'And what should you say, ' said the Captain--'not committingyourself--about his time of sheering off? Hey?'

'Why, I think, Captain, ' returned Rob, 'that he must have gone prettysoon after I began to snore. '

'What o'clock was that?' said the Captain, prepared to be veryparticular about the exact time. 

'How can I tell, Captain!' answered Rob. 'I only know that I'm a heavysleeper at first, and a light one towards morning; and if Mr Gills hadcome through the shop near daybreak, though ever so much on tiptoe, I'mpretty sure I should have heard him shut the door at all events. 

On mature consideration of this evidence, Captain Cuttle began to thinkthat the Instrument-maker must have vanished of his own accord; to whichlogical conclusion he was assisted by the letter addressed to himself, which, as being undeniably in the old man's handwriting, would seem, with no great forcing, to bear the construction, that he arranged of hisown will to go, and so went. The Captain had next to consider where andwhy? and as there was no way whatsoever that he saw to the solution ofthe first difficulty, he confined his meditations to the second. 

Remembering the old man's curious manner, and the farewell he had takenof him; unaccountably fervent at the time, but quite intelligible now: aterrible apprehension strengthened on the Captain, that, overpoweredby his anxieties and regrets for Walter, he had been driven to commitsuicide. Unequal to the wear and tear of daily life, as he hadoften professed himself to be, and shaken as he no doubt was by theuncertainty and deferred hope he had undergone, it seemed no violentlystrained misgiving, but only too probable. Free from debt, and with nofear for his personal liberty, or the seizure of his goods, what elsebut such a state of madness could have hurried him away alone andsecretly? As to his carrying some apparel with him, if he had reallydone so--and they were not even sure of that--he might have done so, the Captain argued, to prevent inquiry, to distract attention from hisprobable fate, or to ease the very mind that was now revolving all thesepossibilities. Such, reduced into plain language, and condensed withina small compass, was the final result and substance of Captain Cuttle'sdeliberations: which took a long time to arrive at this pass, and were, like some more public deliberations, very discursive and disorderly. 

Dejected and despondent in the extreme, Captain Cuttle felt it just torelease Rob from the arrest in which he had placed him, and to enlargehim, subject to a kind of honourable inspection which he still resolvedto exercise; and having hired a man, from Brogley the Broker, to sit inthe shop during their absence, the Captain, taking Rob with him, issuedforth upon a dismal quest after the mortal remains of Solomon Gills. 

Not a station-house, or bone-house, or work-house in the metropolisescaped a visitation from the hard glazed hat. Along the wharves, amongthe shipping on the bank-side, up the river, down the river, here, there, everywhere, it went gleaming where men were thickest, like thehero's helmet in an epic battle. For a whole week the Captain read ofall the found and missing people in all the newspapers and handbills, and went forth on expeditions at all hours of the day to identifySolomon Gills, in poor little ship-boys who had fallen overboard, and intall foreigners with dark beards who had taken poison--'to make sure, 'Captain Cuttle said, 'that it wam't him. ' It is a sure thing that itnever was, and that the good Captain had no other satisfaction. 

Captain Cuttle at last abandoned these attempts as hopeless, and sethimself to consider what was to be done next. After several new perusalsof his poor friend's letter, he considered that the maintenance of' ahome in the old place for Walter' was the primary duty imposed upon him. Therefore, the Captain's decision was, that he would keep house onthe premises of Solomon Gills himself, and would go into theinstrument-business, and see what came of it. 

But as this step involved the relinquishment of his apartments at MrsMacStinger's, and he knew that resolute woman would never hear of hisdeserting them, the Captain took the desperate determination of runningaway. 

'Now, look ye here, my lad, ' said the Captain to Rob, when he hadmatured this notable scheme, 'to-morrow, I shan't be found in this hereroadstead till night--not till arter midnight p'rhaps. But you keepwatch till you hear me knock, and the moment you do, turn-to, and openthe door. '

'Very good, Captain, ' said Rob. 

'You'll continue to be rated on these here books, ' pursued the Captaincondescendingly, 'and I don't say but what you may get promotion, ifyou and me should pull together with a will. But the moment you hear meknock to-morrow night, whatever time it is, turn-to and show yourselfsmart with the door. '

'I'll be sure to do it, Captain, ' replied Rob. 

'Because you understand, ' resumed the Captain, coming back again toenforce this charge upon his mind, 'there may be, for anything I cansay, a chase; and I might be took while I was waiting, if you didn'tshow yourself smart with the door. '

Rob again assured the Captain that he would be prompt and wakeful;and the Captain having made this prudent arrangement, went home to MrsMacStinger's for the last time. 

The sense the Captain had of its being the last time, and of the awfulpurpose hidden beneath his blue waistcoat, inspired him with such amortal dread of Mrs MacStinger, that the sound of that lady's footdownstairs at any time of the day, was sufficient to throw him intoa fit of trembling. It fell out, too, that Mrs MacStinger was in acharming temper--mild and placid as a house--lamb; and Captain Cuttle'sconscience suffered terrible twinges, when she came up to inquire if shecould cook him nothing for his dinner. 

'A nice small kidney-pudding now, Cap'en Cuttle, ' said his landlady: 'ora sheep's heart. Don't mind my trouble. '

'No thank'ee, Ma'am, ' returned the Captain. 

'Have a roast fowl, ' said Mrs MacStinger, 'with a bit of weal stuffingand some egg sauce. Come, Cap'en Cuttle! Give yourself a little treat!'

'No thank'ee, Ma'am, ' returned the Captain very humbly. 

'I'm sure you're out of sorts, and want to be stimulated, ' said MrsMacStinger. 'Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry wine?'

'Well, Ma'am, ' rejoined the Captain, 'if you'd be so good as take aglass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favour, Ma'am, ' said the Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, 'to accept aquarter's rent ahead?'

'And why so, Cap'en Cuttle?' retorted Mrs MacStinger--sharply, as theCaptain thought. 

The Captain was frightened to dead 'If you would Ma'am, ' he said withsubmission, 'it would oblige me. I can't keep my money very well. Itpays itself out. I should take it kind if you'd comply. '

'Well, Cap'en Cuttle, ' said the unconscious MacStinger, rubbing herhands, 'you can do as you please. It's not for me, with my family, torefuse, no more than it is to ask. '

'And would you, Ma'am, ' said the Captain, taking down the tin canisterin which he kept his cash' from the top shelf of the cupboard, 'be sogood as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? Ifyou could make it convenient, Ma'am, to pass the word presently for themchildren to come for'ard, in a body, I should be glad to see 'em. '

These innocent MacStingers were so many daggers to the Captain's breast, when they appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confidingtrustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander MacStinger, whohad been his favourite, was insupportable to the Captain; the voice ofJuliana MacStinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward ofhim. 

Captain Cuttle kept up appearances, nevertheless, tolerably well, andfor an hour or two was very hardly used and roughly handled by the youngMacStingers: who in their childish frolics, did a little damage alsoto the glazed hat, by sitting in it, two at a time, as in a nest, anddrumming on the inside of the crown with their shoes. At length theCaptain sorrowfully dismissed them: taking leave of these cherubs withthe poignant remorse and grief of a man who was going to execution. 

In the silence of night, the Captain packed up his heavier property in achest, which he locked, intending to leave it there, in all probabilityfor ever, but on the forlorn chance of one day finding a mansufficiently bold and desperate to come and ask for it. Of his lighternecessaries, the Captain made a bundle; and disposed his plate about hisperson, ready for flight. At the hour of midnight, when Brig Place wasburied in slumber, and Mrs MacStinger was lulled in sweet oblivion, withher infants around her, the guilty Captain, stealing down on tiptoe, inthe dark, opened the door, closed it softly after him, and took to hisheels. 

Pursued by the image of Mrs MacStinger springing out of bed, and, regardless of costume, following and bringing him back; pursued also bya consciousness of his enormous crime; Captain Cuttle held on at a greatpace, and allowed no grass to grow under his feet, between Brig Placeand the Instrument-maker's door. It opened when he knocked--for Robwas on the watch--and when it was bolted and locked behind him, CaptainCuttle felt comparatively safe. 

'Whew!' cried the Captain, looking round him. 'It's a breather!'

'Nothing the matter, is there, Captain?' cried the gaping Rob. 

'No, no!' said Captain Cuttle, after changing colour, and listening toa passing footstep in the street. 'But mind ye, my lad; if any lady, except either of them two as you see t'other day, ever comes and asksfor Cap'en Cuttle, be sure to report no person of that name known, nornever heard of here; observe them orders, will you?'

'I'll take care, Captain, ' returned Rob. 

'You might say--if you liked, ' hesitated the Captain, 'that you'dread in the paper that a Cap'en of that name was gone to Australia, emigrating, along with a whole ship's complement of people as had allswore never to come back no more. 

Rob nodded his understanding of these instructions; and Captain Cuttlepromising to make a man of him, if he obeyed orders, dismissed him, yawning, to his bed under the counter, and went aloft to the chamber ofSolomon Gills. 

What the Captain suffered next day, whenever a bonnet passed, or howoften he darted out of the shop to elude imaginary MacStingers, andsought safety in the attic, cannot be told. But to avoid the fatiguesattendant on this means of self-preservation, the Captain curtained theglass door of communication between the shop and parlour, on the inside;fitted a key to it from the bunch that had been sent to him; and cut asmall hole of espial in the wall. The advantage of this fortification isobvious. On a bonnet appearing, the Captain instantly slipped into hisgarrison, locked himself up, and took a secret observation of the enemy. Finding it a false alarm, the Captain instantly slipped out again. Andthe bonnets in the street were so very numerous, and alarms wereso inseparable from their appearance, that the Captain was almostincessantly slipping in and out all day long. 

Captain Cuttle found time, however, in the midst of this fatiguingservice to inspect the stock; in connexion with which he had thegeneral idea (very laborious to Rob) that too much friction could notbe bestowed upon it, and that it could not be made too bright. He alsoticketed a few attractive-looking articles at a venture, at pricesranging from ten shillings to fifty pounds, and exposed them in thewindow to the great astonishment of the public. 

After effecting these improvements, Captain Cuttle, surrounded by theinstruments, began to feel scientific: and looked up at the stars atnight, through the skylight, when he was smoking his pipe in the littleback parlour before going to bed, as if he had established a kind ofproperty in them. As a tradesman in the City, too, he began to have aninterest in the Lord Mayor, and the Sheriffs, and in Public Companies;and felt bound to read the quotations of the Funds every day, though hewas unable to make out, on any principle of navigation, what the figuresmeant, and could have very well dispensed with the fractions. Florence, the Captain waited on, with his strange news of Uncle Sol, immediatelyafter taking possession of the Midshipman; but she was away from home. So the Captain sat himself down in his altered station of life, with nocompany but Rob the Grinder; and losing count of time, as men do whengreat changes come upon them, thought musingly of Walter, and of SolomonGills, and even of Mrs MacStinger herself, as among the things that hadbeen. 

CHAPTER 26. Shadows of the Past and Future

'Your most obedient, Sir, ' said the Major. 'Damme, Sir, a friend of myfriend Dombey's is a friend of mine, and I'm glad to see you!'

'I am infinitely obliged, Carker, ' explained Mr Dombey, 'to MajorBagstock, for his company and conversation. 'Major Bagstock has renderedme great service, Carker. '

Mr Carker the Manager, hat in hand, just arrived at Leamington, andjust introduced to the Major, showed the Major his whole double rangeof teeth, and trusted he might take the liberty of thanking him withall his heart for having effected so great an Improvement in Mr Dombey'slooks and spirits. '

'By Gad, Sir, ' said the Major, in reply, 'there are no thanks due tome, for it's a give and take affair. A great creature like our friendDombey, Sir, ' said the Major, lowering his voice, but not lowering it somuch as to render it inaudible to that gentleman, 'cannot help improvingand exalting his friends. He strengthens and invigorates a man, Sir, does Dombey, in his moral nature. '

Mr Carker snapped at the expression. In his moral nature. Exactly. Thevery words he had been on the point of suggesting. 

'But when my friend Dombey, Sir, ' added the Major, 'talks to you ofMajor Bagstock, I must crave leave to set him and you right. He meansplain Joe, Sir--Joey B. --Josh. Bagstock--Joseph--rough and tough Old J. , Sir. At your service. '

Mr Carker's excessively friendly inclinations towards the Major, and MrCarker's admiration of his roughness, toughness, and plainness, gleamedout of every tooth in Mr Carker's head. 

'And now, Sir, ' said the Major, 'you and Dombey have the devil's ownamount of business to talk over. '

'By no means, Major, ' observed Mr Dombey. 

'Dombey, ' said the Major, defiantly, 'I know better; a man of yourmark--the Colossus of commerce--is not to be interrupted. Your momentsare precious. We shall meet at dinner-time. In the interval, old Josephwill be scarce. The dinner-hour is a sharp seven, Mr Carker. '

With that, the Major, greatly swollen as to his face, withdrew; butimmediately putting in his head at the door again, said:

'I beg your pardon. Dombey, have you any message to 'em?'

Mr Dombey in some embarrassment, and not without a glance at thecourteous keeper of his business confidence, entrusted the Major withhis compliments. 

'By the Lord, Sir, ' said the Major, 'you must make it something warmerthan that, or old Joe will be far from welcome. '

'Regards then, if you will, Major, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

'Damme, Sir, ' said the Major, shaking his shoulders and his great cheeksjocularly: 'make it something warmer than that. '

'What you please, then, Major, ' observed Mr Dombey. 

'Our friend is sly, Sir, sly, Sir, de-vilish sly, ' said the Major, staring round the door at Carker. 'So is Bagstock. ' But stopping in themidst of a chuckle, and drawing himself up to his full height, the Majorsolemnly exclaimed, as he struck himself on the chest, 'Dombey! I envyyour feelings. God bless you!' and withdrew. 

'You must have found the gentleman a great resource, ' said Carker, following him with his teeth. 

'Very great indeed, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'He has friends here, no doubt, ' pursued Carker. 'I perceive, fromwhat he has said, that you go into society here. Do you know, ' smilinghorribly, 'I am so very glad that you go into society!'

Mr Dombey acknowledged this display of interest on the part of hissecond in command, by twirling his watch-chain, and slightly moving hishead. 

'You were formed for society, ' said Carker. 'Of all the men I know, youare the best adapted, by nature and by position, for society. Do youknow I have been frequently amazed that you should have held it at arm'slength so long!'

'I have had my reasons, Carker. I have been alone, and indifferent toit. But you have great social qualifications yourself, and are the morelikely to have been surprised. '

'Oh! I!' returned the other, with ready self-disparagement. 'It'squite another matter in the case of a man like me. I don't come intocomparison with you. '

Mr Dombey put his hand to his neckcloth, settled his chin in it, coughed, and stood looking at his faithful friend and servant for a fewmoments in silence. 

'I shall have the pleasure, Carker, ' said Mr Dombey at length: making asif he swallowed something a little too large for his throat: 'to presentyou to my--to the Major's friends. Highly agreeable people. '

'Ladies among them, I presume?' insinuated the smooth Manager. 

'They are all--that is to say, they are both--ladies, ' replied MrDombey. 

'Only two?' smiled Carker. 

'They are only two. I have confined my visits to their residence, andhave made no other acquaintance here. '

'Sisters, perhaps?' quoth Carker. 

'Mother and daughter, ' replied Mr Dombey. 

As Mr Dombey dropped his eyes, and adjusted his neckcloth again, thesmiling face of Mr Carker the Manager became in a moment, and withoutany stage of transition, transformed into a most intent and frowningface, scanning his closely, and with an ugly sneer. As Mr Dombey raisedhis eyes, it changed back, no less quickly, to its old expression, andshowed him every gum of which it stood possessed. 

'You are very kind, ' said Carker, 'I shall be delighted to know them. Speaking of daughters, I have seen Miss Dombey. '

There was a sudden rush of blood to Mr Dombey's face. 

'I took the liberty of waiting on her, ' said Carker, 'to inquire if shecould charge me with any little commission. I am not so fortunate as tobe the bearer of any but her--but her dear love. '

Wolf's face that it was then, with even the hot tongue revealing itselfthrough the stretched mouth, as the eyes encountered Mr Dombey's!

'What business intelligence is there?' inquired the latter gentleman, after a silence, during which Mr Carker had produced some memoranda andother papers. 

'There is very little, ' returned Carker. 'Upon the whole we have not hadour usual good fortune of late, but that is of little moment to you. AtLloyd's, they give up the Son and Heir for lost. Well, she was insured, from her keel to her masthead. '

'Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, taking a chair near him, 'I cannot say thatyoung man, Gay, ever impressed me favourably--'

'Nor me, ' interposed the Manager. 

'But I wish, ' said Mr Dombey, without heeding the interruption, 'he hadnever gone on board that ship. I wish he had never been sent out. 

'It is a pity you didn't say so, in good time, is it not?' retortedCarker, coolly. 'However, I think it's all for the best. I really, thinkit's all for the best. Did I mention that there was something like alittle confidence between Miss Dombey and myself?'

'No, ' said Mr Dombey, sternly. 

'I have no doubt, ' returned Mr Carker, after an impressive pause, 'thatwherever Gay is, he is much better where he is, than at home here. IfI were, or could be, in your place, I should be satisfied of that. Iam quite satisfied of it myself. Miss Dombey is confiding andyoung--perhaps hardly proud enough, for your daughter--if she have afault. Not that that is much though, I am sure. Will you check thesebalances with me?'

Mr Dombey leaned back in his chair, instead of bending over the papersthat were laid before him, and looked the Manager steadily in the face. The Manager, with his eyelids slightly raised, affected to be glancingat his figures, and to await the leisure of his principal. He showedthat he affected this, as if from great delicacy, and with a design tospare Mr Dombey's feelings; and the latter, as he looked at him, wascognizant of his intended consideration, and felt that but for it, thisconfidential Carker would have said a great deal more, which he, MrDombey, was too proud to ask for. It was his way in business, often. Little by little, Mr Dombey's gaze relaxed, and his attention becamediverted to the papers before him; but while busy with the occupationthey afforded him, he frequently stopped, and looked at Mr Carker again. Whenever he did so, Mr Carker was demonstrative, as before, in hisdelicacy, and impressed it on his great chief more and more. 

While they were thus engaged; and under the skilful culture of theManager, angry thoughts in reference to poor Florence brooded and bredin Mr Dombey's breast, usurping the place of the cold dislike thatgenerally reigned there; Major Bagstock, much admired by the old ladiesof Leamington, and followed by the Native, carrying the usual amountof light baggage, straddled along the shady side of the way, to make amorning call on Mrs Skewton. It being midday when the Major reached thebower of Cleopatra, he had the good fortune to find his Princess on herusual sofa, languishing over a cup of coffee, with the room so darkenedand shaded for her more luxurious repose, that Withers, who was inattendance on her, loomed like a phantom page. 

'What insupportable creature is this, coming in?' said Mrs Skewton, 'Icannot hear it. Go away, whoever you are!'

'You have not the heart to banish J. B. , Ma'am!' said the Major haltingmidway, to remonstrate, with his cane over his shoulder. 

'Oh it's you, is it? On second thoughts, you may enter, ' observedCleopatra. 

The Major entered accordingly, and advancing to the sofa pressed hercharming hand to his lips. 

'Sit down, ' said Cleopatra, listlessly waving her fan, 'a long way off. Don't come too near me, for I am frightfully faint and sensitive thismorning, and you smell of the Sun. You are absolutely tropical. '

'By George, Ma'am, ' said the Major, 'the time has been when JosephBagstock has been grilled and blistered by the Sun; then time was, whenhe was forced, Ma'am, into such full blow, by high hothouse heat inthe West Indies, that he was known as the Flower. A man never heard ofBagstock, Ma'am, in those days; he heard of the Flower--the Flower ofOurs. The Flower may have faded, more or less, Ma'am, ' observed theMajor, dropping into a much nearer chair than had been indicated byhis cruel Divinity, 'but it is a tough plant yet, and constant as theevergreen. '

Here the Major, under cover of the dark room, shut up one eye, rolledhis head like a Harlequin, and, in his great self-satisfaction, perhapswent nearer to the confines of apoplexy than he had ever gone before. 

'Where is Mrs Granger?' inquired Cleopatra of her page. 

Withers believed she was in her own room. 

'Very well, ' said Mrs Skewton. 'Go away, and shut the door. I amengaged. '

As Withers disappeared, Mrs Skewton turned her head languidly towardsthe Major, without otherwise moving, and asked him how his friend was. 

'Dombey, Ma'am, ' returned the Major, with a facetious gurgling in histhroat, 'is as well as a man in his condition can be. His condition isa desperate one, Ma'am. He is touched, is Dombey! Touched!' cried theMajor. 'He is bayonetted through the body. '

Cleopatra cast a sharp look at the Major, that contrasted forcibly withthe affected drawl in which she presently said:

'Major Bagstock, although I know but little of the world, --nor can Ireally regret my experience, for I fear it is a false place, full ofwithering conventionalities: where Nature is but little regarded, andwhere the music of the heart, and the gushing of the soul, and all thatsort of thing, which is so truly poetical, is seldom heard, --I cannotmisunderstand your meaning. There is an allusion to Edith--to myextremely dear child, ' said Mrs Skewton, tracing the outline of hereyebrows with her forefinger, 'in your words, to which the tenderest ofchords vibrates excessively. '

'Bluntness, Ma'am, ' returned the Major, 'has ever been thecharacteristic of the Bagstock breed. You are right. Joe admits it. '

'And that allusion, ' pursued Cleopatra, 'would involve one of themost--if not positively the most--touching, and thrilling, and sacredemotions of which our sadly-fallen nature is susceptible, I conceive. '

The Major laid his hand upon his lips, and wafted a kiss to Cleopatra, as if to identify the emotion in question. 

'I feel that I am weak. I feel that I am wanting in that energy, whichshould sustain a Mama: not to say a parent: on such a subject, ' saidMrs Skewton, trimming her lips with the laced edge of herpocket-handkerchief; 'but I can hardly approach a topic so excessivelymomentous to my dearest Edith without a feeling of faintness. Nevertheless, bad man, as you have boldly remarked upon it, and as ithas occasioned me great anguish:' Mrs Skewton touched her left side withher fan: 'I will not shrink from my duty. '

The Major, under cover of the dimness, swelled, and swelled, and rolledhis purple face about, and winked his lobster eye, until he fell into afit of wheezing, which obliged him to rise and take a turn or two aboutthe room, before his fair friend could proceed. 

'Mr Dombey, ' said Mrs Skewton, when she at length resumed, 'was obligingenough, now many weeks ago, to do us the honour of visiting us here;in company, my dear Major, with yourself. I acknowledge--let me beopen--that it is my failing to be the creature of impulse, and to wearmy heart as it were, outside. I know my failing full well. My enemycannot know it better. But I am not penitent; I would rather not befrozen by the heartless world, and am content to bear this imputationjustly. '

Mrs Skewton arranged her tucker, pinched her wiry throat to give it asoft surface, and went on, with great complacency. 

'It gave me (my dearest Edith too, I am sure) infinite pleasureto receive Mr Dombey. As a friend of yours, my dear Major, we werenaturally disposed to be prepossessed in his favour; and I fanciedthat I observed an amount of Heart in Mr Dombey, that was excessivelyrefreshing. '

'There is devilish little heart in Dombey now, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 

'Wretched man!' cried Mrs Skewton, looking at him languidly, 'pray besilent. '

'J. B. Is dumb, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 

'Mr Dombey, ' pursued Cleopatra, smoothing the rosy hue upon her cheeks, 'accordingly repeated his visit; and possibly finding some attractionin the simplicity and primitiveness of our tastes--for there is alwaysa charm in nature--it is so very sweet--became one of our little circleevery evening. Little did I think of the awful responsibility into whichI plunged when I encouraged Mr Dombey--to--

'To beat up these quarters, Ma'am, ' suggested Major Bagstock. 

'Coarse person! 'said Mrs Skewton, 'you anticipate my meaning, though inodious language. 

Here Mrs Skewton rested her elbow on the little table at her side, and suffering her wrist to droop in what she considered a graceful andbecoming manner, dangled her fan to and fro, and lazily admired her handwhile speaking. 

'The agony I have endured, ' she said mincingly, 'as the truth has bydegrees dawned upon me, has been too exceedingly terrific to dilateupon. My whole existence is bound up in my sweetest Edith; and tosee her change from day to day--my beautiful pet, who has positivelygarnered up her heart since the death of that most delightful creature, Granger--is the most affecting thing in the world. '

Mrs Skewton's world was not a very trying one, if one might judge of itby the influence of its most affecting circumstance upon her; but thisby the way. 

'Edith, ' simpered Mrs Skewton, 'who is the perfect pearl of my life, issaid to resemble me. I believe we are alike. '

'There is one man in the world who never will admit that anyoneresembles you, Ma'am, ' said the Major; 'and that man's name is Old JoeBagstock. '

Cleopatra made as if she would brain the flatterer with her fan, butrelenting, smiled upon him and proceeded:

'If my charming girl inherits any advantages from me, wicked one!': theMajor was the wicked one: 'she inherits also my foolish nature. She hasgreat force of character--mine has been said to be immense, though Idon't believe it--but once moved, she is susceptible and sensitiveto the last extent. What are my feelings when I see her pining! Theydestroy me. 

The Major advancing his double chin, and pursing up his blue lips into asoothing expression, affected the profoundest sympathy. 

'The confidence, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'that has subsisted between us--thefree development of soul, and openness of sentiment--is touching tothink of. We have been more like sisters than Mama and child. '

'J. B. 's own sentiment, ' observed the Major, 'expressed by J. B. Fiftythousand times!'

'Do not interrupt, rude man!' said Cleopatra. 'What are my feelings, then, when I find that there is one subject avoided by us! That there isa what's-his-name--a gulf--opened between us. That my own artless Edithis changed to me! They are of the most poignant description, of course. '

The Major left his chair, and took one nearer to the little table. 

'From day to day I see this, my dear Major, ' proceeded Mrs Skewton. 'From day to day I feel this. From hour to hour I reproach myself forthat excess of faith and trustfulness which has led to such distressingconsequences; and almost from minute to minute, I hope that Mr Dombeymay explain himself, and relieve the torture I undergo, which isextremely wearing. But nothing happens, my dear Major; I am the slaveof remorse--take care of the coffee-cup: you are so very awkward--mydarling Edith is an altered being; and I really don't see what is to bedone, or what good creature I can advise with. '

Major Bagstock, encouraged perhaps by the softened and confidentialtone into which Mrs Skewton, after several times lapsing into it fora moment, seemed now to have subsided for good, stretched out his handacross the little table, and said with a leer, 'Advise with Joe, Ma'am. '

'Then, you aggravating monster, ' said Cleopatra, giving one hand tothe Major, and tapping his knuckles with her fan, which she held in theother: 'why don't you talk to me? you know what I mean. Why don't youtell me something to the purpose?'

The Major laughed, and kissed the hand she had bestowed upon him, andlaughed again immensely. 

'Is there as much Heart in Mr Dombey as I gave him credit for?'languished Cleopatra tenderly. 'Do you think he is in earnest, my dearMajor? Would you recommend his being spoken to, or his being left alone?Now tell me, like a dear man, what would you advise. '

'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am?' chuckled the Major, hoarsely. 

'Mysterious creature!' returned Cleopatra, bringing her fan to bear uponthe Major's nose. 'How can we marry him?'

'Shall we marry him to Edith Granger, Ma'am, I say?' chuckled the Majoragain. 

Mrs Skewton returned no answer in words, but smiled upon the Major withso much archness and vivacity, that that gallant officer consideringhimself challenged, would have imprinted a kiss on her exceedingly redlips, but for her interposing the fan with a very winning and juveniledexterity. It might have been in modesty; it might have been inapprehension of some danger to their bloom. 

'Dombey, Ma'am, ' said the Major, 'is a great catch. '

'Oh, mercenary wretch!' cried Cleopatra, with a little shriek, 'I amshocked. '

'And Dombey, Ma'am, ' pursued the Major, thrusting forward his head, anddistending his eyes, 'is in earnest. Joseph says it; Bagstock knows it;J. B. Keeps him to the mark. Leave Dombey to himself, Ma'am. Dombey issafe, Ma'am. Do as you have done; do no more; and trust to J. B. For theend. '

'You really think so, my dear Major?' returned Cleopatra, who had eyedhim very cautiously, and very searchingly, in spite of her listlessbearing. 

'Sure of it, Ma'am, ' rejoined the Major. 'Cleopatra the peerless, and her Antony Bagstock, will often speak of this, triumphantly, when sharing the elegance and wealth of Edith Dombey's establishment. Dombey's right-hand man, Ma'am, ' said the Major, stopping abruptly in achuckle, and becoming serious, 'has arrived. '

'This morning?' said Cleopatra. 

'This morning, Ma'am, ' returned the Major. 'And Dombey's anxiety for hisarrival, Ma'am, is to be referred--take J. B. 's word for this; for Joeis devilish sly'--the Major tapped his nose, and screwed up one of hiseyes tight: which did not enhance his native beauty--'to his desire thatwhat is in the wind should become known to him' without Dombey's tellingand consulting him. For Dombey is as proud, Ma'am, ' said the Major, 'asLucifer. '

'A charming quality, ' lisped Mrs Skewton; 'reminding one of dearestEdith. '

'Well, Ma'am, ' said the Major. 'I have thrown out hints already, and theright-hand man understands 'em; and I'll throw out more, before the dayis done. Dombey projected this morning a ride to Warwick Castle, andto Kenilworth, to-morrow, to be preceded by a breakfast with us. Iundertook the delivery of this invitation. Will you honour us so far, Ma'am?' said the Major, swelling with shortness of breath and slyness, as he produced a note, addressed to the Honourable Mrs Skewton, byfavour of Major Bagstock, wherein hers ever faithfully, Paul Dombey, besought her and her amiable and accomplished daughter to consent tothe proposed excursion; and in a postscript unto which, the same everfaithfully Paul Dombey entreated to be recalled to the remembrance ofMrs Granger. 

'Hush!' said Cleopatra, suddenly, 'Edith!'

The loving mother can scarcely be described as resuming her insipid andaffected air when she made this exclamation; for she had never cast itoff; nor was it likely that she ever would or could, in any otherplace than in the grave. But hurriedly dismissing whatever shadow ofearnestness, or faint confession of a purpose, laudable or wicked, that her face, or voice, or manner: had, for the moment, betrayed, shelounged upon the couch, her most insipid and most languid self again, asEdith entered the room. 

Edith, so beautiful and stately, but so cold and so repelling. Who, slightly acknowledging the presence of Major Bagstock, and directinga keen glance at her mother, drew back the from a window, and sat downthere, looking out. 

'My dearest Edith, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'where on earth have you been? Ihave wanted you, my love, most sadly. '

'You said you were engaged, and I stayed away, ' she answered, withoutturning her head. 

'It was cruel to Old Joe, Ma'am, ' said the Major in his gallantry. 

'It was very cruel, I know, ' she said, still looking out--and said withsuch calm disdain, that the Major was discomfited, and could think ofnothing in reply. 

'Major Bagstock, my darling Edith, ' drawled her mother, 'who isgenerally the most useless and disagreeable creature in the world: asyou know--'

'It is surely not worthwhile, Mama, ' said Edith, looking round, 'toobserve these forms of speech. We are quite alone. We know each other. '

The quiet scorn that sat upon her handsome face--a scorn that evidentlylighted on herself, no less than them--was so intense and deep, thather mother's simper, for the instant, though of a hardy constitution, drooped before it. 

'My darling girl, ' she began again. 

'Not woman yet?' said Edith, with a smile. 

'How very odd you are to-day, my dear! Pray let me say, my love, that Major Bagstock has brought the kindest of notes from Mr Dombey, proposing that we should breakfast with him to-morrow, and ride toWarwick and Kenilworth. Will you go, Edith?'

'Will I go!' she repeated, turning very red, and breathing quickly asshe looked round at her mother. 

'I knew you would, my own, observed the latter carelessly. 'It is, asyou say, quite a form to ask. Here is Mr Dombey's letter, Edith. '

'Thank you. I have no desire to read it, ' was her answer. 

'Then perhaps I had better answer it myself, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'thoughI had thought of asking you to be my secretary, darling. ' As Edith madeno movement, and no answer, Mrs Skewton begged the Major to wheel herlittle table nearer, and to set open the desk it contained, and to takeout pen and paper for her; all which congenial offices of gallantry theMajor discharged, with much submission and devotion. 

'Your regards, Edith, my dear?' said Mrs Skewton, pausing, pen in hand, at the postscript. 

'What you will, Mama, ' she answered, without turning her head, and withsupreme indifference. 

Mrs Skewton wrote what she would, without seeking for any more explicitdirections, and handed her letter to the Major, who receiving it as aprecious charge, made a show of laying it near his heart, but was fainto put it in the pocket of his pantaloons on account of the insecurityof his waistcoat The Major then took a very polished and chivalrousfarewell of both ladies, which the elder one acknowledged in her usualmanner, while the younger, sitting with her face addressed to thewindow, bent her head so slightly that it would have been a greatercompliment to the Major to have made no sign at all, and to have lefthim to infer that he had not been heard or thought of. 

'As to alteration in her, Sir, ' mused the Major on his way back; onwhich expedition--the afternoon being sunny and hot--he ordered theNative and the light baggage to the front, and walked in the shadowof that expatriated prince: 'as to alteration, Sir, and pining, and soforth, that won't go down with Joseph Bagstock, None of that, Sir. Itwon't do here. But as to there being something of a division between'em--or a gulf as the mother calls it--damme, Sir, that seems trueenough. And it's odd enough! Well, Sir!' panted the Major, 'EdithGranger and Dombey are well matched; let 'em fight it out! Bagstockbacks the winner!'

The Major, by saying these latter words aloud, in the vigour of histhoughts, caused the unhappy Native to stop, and turn round, in thebelief that he was personally addressed. Exasperated to the last degreeby this act of insubordination, the Major (though he was swelling withenjoyment of his own humour), at the moment of its occurrence instantlythrust his cane among the Native's ribs, and continued to stir him up, at short intervals, all the way to the hotel. 

Nor was the Major less exasperated as he dressed for dinner, duringwhich operation the dark servant underwent the pelting of a shower ofmiscellaneous objects, varying in size from a boot to a hairbrush, andincluding everything that came within his master's reach. For the Majorplumed himself on having the Native in a perfect state of drill, andvisited the least departure from strict discipline with this kind offatigue duty. Add to this, that he maintained the Native about hisperson as a counter-irritant against the gout, and all other vexations, mental as well as bodily; and the Native would appear to have earned hispay--which was not large. 

At length, the Major having disposed of all the missiles that wereconvenient to his hand, and having called the Native so many new namesas must have given him great occasion to marvel at the resources ofthe English language, submitted to have his cravat put on; and beingdressed, and finding himself in a brisk flow of spirits after thisexercise, went downstairs to enliven 'Dombey' and his right-hand man. 

Dombey was not yet in the room, but the right-hand man was there, andhis dental treasures were, as usual, ready for the Major. 

'Well, Sir!' said the Major. 'How have you passed the time since I hadthe happiness of meeting you? Have you walked at all?'

'A saunter of barely half an hour's duration, ' returned Carker. 'We havebeen so much occupied. '

'Business, eh?' said the Major. 

'A variety of little matters necessary to be gone through, ' repliedCarker. 'But do you know--this is quite unusual with me, educated ina distrustful school, and who am not generally disposed to becommunicative, ' he said, breaking off, and speaking in a charming toneof frankness--'but I feel quite confidential with you, Major Bagstock. '

'You do me honour, Sir, ' returned the Major. 'You may be. '

'Do you know, then, ' pursued Carker, 'that I have not found myfriend--our friend, I ought rather to call him--'

'Meaning Dombey, Sir?' cried the Major. 'You see me, Mr Carker, standinghere! J. B. ?'

He was puffy enough to see, and blue enough; and Mr Carker intimated thehe had that pleasure. 

'Then you see a man, Sir, who would go through fire and water to serveDombey, ' returned Major Bagstock. 

Mr Carker smiled, and said he was sure of it. 'Do you know, Major, ' heproceeded: 'to resume where I left off' that I have not found our friendso attentive to business today, as usual?'

'No?' observed the delighted Major. 

'I have found him a little abstracted, and with his attention disposedto wander, ' said Carker. 

'By Jove, Sir, ' cried the Major, 'there's a lady in the case. '

'Indeed, I begin to believe there really is, ' returned Carker; 'Ithought you might be jesting when you seemed to hint at it; for I knowyou military men--

The Major gave the horse's cough, and shook his head and shoulders, asmuch as to say, 'Well! we are gay dogs, there's no denying. ' He thenseized Mr Carker by the button-hole, and with starting eyes whispered inhis ear, that she was a woman of extraordinary charms, Sir. That she wasa young widow, Sir. That she was of a fine family, Sir. That Dombey wasover head and ears in love with her, Sir, and that it would be a goodmatch on both sides; for she had beauty, blood, and talent, and Dombeyhad fortune; and what more could any couple have? Hearing Mr Dombey'sfootsteps without, the Major cut himself short by saying, that Mr Carkerwould see her tomorrow morning, and would judge for himself; and betweenhis mental excitement, and the exertion of saying all this in wheezywhispers, the Major sat gurgling in the throat and watering at the eyes, until dinner was ready. 

The Major, like some other noble animals, exhibited himself to greatadvantage at feeding-time. On this occasion, he shone resplendent atone end of the table, supported by the milder lustre of Mr Dombey atthe other; while Carker on one side lent his ray to either light, orsuffered it to merge into both, as occasion arose. 

During the first course or two, the Major was usually grave; for theNative, in obedience to general orders, secretly issued, collected everysauce and cruet round him, and gave him a great deal to do, in takingout the stoppers, and mixing up the contents in his plate. Besideswhich, the Native had private zests and flavours on a side-table, with which the Major daily scorched himself; to say nothing of strangemachines out of which he spirited unknown liquids into the Major'sdrink. But on this occasion, Major Bagstock, even amidst these manyoccupations, found time to be social; and his sociality consisted inexcessive slyness for the behoof of Mr Carker, and the betrayal of MrDombey's state of mind. 

'Dombey, ' said the Major, 'you don't eat; what's the matter?'

'Thank you, ' returned the gentleman, 'I am doing very well; I have nogreat appetite today. '

'Why, Dombey, what's become of it?' asked the Major. 'Where's it gone?You haven't left it with our friends, I'll swear, for I can answer fortheir having none to-day at luncheon. I can answer for one of 'em, atleast: I won't say which. '

Then the Major winked at Carker, and became so frightfully sly, that hisdark attendant was obliged to pat him on the back, without orders, or hewould probably have disappeared under the table. 

In a later stage of the dinner: that is to say, when the Native stoodat the Major's elbow ready to serve the first bottle of champagne: theMajor became still slyer. 

'Fill this to the brim, you scoundrel, ' said the Major, holding up hisglass. 'Fill Mr Carker's to the brim too. And Mr Dombey's too. By Gad, gentlemen, ' said the Major, winking at his new friend, while Mr Dombeylooked into his plate with a conscious air, 'we'll consecrate thisglass of wine to a Divinity whom Joe is proud to know, and at a distancehumbly and reverently to admire. Edith, ' said the Major, 'is her name;angelic Edith!'

'To angelic Edith!' cried the smiling Carker. 

'Edith, by all means, ' said Mr Dombey. 

The entrance of the waiters with new dishes caused the Major to beslyer yet, but in a more serious vein. 'For though among ourselves, JoeBagstock mingles jest and earnest on this subject, Sir, ' said the Major, laying his finger on his lips, and speaking half apart to Carker, 'heholds that name too sacred to be made the property of these fellows, orof any fellows. Not a word!, Sir' while they are here!'

This was respectful and becoming on the Major's part, and Mr Dombeyplainly felt it so. Although embarrassed in his own frigid way, by theMajor's allusions, Mr Dombey had no objection to such rallying, it wasclear, but rather courted it. Perhaps the Major had been pretty near thetruth, when he had divined that morning that the great man who was toohaughty formally to consult with, or confide in his prime minister, onsuch a matter, yet wished him to be fully possessed of it. Let thisbe how it may, he often glanced at Mr Carker while the Major plied hislight artillery, and seemed watchful of its effect upon him. 

But the Major, having secured an attentive listener, and a smiler whohad not his match in all the world--'in short, a devilish intelligentand able fellow, ' as he often afterwards declared--was not going to lethim off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on theremoval of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spiritin the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimentalstories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigalexuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted withlaughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starchedcravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who wasglad to see his bear dancing well. 

When the Major was too hoarse with meat and drink, and the displayof his social powers, to render himself intelligible any longer, theyadjourned to coffee. After which, the Major inquired of Mr Carker theManager, with little apparent hope of an answer in the affirmative, ifhe played picquet. 

'Yes, I play picquet a little, ' said Mr Carker. 

'Backgammon, perhaps?' observed the Major, hesitating. 

'Yes, I play backgammon a little too, ' replied the man of teeth. 

'Carker plays at all games, I believe, ' said Mr Dombey, laying himselfon a sofa like a man of wood, without a hinge or a joint in him; 'andplays them well. '

In sooth, he played the two in question, to such perfection, that theMajor was astonished, and asked him, at random, if he played chess. 

'Yes, I play chess a little, ' answered Carker. 'I have sometimes played, and won a game--it's a mere trick--without seeing the board. '

'By Gad, Sir!' said the Major, staring, 'you are a contrast to Dombey, who plays nothing. '

'Oh! He!' returned the Manager. 'He has never had occasion to acquiresuch little arts. To men like me, they are sometimes useful. As atpresent, Major Bagstock, when they enable me to take a hand with you. '

It might be only the false mouth, so smooth and wide; and yet thereseemed to lurk beneath the humility and subserviency of this shortspeech, a something like a snarl; and, for a moment, one might havethought that the white teeth were prone to bite the hand they fawnedupon. But the Major thought nothing about it; and Mr Dombey laymeditating with his eyes half shut, during the whole of the play, whichlasted until bed-time. 

By that time, Mr Carker, though the winner, had mounted high into theMajor's good opinion, insomuch that when he left the Major at his ownroom before going to bed, the Major as a special attention, sent theNative--who always rested on a mattress spread upon the ground at hismaster's door--along the gallery, to light him to his room in state. 

There was a faint blur on the surface of the mirror in Mr Carker'schamber, and its reflection was, perhaps, a false one. But it showed, that night, the image of a man, who saw, in his fancy, a crowd ofpeople slumbering on the ground at his feet, like the poor Native at hismaster's door: who picked his way among them: looking down, maliciouslyenough: but trod upon no upturned face--as yet. 

CHAPTER 27. Deeper Shadows

Mr Carker the Manager rose with the lark, and went out, walking in thesummer day. His meditations--and he meditated with contracted browswhile he strolled along--hardly seemed to soar as high as the lark, orto mount in that direction; rather they kept close to their nest uponthe earth, and looked about, among the dust and worms. But there was nota bird in the air, singing unseen, farther beyond the reach of human eyethan Mr Carker's thoughts. He had his face so perfectly under control, that few could say more, in distinct terms, of its expression, than thatit smiled or that it pondered. It pondered now, intently. As the larkrose higher, he sank deeper in thought. As the lark poured out hermelody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and profoundersilence. At length, when the lark came headlong down, with anaccumulating stream of song, and dropped among the green wheat near him, rippling in the breath of the morning like a river, he sprang up fromhis reverie, and looked round with a sudden smile, as courteous andas soft as if he had had numerous observers to propitiate; nor did herelapse, after being thus awakened; but clearing his face, like one whobethought himself that it might otherwise wrinkle and tell tales, wentsmiling on, as if for practice. 

Perhaps with an eye to first impressions, Mr Carker was very carefullyand trimly dressed, that morning. Though always somewhat formal, in hisdress, in imitation of the great man whom he served, he stopped short ofthe extent of Mr Dombey's stiffness: at once perhaps because he knewit to be ludicrous, and because in doing so he found another means ofexpressing his sense of the difference and distance between them. Somepeople quoted him indeed, in this respect, as a pointed commentary, and not a flattering one, on his icy patron--but the world is proneto misconstruction, and Mr Carker was not accountable for its badpropensity. 

Clean and florid: with his light complexion, fading as it were, in thesun, and his dainty step enhancing the softness of the turf: Mr Carkerthe Manager strolled about meadows, and green lanes, and glided amongavenues of trees, until it was time to return to breakfast. Taking anearer way back, Mr Carker pursued it, airing his teeth, and said aloudas he did so, 'Now to see the second Mrs Dombey!'

He had strolled beyond the town, and re-entered it by a pleasant walk, where there was a deep shade of leafy trees, and where there were a fewbenches here and there for those who chose to rest. It not being a placeof general resort at any hour, and wearing at that time of the stillmorning the air of being quite deserted and retired, Mr Carker had it, or thought he had it, all to himself. So, with the whim of an idle man, to whom there yet remained twenty minutes for reaching a destinationeasily able in ten, Mr Carker threaded the great boles of the trees, and went passing in and out, before this one and behind that, weaving achain of footsteps on the dewy ground. 

But he found he was mistaken in supposing there was no one in the grove, for as he softly rounded the trunk of one large tree, on which theobdurate bark was knotted and overlapped like the hide of a rhinocerosor some kindred monster of the ancient days before the Flood, he sawan unexpected figure sitting on a bench near at hand, about which, inanother moment, he would have wound the chain he was making. 

It was that of a lady, elegantly dressed and very handsome, whose darkproud eyes were fixed upon the ground, and in whom some passion orstruggle was raging. For as she sat looking down, she held a corner ofher under lip within her mouth, her bosom heaved, her nostril quivered, her head trembled, indignant tears were on her cheek, and her foot wasset upon the moss as though she would have crushed it into nothing. Andyet almost the self-same glance that showed him this, showed him theself-same lady rising with a scornful air of weariness and lassitude, and turning away with nothing expressed in face or figure but carelessbeauty and imperious disdain. 

A withered and very ugly old woman, dressed not so much like a gipsy aslike any of that medley race of vagabonds who tramp about the country, begging, and stealing, and tinkering, and weaving rushes, by turns, orall together, had been observing the lady, too; for, as she rose, thissecond figure strangely confronting the first, scrambled up from theground--out of it, it almost appeared--and stood in the way. 

'Let me tell your fortune, my pretty lady, ' said the old woman, munchingwith her jaws, as if the Death's Head beneath her yellow skin wereimpatient to get out. 

'I can tell it for myself, ' was the reply. 

'Ay, ay, pretty lady; but not right. You didn't tell it right when youwere sitting there. I see you! Give me a piece of silver, pretty lady, and I'll tell your fortune true. There's riches, pretty lady, in yourface. '

'I know, ' returned the lady, passing her with a dark smile, and a proudstep. 'I knew it before. 

'What! You won't give me nothing?' cried the old woman. 'You won't giveme nothing to tell your fortune, pretty lady? How much will you give meto tell it, then? Give me something, or I'll call it after you!' croakedthe old woman, passionately. 

Mr Carker, whom the lady was about to pass close, slinking against histree as she crossed to gain the path, advanced so as to meet her, andpulling off his hat as she went by, bade the old woman hold her peace. The lady acknowledged his interference with an inclination of the head, and went her way. 

'You give me something then, or I'll call it after her!' screamedthe old woman, throwing up her arms, and pressing forward against hisoutstretched hand. 'Or come, ' she added, dropping her voice suddenly, looking at him earnestly, and seeming in a moment to forget the objectof her wrath, 'give me something, or I'll call it after you!'

'After me, old lady!' returned the Manager, putting his hand in hispocket. 

'Yes, ' said the woman, steadfast in her scrutiny, and holding out hershrivelled hand. 'I know!'

'What do you know?' demanded Carker, throwing her a shilling. 'Do youknow who the handsome lady is?'

Munching like that sailor's wife of yore, who had chestnuts In her lap, and scowling like the witch who asked for some in vain, the old womanpicked the shilling up, and going backwards, like a crab, or like a heapof crabs: for her alternately expanding and contracting hands mighthave represented two of that species, and her creeping face, somehalf-a-dozen more: crouched on the veinous root of an old tree, pulledout a short black pipe from within the crown of her bonnet, lighted itwith a match, and smoked in silence, looking fixedly at her questioner. 

Mr Carker laughed, and turned upon his heel. 

'Good!' said the old woman. 'One child dead, and one child living: onewife dead, and one wife coming. Go and meet her!'

In spite of himself, the Manager looked round again, and stopped. Theold woman, who had not removed her pipe, and was munching and mumblingwhile she smoked, as if in conversation with an invisible familiar, pointed with her finger in the direction he was going, and laughed. 

'What was that you said, Beldamite?' he demanded. 

The woman mumbled, and chattered, and smoked, and still pointedbefore him; but remained silent Muttering a farewell that was notcomplimentary, Mr Carker pursued his way; but as he turned out of thatplace, and looked over his shoulder at the root of the old tree, hecould yet see the finger pointing before him, and thought he heard thewoman screaming, 'Go and meet her!'

Preparations for a choice repast were completed, he found, at the hotel;and Mr Dombey, and the Major, and the breakfast, were awaiting theladies. Individual constitution has much to do with the development ofsuch facts, no doubt; but in this case, appetite carried it hollow overthe tender passion; Mr Dombey being very cool and collected, and theMajor fretting and fuming in a state of violent heat and irritation. At length the door was thrown open by the Native, and, after a pause, occupied by her languishing along the gallery, a very blooming, but notvery youthful lady, appeared. 

'My dear Mr Dombey, ' said the lady, 'I am afraid we are late, butEdith has been out already looking for a favourable point of view for asketch, and kept me waiting for her. Falsest of Majors, ' giving him herlittle finger, 'how do you do?'

'Mrs Skewton, ' said Mr Dombey, 'let me gratify my friend Carker:' MrDombey unconsciously emphasised the word friend, as saying "no really; Ido allow him to take credit for that distinction:" 'by presenting him toyou. You have heard me mention Mr Carker. '

'I am charmed, I am sure, ' said Mrs Skewton, graciously. 

Mr Carker was charmed, of course. Would he have been more charmed on MrDombey's behalf, if Mrs Skewton had been (as he at first supposed her)the Edith whom they had toasted overnight?

'Why, where, for Heaven's sake, is Edith?' exclaimed Mrs Skewton, looking round. 'Still at the door, giving Withers orders about themounting of those drawings! My dear Mr Dombey, will you have thekindness--

Mr Dombey was already gone to seek her. Next moment he returned, bearingon his arm the same elegantly dressed and very handsome lady whom MrCarker had encountered underneath the trees. 

'Carker--' began Mr Dombey. But their recognition of each other was somanifest, that Mr Dombey stopped surprised. 

'I am obliged to the gentleman, ' said Edith, with a stately bend, 'forsparing me some annoyance from an importunate beggar just now. '

'I am obliged to my good fortune, ' said Mr Carker, bowing low, 'for theopportunity of rendering so slight a service to one whose servant I amproud to be. '

As her eye rested on him for an instant, and then lighted on the ground, he saw in its bright and searching glance a suspicion that he had notcome up at the moment of his interference, but had secretly observedher sooner. As he saw that, she saw in his eye that her distrust was notwithout foundation. 

'Really, ' cried Mrs Skewton, who had taken this opportunity ofinspecting Mr Carker through her glass, and satisfying herself (as shelisped audibly to the Major) that he was all heart; 'really now, this isone of the most enchanting coincidences that I ever heard of. The idea!My dearest Edith, there is such an obvious destiny in it, that reallyone might almost be induced to cross one's arms upon one's frock, andsay, like those wicked Turks, there is no What's-his-name but Thingummy, and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet!'

Edith designed no revision of this extraordinary quotation from theKoran, but Mr Dombey felt it necessary to offer a few polite remarks. 

'It gives me great pleasure, ' said Mr Dombey, with cumbrous gallantry, 'that a gentleman so nearly connected with myself as Carker is, shouldhave had the honour and happiness of rendering the least assistance toMrs Granger. ' Mr Dombey bowed to her. 'But it gives me some pain, andit occasions me to be really envious of Carker;' he unconsciously laidstress on these words, as sensible that they must appear to involve avery surprising proposition; 'envious of Carker, that I had not thathonour and that happiness myself. ' Mr Dombey bowed again. Edith, savingfor a curl of her lip, was motionless. 

'By the Lord, Sir, ' cried the Major, bursting into speech at sight ofthe waiter, who was come to announce breakfast, 'it's an extraordinarything to me that no one can have the honour and happiness of shootingall such beggars through the head without being brought to book forit. But here's an arm for Mrs Granger if she'll do J. B. The honour toaccept it; and the greatest service Joe can render you, Ma'am, just now, is, to lead you into table!'

With this, the Major gave his arm to Edith; Mr Dombey led the way withMrs Skewton; Mrs Carker went last, smiling on the party. 

'I am quite rejoiced, Mr Carker, ' said the lady-mother, at breakfast, after another approving survey of him through her glass, 'that you havetimed your visit so happily, as to go with us to-day. It is the mostenchanting expedition!'

'Any expedition would be enchanting in such society, ' returned Carker;'but I believe it is, in itself, full of interest. '

'Oh!' cried Mrs Skewton, with a faded little scream of rapture, 'the Castle is charming!--associations of the Middle Ages--and allthat--which is so truly exquisite. Don't you dote upon the Middle Ages, Mr Carker?'

'Very much, indeed, ' said Mr Carker. 

'Such charming times!' cried Cleopatra. 'So full of faith! So vigorousand forcible! So picturesque! So perfectly removed from commonplace!Oh dear! If they would only leave us a little more of the poetry ofexistence in these terrible days!'

Mrs Skewton was looking sharp after Mr Dombey all the time she saidthis, who was looking at Edith: who was listening, but who never liftedup her eyes. 

'We are dreadfully real, Mr Carker, ' said Mrs Skewton; 'are we not?'

Few people had less reason to complain of their reality than Cleopatra, who had as much that was false about her as could well go to thecomposition of anybody with a real individual existence. But Mr Carkercommiserated our reality nevertheless, and agreed that we were veryhardly used in that regard. 

'Pictures at the Castle, quite divine!' said Cleopatra. 'I hope you doteupon pictures?'

'I assure you, Mrs Skewton, ' said Mr Dombey, with solemn encouragementof his Manager, 'that Carker has a very good taste for pictures; quitea natural power of appreciating them. He is a very creditable artisthimself. He will be delighted, I am sure, with Mrs Granger's taste andskill. '

'Damme, Sir!' cried Major Bagstock, 'my opinion is, that you're theadmirable Carker, and can do anything. '

'Oh!' smiled Carker, with humility, 'you are much too sanguine, MajorBagstock. I can do very little. But Mr Dombey is so generous in hisestimation of any trivial accomplishment a man like myself may find italmost necessary to acquire, and to which, in his very differentsphere, he is far superior, that--' Mr Carker shrugged his shoulders, deprecating further praise, and said no more. 

All this time, Edith never raised her eyes, unless to glance towardsher mother when that lady's fervent spirit shone forth in words. But asCarker ceased, she looked at Mr Dombey for a moment. For a moment only;but with a transient gleam of scornful wonder on her face, not lost onone observer, who was smiling round the board. 

Mr Dombey caught the dark eyelash in its descent, and took theopportunity of arresting it. 

'You have been to Warwick often, unfortunately?' said Mr Dombey. 

'Several times. '

'The visit will be tedious to you, I am afraid. '

'Oh no; not at all. '

'Ah! You are like your cousin Feenix, my dearest Edith, ' said MrsSkewton. 'He has been to Warwick Castle fifty times, if he has beenthere once; yet if he came to Leamington to-morrow--I wish he would, dear angel!--he would make his fifty-second visit next day. '

'We are all enthusiastic, are we not, Mama?' said Edith, with a coldsmile. 

'Too much so, for our peace, perhaps, my dear, ' returned her mother;'but we won't complain. Our own emotions are our recompense. If, as yourcousin Feenix says, the sword wears out the what's-its-name--'

'The scabbard, perhaps, ' said Edith. 

'Exactly--a little too fast, it is because it is bright and glowing, youknow, my dearest love. '

Mrs Skewton heaved a gentle sigh, supposed to cast a shadow on thesurface of that dagger of lath, whereof her susceptible bosom was thesheath: and leaning her head on one side, in the Cleopatra manner, looked with pensive affection on her darling child. 

Edith had turned her face towards Mr Dombey when he first addressed her, and had remained in that attitude, while speaking to her mother, andwhile her mother spoke to her, as though offering him her attention, ifhe had anything more to say. There was something in the manner of thissimple courtesy: almost defiant, and giving it the character of beingrendered on compulsion, or as a matter of traffic to which she was areluctant party again not lost upon that same observer who was smilinground the board. It set him thinking of her as he had first seen her, when she had believed herself to be alone among the trees. 

Mr Dombey having nothing else to say, proposed--the breakfast beingnow finished, and the Major gorged, like any Boa Constrictor--that theyshould start. A barouche being in waiting, according to the orders ofthat gentleman, the two ladies, the Major and himself, took their seatsin it; the Native and the wan page mounted the box, Mr Towlinson beingleft behind; and Mr Carker, on horseback, brought up the rear. Mr Carkercantered behind the carriage at the distance of a hundred yards or so, and watched it, during all the ride, as if he were a cat, indeed, andits four occupants, mice. Whether he looked to one side of the road, or to the other--over distant landscape, with its smooth undulations, wind-mills, corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks, and the spire among the wood--or upwards in the sunny air, where butterflies were sporting round his head, and birds were pouringout their songs--or downward, where the shadows of the branchesinterlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the road--or onward, wherethe overhanging trees formed aisles and arches, dim with the softenedlight that steeped through leaves--one corner of his eye was ever on theformal head of Mr Dombey, addressed towards him, and the feather in thebonnet, drooping so neglectfully and scornfully between them; much as hehad seen the haughty eyelids droop; not least so, when the face met thatnow fronting it. Once, and once only, did his wary glance release theseobjects; and that was, when a leap over a low hedge, and a gallop acrossa field, enabled him to anticipate the carriage coming by the road, and to be standing ready, at the journey's end, to hand the ladiesout. Then, and but then, he met her glance for an instant in her firstsurprise; but when he touched her, in alighting, with his soft whitehand, it overlooked him altogether as before. 

Mrs Skewton was bent on taking charge of Mr Carker herself, and showinghim the beauties of the Castle. She was determined to have his arm, andthe Major's too. It would do that incorrigible creature: who was themost barbarous infidel in point of poetry: good to be in such company. This chance arrangement left Mr Dombey at liberty to escort Edith: whichhe did: stalking before them through the apartments with a gentlemanlysolemnity. 

'Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker, ' said Cleopatra, 'with theirdelicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightfulplaces of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesqueassaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! Howdreadfully we have degenerated!'

'Yes, we have fallen off deplorably, ' said Mr Carker. 

The peculiarity of their conversation was, that Mrs Skewton, in spite ofher ecstasies, and Mr Carker, in spite of his urbanity, were bothintent on watching Mr Dombey and Edith. With all their conversationalendowments, they spoke somewhat distractedly, and at random, inconsequence. 

'We have no Faith left, positively, ' said Mrs Skewton, advancing hershrivelled ear; for Mr Dombey was saying something to Edith. 'We have noFaith in the dear old Barons, who were the most delightful creatures--orin the dear old Priests, who were the most warlike of men--or even inthe days of that inestimable Queen Bess, upon the wall there, which wereso extremely golden. Dear creature! She was all Heart And that charmingfather of hers! I hope you dote on Harry the Eighth!'

'I admire him very much, ' said Carker. 

'So bluff!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'wasn't he? So burly. So truly English. Such a picture, too, he makes, with his dear little peepy eyes, and hisbenevolent chin!'

'Ah, Ma'am!' said Carker, stopping short; 'but if you speak of pictures, there's a composition! What gallery in the world can produce thecounterpart of that?'

As the smiling gentleman thus spake, he pointed through a doorway towhere Mr Dombey and Edith were standing alone in the centre of anotherroom. 

They were not interchanging a word or a look. Standing together, armin arm, they had the appearance of being more divided than if seas hadrolled between them. There was a difference even in the pride of thetwo, that removed them farther from each other, than if one had beenthe proudest and the other the humblest specimen of humanity in allcreation. He, self-important, unbending, formal, austere. She, lovelyand graceful, in an uncommon degree, but totally regardless of herselfand him and everything around, and spurning her own attractions with herhaughty brow and lip, as if they were a badge or livery she hated. Sounmatched were they, and opposed, so forced and linked together by achain which adverse hazard and mischance had forged: that fancy mighthave imagined the pictures on the walls around them, startled by theunnatural conjunction, and observant of it in their several expressions. Grim knights and warriors looked scowling on them. A churchman, with hishand upraised, denounced the mockery of such a couple coming to God'saltar. Quiet waters in landscapes, with the sun reflected in theirdepths, asked, if better means of escape were not at hand, was there nodrowning left? Ruins cried, 'Look here, and see what We are, wedded touncongenial Time!' Animals, opposed by nature, worried one another, as amoral to them. Loves and Cupids took to flight afraid, and Martyrdom hadno such torment in its painted history of suffering. 

Nevertheless, Mrs Skewton was so charmed by the sight to which Mr Carkerinvoked her attention, that she could not refrain from saying, halfaloud, how sweet, how very full of soul it was! Edith, overhearing, looked round, and flushed indignant scarlet to her hair. 

'My dearest Edith knows I was admiring her!' said Cleopatra, tappingher, almost timidly, on the back with her parasol. 'Sweet pet!'

Again Mr Carker saw the strife he had witnessed so unexpectedly amongthe trees. Again he saw the haughty languor and indifference come overit, and hide it like a cloud. 

She did not raise her eyes to him; but with a slight peremptory motionof them, seemed to bid her mother come near. Mrs Skewton thought itexpedient to understand the hint, and advancing quickly, with her twocavaliers, kept near her daughter from that time. 

Mr Carker now, having nothing to distract his attention, began todiscourse upon the pictures and to select the best, and point themout to Mr Dombey: speaking with his usual familiar recognition of MrDombey's greatness, and rendering homage by adjusting his eye-glass forhim, or finding out the right place in his catalogue, or holding hisstick, or the like. These services did not so much originate with MrCarker, in truth, as with Mr Dombey himself, who was apt to assert hischieftainship by saying, with subdued authority, and in an easy way--forhim--'Here, Carker, have the goodness to assist me, will you?' which thesmiling gentleman always did with pleasure. 

They made the tour of the pictures, the walls, crow's nest, and soforth; and as they were still one little party, and the Major was ratherin the shade: being sleepy during the process of digestion: Mr Carkerbecame communicative and agreeable. At first, he addressed himself forthe most part to Mrs Skewton; but as that sensitive lady was in suchecstasies with the works of art, after the first quarter of an hour, that she could do nothing but yawn (they were such perfect inspirations, she observed as a reason for that mark of rapture), he transferred hisattentions to Mr Dombey. Mr Dombey said little beyond an occasional'Very true, Carker, ' or 'Indeed, Carker, ' but he tacitly encouragedCarker to proceed, and inwardly approved of his behaviour very much:deeming it as well that somebody should talk, and thinking thathis remarks, which were, as one might say, a branch of the parentestablishment, might amuse Mrs Granger. Mr Carker, who possessed anexcellent discretion, never took the liberty of addressing that lady, direct; but she seemed to listen, though she never looked at him;and once or twice, when he was emphatic in his peculiar humility, thetwilight smile stole over her face, not as a light, but as a deep blackshadow. 

Warwick Castle being at length pretty well exhausted, and the Major verymuch so: to say nothing of Mrs Skewton, whose peculiar demonstrations ofdelight had become very frequent Indeed: the carriage was again putIn requisition, and they rode to several admired points of view In theneighbourhood. Mr Dombey ceremoniously observed of one of these, thata sketch, however slight, from the fair hand of Mrs Granger, would be aremembrance to him of that agreeable day: though he wanted no artificialremembrance, he was sure (here Mr Dombey made another of his bows), which he must always highly value. Withers the lean having Edith'ssketch-book under his arm, was immediately called upon by Mrs Skewtonto produce the same: and the carriage stopped, that Edith might make thedrawing, which Mr Dombey was to put away among his treasures. 

'But I am afraid I trouble you too much, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'By no means. Where would you wish it taken from?' she answered, turningto him with the same enforced attention as before. 

Mr Dombey, with another bow, which cracked the starch in his cravat, would beg to leave that to the Artist. 

'I would rather you chose for yourself, ' said Edith. 

'Suppose then, ' said Mr Dombey, 'we say from here. It appears a goodspot for the purpose, or--Carker, what do you think?'

There happened to be in the foreground, at some little distance, agrove of trees, not unlike that In which Mr Carker had made his chainof footsteps in the morning, and with a seat under one tree, greatlyresembling, in the general character of its situation, the point wherehis chain had broken. 

'Might I venture to suggest to Mrs Granger, ' said Carker, 'that that isan interesting--almost a curious--point of view?'

She followed the direction of his riding-whip with her eyes, and raisedthem quickly to his face. It was the second glance they had exchangedsince their introduction; and would have been exactly like the first, but that its expression was plainer. 

'Will you like that?' said Edith to Mr Dombey. 

'I shall be charmed, ' said Mr Dombey to Edith. 

Therefore the carriage was driven to the spot where Mr Dombey was tobe charmed; and Edith, without moving from her seat, and opening hersketch-book with her usual proud indifference, began to sketch. 

'My pencils are all pointless, ' she said, stopping and turning themover. 

'Pray allow me, ' said Mr Dombey. 'Or Carker will do it better, as heunderstands these things. Carker, have the goodness to see to thesepencils for Mrs Granger. 

Mr Carker rode up close to the carriage-door on Mrs Granger's side, andletting the rein fall on his horse's neck, took the pencils from herhand with a smile and a bow, and sat in the saddle leisurely mendingthem. Having done so, he begged to be allowed to hold them, and tohand them to her as they were required; and thus Mr Carker, with manycommendations of Mrs Granger's extraordinary skill--especially intrees--remained--close at her side, looking over the drawing as she madeit. Mr Dombey in the meantime stood bolt upright in the carriage like ahighly respectable ghost, looking on too; while Cleopatra and the Majordallied as two ancient doves might do. 

'Are you satisfied with that, or shall I finish it a little more?' saidEdith, showing the sketch to Mr Dombey. 

Mr Dombey begged that it might not be touched; it was perfection. 

'It is most extraordinary, ' said Carker, bringing every one of hisred gums to bear upon his praise. 'I was not prepared for anything sobeautiful, and so unusual altogether. '

This might have applied to the sketcher no less than to the sketch; butMr Carker's manner was openness itself--not as to his mouth alone, butas to his whole spirit. So it continued to be while the drawing was laidaside for Mr Dombey, and while the sketching materials were put up;then he handed in the pencils (which were received with a distantacknowledgment of his help, but without a look), and tightening hisrein, fell back, and followed the carriage again. 

Thinking, perhaps, as he rode, that even this trivial sketch had beenmade and delivered to its owner, as if it had been bargained for andbought. Thinking, perhaps, that although she had assented with suchperfect readiness to his request, her haughty face, bent over thedrawing, or glancing at the distant objects represented in it, hadbeen the face of a proud woman, engaged in a sordid and miserabletransaction. Thinking, perhaps, of such things: but smiling certainly, and while he seemed to look about him freely, in enjoyment of the airand exercise, keeping always that sharp corner of his eye upon thecarriage. 

A stroll among the haunted ruins of Kenilworth, and more rides to morepoints of view: most of which, Mrs Skewton reminded Mr Dombey, Edith hadalready sketched, as he had seen in looking over her drawings: broughtthe day's expedition to a close. Mrs Skewton and Edith were driven totheir own lodgings; Mr Carker was graciously invited by Cleopatra toreturn thither with Mr Dombey and the Major, in the evening, to hearsome of Edith's music; and the three gentlemen repaired to their hotelto dinner. 

The dinner was the counterpart of yesterday's, except that the Major wastwenty-four hours more triumphant and less mysterious. Edith was toastedagain. Mr Dombey was again agreeably embarrassed. And Mr Carker was fullof interest and praise. 

There were no other visitors at Mrs Skewton's. Edith's drawings werestrewn about the room, a little more abundantly than usual perhaps; andWithers, the wan page, handed round a little stronger tea. The harpwas there; the piano was there; and Edith sang and played. But even themusic was played by Edith to Mr Dombey's order, as it were, in the sameuncompromising way. As thus. 

'Edith, my dearest love, ' said Mrs Skewton, half an hour after tea, 'MrDombey is dying to hear you, I know. '

'Mr Dombey has life enough left to say so for himself, Mama, I have nodoubt. '

'I shall be immensely obliged, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'What do you wish?'

'Piano?' hesitated Mr Dombey. 

'Whatever you please. You have only to choose. 

Accordingly, she began with the piano. It was the same with the harp;the same with her singing; the same with the selection of the piecesthat she sang and played. Such frigid and constrained, yet prompt andpointed acquiescence with the wishes he imposed upon her, and on no oneelse, was sufficiently remarkable to penetrate through all the mysteriesof picquet, and impress itself on Mr Carker's keen attention. Nor did helose sight of the fact that Mr Dombey was evidently proud of his power, and liked to show it. 

Nevertheless, Mr Carker played so well--some games with the Major, andsome with Cleopatra, whose vigilance of eye in respect of Mr Dombey andEdith no lynx could have surpassed--that he even heightened his positionin the lady-mother's good graces; and when on taking leave he regrettedthat he would be obliged to return to London next morning, Cleopatratrusted: community of feeling not being met with every day: that it wasfar from being the last time they would meet. 

'I hope so, ' said Mr Carker, with an expressive look at the couple inthe distance, as he drew towards the door, following the Major. 'I thinkso. '

Mr Dombey, who had taken a stately leave of Edith, bent, or made someapproach to a bend, over Cleopatra's couch, and said, in a low voice:

'I have requested Mrs Granger's permission to call on her to-morrowmorning--for a purpose--and she has appointed twelve o'clock. May I hopeto have the pleasure of finding you at home, Madam, afterwards?'

Cleopatra was so much fluttered and moved, by hearing this, of course, incomprehensible speech, that she could only shut her eyes, and shakeher head, and give Mr Dombey her hand; which Mr Dombey, not exactlyknowing what to do with, dropped. 

'Dombey, come along!' cried the Major, looking in at the door. 'Damme, Sir, old Joe has a great mind to propose an alteration in the name ofthe Royal Hotel, and that it should be called the Three Jolly Bachelors, in honour of ourselves and Carker. ' With this, the Major slapped MrDombey on the back, and winking over his shoulder at the ladies, with afrightful tendency of blood to the head, carried him off. 

Mrs Skewton reposed on her sofa, and Edith sat apart, by her harp, insilence. The mother, trifling with her fan, looked stealthily at thedaughter more than once, but the daughter, brooding gloomily withdowncast eyes, was not to be disturbed. 

Thus they remained for a long hour, without a word, until Mrs Skewton'smaid appeared, according to custom, to prepare her gradually for night. At night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass, rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the touchof Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the formcollapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed toscanty tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverousand loose; an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, aloneremained in Cleopatra's place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in agreasy flannel gown. 

The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were aloneagain. 

'Why don't you tell me, ' it said sharply, 'that he is coming hereto-morrow by appointment?'

'Because you know it, ' returned Edith, 'Mother. '

The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word!

'You know he has bought me, ' she resumed. 'Or that he will, to-morrow. He has considered of his bargain; he has shown it to his friend; he iseven rather proud of it; he thinks that it will suit him, and may be hadsufficiently cheap; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have livedfor this, and that I feel it!'

Compress into one handsome face the conscious self-abasement, and theburning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride;and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms. 

'What do you mean?' returned the angry mother. 'Haven't you from achild--'

'A child!' said Edith, looking at her, 'when was I a child? Whatchildhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman--artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men--before I knew myself, or you, or evenunderstood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt Yougave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight. '

And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, asthough she would have beaten down herself. 

'Look at me, ' she said, 'who have never known what it is to have anhonest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot whenchildren play; and married in my youth--an old age of design--to onefor whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left awidow, dying before his inheritance descended to him--a judgment on you!well deserved!--and tell me what has been my life for ten years since. '

'We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a goodestablishment, ' rejoined her mother. 'That has been your life. And nowyou have got it. '

'There is no slave in a market: there is no horse in a fair: so shownand offered and examined and paraded, Mother, as I have been, for tenshameful years, ' cried Edith, with a burning brow, and the same bitteremphasis on the one word. 'Is it not so? Have I been made the bye-wordof all kinds of men? Have fools, have profligates, have boys, havedotards, dangled after me, and one by one rejected me, and fallen off, because you were too plain with all your cunning: yes, and too true, with all those false pretences: until we have almost come to benotorious? The licence of look and touch, ' she said, with flashing eyes, 'have I submitted to it, in half the places of resort upon the map ofEngland? Have I been hawked and vended here and there, until the lastgrain of self-respect is dead within me, and I loathe myself? Has beenmy late childhood? I had none before. Do not tell me that I had, tonightof all nights in my life!'

'You might have been well married, ' said her mother, 'twenty times atleast, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough. '

'No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be, ' sheanswered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame andstormy pride, 'shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine putforth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well tobuy me. Let him! When he came to view me--perhaps to bid--he required tosee the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would haveme show one of them, to justify his purchase to his men, I require ofhim to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no more. Hemakes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. Ihave not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as Ihave been able to prevent you. 

'You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own Mother. '

'It seems so to me; stranger to me than you, ' said Edith. 'But myeducation was completed long ago. I am too old now, and have fallen toolow, by degrees, to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to helpmyself. The germ of all that purifies a woman's breast, and makes ittrue and good, has never stirred in mine, and I have nothing else tosustain me when I despise myself. ' There had been a touching sadness inher voice, but it was gone, when she went on to say, with a curled lip, 'So, as we are genteel and poor, I am content that we should be maderich by these means; all I say is, I have kept the only purpose I havehad the strength to form--I had almost said the power, with you at myside, Mother--and have not tempted this man on. '

'This man! You speak, ' said her mother, 'as if you hated him. '

'And you thought I loved him, did you not?' she answered, stopping onher way across the room, and looking round. 'Shall I tell you, ' shecontinued, with her eyes fixed on her mother, 'who already knows usthoroughly, and reads us right, and before whom I have even less ofself-respect or confidence than before my own inward self; being so muchdegraded by his knowledge of me?'

'This is an attack, I suppose, ' returned her mother coldly, 'on poor, unfortunate what's-his-name--Mr Carker! Your want of self-respect andconfidence, my dear, in reference to that person (who is very agreeable, it strikes me), is not likely to have much effect on your establishment. Why do you look at me so hard? Are you ill?'

Edith suddenly let fall her face, as if it had been stung, and whileshe pressed her hands upon it, a terrible tremble crept over her wholeframe. It was quickly gone; and with her usual step, she passed out ofthe room. 

The maid who should have been a skeleton, then reappeared, and givingone arm to her mistress, who appeared to have taken off her mannerwith her charms, and to have put on paralysis with her flannel gown, collected the ashes of Cleopatra, and carried them away in the other, ready for tomorrow's revivification. 

CHAPTER 28. Alterations

'So the day has come at length, Susan, ' said Florence to the excellentNipper, 'when we are going back to our quiet home!'

Susan drew in her breath with an amount of expression not easilydescribed, further relieving her feelings with a smart cough, answered, 'Very quiet indeed, Miss Floy, no doubt. Excessive so. '

'When I was a child, ' said Florence, thoughtfully, and after musing forsome moments, 'did you ever see that gentleman who has taken the troubleto ride down here to speak to me, now three times--three times, I think, Susan?'

'Three times, Miss, ' returned the Nipper. 'Once when you was out awalking with them Sket--'

Florence gently looked at her, and Miss Nipper checked herself. 

'With Sir Barnet and his lady, I mean to say, Miss, and the younggentleman. And two evenings since then. '

'When I was a child, and when company used to come to visit Papa, didyou ever see that gentleman at home, Susan?' asked Florence. 

'Well, Miss, ' returned her maid, after considering, 'I really couldn'tsay I ever did. When your poor dear Ma died, Miss Floy, I was very newin the family, you see, and my element:' the Nipper bridled, as opiningthat her merits had been always designedly extinguished by Mr Dombey:'was the floor below the attics. '

'To be sure, ' said Florence, still thoughtfully; 'you are not likely tohave known who came to the house. I quite forgot. '

'Not, Miss, but what we talked about the family and visitors, ' saidSusan, 'and but what I heard much said, although the nurse before MrsRichards make unpleasant remarks when I was in company, and hintat little Pitchers, but that could only be attributed, poor thing, 'observed Susan, with composed forbearance, 'to habits of intoxication, for which she was required to leave, and did. '

Florence, who was seated at her chamber window, with her face restingon her hand, sat looking out, and hardly seemed to hear what Susan said, she was so lost in thought. 

'At all events, Miss, ' said Susan, 'I remember very well that this samegentleman, Mr Carker, was almost, if not quite, as great a gentlemanwith your Papa then, as he is now. It used to be said in the house then, Miss, that he was at the head of all your Pa's affairs in the City, andmanaged the whole, and that your Pa minded him more than anybody, which, begging your pardon, Miss Floy, he might easy do, for he never mindedanybody else. I knew that, Pitcher as I might have been. '

Susan Nipper, with an injured remembrance of the nurse before MrsRichards, emphasised 'Pitcher' strongly. 

'And that Mr Carker has not fallen off, Miss, ' she pursued, 'but hasstood his ground, and kept his credit with your Pa, I know from whatis always said among our people by that Perch, whenever he comes to thehouse; and though he's the weakest weed in the world, Miss Floy, and noone can have a moment's patience with the man, he knows what goes on inthe City tolerable well, and says that your Pa does nothing without MrCarker, and leaves all to Mr Carker, and acts according to Mr Carker, and has Mr Carker always at his elbow, and I do believe that he believes(that washiest of Perches!) that after your Pa, the Emperor of India isthe child unborn to Mr Carker. '

Not a word of this was lost on Florence, who, with an awakened interestin Susan's speech, no longer gazed abstractedly on the prospect without, but looked at her, and listened with attention. 

'Yes, Susan, ' she said, when that young lady had concluded. 'He is inPapa's confidence, and is his friend, I am sure. '

Florence's mind ran high on this theme, and had done for some days. MrCarker, in the two visits with which he had followed up his first one, had assumed a confidence between himself and her--a right on his partto be mysterious and stealthy, in telling her that the ship was stillunheard of--a kind of mildly restrained power and authority overher--that made her wonder, and caused her great uneasiness. She hadno means of repelling it, or of freeing herself from the web he wasgradually winding about her; for that would have required some art andknowledge of the world, opposed to such address as his; and Florence hadnone. True, he had said no more to her than that there was no news ofthe ship, and that he feared the worst; but how he came to know thatshe was interested in the ship, and why he had the right to signifyhis knowledge to her, so insidiously and darkly, troubled Florence verymuch. 

This conduct on the part of Mr Carker, and her habit of oftenconsidering it with wonder and uneasiness, began to invest him withan uncomfortable fascination in Florence's thoughts. A more distinctremembrance of his features, voice, and manner: which she sometimescourted, as a means of reducing him to the level of a real personage, capable of exerting no greater charm over her than another: did notremove the vague impression. And yet he never frowned, or looked uponher with an air of dislike or animosity, but was always smiling andserene. 

Again, Florence, in pursuit of her strong purpose with reference toher father, and her steady resolution to believe that she was herselfunwittingly to blame for their so cold and distant relations, wouldrecall to mind that this gentleman was his confidential friend, andwould think, with an anxious heart, could her struggling tendency todislike and fear him be a part of that misfortune in her, which hadturned her father's love adrift, and left her so alone? She dreaded thatit might be; sometimes believed it was: then she resolved that shewould try to conquer this wrong feeling; persuaded herself that she washonoured and encouraged by the notice of her father's friend; and hopedthat patient observation of him and trust in him would lead her bleedingfeet along that stony road which ended in her father's heart. 

Thus, with no one to advise her--for she could advise with no onewithout seeming to complain against him--gentle Florence tossed on anuneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr Carker, like a scaly monster of thedeep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her. Florence had anew reason in all this for wishing to be at home again. Her lonely lifewas better suited to her course of timid hope and doubt; and she fearedsometimes, that in her absence she might miss some hopeful chance oftestifying her affection for her father. Heaven knows, she might haveset her mind at rest, poor child! on this last point; but her slightedlove was fluttering within her, and, even in her sleep, it flew away indreams, and nestled, like a wandering bird come home, upon her father'sneck. 

Of Walter she thought often. Ah! how often, when the night was gloomy, and the wind was blowing round the house! But hope was strong in herbreast. It is so difficult for the young and ardent, even with suchexperience as hers, to imagine youth and ardour quenched like a weakflame, and the bright day of life merging into night, at noon, that hopewas strong yet. Her tears fell frequently for Walter's sufferings; butrarely for his supposed death, and never long. 

She had written to the old Instrument-maker, but had received noanswer to her note: which indeed required none. Thus matters stood withFlorence on the morning when she was going home, gladly, to her oldsecluded life. 

Doctor and Mrs Blimber, accompanied (much against his will) by theirvalued charge, Master Barnet, were already gone back to Brighton, wherethat young gentleman and his fellow-pilgrims to Parnassus were then, nodoubt, in the continual resumption of their studies. The holiday timewas past and over; most of the juvenile guests at the villa had takentheir departure; and Florence's long visit was come to an end. 

There was one guest, however, albeit not resident within the house, whohad been very constant in his attentions to the family, and who stillremained devoted to them. This was Mr Toots, who after renewing, someweeks ago, the acquaintance he had had the happiness of forming withSkettles Junior, on the night when he burst the Blimberian bonds andsoared into freedom with his ring on, called regularly every other day, and left a perfect pack of cards at the hall-door; so many indeed, thatthe ceremony was quite a deal on the part of Mr Toots, and a hand atwhist on the part of the servant. 

Mr Toots, likewise, with the bold and happy idea of preventing thefamily from forgetting him (but there is reason to suppose thatthis expedient originated in the teeming brain of the Chicken), hadestablished a six-oared cutter, manned by aquatic friends of theChicken's and steered by that illustrious character in person, who worea bright red fireman's coat for the purpose, and concealed the perpetualblack eye with which he was afflicted, beneath a green shade. Previousto the institution of this equipage, Mr Toots sounded the Chicken on ahypothetical case, as, supposing the Chicken to be enamoured of a younglady named Mary, and to have conceived the intention of starting a boatof his own, what would he call that boat? The Chicken replied, withdivers strong asseverations, that he would either christen it Poll orThe Chicken's Delight. Improving on this idea, Mr Toots, after deepstudy and the exercise of much invention, resolved to call his boatThe Toots's Joy, as a delicate compliment to Florence, of which no manknowing the parties, could possibly miss the appreciation. 

Stretched on a crimson cushion in his gallant bark, with his shoesin the air, Mr Toots, in the exercise of his project, had come up theriver, day after day, and week after week, and had flitted to and fro, near Sir Barnet's garden, and had caused his crew to cut across andacross the river at sharp angles, for his better exhibition to anylookers-out from Sir Barnet's windows, and had had such evolutionsperformed by the Toots's Joy as had filled all the neighbouring partof the water-side with astonishment. But whenever he saw anyone in SirBarnet's garden on the brink of the river, Mr Toots always feigned to bepassing there, by a combination of coincidences of the most singular andunlikely description. 

'How are you, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say, waving his hand from thelawn, while the artful Chicken steered close in shore. 

'How de do, Sir Barnet?' Mr Toots would answer, What a surprising thingthat I should see you here!'

Mr Toots, in his sagacity, always said this, as if, instead of thatbeing Sir Barnet's house, it were some deserted edifice on the banks ofthe Nile, or Ganges. 

'I never was so surprised!' Mr Toots would exclaim. --'Is Miss Dombeythere?'

Whereupon Florence would appear, perhaps. 

'Oh, Diogenes is quite well, Miss Dombey, ' Toots would cry. 'I called toask this morning. '

'Thank you very much!' the pleasant voice of Florence would reply. 

'Won't you come ashore, Toots?' Sir Barnet would say then. 'Come! you'rein no hurry. Come and see us. '

'Oh, it's of no consequence, thank you!' Mr Toots would blushinglyrejoin. 'I thought Miss Dombey might like to know, that's all. Good-bye!' And poor Mr Toots, who was dying to accept the invitation, but hadn't the courage to do it, signed to the Chicken, with an achingheart, and away went the Joy, cleaving the water like an arrow. 

The Joy was lying in a state of extraordinary splendour, at the gardensteps, on the morning of Florence's departure. When she went downstairsto take leave, after her talk with Susan, she found Mr Toots awaitingher in the drawing-room. 

'Oh, how de do, Miss Dombey?' said the stricken Toots, always dreadfullydisconcerted when the desire of his heart was gained, and he wasspeaking to her; 'thank you, I'm very well indeed, I hope you're thesame, so was Diogenes yesterday. '

'You are very kind, ' said Florence. 

'Thank you, it's of no consequence, ' retorted Mr Toots. 'I thoughtperhaps you wouldn't mind, in this fine weather, coming home by water, Miss Dombey. There's plenty of room in the boat for your maid. '

'I am very much obliged to you, ' said Florence, hesitating. 'I reallyam--but I would rather not. '

'Oh, it's of no consequence, ' retorted Mr Toots. 'Good morning. '

'Won't you wait and see Lady Skettles?' asked Florence, kindly. 

'Oh no, thank you, ' returned Mr Toots, 'it's of no consequence at all. '

So shy was Mr Toots on such occasions, and so flurried! But LadySkettles entering at the moment, Mr Toots was suddenly seized with apassion for asking her how she did, and hoping she was very well; norcould Mr Toots by any possibility leave off shaking hands with her, until Sir Barnet appeared: to whom he immediately clung with thetenacity of desperation. 

'We are losing, today, Toots, ' said Sir Barnet, turning towardsFlorence, 'the light of our house, I assure you'

'Oh, it's of no conseq--I mean yes, to be sure, ' faltered theembarrassed Mr Toots. 'Good morning!'

Notwithstanding the emphatic nature of this farewell, Mr Toots, insteadof going away, stood leering about him, vacantly. Florence, to relievehim, bade adieu, with many thanks, to Lady Skettles, and gave her arm toSir Barnet. 

'May I beg of you, my dear Miss Dombey, ' said her host, as he conductedher to the carriage, 'to present my best compliments to your dear Papa?'

It was distressing to Florence to receive the commission, for she feltas if she were imposing on Sir Barnet by allowing him to believe that akindness rendered to her, was rendered to her father. As she could notexplain, however, she bowed her head and thanked him; and again shethought that the dull home, free from such embarrassments, and suchreminders of her sorrow, was her natural and best retreat. 

Such of her late friends and companions as were yet remaining at thevilla, came running from within, and from the garden, to say good-bye. They were all attached to her, and very earnest in taking leave ofher. Even the household were sorry for her going, and the servants camenodding and curtseying round the carriage door. As Florence looked roundon the kind faces, and saw among them those of Sir Barnet and his lady, and of Mr Toots, who was chuckling and staring at her from a distance, she was reminded of the night when Paul and she had come from DoctorBlimber's: and when the carriage drove away, her face was wet withtears. 

Sorrowful tears, but tears of consolation, too; for all the softermemories connected with the dull old house to which she was returningmade it dear to her, as they rose up. How long it seemed since she hadwandered through the silent rooms: since she had last crept, softly andafraid, into those her father occupied: since she had felt the solemnbut yet soothing influence of the beloved dead in every action of herdaily life! This new farewell reminded her, besides, of her partingwith poor Walter: of his looks and words that night: and of the graciousblending she had noticed in him, of tenderness for those he left behind, with courage and high spirit. His little history was associated withthe old house too, and gave it a new claim and hold upon her heart. EvenSusan Nipper softened towards the home of so many years, as they wereon their way towards it. Gloomy as it was, and rigid justice as sherendered to its gloom, she forgave it a great deal. 'I shall be glad tosee it again, I don't deny, Miss, ' said the Nipper. 'There ain't much init to boast of, but I wouldn't have it burnt or pulled down, neither!'

'You'll be glad to go through the old rooms, won't you, Susan?' saidFlorence, smiling. 

'Well, Miss, ' returned the Nipper, softening more and more towards thehouse, as they approached it nearer, 'I won't deny but what I shall, though I shall hate 'em again, to-morrow, very likely. '

Florence felt that, for her, there was greater peace within it thanelsewhere. It was better and easier to keep her secret shut up there, among the tall dark walls, than to carry it abroad into the light, andtry to hide it from a crowd of happy eyes. It was better to pursue thestudy of her loving heart, alone, and find no new discouragements inloving hearts about her. It was easier to hope, and pray, and loveon, all uncared for, yet with constancy and patience, in the tranquilsanctuary of such remembrances: although it mouldered, rusted, anddecayed about her: than in a new scene, let its gaiety be what it would. She welcomed back her old enchanted dream of life, and longed for theold dark door to close upon her, once again. 

Full of such thoughts, they turned into the long and sombre street. Florence was not on that side of the carriage which was nearest to herhome, and as the distance lessened between them and it, she looked outof her window for the children over the way. 

She was thus engaged, when an exclamation from Susan caused her to turnquickly round. 

'Why, Gracious me!' cried Susan, breathless, 'where's our house!'

'Our house!' said Florence. 

Susan, drawing in her head from the window, thrust it out again, drewit in again as the carriage stopped, and stared at her mistress inamazement. 

There was a labyrinth of scaffolding raised all round the house, fromthe basement to the roof. Loads of bricks and stones, and heaps ofmortar, and piles of wood, blocked up half the width and length ofthe broad street at the side. Ladders were raised against the walls;labourers were climbing up and down; men were at work upon the steps ofthe scaffolding; painters and decorators were busy inside; great rollsof ornamental paper were being delivered from a cart at the door; anupholsterer's waggon also stopped the way; no furniture was to be seenthrough the gaping and broken windows in any of the rooms; nothing butworkmen, and the implements of their several trades, swarming fromthe kitchens to the garrets. Inside and outside alike: bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons: hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, andtrowel: all at work together, in full chorus!

Florence descended from the coach, half doubting if it were, or could bethe right house, until she recognised Towlinson, with a sun-burnt face, standing at the door to receive her. 

'There is nothing the matter?' inquired Florence. 

'Oh no, Miss. '

'There are great alterations going on. '

'Yes, Miss, great alterations, ' said Towlinson. 

Florence passed him as if she were in a dream, and hurried upstairs. Thegarish light was in the long-darkened drawing-room and there were stepsand platforms, and men In paper caps, in the high places. Her mother'spicture was gone with the rest of the moveables, and on the mark whereit had been, was scrawled in chalk, 'this room in panel. Green andgold. ' The staircase was a labyrinth of posts and planks like theoutside of the house, and a whole Olympus of plumbers and glaziers wasreclining in various attitudes, on the skylight. Her own room was notyet touched within, but there were beams and boards raised againstit without, baulking the daylight. She went up swiftly to that otherbedroom, where the little bed was; and a dark giant of a man with a pipein his mouth, and his head tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, was staringin at the window. 

It was here that Susan Nipper, who had been in quest of Florence, foundher, and said, would she go downstairs to her Papa, who wished to speakto her. 

'At home! and wishing to speak to me!' cried Florence, trembling. 

Susan, who was infinitely more distraught than Florence herself, repeated her errand; and Florence, pale and agitated, hurried downagain, without a moment's hesitation. She thought upon the way down, would she dare to kiss him? The longing of her heart resolved her, andshe thought she would. 

Her father might have heard that heart beat, when it came into hispresence. One instant, and it would have beat against his breast. 

But he was not alone. There were two ladies there; and Florence stopped. Striving so hard with her emotion, that if her brute friend Di had notburst in and overwhelmed her with his caresses as a welcome home--atwhich one of the ladies gave a little scream, and that diverted herattention from herself--she would have swooned upon the floor. 

'Florence, ' said her father, putting out his hand: so stiffly that itheld her off: 'how do you do?'

Florence took the hand between her own, and putting it timidly to herlips, yielded to its withdrawal. It touched the door in shutting it, with quite as much endearment as it had touched her. 

'What dog is that?' said Mr Dombey, displeased. 

'It is a dog, Papa--from Brighton. '

'Well!' said Mr Dombey; and a cloud passed over his face, for heunderstood her. 

'He is very good-tempered, ' said Florence, addressing herself with hernatural grace and sweetness to the two lady strangers. 'He is only gladto see me. Pray forgive him. '

She saw in the glance they interchanged, that the lady who had screamed, and who was seated, was old; and that the other lady, who stood near herPapa, was very beautiful, and of an elegant figure. 

'Mrs Skewton, ' said her father, turning to the first, and holding outhis hand, 'this is my daughter Florence. '

'Charming, I am sure, ' observed the lady, putting up her glass. 'Sonatural! My darling Florence, you must kiss me, if you please. '

Florence having done so, turned towards the other lady, by whom herfather stood waiting. 

'Edith, ' said Mr Dombey, 'this is my daughter Florence. Florence, thislady will soon be your Mama. '

Florence started, and looked up at the beautiful face in a conflictof emotions, among which the tears that name awakened, struggled for amoment with surprise, interest, admiration, and an indefinable sort offear. Then she cried out, 'Oh, Papa, may you be happy! may you be very, very happy all your life!' and then fell weeping on the lady's bosom. 

There was a short silence. The beautiful lady, who at first had seemedto hesitate whether or no she should advance to Florence, held her toher breast, and pressed the hand with which she clasped her, close abouther waist, as if to reassure her and comfort her. Not one word passedthe lady's lips. She bent her head down over Florence, and she kissedher on the cheek, but she said no word. 

'Shall we go on through the rooms, ' said Mr Dombey, 'and see how ourworkmen are doing? Pray allow me, my dear madam. '

He said this in offering his arm to Mrs Skewton, who had been lookingat Florence through her glass, as though picturing to herself what shemight be made, by the infusion--from her own copious storehouse, nodoubt--of a little more Heart and Nature. Florence was still sobbing onthe lady's breast, and holding to her, when Mr Dombey was heard to sayfrom the Conservatory:

'Let us ask Edith. Dear me, where is she?'

'Edith, my dear!' cried Mrs Skewton, 'where are you? Looking for MrDombey somewhere, I know. We are here, my love. '

The beautiful lady released her hold of Florence, and pressing her lipsonce more upon her face, withdrew hurriedly, and joined them. Florenceremained standing In the same place: happy, sorry, joyful, and in tears, she knew not how, or how long, but all at once: when her new Mama cameback, and took her in her arms again. 

'Florence, ' said the lady, hurriedly, and looking into her face withgreat earnestness. 'You will not begin by hating me?'

'By hating you, Mama?' cried Florence, winding her arm round her neck, and returning the look. 

'Hush! Begin by thinking well of me, ' said the beautiful lady. 'Begin bybelieving that I will try to make you happy, and that I am prepared tolove you, Florence. Good-bye. We shall meet again soon. Good-bye! Don'tstay here, now. '

Again she pressed her to her breast she had spoken in a rapid manner, but firmly--and Florence saw her rejoin them in the other room. And nowFlorence began to hope that she would learn from her new and beautifulMama, how to gain her father's love; and in her sleep that night, in herlost old home, her own Mama smiled radiantly upon the hope, and blessedit. Dreaming Florence!

CHAPTER 29. The Opening of the Eyes of Mrs Chick

Miss Tox, all unconscious of any such rare appearances in connexion withMr Dombey's house, as scaffoldings and ladders, and men with their headstied up in pocket-handkerchiefs, glaring in at the windows like flyinggenii or strange birds, --having breakfasted one morning at about thiseventful period of time, on her customary viands; to wit, one Frenchroll rasped, one egg new laid (or warranted to be), and one little potof tea, wherein was infused one little silver scoopful of that herbon behalf of Miss Tox, and one little silver scoopful on behalf ofthe teapot--a flight of fancy in which good housekeepers delight; wentupstairs to set forth the bird waltz on the harpsichord, to water andarrange the plants, to dust the nick-nacks, and, according to her dailycustom, to make her little drawing-room the garland of Princess's Place. 

Miss Tox endued herself with a pair of ancient gloves, like dead leaves, in which she was accustomed to perform these avocations--hidden fromhuman sight at other times in a table drawer--and went methodically towork; beginning with the bird waltz; passing, by a natural associationof ideas, to her bird--a very high-shouldered canary, stricken in years, and much rumpled, but a piercing singer, as Princess's Place well knew;taking, next in order, the little china ornaments, paper fly-cages, andso forth; and coming round, in good time, to the plants, which generallyrequired to be snipped here and there with a pair of scissors, for somebotanical reason that was very powerful with Miss Tox. Miss Tox was slowin coming to the plants, this morning. The weather was warm, the windsoutherly; and there was a sigh of the summer-time In Princess's Place, that turned Miss Tox's thoughts upon the country. The pot-boy attachedto the Princess's Arms had come out with a can and trickled water, ina flowering pattern, all over Princess's Place, and it gave the weedyground a fresh scent--quite a growing scent, Miss Tox said. There was atiny blink of sun peeping in from the great street round the corner, andthe smoky sparrows hopped over it and back again, brightening as theypassed: or bathed in it, like a stream, and became glorified sparrows, unconnected with chimneys. Legends in praise of Ginger-Beer, withpictorial representations of thirsty customers submerged in theeffervescence, or stunned by the flying corks, were conspicuous in thewindow of the Princess's Arms. They were making late hay, somewhereout of town; and though the fragrance had a long way to come, and manycounter fragrances to contend with among the dwellings of the poor (mayGod reward the worthy gentlemen who stickle for the Plague as part andparcel of the wisdom of our ancestors, and who do their little bestto keep those dwellings miserable!), yet it was wafted faintly intoPrincess's Place, whispering of Nature and her wholesome air, assuch things will, even unto prisoners and captives, and those who aredesolate and oppressed, in very spite of aldermen and knights to boot:at whose sage nod--and how they nod!--the rolling world stands still!

Miss Tox sat down upon the window-seat, and thought of her good Papadeceased--Mr Tox, of the Customs Department of the public service; andof her childhood, passed at a seaport, among a considerable quantity ofcold tar, and some rusticity. She fell into a softened remembrance ofmeadows, in old time, gleaming with buttercups, like so manyinverted firmaments of golden stars; and how she had made chains ofdandelion-stalks for youthful vowers of eternal constancy, dressedchiefly in nankeen; and how soon those fetters had withered and broken. 

Sitting on the window-seat, and looking out upon the sparrows andthe blink of sun, Miss Tox thought likewise of her good Mamadeceased--sister to the owner of the powdered head and pigtail--of hervirtues and her rheumatism. And when a man with bulgy legs, and a roughvoice, and a heavy basket on his head that crushed his hat into a mereblack muffin, came crying flowers down Princess's Place, making histimid little roots of daisies shudder in the vibration of every yellhe gave, as though he had been an ogre, hawking little children, summerrecollections were so strong upon Miss Tox, that she shook her head, andmurmured she would be comparatively old before she knew it--which seemedlikely. 

In her pensive mood, Miss Tox's thoughts went wandering on Mr Dombey'strack; probably because the Major had returned home to his lodgingsopposite, and had just bowed to her from his window. What other reasoncould Miss Tox have for connecting Mr Dombey with her summer daysand dandelion fetters? Was he more cheerful? thought Miss Tox. Was hereconciled to the decrees of fate? Would he ever marry again? and ifyes, whom? What sort of person now!

A flush--it was warm weather--overspread Miss Tox's face, as, whileentertaining these meditations, she turned her head, and was surprisedby the reflection of her thoughtful image In the chimney-glass. Anotherflush succeeded when she saw a little carriage drive into Princess'sPlace, and make straight for her own door. Miss Tox arose, took up herscissors hastily, and so coming, at last, to the plants, was very busywith them when Mrs Chick entered the room. 

'How is my sweetest friend!' exclaimed Miss Tox, with open arms. 

A little stateliness was mingled with Miss Tox's sweetest friend'sdemeanour, but she kissed Miss Tox, and said, 'Lucretia, thank you, I ampretty well. I hope you are the same. Hem!'

Mrs Chick was labouring under a peculiar little monosyllabic cough; asort of primer, or easy introduction to the art of coughing. 

'You call very early, and how kind that is, my dear!' pursued Miss Tox. 'Now, have you breakfasted?'

'Thank you, Lucretia, ' said Mrs Chick, 'I have. I took an earlybreakfast'--the good lady seemed curious on the subject of Princess'sPlace, and looked all round it as she spoke--'with my brother, who hascome home. '

'He is better, I trust, my love, ' faltered Miss Tox. 

'He is greatly better, thank you. Hem!'

'My dear Louisa must be careful of that cough' remarked Miss Tox. 

'It's nothing, ' returned Mrs Chic 'It's merely change of weather. Wemust expect change. '

'Of weather?' asked Miss Tox, in her simplicity. 

'Of everything' returned Mrs Chick 'Of course we must. It's a world ofchange. Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, and would greatlyalter my opinion of their understanding, if they attempted to contradictor evade what is so perfectly evident. Change!' exclaimed Mrs Chick, with severe philosophy. 'Why, my gracious me, what is there that doesnot change! even the silkworm, who I am sure might be supposed not totrouble itself about such subjects, changes into all sorts of unexpectedthings continually. '

'My Louisa, ' said the mild Miss Tox, 'is ever happy in herillustrations. '

'You are so kind, Lucretia, ' returned Mrs Chick, a little softened, 'asto say so, and to think so, I believe. I hope neither of us may everhave any cause to lessen our opinion of the other, Lucretia. '

'I am sure of it, ' returned Miss Tox. 

Mrs Chick coughed as before, and drew lines on the carpet with the ivoryend of her parasol. Miss Tox, who had experience of her fair friend, andknew that under the pressure of any slight fatigue or vexation shewas prone to a discursive kind of irritability, availed herself of thepause, to change the subject. 

'Pardon me, my dear Louisa, ' said Miss Tox, 'but have I caught sight ofthe manly form of Mr Chick in the carriage?'

'He is there, ' said Mrs Chick, 'but pray leave him there. He has hisnewspaper, and would be quite contented for the next two hours. Go onwith your flowers, Lucretia, and allow me to sit here and rest. '

'My Louisa knows, ' observed Miss Tox, 'that between friends likeourselves, any approach to ceremony would be out of the question. Therefore--' Therefore Miss Tox finished the sentence, not in words butaction; and putting on her gloves again, which she had taken off, andarming herself once more with her scissors, began to snip and clip amongthe leaves with microscopic industry. 

'Florence has returned home also, ' said Mrs Chick, after sitting silentfor some time, with her head on one side, and her parasol sketching onthe floor; 'and really Florence is a great deal too old now, to continueto lead that solitary life to which she has been accustomed. Of courseshe is. There can be no doubt about it. I should have very littlerespect, indeed, for anybody who could advocate a different opinion. Whatever my wishes might be, I could not respect them. We cannot commandour feelings to such an extent as that. '

Miss Tox assented, without being particular as to the intelligibility ofthe proposition. 

'If she's a strange girl, ' said Mrs Chick, 'and if my brother Paulcannot feel perfectly comfortable in her society, after all the sadthings that have happened, and all the terrible disappointments thathave been undergone, then, what is the reply? That he must make aneffort. That he is bound to make an effort. We have always been a familyremarkable for effort. Paul is at the head of the family; almost theonly representative of it left--for what am I--I am of no consequence--'

'My dearest love, ' remonstrated Miss Tox. 

Mrs Chick dried her eyes, which were, for the moment, overflowing; andproceeded:

'And consequently he is more than ever bound to make an effort. Andthough his having done so, comes upon me with a sort of shock--for mineis a very weak and foolish nature; which is anything but a blessing I amsure; I often wish my heart was a marble slab, or a paving-stone--

'My sweet Louisa, ' remonstrated Miss Tox again. 

'Still, it is a triumph to me to know that he is so true to himself, andto his name of Dombey; although, of course, I always knew he would be. I only hope, ' said Mrs Chick, after a pause, 'that she may be worthy ofthe name too. 

Miss Tox filled a little green watering-pot from a jug, and happeningto look up when she had done so, was so surprised by the amount ofexpression Mrs Chick had conveyed into her face, and was bestowing uponher, that she put the little watering-pot on the table for the present, and sat down near it. 

'My dear Louisa, ' said Miss Tox, 'will it be the least satisfaction toyou, if I venture to observe in reference to that remark, that I, as ahumble individual, think your sweet niece in every way most promising?''What do you mean, Lucretia?' returned Mrs Chick, with increasedstateliness of manner. 'To what remark of mine, my dear, do you refer?'

'Her being worthy of her name, my love, ' replied Miss Tox. 

'If, ' said Mrs Chick, with solemn patience, 'I have not expressedmyself with clearness, Lucretia, the fault of course is mine. Thereis, perhaps, no reason why I should express myself at all, except theintimacy that has subsisted between us, and which I very much hope, Lucretia--confidently hope--nothing will occur to disturb. Because, whyshould I do anything else? There is no reason; it would be absurd. ButI wish to express myself clearly, Lucretia; and therefore to go backto that remark, I must beg to say that it was not intended to relate toFlorence, in any way. '

'Indeed!' returned Miss Tox. 

'No, ' said Mrs Chick shortly and decisively. 

'Pardon me, my dear, ' rejoined her meek friend; 'but I cannot haveunderstood it. I fear I am dull. '

Mrs Chick looked round the room and over the way; at the plants, at thebird, at the watering-pot, at almost everything within view, except MissTox; and finally dropping her glance upon Miss Tox, for a moment, on itsway to the ground, said, looking meanwhile with elevated eyebrows at thecarpet:

'When I speak, Lucretia, of her being worthy of the name, I speak of mybrother Paul's second wife. I believe I have already said, in effect, if not in the very words I now use, that it is his intention to marry asecond wife. '

Miss Tox left her seat in a hurry, and returned to her plants; clippingamong the stems and leaves, with as little favour as a barber working atso many pauper heads of hair. 

'Whether she will be fully sensible of the distinction conferred uponher, ' said Mrs Chick, in a lofty tone, 'is quite another question. I hope she may be. We are bound to think well of one another in thisworld, and I hope she may be. I have not been advised with myself IfI had been advised with, I have no doubt my advice would have beencavalierly received, and therefore it is infinitely better as it is. Imuch prefer it as it is. '

Miss Tox, with head bent down, still clipped among the plants. MrsChick, with energetic shakings of her own head from time to time, continued to hold forth, as if in defiance of somebody. 'If my brotherPaul had consulted with me, which he sometimes does--or rather, sometimes used to do; for he will naturally do that no more now, andthis is a circumstance which I regard as a relief from responsibility, 'said Mrs Chick, hysterically, 'for I thank Heaven I am not jealous--'here Mrs Chick again shed tears: 'if my brother Paul had come to me, andhad said, "Louisa, what kind of qualities would you advise me to lookout for, in a wife?" I should certainly have answered, "Paul, you musthave family, you must have beauty, you must have dignity, you must haveconnexion. " Those are the words I should have used. You might have ledme to the block immediately afterwards, ' said Mrs Chick, as if thatconsequence were highly probable, 'but I should have used them. I shouldhave said, "Paul! You to marry a second time without family! You tomarry without beauty! You to marry without dignity! You to marry withoutconnexion! There is nobody in the world, not mad, who could dream ofdaring to entertain such a preposterous idea!"'

Miss Tox stopped clipping; and with her head among the plants, listenedattentively. Perhaps Miss Tox thought there was hope in this exordium, and the warmth of Mrs Chick. 

I should have adopted this course of argument, ' pursued the discreetlady, 'because I trust I am not a fool. I make no claim to be considereda person of superior intellect--though I believe some people have beenextraordinary enough to consider me so; one so little humoured as I am, would very soon be disabused of any such notion; but I trust I am not adownright fool. And to tell ME, ' said Mrs Chick with ineffable disdain, 'that my brother Paul Dombey could ever contemplate the possibility ofuniting himself to anybody--I don't care who'--she was more sharpand emphatic in that short clause than in any other part of herdiscourse--'not possessing these requisites, would be to insult whatunderstanding I have got, as much as if I was to be told that I was bornand bred an elephant, which I may be told next, ' said Mrs Chick, withresignation. 'It wouldn't surprise me at all. I expect it. '

In the moment's silence that ensued, Miss Tox's scissors gave a feebleclip or two; but Miss Tox's face was still invisible, and Miss Tox'smorning gown was agitated. Mrs Chick looked sideways at her, through theintervening plants, and went on to say, in a tone of bland conviction, and as one dwelling on a point of fact that hardly required to bestated:

'Therefore, of course my brother Paul has done what was to be expectedof him, and what anybody might have foreseen he would do, if he enteredthe marriage state again. I confess it takes me rather by surprise, however gratifying; because when Paul went out of town I had no idea atall that he would form any attachment out of town, and he certainlyhad no attachment when he left here. However, it seems to be extremelydesirable in every point of view. I have no doubt the mother is a mostgenteel and elegant creature, and I have no right whatever to disputethe policy of her living with them: which is Paul's affair, notmine--and as to Paul's choice, herself, I have only seen her pictureyet, but that is beautiful indeed. Her name is beautiful too, ' said MrsChick, shaking her head with energy, and arranging herself in herchair; 'Edith is at once uncommon, as it strikes me, and distinguished. Consequently, Lucretia, I have no doubt you will be happy to hear thatthe marriage is to take place immediately--of course, you will:' greatemphasis again: 'and that you are delighted with this change in thecondition of my brother, who has shown you a great deal of pleasantattention at various times. '

Miss Tox made no verbal answer, but took up the little watering-potwith a trembling hand, and looked vacantly round as if considering whatarticle of furniture would be improved by the contents. The room dooropening at this crisis of Miss Tox's feelings, she started, laughedaloud, and fell into the arms of the person entering; happily insensiblealike of Mrs Chick's indignant countenance and of the Major at hiswindow over the way, who had his double-barrelled eye-glass in fullaction, and whose face and figure were dilated with Mephistophelean joy. 

Not so the expatriated Native, amazed supporter of Miss Tox's swooningform, who, coming straight upstairs, with a polite inquiry touching MissTox's health (in exact pursuance of the Major's malicious instructions), had accidentally arrived in the very nick of time to catch thedelicate burden in his arms, and to receive the content' of the littlewatering-pot in his shoe; both of which circumstances, coupled with hisconsciousness of being closely watched by the wrathful Major, who hadthreatened the usual penalty in regard of every bone in his skin in caseof any failure, combined to render him a moving spectacle of mental andbodily distress. 

For some moments, this afflicted foreigner remained clasping Miss Toxto his heart, with an energy of action in remarkable opposition to hisdisconcerted face, while that poor lady trickled slowly down upon himthe very last sprinklings of the little watering-pot, as if he were adelicate exotic (which indeed he was), and might be almost expected toblow while the gentle rain descended. Mrs Chick, at length recoveringsufficient presence of mind to interpose, commanded him to drop Miss Toxupon the sofa and withdraw; and the exile promptly obeying, she appliedherself to promote Miss Tox's recovery. 

But none of that gentle concern which usually characterises thedaughters of Eve in their tending of each other; none of thatfreemasonry in fainting, by which they are generally bound together Ina mysterious bond of sisterhood; was visible in Mrs Chick's demeanour. Rather like the executioner who restores the victim to sensationprevious to proceeding with the torture (or was wont to do so, in thegood old times for which all true men wear perpetual mourning), did MrsChick administer the smelling-bottle, the slapping on the hands, thedashing of cold water on the face, and the other proved remedies. Andwhen, at length, Miss Tox opened her eyes, and gradually became restoredto animation and consciousness, Mrs Chick drew off as from a criminal, and reversing the precedent of the murdered king of Denmark, regardedher more in anger than In sorrow. '

'Lucretia!' said Mrs Chick 'I will not attempt to disguise what I feel. My eyes are opened, all at once. I wouldn't have believed this, if aSaint had told it to me. 

'I am foolish to give way to faintness, ' Miss Tox faltered. 'I shall bebetter presently. '

'You will be better presently, Lucretia!' repeated Mrs Chick, withexceeding scorn. 'Do you suppose I am blind? Do you imagine I am in mysecond childhood? No, Lucretia! I am obliged to you!'

Miss Tox directed an imploring, helpless kind of look towards herfriend, and put her handkerchief before her face. 

'If anyone had told me this yesterday, ' said Mrs Chick, with majesty, 'or even half-an-hour ago, I should have been tempted, I almost believe, to strike them to the earth. Lucretia Tox, my eyes are opened to you allat once. The scales:' here Mrs Chick cast down an imaginary pair, suchas are commonly used in grocers' shops: 'have fallen from my sight. Theblindness of my confidence is past, Lucretia. It has been abused andplayed, upon, and evasion is quite out of the question now, I assureyou. 

'Oh! to what do you allude so cruelly, my love?' asked Miss Tox, throughher tears. 

'Lucretia, ' said Mrs Chick, 'ask your own heart. I must entreat you notto address me by any such familiar term as you have just used, if youplease. I have some self-respect left, though you may think otherwise. '

'Oh, Louisa!' cried Miss Tox. 'How can you speak to me like that?'

'How can I speak to you like that?' retorted Mrs Chick, who, in defaultof having any particular argument to sustain herself upon, reliedprincipally on such repetitions for her most withering effects. 'Likethat! You may well say like that, indeed!'

Miss Tox sobbed pitifully. 

'The idea!' said Mrs Chick, 'of your having basked at my brother'sfireside, like a serpent, and wound yourself, through me, almost intohis confidence, Lucretia, that you might, in secret, entertain designsupon him, and dare to aspire to contemplate the possibility of hisuniting himself to you! Why, it is an idea, ' said Mrs Chick, withsarcastic dignity, 'the absurdity of which almost relieves itstreachery. '

'Pray, Louisa, ' urged Miss Tox, 'do not say such dreadful things. '

'Dreadful things!' repeated Mrs Chick. 'Dreadful things! Is it nota fact, Lucretia, that you have just now been unable to command yourfeelings even before me, whose eyes you had so completely closed?'

'I have made no complaint, ' sobbed Miss Tox. 'I have said nothing. If Ihave been a little overpowered by your news, Louisa, and have everhad any lingering thought that Mr Dombey was inclined to be particulartowards me, surely you will not condemn me. '

'She is going to say, ' said Mrs Chick, addressing herself to the wholeof the furniture, in a comprehensive glance of resignation and appeal, 'She is going to say--I know it--that I have encouraged her!'

'I don't wish to exchange reproaches, dear Louisa, ' sobbed Miss Tox 'Nordo I wish to complain. But, in my own defence--'

'Yes, ' cried Mrs Chick, looking round the room with a prophetic smile, 'that's what she's going to say. I knew it. You had better say it. Say it openly! Be open, Lucretia Tox, ' said Mrs Chick, with desperatesternness, 'whatever you are. '

'In my own defence, ' faltered Miss Tox, 'and only In my own defenceagainst your unkind words, my dear Louisa, I would merely ask you if youhaven't often favoured such a fancy, and even said it might happen, foranything we could tell?'

'There is a point, ' said Mrs Chick, rising, not as if she were going tostop at the floor, but as if she were about to soar up, high, intoher native skies, 'beyond which endurance becomes ridiculous, if notculpable. I can bear much; but not too much. What spell was on me when Icame into this house this day, I don't know; but I had a presentiment--adark presentiment, ' said Mrs Chick, with a shiver, 'that something wasgoing to happen. Well may I have had that foreboding, Lucretia, when myconfidence of many years is destroyed in an instant, when my eyes areopened all at once, and when I find you revealed in your true colours. Lucretia, I have been mistaken in you. It is better for us both thatthis subject should end here. I wish you well, and I shall ever wish youwell. But, as an individual who desires to be true to herself in her ownpoor position, whatever that position may be, or may not be--and as thesister of my brother--and as the sister-in-law of my brother's wife--andas a connexion by marriage of my brother's wife's mother--may I bepermitted to add, as a Dombey?--I can wish you nothing else but goodmorning. '

These words, delivered with cutting suavity, tempered and chastened by alofty air of moral rectitude, carried the speaker to the door. There sheinclined her head in a ghostly and statue-like manner, and so withdrewto her carriage, to seek comfort and consolation in the arms of MrChick, her lord. 

Figuratively speaking, that is to say; for the arms of Mr Chick werefull of his newspaper. Neither did that gentleman address his eyestowards his wife otherwise than by stealth. Neither did he offer anyconsolation whatever. In short, he sat reading, and humming fag endsof tunes, and sometimes glancing furtively at her without deliveringhimself of a word, good, bad, or indifferent. 

In the meantime Mrs Chick sat swelling and bridling, and tossing herhead, as if she were still repeating that solemn formula of farewellto Lucretia Tox. At length, she said aloud, 'Oh the extent to which hereyes had been opened that day!'

'To which your eyes have been opened, my dear!' repeated Mr Chick. 

'Oh, don't talk to me!' said Mrs Chic 'if you can bear to see me inthis state, and not ask me what the matter is, you had better hold yourtongue for ever. '

'What is the matter, my dear?' asked Mr Chick

'To think, ' said Mrs Chick, in a state of soliloquy, 'that she shouldever have conceived the base idea of connecting herself with our familyby a marriage with Paul! To think that when she was playing at horseswith that dear child who is now in his grave--I never liked it at thetime--she should have been hiding such a double-faced design! Iwonder she was never afraid that something would happen to her. She isfortunate if nothing does. '

'I really thought, my dear, ' said Mr Chick slowly, after rubbing thebridge of his nose for some time with his newspaper, 'that you hadgone on the same tack yourself, all along, until this morning; and hadthought it would be a convenient thing enough, if it could have beenbrought about. '

Mrs Chick instantly burst into tears, and told Mr Chick that if hewished to trample upon her with his boots, he had better do It. 

'But with Lucretia Tox I have done, ' said Mrs Chick, after abandoningherself to her feelings for some minutes, to Mr Chick's great terror. 'I can bear to resign Paul's confidence in favour of one who, I hope andtrust, may be deserving of it, and with whom he has a perfect right toreplace poor Fanny if he chooses; I can bear to be informed, In Paul'scool manner, of such a change in his plans, and never to be consulteduntil all is settled and determined; but deceit I can not bear, andwith Lucretia Tox I have done. It is better as it is, ' said Mrs Chick, piously; 'much better. It would have been a long time before I couldhave accommodated myself comfortably with her, after this; and I reallydon't know, as Paul is going to be very grand, and these are people ofcondition, that she would have been quite presentable, and might nothave compromised myself. There's a providence in everything; everythingworks for the best; I have been tried today but on the whole I do notregret it. '

In which Christian spirit, Mrs Chick dried her eyes and smoothed herlap, and sat as became a person calm under a great wrong. Mr Chickfeeling his unworthiness no doubt, took an early opportunity of beingset down at a street corner and walking away whistling, with hisshoulders very much raised, and his hands in his pockets. 

While poor excommunicated Miss Tox, who, if she were a fawner andtoad-eater, was at least an honest and a constant one, and had everborne a faithful friendship towards her impeacher and had been trulyabsorbed and swallowed up in devotion to the magnificence of MrDombey--while poor excommunicated Miss Tox watered her plants with hertears, and felt that it was winter in Princess's Place. 

CHAPTER 30. The interval before the Marriage

Although the enchanted house was no more, and the working world hadbroken into it, and was hammering and crashing and tramping up anddown stairs all day long keeping Diogenes in an incessant paroxysm ofbarking, from sunrise to sunset--evidently convinced that his enemyhad got the better of him at last, and was then sacking the premises intriumphant defiance--there was, at first, no other great change in themethod of Florence's life. At night, when the workpeople went away, thehouse was dreary and deserted again; and Florence, listening to theirvoices echoing through the hall and staircase as they departed, picturedto herself the cheerful homes to which the were returning, and thechildren who were waiting for them, and was glad to think that they weremerry and well pleased to go. 

She welcomed back the evening silence as an old friend, but it came nowwith an altered face, and looked more kindly on her. Fresh hope was init. The beautiful lady who had soothed and carressed her, in the veryroom in which her heart had been so wrung, was a spirit of promiseto her. Soft shadows of the bright life dawning, when her father'saffection should be gradually won, and all, or much should be restored, of what she had lost on the dark day when a mother's love had faded witha mother's last breath on her cheek, moved about her in the twilight andwere welcome company. Peeping at the rosy children her neighbours, itwas a new and precious sensation to think that they might soon speaktogether and know each other; when she would not fear, as of old, toshow herself before them, lest they should be grieved to see her in herblack dress sitting there alone!

In her thoughts of her new mother, and in the love and trust overflowingher pure heart towards her, Florence loved her own dead mother moreand more. She had no fear of setting up a rival in her breast. The newflower sprang from the deep-planted and long-cherished root, she knew. Every gentle word that had fallen from the lips of the beautiful lady, sounded to Florence like an echo of the voice long hushed and silent. How could she love that memory less for living tenderness, when it washer memory of all parental tenderness and love!

Florence was, one day, sitting reading in her room, and thinking ofthe lady and her promised visit soon--for her book turned on a kindredsubject--when, raising her eyes, she saw her standing in the doorway. 

'Mama!' cried Florence, joyfully meeting her. 'Come again!'

'Not Mama yet, ' returned the lady, with a serious smile, as sheencircled Florence's neck with her arm. 

'But very soon to be, ' cried Florence. 

'Very soon now, Florence: very soon. 

Edith bent her head a little, so as to press the blooming cheek ofFlorence against her own, and for some few moments remained thus silent. There was something so very tender in her manner, that Florence was evenmore sensible of it than on the first occasion of their meeting. 

She led Florence to a chair beside her, and sat down: Florence lookingin her face, quite wondering at its beauty, and willingly leaving herhand In hers. 

'Have you been alone, Florence, since I was here last?'

'Oh yes!' smiled Florence, hastily. 

She hesitated and cast down her eyes; for her new Mama was very earnestin her look, and the look was intently and thoughtfully fixed upon herface. 

'I--I--am used to be alone, ' said Florence. 'I don't mind it at all. Diand I pass whole days together, sometimes. ' Florence might have said, whole weeks and months. 

'Is Di your maid, love?'

'My dog, Mama, ' said Florence, laughing. 'Susan is my maid. '

'And these are your rooms, ' said Edith, looking round. 'I was not shownthese rooms the other day. We must have them improved, Florence. Theyshall be made the prettiest in the house. '

'If I might change them, Mama, ' returned Florence; 'there is oneupstairs I should like much better. '

'Is this not high enough, dear girl?' asked Edith, smiling. 

'The other was my brother's room, ' said Florence, 'and I am very fond ofit. I would have spoken to Papa about it when I came home, and found theworkmen here, and everything changing; but--'

Florence dropped her eyes, lest the same look should make her falteragain. 

'but I was afraid it might distress him; and as you said you would behere again soon, Mama, and are the mistress of everything, I determinedto take courage and ask you. '

Edith sat looking at her, with her brilliant eyes intent upon her face, until Florence raising her own, she, in her turn, withdrew her gaze, andturned it on the ground. It was then that Florence thought how differentthis lady's beauty was, from what she had supposed. She had thought itof a proud and lofty kind; yet her manner was so subdued and gentle, that if she had been of Florence's own age and character, it scarcelycould have invited confidence more. 

Except when a constrained and singular reserve crept over her; and thenshe seemed (but Florence hardly understood this, though she could notchoose but notice it, and think about it) as if she were humbled beforeFlorence, and ill at ease. When she had said that she was not her Mamayet, and when Florence had called her the mistress of everything there, this change in her was quick and startling; and now, while the eyes ofFlorence rested on her face, she sat as though she would have shrunk andhidden from her, rather than as one about to love and cherish her, inright of such a near connexion. 

She gave Florence her ready promise, about her new room, and said shewould give directions about it herself. She then asked some questionsconcerning poor Paul; and when they had sat in conversation for sometime, told Florence she had come to take her to her own home. 

'We have come to London now, my mother and I, ' said Edith, 'and youshall stay with us until I am married. I wish that we should know andtrust each other, Florence. '

'You are very kind to me, ' said Florence, 'dear Mama. How much I thankyou!'

'Let me say now, for it may be the best opportunity, ' continued Edith, looking round to see that they were quite alone, and speaking in a lowervoice, 'that when I am married, and have gone away for some weeks, I shall be easier at heart if you will come home here. No matter whoinvites you to stay elsewhere. Come home here. It is better to be alonethan--what I would say is, ' she added, checking herself, 'that I knowwell you are best at home, dear Florence. '

'I will come home on the very day, Mama'

'Do so. I rely on that promise. Now, prepare to come with me, dear girl. You will find me downstairs when you are ready. '

Slowly and thoughtfully did Edith wander alone through the mansion ofwhich she was so soon to be the lady: and little heed took she of allthe elegance and splendour it began to display. The same indomitablehaughtiness of soul, the same proud scorn expressed in eye and lip, thesame fierce beauty, only tamed by a sense of its own little worth, andof the little worth of everything around it, went through the grandsaloons and halls, that had got loose among the shady trees, and ragedand rent themselves. The mimic roses on the walls and floors were setround with sharp thorns, that tore her breast; in every scrap of goldso dazzling to the eye, she saw some hateful atom of her purchase-money;the broad high mirrors showed her, at full length, a woman with a noblequality yet dwelling in her nature, who was too false to her betterself, and too debased and lost, to save herself. She believed that allthis was so plain, more or less, to all eyes, that she had no resourceor power of self-assertion but in pride: and with this pride, whichtortured her own heart night and day, she fought her fate out, bravedit, and defied it. 

Was this the woman whom Florence--an innocent girl, strong only in herearnestness and simple truth--could so impress and quell, that by herside she was another creature, with her tempest of passion hushed, andher very pride itself subdued? Was this the woman who now sat beside herin a carriage, with her arms entwined, and who, while she courted andentreated her to love and trust her, drew her fair head to nestle on herbreast, and would have laid down life to shield it from wrong or harm?

Oh, Edith! it were well to die, indeed, at such a time! Better andhappier far, perhaps, to die so, Edith, than to live on to the end!

The Honourable Mrs Skewton, who was thinking of anything rather thanof such sentiments--for, like many genteel persons who have existed atvarious times, she set her face against death altogether, and objectedto the mention of any such low and levelling upstart--had borrowed ahouse in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative (oneof the Feenix brood), who was out of town, and who did not object tolending it, in the handsomest manner, for nuptial purposes, as the loanimplied his final release and acquittance from all further loans andgifts to Mrs Skewton and her daughter. It being necessary for the creditof the family to make a handsome appearance at such a time, Mrs Skewton, with the assistance of an accommodating tradesman resident In the parishof Mary-le-bone, who lent out all sorts of articles to the nobility andgentry, from a service of plate to an army of footmen, clapped into thishouse a silver-headed butler (who was charged extra on that account, ashaving the appearance of an ancient family retainer), two very tall youngmen in livery, and a select staff of kitchen-servants; so that a legendarose, downstairs, that Withers the page, released at once from hisnumerous household duties, and from the propulsion of the wheeled-chair(inconsistent with the metropolis), had been several times observedto rub his eyes and pinch his limbs, as if he misdoubted his havingoverslept himself at the Leamington milkman's, and being still in acelestial dream. A variety of requisites in plate and china being alsoconveyed to the same establishment from the same convenient source, withseveral miscellaneous articles, including a neat chariot and a pairof bays, Mrs Skewton cushioned herself on the principal sofa, in theCleopatra attitude, and held her court in fair state. 

'And how, ' said Mrs Skewton, on the entrance of her daughter and hercharge, 'is my charming Florence? You must come and kiss me, Florence, if you please, my love. '

Florence was timidly stooping to pick out a place In the white part ofMrs Skewton's face, when that lady presented her ear, and relieved herof her difficulty. 

'Edith, my dear, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'positively, I--stand a little morein the light, my sweetest Florence, for a moment. 

Florence blushingly complied. 

'You don't remember, dearest Edith, ' said her mother, 'what you werewhen you were about the same age as our exceedingly precious Florence, or a few years younger?'

'I have long forgotten, mother. '

'For positively, my dear, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'I do think that I see adecided resemblance to what you were then, in our extremely fascinatingyoung friend. And it shows, ' said Mrs Skewton, in a lower voice, whichconveyed her opinion that Florence was in a very unfinished state, 'whatcultivation will do. '

'It does, indeed, ' was Edith's stern reply. 

Her mother eyed her sharply for a moment, and feeling herself on unsafeground, said, as a diversion:

'My charming Florence, you must come and kiss me once more, if youplease, my love. '

Florence complied, of course, and again imprinted her lips on MrsSkewton's ear. 

'And you have heard, no doubt, my darling pet, ' said Mrs Skewton, detaining her hand, 'that your Papa, whom we all perfectly adore anddote upon, is to be married to my dearest Edith this day week. '

'I knew it would be very soon, ' returned Florence, 'but not exactlywhen. '

'My darling Edith, ' urged her mother, gaily, 'is it possible you havenot told Florence?'

'Why should I tell Florence?' she returned, so suddenly and harshly, that Florence could scarcely believe it was the same voice. 

Mrs Skewton then told Florence, as another and safer diversion, that herfather was coming to dinner, and that he would no doubt be charminglysurprised to see her; as he had spoken last night of dressing in theCity, and had known nothing of Edith's design, the execution of which, according to Mrs Skewton's expectation, would throw him into a perfectecstasy. Florence was troubled to hear this; and her distress became sokeen, as the dinner-hour approached, that if she had known how to framean entreaty to be suffered to return home, without involving her fatherin her explanation, she would have hurried back on foot, bareheaded, breathless, and alone, rather than incur the risk of meeting hisdispleasure. 

As the time drew nearer, she could hardly breathe. She dared notapproach a window, lest he should see her from the street. She dared notgo upstairs to hide her emotion, lest, in passing out at the door, sheshould meet him unexpectedly; besides which dread, she felt as thoughshe never could come back again if she were summoned to his presence. In this conflict of fears; she was sitting by Cleopatra's couch, endeavouring to understand and to reply to the bald discourse of thatlady, when she heard his foot upon the stair. 

'I hear him now!' cried Florence, starting. 'He is coming!'

Cleopatra, who in her juvenility was always playfully disposed, and whoin her self-engrossment did not trouble herself about the nature of thisagitation, pushed Florence behind her couch, and dropped a shawl overher, preparatory to giving Mr Dombey a rapture of surprise. It was soquickly done, that in a moment Florence heard his awful step in theroom. 

He saluted his intended mother-in-law, and his intended bride. Thestrange sound of his voice thrilled through the whole frame of hischild. 

'My dear Dombey, ' said Cleopatra, 'come here and tell me how your prettyFlorence is. '

'Florence is very well, ' said Mr Dombey, advancing towards the couch. 

'At home?'

'At home, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'My dear Dombey, ' returned Cleopatra, with bewitching vivacity; 'now areyou sure you are not deceiving me? I don't know what my dearest Edithwill say to me when I make such a declaration, but upon my honour I amafraid you are the falsest of men, my dear Dombey. '

Though he had been; and had been detected on the spot, in the mostenormous falsehood that was ever said or done; he could hardly have beenmore disconcerted than he was, when Mrs Skewton plucked the shawl away, and Florence, pale and trembling, rose before him like a ghost. He hadnot yet recovered his presence of mind, when Florence had run up to him, clasped her hands round his neck, kissed his face, and hurried out ofthe room. He looked round as if to refer the matter to somebody else, but Edith had gone after Florence, instantly. 

'Now, confess, my dear Dombey, ' said Mrs Skewton, giving him her hand, 'that you never were more surprised and pleased in your life. '

'I never was more surprised, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Nor pleased, my dearest Dombey?' returned Mrs Skewton, holding up herfan. 

'I--yes, I am exceedingly glad to meet Florence here, ' said Mr Dombey. He appeared to consider gravely about it for a moment, and then said, more decidedly, 'Yes, I really am very glad indeed to meet Florencehere. '

'You wonder how she comes here?' said Mrs Skewton, 'don't you?'

'Edith, perhaps--' suggested Mr Dombey. 

'Ah! wicked guesser!' replied Cleopatra, shaking her head. 'Ah! cunning, cunning man! One shouldn't tell these things; your sex, my dear Dombey, are so vain, and so apt to abuse our weakness; but you know my opensoul--very well; immediately. '

This was addressed to one of the very tall young men who announceddinner. 

'But Edith, my dear Dombey, ' she continued in a whisper, when shecannot have you near her--and as I tell her, she cannot expect thatalways--will at least have near her something or somebody belonging toyou. Well, how extremely natural that is! And in this spirit, nothingwould keep her from riding off to-day to fetch our darling Florence. Well, how excessively charming that is!'

As she waited for an answer, Mr Dombey answered, 'Eminently so. 

'Bless you, my dear Dombey, for that proof of heart!' cried Cleopatra, squeezing his hand. 'But I am growing too serious! Take me downstairs, like an angel, and let us see what these people intend to give us fordinner. Bless you, dear Dombey!'

Cleopatra skipping off her couch with tolerable briskness, afterthe last benediction, Mr Dombey took her arm in his and led herceremoniously downstairs; one of the very tall young men on hire, whoseorgan of veneration was imperfectly developed, thrusting his tongue intohis cheek, for the entertainment of the other very tall young man onhire, as the couple turned into the dining-room. 

Florence and Edith were already there, and sitting side by side. Florence would have risen when her father entered, to resign her chairto him; but Edith openly put her hand upon her arm, and Mr Dombey tookan opposite place at the round table. 

The conversation was almost entirely sustained by Mrs Skewton. Florencehardly dared to raise her eyes, lest they should reveal the traces oftears; far less dared to speak; and Edith never uttered one word, unless in answer to a question. Verily, Cleopatra worked hard, for theestablishment that was so nearly clutched; and verily it should havebeen a rich one to reward her!

And so your preparations are nearly finished at last, my dear Dombey?'said Cleopatra, when the dessert was put upon the table, and thesilver-headed butler had withdrawn. 'Even the lawyers' preparations!'

'Yes, madam, ' replied Mr Dombey; 'the deed of settlement, theprofessional gentlemen inform me, is now ready, and as I was mentioningto you, Edith has only to do us the favour to suggest her own time forits execution. '

Edith sat like a handsome statue; as cold, as silent, and as still. 

'My dearest love, ' said Cleopatra, 'do you hear what Mr Dombey says? Ah, my dear Dombey!' aside to that gentleman, 'how her absence, as thetime approaches, reminds me of the days, when that most agreeable ofcreatures, her Papa, was in your situation!'

'I have nothing to suggest. It shall be when you please, ' said Edith, scarcely looking over the table at Mr Dombey. 

'To-morrow?' suggested Mr Dombey. 

'If you please. '

'Or would next day, ' said Mr Dombey, 'suit your engagements better?'

'I have no engagements. I am always at your disposal. Let it be when youlike. '

'No engagements, my dear Edith!' remonstrated her mother, 'when you arein a most terrible state of flurry all day long, and have a thousand andone appointments with all sorts of trades-people!'

'They are of your making, ' returned Edith, turning on her with a slightcontraction of her brow. 'You and Mr Dombey can arrange between you. '

'Very true indeed, my love, and most considerate of you!' saidCleopatra. 'My darling Florence, you must really come and kiss me oncemore, if you please, my dear!'

Singular coincidence, that these gushes of interest In Florence hurriedCleopatra away from almost every dialogue in which Edith had a share, however trifling! Florence had certainly never undergone so muchembracing, and perhaps had never been, unconsciously, so useful in herlife. 

Mr Dombey was far from quarrelling, in his own breast, with the mannerof his beautiful betrothed. He had that good reason for sympathywith haughtiness and coldness, which is found In a fellow-feeling. Itflattered him to think how these deferred to him, in Edith's case, andseemed to have no will apart from his. It flattered him to picture tohimself, this proud and stately woman doing the honours of his house, and chilling his guests after his own manner. The dignity of Dombey andSon would be heightened and maintained, indeed, in such hands. 

So thought Mr Dombey, when he was left alone at the dining-table, andmused upon his past and future fortunes: finding no uncongeniality in anair of scant and gloomy state that pervaded the room, in colour adark brown, with black hatchments of pictures blotching the walls, andtwenty-four black chairs, with almost as many nails in them as so manycoffins, waiting like mutes, upon the threshold of the Turkey carpet;and two exhausted negroes holding up two withered branches of candelabraon the sideboard, and a musty smell prevailing as if the ashes of tenthousand dinners were entombed in the sarcophagus below it. The owner ofthe house lived much abroad; the air of England seldom agreed long witha member of the Feenix family; and the room had gradually put itselfinto deeper and still deeper mourning for him, until it was become sofunereal as to want nothing but a body in it to be quite complete. 

No bad representation of the body, for the nonce, in his unbending form, if not in his attitude, Mr Dombey looked down into the cold depths ofthe dead sea of mahogany on which the fruit dishes and decanters layat anchor: as if the subjects of his thoughts were rising towards thesurface one by one, and plunging down again. Edith was there In all hermajesty of brow and figure; and close to her came Florence, with hertimid head turned to him, as it had been, for an instant, when sheleft the room; and Edith's eyes upon her, and Edith's hand put outprotectingly. A little figure in a low arm-chair came springing nextinto the light, and looked upon him wonderingly, with its bright eyesand its old-young face, gleaming as in the flickering of an eveningfire. Again came Florence close upon it, and absorbed his wholeattention. Whether as a fore-doomed difficulty and disappointment tohim; whether as a rival who had crossed him in his way, and might again;whether as his child, of whom, in his successful wooing, he couldstoop to think as claiming, at such a time, to be no more estranged; orwhether as a hint to him that the mere appearance of caring for hisown blood should be maintained in his new relations; he best knew. Indifferently well, perhaps, at best; for marriage company and marriagealtars, and ambitious scenes--still blotted here and there withFlorence--always Florence--turned up so fast, and so confusedly, that herose, and went upstairs to escape them. 

It was quite late at night before candles were brought; for at presentthey made Mrs Skewton's head ache, she complained; and in the meantimeFlorence and Mrs Skewton talked together (Cleopatra being very anxiousto keep her close to herself), or Florence touched the piano softlyfor Mrs Skewton's delight; to make no mention of a few occasions inthe course of the evening, when that affectionate lady was impelled tosolicit another kiss, and which always happened after Edith had saidanything. They were not many, however, for Edith sat apart by an openwindow during the whole time (in spite of her mother's fears that shewould take cold), and remained there until Mr Dombey took leave. He wasserenely gracious to Florence when he did so; and Florence went to bedin a room within Edith's, so happy and hopeful, that she thought ofher late self as if it were some other poor deserted girl who was to bepitied for her sorrow; and in her pity, sobbed herself to sleep. 

The week fled fast. There were drives to milliners, dressmakers, jewellers, lawyers, florists, pastry-cooks; and Florence was always ofthe party. Florence was to go to the wedding. Florence was to castoff her mourning, and to wear a brilliant dress on the occasion. Themilliner's intentions on the subject of this dress--the milliner wasa Frenchwoman, and greatly resembled Mrs Skewton--were so chaste andelegant, that Mrs Skewton bespoke one like it for herself. The millinersaid it would become her to admiration, and that all the world wouldtake her for the young lady's sister. 

The week fled faster. Edith looked at nothing and cared for nothing. Herrich dresses came home, and were tried on, and were loudly commendedby Mrs Skewton and the milliners, and were put away without a word fromher. Mrs Skewton made their plans for every day, and executed them. Sometimes Edith sat in the carriage when they went to make purchases;sometimes, when it was absolutely necessary, she went into the shops. But Mrs Skewton conducted the whole business, whatever it happenedto be; and Edith looked on as uninterested and with as much apparentindifference as if she had no concern in it. Florence might perhaps havethought she was haughty and listless, but that she was never so to her. So Florence quenched her wonder in her gratitude whenever it broke out, and soon subdued it. 

The week fled faster. It had nearly winged its flight away. The lastnight of the week, the night before the marriage, was come. In the darkroom--for Mrs Skewton's head was no better yet, though she expected torecover permanently to-morrow--were that lady, Edith, and Mr Dombey. Edith was at her open window looking out into the street; Mr Dombeyand Cleopatra were talking softly on the sofa. It was growing late; andFlorence, being fatigued, had gone to bed. 

'My dear Dombey, ' said Cleopatra, 'you will leave me Florence to-morrow, when you deprive me of my sweetest Edith. '

Mr Dombey said he would, with pleasure. 

'To have her about me, here, while you are both at Paris, and tothink at her age, I am assisting in the formation of her mind, my dearDombey, ' said Cleopatra, 'will be a perfect balm to me in the extremelyshattered state to which I shall be reduced. '

Edith turned her head suddenly. Her listless manner was exchanged, ina moment, to one of burning interest, and, unseen in the darkness, sheattended closely to their conversation. 

Mr Dombey would be delighted to leave Florence in such admirableguardianship. 

'My dear Dombey, ' returned Cleopatra, 'a thousand thanks for your goodopinion. I feared you were going, with malice aforethought' as thedreadful lawyers say--those horrid proses!--to condemn me to uttersolitude. '

'Why do me so great an injustice, my dear madam?' said Mr Dombey. 

'Because my charming Florence tells me so positively she must go hometomorrow, returned Cleopatra, that I began to be afraid, my dearestDombey, you were quite a Bashaw. '

'I assure you, madam!' said Mr Dombey, 'I have laid no commands onFlorence; and if I had, there are no commands like your wish. '

'My dear Dombey, ' replied Cleopatra, what a courtier you are! ThoughI'll not say so, either; for courtiers have no heart, and yours pervadesyour farming life and character. And are you really going so early, mydear Dombey!'

Oh, indeed! it was late, and Mr Dombey feared he must. 

'Is this a fact, or is it all a dream!' lisped Cleopatra. 'Can Ibelieve, my dearest Dombey, that you are coming back tomorrow morning todeprive me of my sweet companion; my own Edith!'

Mr Dombey, who was accustomed to take things literally, reminded MrsSkewton that they were to meet first at the church. 

'The pang, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'of consigning a child, even to you, mydear Dombey, is one of the most excruciating imaginable, and combinedwith a naturally delicate constitution, and the extreme stupidity of thepastry-cook who has undertaken the breakfast, is almost too much for mypoor strength. But I shall rally, my dear Dombey, In the morning; do notfear for me, or be uneasy on my account. Heaven bless you! My dearestEdith!' she cried archly. 'Somebody is going, pet. '

Edith, who had turned her head again towards the window, and whoseinterest in their conversation had ceased, rose up in her place, butmade no advance towards him, and said nothing. Mr Dombey, with a loftygallantry adapted to his dignity and the occasion, betook his creakingboots towards her, put her hand to his lips, said, 'Tomorrow morningI shall have the happiness of claiming this hand as Mrs Dombey's, ' andbowed himself solemnly out. 

Mrs Skewton rang for candles as soon as the house-door had closed uponhim. With the candles appeared her maid, with the juvenile dress thatwas to delude the world to-morrow. The dress had savage retribution init, as such dresses ever have, and made her infinitely older and morehideous than her greasy flannel gown. But Mrs Skewton tried it on withmincing satisfaction; smirked at her cadaverous self in the glass, asshe thought of its killing effect upon the Major; and suffering her maidto take it off again, and to prepare her for repose, tumbled into ruinslike a house of painted cards. 

All this time, Edith remained at the dark window looking out into thestreet. When she and her mother were at last left alone, she movedfrom it for the first time that evening, and came opposite to her. Theyawning, shaking, peevish figure of the mother, with her eyes raised toconfront the proud erect form of the daughter, whose glance of fire wasbent downward upon her, had a conscious air upon it, that no levity ortemper could conceal. 

'I am tired to death, ' said she. 'You can't be trusted for a moment. Youare worse than a child. Child! No child would be half so obstinate andundutiful. '

'Listen to me, mother, ' returned Edith, passing these words by with ascorn that would not descend to trifle with them. 'You must remain alonehere until I return. '

'Must remain alone here, Edith, until you return!' repeated her mother. 

'Or in that name upon which I shall call to-morrow to witness what I do, so falsely: and so shamefully, I swear I will refuse the hand of thisman in the church. If I do not, may I fall dead upon the pavement!'

The mother answered with a look of quick alarm, in no degree diminishedby the look she met. 

'It is enough, ' said Edith, steadily, 'that we are what we are. Iwill have no youth and truth dragged down to my level. I will have noguileless nature undermined, corrupted, and perverted, to amuse theleisure of a world of mothers. You know my meaning. Florence must gohome. '

'You are an idiot, Edith, ' cried her angry mother. 'Do you expect therecan ever be peace for you in that house, till she is married, and away?'

'Ask me, or ask yourself, if I ever expect peace in that house, ' saidher daughter, 'and you know the answer. 

'And am I to be told to-night, after all my pains and labour, and whenyou are going, through me, to be rendered independent, ' her motheralmost shrieked in her passion, while her palsied head shook like aleaf, 'that there is corruption and contagion in me, and that I am notfit company for a girl! What are you, pray? What are you?'

'I have put the question to myself, ' said Edith, ashy pale, and pointingto the window, 'more than once when I have been sitting there, andsomething in the faded likeness of my sex has wandered past outside; andGod knows I have met with my reply. Oh mother, mother, if you had butleft me to my natural heart when I too was a girl--a younger girl thanFlorence--how different I might have been!'

Sensible that any show of anger was useless here, her mother restrainedherself, and fell a whimpering, and bewailed that she had lived toolong, and that her only child had cast her off, and that duty towardsparents was forgotten in these evil days, and that she had heardunnatural taunts, and cared for life no longer. 

'If one is to go on living through continual scenes like this, ' shewhined, 'I am sure it would be much better for me to think of somemeans of putting an end to my existence. Oh! The idea of your being mydaughter, Edith, and addressing me in such a strain!'

'Between us, mother, ' returned Edith, mournfully, 'the time for mutualreproaches is past. 

'Then why do you revive it?' whimpered her mother. 'You know that youare lacerating me in the cruellest manner. You know how sensitive I amto unkindness. At such a moment, too, when I have so much to think of, and am naturally anxious to appear to the best advantage! I wonder atyou, Edith. To make your mother a fright upon your wedding-day!'

Edith bent the same fixed look upon her, as she sobbed and rubbed hereyes; and said in the same low steady voice, which had neither risen norfallen since she first addressed her, 'I have said that Florence must gohome. '

'Let her go!' cried the afflicted and affrighted parent, hastily. 'I amsure I am willing she should go. What is the girl to me?'

'She is so much to me, that rather than communicate, or suffer to becommunicated to her, one grain of the evil that is in my breast, mother, I would renounce you, as I would (if you gave me cause) renounce him inthe church to-morrow, ' replied Edith. 'Leave her alone. She shall not, while I can interpose, be tampered with and tainted by the lessons Ihave learned. This is no hard condition on this bitter night. '

'If you had proposed it in a filial manner, Edith, ' whined her mother, 'perhaps not; very likely not. But such extremely cutting words--'

'They are past and at an end between us now, ' said Edith. 'Take your ownway, mother; share as you please in what you have gained; spend, enjoy, make much of it; and be as happy as you will. The object of our livesis won. Henceforth let us wear it silently. My lips are closed upon thepast from this hour. I forgive you your part in to-morrow's wickedness. May God forgive my own!'

Without a tremor in her voice, or frame, and passing onward with a footthat set itself upon the neck of every soft emotion, she bade her mothergood-night, and repaired to her own room. 

But not to rest; for there was no rest in the tumult of her agitationwhen alone to and fro, and to and fro, and to and fro again, fivehundred times, among the splendid preparations for her adornment on themorrow; with her dark hair shaken down, her dark eyes flashing witha raging light, her broad white bosom red with the cruel grasp of therelentless hand with which she spurned it from her, pacing up and downwith an averted head, as if she would avoid the sight of her own fairperson, and divorce herself from its companionship. Thus, In the deadtime of the night before her bridal, Edith Granger wrestled with herunquiet spirit, tearless, friendless, silent, proud, and uncomplaining. 

At length it happened that she touched the open door which led into theroom where Florence lay. 

She started, stopped, and looked in. 

A light was burning there, and showed her Florence in her bloom ofinnocence and beauty, fast asleep. Edith held her breath, and feltherself drawn on towards her. 

Drawn nearer, nearer, nearer yet; at last, drawn so near, that stoopingdown, she pressed her lips to the gentle hand that lay outside the bed, and put it softly to her neck. Its touch was like the prophet's rod ofold upon the rock. Her tears sprung forth beneath it, as she sunk uponher knees, and laid her aching head and streaming hair upon the pillowby its side. 

Thus Edith Granger passed the night before her bridal. Thus the sunfound her on her bridal morning. 

CHAPTER 31. The Wedding

Dawn with its passionless blank face, steals shivering to the churchbeneath which lies the dust of little Paul and his mother, and looksin at the windows. It is cold and dark. Night crouches yet, upon thepavement, and broods, sombre and heavy, in nooks and corners of thebuilding. The steeple-clock, perched up above the houses, emergingfrom beneath another of the countless ripples in the tide of time thatregularly roll and break on the eternal shore, is greyly visible, like astone beacon, recording how the sea flows on; but within doors, dawn, atfirst, can only peep at night, and see that it is there. 

Hovering feebly round the church, and looking in, dawn moans and weepsfor its short reign, and its tears trickle on the window-glass, andthe trees against the church-wall bow their heads, and wring their manyhands in sympathy. Night, growing pale before it, gradually fades out ofthe church, but lingers in the vaults below, and sits upon the coffins. And now comes bright day, burnishing the steeple-clock, and reddeningthe spire, and drying up the tears of dawn, and stifling itscomplaining; and the dawn, following the night, and chasing it from itslast refuge, shrinks into the vaults itself and hides, with a frightenedface, among the dead, until night returns, refreshed, to drive it out. 

And now, the mice, who have been busier with the prayer-books than theirproper owners, and with the hassocks, more worn by their little teeththan by human knees, hide their bright eyes in their holes, andgather close together in affright at the resounding clashing of thechurch-door. For the beadle, that man of power, comes early this morningwith the sexton; and Mrs Miff, the wheezy little pew-opener--a mightydry old lady, sparely dressed, with not an inch of fulness anywhereabout her--is also here, and has been waiting at the church-gatehalf-an-hour, as her place is, for the beadle. 

A vinegary face has Mrs Miff, and a mortified bonnet, and eke a thirstysoul for sixpences and shillings. Beckoning to stray people to come intopews, has given Mrs Miff an air of mystery; and there is reservation inthe eye of Mrs Miff, as always knowing of a softer seat, but having hersuspicions of the fee. There is no such fact as Mr Miff, nor has therebeen, these twenty years, and Mrs Miff would rather not allude to him. He held some bad opinions, it would seem, about free seats; and thoughMrs Miff hopes he may be gone upwards, she couldn't positively undertaketo say so. 

Busy is Mrs Miff this morning at the church-door, beating and dustingthe altar-cloth, the carpet, and the cushions; and much has Mrs Miff tosay, about the wedding they are going to have. Mrs Miff is told, thatthe new furniture and alterations in the house cost full five thousandpound if they cost a penny; and Mrs Miff has heard, upon the bestauthority, that the lady hasn't got a sixpence wherewithal to blessherself. Mrs Miff remembers, like wise, as if it had happened yesterday, the first wife's funeral, and then the christening, and then the otherfuneral; and Mrs Miff says, by-the-bye she'll soap-and-water that 'eretablet presently, against the company arrive. Mr Sownds the Beadle, whois sitting in the sun upon the church steps all this time (and seldomdoes anything else, except, in cold weather, sitting by the fire), approves of Mrs Miff's discourse, and asks if Mrs Miff has heard itsaid, that the lady is uncommon handsome? The information Mrs Miffhas received, being of this nature, Mr Sownds the Beadle, who, thoughorthodox and corpulent, is still an admirer of female beauty, observes, with unction, yes, he hears she is a spanker--an expression that seemssomewhat forcible to Mrs Miff, or would, from any lips but those of MrSownds the Beadle. 

In Mr Dombey's house, at this same time, there is great stir and bustle, more especially among the women: not one of whom has had a wink of sleepsince four o'clock, and all of whom were fully dressed before six. Mr Towlinson is an object of greater consideration than usual to thehousemaid, and the cook says at breakfast time that one wedding makesmany, which the housemaid can't believe, and don't think true at all. Mr Towlinson reserves his sentiments on this question; being renderedsomething gloomy by the engagement of a foreigner with whiskers (MrTowlinson is whiskerless himself), who has been hired to accompany thehappy pair to Paris, and who is busy packing the new chariot. In respectof this personage, Mr Towlinson admits, presently, that he never knew ofany good that ever come of foreigners; and being charged by the ladieswith prejudice, says, look at Bonaparte who was at the head of 'em, andsee what he was always up to! Which the housemaid says is very true. 

The pastry-cook is hard at work in the funereal room in Brook Street, and the very tall young men are busy looking on. One of the very tallyoung men already smells of sherry, and his eyes have a tendency tobecome fixed in his head, and to stare at objects without seeing them. The very tall young man is conscious of this failing in himself; andinforms his comrade that it's his 'exciseman. ' The very tall young manwould say excitement, but his speech is hazy. 

The men who play the bells have got scent of the marriage; and themarrow-bones and cleavers too; and a brass band too. The first, arepractising in a back settlement near Battlebridge; the second, putthemselves in communication, through their chief, with Mr Towlinson, towhom they offer terms to be bought off; and the third, in the person ofan artful trombone, lurks and dodges round the corner, waiting forsome traitor tradesman to reveal the place and hour of breakfast, for abribe. Expectation and excitement extend further yet, and take a widerrange. From Balls Pond, Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to spend the day withMr Dombey's servants, and accompany them, surreptitiously, to see thewedding. In Mr Toots's lodgings, Mr Toots attires himself as if he wereat least the Bridegroom; determined to behold the spectacle in splendourfrom a secret corner of the gallery, and thither to convey the Chicken:for it is Mr Toots's desperate intent to point out Florence to theChicken, then and there, and openly to say, 'Now, Chicken, I will notdeceive you any longer; the friend I have sometimes mentioned to you ismyself; Miss Dombey is the object of my passion; what are your opinions, Chicken, in this state of things, and what, on the spot, do you advise?The so-much-to-be-astonished Chicken, in the meanwhile, dips his beakinto a tankard of strong beer, in Mr Toots's kitchen, and pecks up twopounds of beefsteaks. In Princess's Place, Miss Tox is up and doing; forshe too, though in sore distress, is resolved to put a shilling in thehands of Mrs Miff, and see the ceremony which has a cruel fascinationfor her, from some lonely corner. The quarters of the wooden Midshipmanare all alive; for Captain Cuttle, in his ankle-jacks and with a hugeshirt-collar, is seated at his breakfast, listening to Rob the Grinderas he reads the marriage service to him beforehand, under orders, to theend that the Captain may perfectly understand the solemnity he is aboutto witness: for which purpose, the Captain gravely lays injunctions onhis chaplain, from time to time, to 'put about, ' or to 'overhaul that'ere article again, ' or to stick to his own duty, and leave the Amens tohim, the Captain; one of which he repeats, whenever a pause is made byRob the Grinder, with sonorous satisfaction. 

Besides all this, and much more, twenty nursery-maids in Mr Dombey'sstreet alone, have promised twenty families of little women, whoseinstinctive interest in nuptials dates from their cradles, that theyshall go and see the marriage. Truly, Mr Sownds the Beadle has goodreason to feel himself in office, as he suns his portly figure on thechurch steps, waiting for the marriage hour. Truly, Mrs Miff has causeto pounce on an unlucky dwarf child, with a giant baby, who peeps in atthe porch, and drive her forth with indignation!

Cousin Feenix has come over from abroad, expressly to attend themarriage. Cousin Feenix was a man about town, forty years ago; but heis still so juvenile in figure and in manner, and so well got up, that strangers are amazed when they discover latent wrinkles in hislordship's face, and crows' feet in his eyes: and first observe him, notexactly certain when he walks across a room, of going quite straight towhere he wants to go. But Cousin Feenix, getting up at half-past seveno'clock or so, is quite another thing from Cousin Feenix got up; andvery dim, indeed, he looks, while being shaved at Long's Hotel, in BondStreet. 

Mr Dombey leaves his dressing-room, amidst a general whisking away ofthe women on the staircase, who disperse in all directions, with a greatrustling of skirts, except Mrs Perch, who, being (but that she alwaysis) in an interesting situation, is not nimble, and is obliged to facehim, and is ready to sink with confusion as she curtesys;--may Heavenavert all evil consequences from the house of Perch! Mr Dombey walks upto the drawing-room, to bide his time. Gorgeous are Mr Dombey's new bluecoat, fawn-coloured pantaloons, and lilac waistcoat; and a whisper goesabout the house, that Mr Dombey's hair is curled. 

A double knock announces the arrival of the Major, who is gorgeous too, and wears a whole geranium in his button-hole, and has his hair curledtight and crisp, as well the Native knows. 

'Dombey!' says the Major, putting out both hands, 'how are you?'

'Major, ' says Mr Dombey, 'how are You?'

'By Jove, Sir, ' says the Major, 'Joey B. Is in such case this morning, Sir, '--and here he hits himself hard upon the breast--'In such case thismorning, Sir, that, damme, Dombey, he has half a mind to make a doublemarriage of it, Sir, and take the mother. '

Mr Dombey smiles; but faintly, even for him; for Mr Dombey feels thathe is going to be related to the mother, and that, under thosecircumstances, she is not to be joked about. 

'Dombey, ' says the Major, seeing this, 'I give you joy. I congratulateyou, Dombey. By the Lord, Sir, ' says the Major, 'you are more to beenvied, this day, than any man in England!'

Here again Mr Dombey's assent is qualified; because he is going toconfer a great distinction on a lady; and, no doubt, she is to be enviedmost. 

'As to Edith Granger, Sir, ' pursues the Major, 'there is not a womanin all Europe but might--and would, Sir, you will allow Bagstock toadd--and would--give her ears, and her earrings, too, to be in EdithGranger's place. '

'You are good enough to say so, Major, ' says Mr Dombey. 

'Dombey, ' returns the Major, 'you know it. Let us have no falsedelicacy. You know it. Do you know it, or do you not, Dombey?' says theMajor, almost in a passion. 

'Oh, really, Major--'

'Damme, Sir, ' retorts the Major, 'do you know that fact, or do you not?Dombey! Is old Joe your friend? Are we on that footing of unreservedintimacy, Dombey, that may justify a man--a blunt old Joseph B. , Sir--in speaking out; or am I to take open order, Dombey, and to keep mydistance, and to stand on forms?'

'My dear Major Bagstock, ' says Mr Dombey, with a gratified air, 'you arequite warm. '

'By Gad, Sir, ' says the Major, 'I am warm. Joseph B. Does not deny it, Dombey. He is warm. This is an occasion, Sir, that calls forth all thehonest sympathies remaining in an old, infernal, battered, used-up, invalided, J. B. Carcase. And I tell you what, Dombey--at such a timea man must blurt out what he feels, or put a muzzle on; and JosephBagstock tells you to your face, Dombey, as he tells his club behindyour back, that he never will be muzzled when Paul Dombey is inquestion. Now, damme, Sir, ' concludes the Major, with great firmness, 'what do you make of that?'

'Major, ' says Mr Dombey, 'I assure you that I am really obliged to you. I had no idea of checking your too partial friendship. '

'Not too partial, Sir!' exclaims the choleric Major. 'Dombey, I denyit. '

'Your friendship I will say then, ' pursues Mr Dombey, 'on any account. Nor can I forget, Major, on such an occasion as the present, how much Iam indebted to it. '

'Dombey, ' says the Major, with appropriate action, 'that is the handof Joseph Bagstock: of plain old Joey B. , Sir, if you like that better!That is the hand, of which His Royal Highness the late Duke of York, didme the honour to observe, Sir, to His Royal Highness the late Duke ofKent, that it was the hand of Josh: a rough and tough, and possibly anup-to-snuff, old vagabond. Dombey, may the present moment be the leastunhappy of our lives. God bless you!'

Now enters Mr Carker, gorgeous likewise, and smiling like awedding-guest indeed. He can scarcely let Mr Dombey's hand go, he is socongratulatory; and he shakes the Major's hand so heartily at the sametime, that his voice shakes too, in accord with his arms, as it comessliding from between his teeth. 

'The very day is auspicious, ' says Mr Carker. 'The brightest and mostgenial weather! I hope I am not a moment late?'

'Punctual to your time, Sir, ' says the Major. 

'I am rejoiced, I am sure, ' says Mr Carker. 'I was afraid I might be afew seconds after the appointed time, for I was delayed by aprocession of waggons; and I took the liberty of riding round to BrookStreet'--this to Mr Dombey--'to leave a few poor rarities of flowers forMrs Dombey. A man in my position, and so distinguished as to be invitedhere, is proud to offer some homage in acknowledgment of his vassalage:and as I have no doubt Mrs Dombey is overwhelmed with what is costlyand magnificent;' with a strange glance at his patron; 'I hope the verypoverty of my offering, may find favour for it. '

'Mrs Dombey, that is to be, ' returns Mr Dombey, condescendingly, 'willbe very sensible of your attention, Carker, I am sure. '

'And if she is to be Mrs Dombey this morning, Sir, ' says the Major, putting down his coffee-cup, and looking at his watch, 'it's high timewe were off!'

Forth, in a barouche, ride Mr Dombey, Major Bagstock, and Mr Carker, tothe church. Mr Sownds the Beadle has long risen from the steps, andis in waiting with his cocked hat in his hand. Mrs Miff curtseys andproposes chairs in the vestry. Mr Dombey prefers remaining in thechurch. As he looks up at the organ, Miss Tox in the gallery shrinksbehind the fat leg of a cherubim on a monument, with cheeks like a youngWind. Captain Cuttle, on the contrary, stands up and waves his hook, intoken of welcome and encouragement. Mr Toots informs the Chicken, behindhis hand, that the middle gentleman, he in the fawn-coloured pantaloons, is the father of his love. The Chicken hoarsely whispers Mr Toots thathe's as stiff a cove as ever he see, but that it is within the resourcesof Science to double him up, with one blow in the waistcoat. 

Mr Sownds and Mrs Miff are eyeing Mr Dombey from a little distance, whenthe noise of approaching wheels is heard, and Mr Sownds goes out. MrsMiff, meeting Mr Dombey's eye as it is withdrawn from the presumptuousmaniac upstairs, who salutes him with so much urbanity, drops a curtsey, and informs him that she believes his 'good lady' is come. Then there isa crowding and a whispering at the door, and the good lady enters, witha haughty step. 

There is no sign upon her face, of last night's suffering; there is notrace in her manner, of the woman on the bended knees, reposing her wildhead, in beautiful abandonment, upon the pillow of the sleeping girl. That girl, all gentle and lovely, is at her side--a striking contrast toher own disdainful and defiant figure, standing there, composed, erect, inscrutable of will, resplendent and majestic in the zenith of itscharms, yet beating down, and treading on, the admiration that itchallenges. 

There is a pause while Mr Sownds the Beadle glides into the vestry forthe clergyman and clerk. At this juncture, Mrs Skewton speaks to MrDombey: more distinctly and emphatically than her custom is, and movingat the same time, close to Edith. 

'My dear Dombey, ' said the good Mama, 'I fear I must relinquish darlingFlorence after all, and suffer her to go home, as she herself proposed. After my loss of to-day, my dear Dombey, I feel I shall not havespirits, even for her society. '

'Had she not better stay with you?' returns the Bridegroom. 

'I think not, my dear Dombey. No, I think not. I shall be better alone. Besides, my dearest Edith will be her natural and constant guardian whenyou return, and I had better not encroach upon her trust, perhaps. Shemight be jealous. Eh, dear Edith?'

The affectionate Mama presses her daughter's arm, as she says this;perhaps entreating her attention earnestly. 

'To be serious, my dear Dombey, ' she resumes, 'I will relinquish ourdear child, and not inflict my gloom upon her. We have settled that, just now. She fully understands, dear Dombey. Edith, my dear, --she fullyunderstands. '

Again, the good mother presses her daughter's arm. Mr Dombey offers noadditional remonstrance; for the clergyman and clerk appear; and MrsMiff, and Mr Sownds the Beadle, group the party in their proper placesat the altar rails. 

The sun is shining down, upon the golden letters of the tencommandments. Why does the Bride's eye read them, one by one? Which oneof all the ten appears the plainest to her in the glare of light? FalseGods; murder; theft; the honour that she owes her mother;--which is itthat appears to leave the wall, and printing itself in glowing letters, on her book!

"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?"'

Cousin Feenix does that. He has come from Baden-Baden on purpose. 'Confound it, ' Cousin Feenix says--good-natured creature, CousinFeenix--'when we do get a rich City fellow into the family, let us showhim some attention; let us do something for him. ' I give this woman tobe married to this man, ' saith Cousin Feenix therefore. Cousin Feenix, meaning to go in a straight line, but turning off sideways by reasonof his wilful legs, gives the wrong woman to be married to this man, at first--to wit, a brides--maid of some condition, distantly connectedwith the family, and ten years Mrs Skewton's junior--but Mrs Miff, interposing her mortified bonnet, dexterously turns him back, and runshim, as on castors, full at the 'good lady:' whom Cousin Feenix givethto married to this man accordingly. And will they in the sight ofheaven--? Ay, that they will: Mr Dombey says he will. And what saysEdith? She will. So, from that day forward, for better for worse, forricher for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do them part, they plight their troth to one another, andare married. In a firm, free hand, the Bride subscribes her name in theregister, when they adjourn to the vestry. 'There ain't a many ladiescome here, ' Mrs Miff says with a curtsey--to look at Mrs Miff, at such aseason, is to make her mortified bonnet go down with a dip--writes theirnames like this good lady!' Mr Sownds the Beadle thinks it is a trulyspanking signature, and worthy of the writer--this, however, betweenhimself and conscience. Florence signs too, but unapplauded, for herhand shakes. All the party sign; Cousin Feenix last; who puts his noblename into a wrong place, and enrols himself as having been born thatmorning. The Major now salutes the Bride right gallantly, and carriesout that branch of military tactics in reference to all the ladies:notwithstanding Mrs Skewton's being extremely hard to kiss, andsqueaking shrilly in the sacred edifice. The example is followed byCousin. Feenix and even by Mr Dombey. Lastly, Mr Carker, with his whiteteeth glistening, approaches Edith, more as if he meant to bite her, than to taste the sweets that linger on her lips. 

There is a glow upon her proud cheek, and a flashing in her eyes, thatmay be meant to stay him; but it does not, for he salutes her as therest have done, and wishes her all happiness. 

'If wishes, ' says he in a low voice, 'are not superfluous, applied tosuch a union. '

'I thank you, Sir, ' she answers, with a curled lip, and a heaving bosom. 

But, does Edith feel still, as on the night when she knew that Mr Dombeywould return to offer his alliance, that Carker knows her thoroughly, and reads her right, and that she is more degraded by his knowledgeof her, than by aught else? Is it for this reason that her haughtinessshrinks beneath his smile, like snow within the hands that grasps itfirmly, and that her imperious glance droops In meeting his, and seeksthe ground?

'I am proud to see, ' said Mr Carker, with a servile stooping of hisneck, which the revelations making by his eyes and teeth proclaim tobe a lie, 'I am proud to see that my humble offering is graced by MrsDombey's hand, and permitted to hold so favoured a place in so joyful anoccasion. '

Though she bends her head, in answer, there is something in themomentary action of her hand, as if she would crush the flowers itholds, and fling them, with contempt, upon the ground. But, she putsthe hand through the arm of her new husband, who has been standingnear, conversing with the Major, and is proud again, and motionless, andsilent. 

The carriages are once more at the church door. Mr Dombey, with hisbride upon his arm, conducts her through the twenty families of littlewomen who are on the steps, and every one of whom remembers the fashionand the colour of her every article of dress from that moment, andreproduces it on her doll, who is for ever being married. Cleopatra andCousin Feenix enter the same carriage. The Major hands into a secondcarriage, Florence, and the bridesmaid who so narrowly escaped beinggiven away by mistake, and then enters it himself, and is followed byMr Carker. Horses prance and caper; coachmen and footmen shine influttering favours, flowers, and new-made liveries. Away they dash andrattle through the streets; and as they pass along, a thousand headsare turned to look at them, and a thousand sober moralists revengethemselves for not being married too, that morning, by reflecting thatthese people little think such happiness can't last. 

Miss Tox emerges from behind the cherubim's leg, when all is quiet, andcomes slowly down from the gallery. Miss Tox's eyes are red, and herpocket-handkerchief is damp. She is wounded, but not exasperated, andshe hopes they may be happy. She quite admits to herself the beauty ofthe bride, and her own comparatively feeble and faded attractions;but the stately image of Mr Dombey in his lilac waistcoat, and hisfawn-coloured pantaloons, is present to her mind, and Miss Tox weepsafresh, behind her veil, on her way home to Princess's Place. CaptainCuttle, having joined in all the amens and responses, with a devoutgrowl, feels much improved by his religious exercises; and in a peacefulframe of mind pervades the body of the church, glazed hat in hand, andreads the tablet to the memory of little Paul. The gallant Mr Toots, attended by the faithful Chicken, leaves the building in torments oflove. The Chicken is as yet unable to elaborate a scheme for winningFlorence, but his first idea has gained possession of him, and he thinksthe doubling up of Mr Dombey would be a move in the right direction. MrDombey's servants come out of their hiding-places, and prepare to rushto Brook Street, when they are delayed by symptoms of indispositionon the part of Mrs Perch, who entreats a glass of water, and becomesalarming; Mrs Perch gets better soon, however, and is borne away; andMrs Miff, and Mr Sownds the Beadle, sit upon the steps to count whatthey have gained by the affair, and talk it over, while the sexton tollsa funeral. 

Now, the carriages arrive at the Bride's residence, and the players onthe bells begin to jingle, and the band strikes up, and Mr Punch, thatmodel of connubial bliss, salutes his wife. Now, the people run, andpush, and press round in a gaping throng, while Mr Dombey, leading MrsDombey by the hand, advances solemnly into the Feenix Halls. Now, therest of the wedding party alight, and enter after them. And why does MrCarker, passing through the people to the hall-door, think of the oldwoman who called to him in the Grove that morning? Or why does Florence, as she passes, think, with a tremble, of her childhood, when she waslost, and of the visage of Good Mrs Brown?

Now, there are more congratulations on this happiest of days, and morecompany, though not much; and now they leave the drawing-room, and rangethemselves at table in the dark-brown dining-room, which no confectionercan brighten up, let him garnish the exhausted negroes with as manyflowers and love-knots as he will. 

The pastry-cook has done his duty like a man, though, and a richbreakfast is set forth. Mr and Mrs Chick have joined the party, amongothers. Mrs Chick admires that Edith should be, by nature, such aperfect Dombey; and is affable and confidential to Mrs Skewton, whosemind is relieved of a great load, and who takes her share of thechampagne. The very tall young man who suffered from excitement early, is better; but a vague sentiment of repentance has seized upon him, andhe hates the other very tall young man, and wrests dishes from himby violence, and takes a grim delight in disobliging the company. Thecompany are cool and calm, and do not outrage the black hatchments ofpictures looking down upon them, by any excess of mirth. Cousin Feenixand the Major are the gayest there; but Mr Carker has a smile for thewhole table. He has an especial smile for the Bride, who very, veryseldom meets it. 

Cousin Feenix rises, when the company have breakfasted, and the servantshave left the room; and wonderfully young he looks, with his whitewristbands almost covering his hands (otherwise rather bony), and thebloom of the champagne in his cheeks. 

'Upon my honour, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'although it's an unusual sort ofthing in a private gentleman's house, I must beg leave to call upon youto drink what is usually called a--in fact a toast. 

The Major very hoarsely indicates his approval. Mr Carker, bending hishead forward over the table in the direction of Cousin Feenix, smilesand nods a great many times. 

'A--in fact it's not a--' Cousin Feenix beginning again, thus, comes toa dead stop. 

'Hear, hear!' says the Major, in a tone of conviction. 

Mr Carker softly claps his hands, and bending forward over the tableagain, smiles and nods a great many more times than before, as ifhe were particularly struck by this last observation, and desiredpersonally to express his sense of the good it has done. 

'It is, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'an occasion in fact, when the generalusages of life may be a little departed from, without impropriety; andalthough I never was an orator in my life, and when I was in the Houseof Commons, and had the honour of seconding the address, was--in fact, was laid up for a fortnight with the consciousness of failure--'

The Major and Mr Carker are so much delighted by this fragment ofpersonal history, that Cousin Feenix laughs, and addressing themindividually, goes on to say:

'And in point of fact, when I was devilish ill--still, you know, Ifeel that a duty devolves upon me. And when a duty devolves upon anEnglishman, he is bound to get out of it, in my opinion, in the bestway he can. Well! our family has had the gratification, to-day, ofconnecting itself, in the person of my lovely and accomplished relative, whom I now see--in point of fact, present--'

Here there is general applause. 

'Present, ' repeats Cousin Feenix, feeling that it is a neat point whichwill bear repetition, --'with one who--that is to say, with a man, atwhom the finger of scorn can never--in fact, with my honourable friendDombey, if he will allow me to call him so. '

Cousin Feenix bows to Mr Dombey; Mr Dombey solemnly returns the bow;everybody is more or less gratified and affected by this extraordinary, and perhaps unprecedented, appeal to the feelings. 

'I have not, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'enjoyed those opportunities which Icould have desired, of cultivating the acquaintance of my friend Dombey, and studying those qualities which do equal honour to his head, and, inpoint of fact, to his heart; for it has been my misfortune to be, aswe used to say in my time in the House of Commons, when it was notthe custom to allude to the Lords, and when the order of parliamentaryproceedings was perhaps better observed than it is now--to be in--inpoint of fact, ' says Cousin Feenix, cherishing his joke, with greatslyness, and finally bringing it out with a jerk, "'in another place!"'

The Major falls into convulsions, and is recovered with difficulty. 

'But I know sufficient of my friend Dombey, ' resumes Cousin Feenix ina graver tone, as if he had suddenly become a sadder and wiser man' 'toknow that he is, in point of fact, what may be emphatically called a--amerchant--a British merchant--and a--and a man. And although I havebeen resident abroad, for some years (it would give me great pleasureto receive my friend Dombey, and everybody here, at Baden-Baden, and tohave an opportunity of making 'em known to the Grand Duke), still I knowenough, I flatter myself, of my lovely and accomplished relative, toknow that she possesses every requisite to make a man happy, and thather marriage with my friend Dombey is one of inclination and affectionon both sides. '

Many smiles and nods from Mr Carker. 

'Therefore, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'I congratulate the family of which Iam a member, on the acquisition of my friend Dombey. I congratulate myfriend Dombey on his union with my lovely and accomplished relative whopossesses every requisite to make a man happy; and I take the libertyof calling on you all, in point of fact, to congratulate both myfriend Dombey and my lovely and accomplished relative, on the presentoccasion. '

The speech of Cousin Feenix is received with great applause, and MrDombey returns thanks on behalf of himself and Mrs Dombey. J. B. Shortlyafterwards proposes Mrs Skewton. The breakfast languishes when that isdone, the violated hatchments are avenged, and Edith rises to assume hertravelling dress. 

All the servants in the meantime, have been breakfasting below. Champagne has grown too common among them to be mentioned, and roastfowls, raised pies, and lobster-salad, have become mere drugs. Thevery tall young man has recovered his spirits, and again alludes to theexciseman. His comrade's eye begins to emulate his own, and he, too, stares at objects without taking cognizance thereof. There is ageneral redness in the faces of the ladies; in the face of Mrs Perchparticularly, who is joyous and beaming, and lifted so far above thecares of life, that if she were asked just now to direct a wayfarer toBall's Pond, where her own cares lodge, she would have some difficultyin recalling the way. Mr Towlinson has proposed the happy pair; to whichthe silver-headed butler has responded neatly, and with emotion; for hehalf begins to think he is an old retainer of the family, and that he isbound to be affected by these changes. The whole party, and especiallythe ladies, are very frolicsome. Mr Dombey's cook, who generally takesthe lead in society, has said, it is impossible to settle down afterthis, and why not go, in a party, to the play? Everybody (Mrs Perchincluded) has agreed to this; even the Native, who is tigerish in hisdrink, and who alarms the ladies (Mrs Perch particularly) by the rollingof his eyes. One of the very tall young men has even proposed a ballafter the play, and it presents itself to no one (Mrs Perch included) inthe light of an impossibility. Words have arisen between the housemaidand Mr Towlinson; she, on the authority of an old saw, assertingmarriages to be made in Heaven: he, affecting to trace the manufactureelsewhere; he, supposing that she says so, because she thinks of beingmarried her own self: she, saying, Lord forbid, at any rate, that sheshould ever marry him. To calm these flying taunts, the silver-headedbutler rises to propose the health of Mr Towlinson, whom to know is toesteem, and to esteem is to wish well settled in life with the object ofhis choice, wherever (here the silver-headed butler eyes the housemaid)she may be. Mr Towlinson returns thanks in a speech replete withfeeling, of which the peroration turns on foreigners, regarding whomhe says they may find favour, sometimes, with weak and inconstantintellects that can be led away by hair, but all he hopes, is, he maynever hear of no foreigner never boning nothing out of no travellingchariot. The eye of Mr Towlinson is so severe and so expressive here, that the housemaid is turning hysterical, when she and all the rest, roused by the intelligence that the Bride is going away, hurry upstairsto witness her departure. 

The chariot is at the door; the Bride is descending to the hall, whereMr Dombey waits for her. Florence is ready on the staircase to departtoo; and Miss Nipper, who has held a middle state between the parlourand the kitchen, is prepared to accompany her. As Edith appears, Florence hastens towards her, to bid her farewell. 

Is Edith cold, that she should tremble! Is there anything unnatural orunwholesome in the touch of Florence, that the beautiful form recedesand contracts, as if it could not bear it! Is there so much hurry inthis going away, that Edith, with a wave of her hand, sweeps on, and isgone!

Mrs Skewton, overpowered by her feelings as a mother, sinks on her sofain the Cleopatra attitude, when the clatter of the chariot wheels islost, and sheds several tears. The Major, coming with the rest of thecompany from table, endeavours to comfort her; but she will not becomforted on any terms, and so the Major takes his leave. Cousin Feenixtakes his leave, and Mr Carker takes his leave. The guests all go away. Cleopatra, left alone, feels a little giddy from her strong emotion, andfalls asleep. 

Giddiness prevails below stairs too. The very tall young man whoseexcitement came on so soon, appears to have his head glued to the tablein the pantry, and cannot be detached from--it. A violent revulsion hastaken place in the spirits of Mrs Perch, who is low on account of MrPerch, and tells cook that she fears he is not so much attached to hishome, as he used to be, when they were only nine in family. Mr Towlinsonhas a singing in his ears and a large wheel going round and round insidehis head. The housemaid wishes it wasn't wicked to wish that one wasdead. 

There is a general delusion likewise, in these lower regions, on thesubject of time; everybody conceiving that it ought to be, at theearliest, ten o'clock at night, whereas it is not yet three in theafternoon. A shadowy idea of wickedness committed, haunts everyindividual in the party; and each one secretly thinks the other acompanion in guilt, whom it would be agreeable to avoid. No man or womanhas the hardihood to hint at the projected visit to the play. Anyonereviving the notion of the ball, would be scouted as a malignant idiot. 

Mrs Skewton sleeps upstairs, two hours afterwards, and naps are notyet over in the kitchen. The hatchments in the dining-room look downon crumbs, dirty plates, spillings of wine, half-thawed ice, stalediscoloured heel-taps, scraps of lobster, drumsticks of fowls, andpensive jellies, gradually resolving themselves into a lukewarm gummysoup. The marriage is, by this time, almost as denuded of its show andgarnish as the breakfast. Mr Dombey's servants moralise so much aboutit, and are so repentant over their early tea, at home, that by eighto'clock or so, they settle down into confirmed seriousness; and MrPerch, arriving at that time from the City, fresh and jocular, witha white waistcoat and a comic song, ready to spend the evening, andprepared for any amount of dissipation, is amazed to find himself coldlyreceived, and Mrs Perch but poorly, and to have the pleasing duty ofescorting that lady home by the next omnibus. 

Night closes in. Florence, having rambled through the handsome house, from room to room, seeks her own chamber, where the care of Edith hassurrounded her with luxuries and comforts; and divesting herself of herhandsome dress, puts on her old simple mourning for dear Paul, and sitsdown to read, with Diogenes winking and blinking on the ground besideher. But Florence cannot read tonight. The house seems strange and new, and there are loud echoes in it. There is a shadow on her heart: sheknows not why or what: but it is heavy. Florence shuts her book, andgruff Diogenes, who takes that for a signal, puts his paws upon her lap, and rubs his ears against her caressing hands. But Florence cannot seehim plainly, in a little time, for there is a mist between her eyesand him, and her dead brother and dead mother shine in it like angels. Walter, too, poor wandering shipwrecked boy, oh, where is he?

The Major don't know; that's for certain; and don't care. The Major, having choked and slumbered, all the afternoon, has taken a late dinnerat his club, and now sits over his pint of wine, driving a modest youngman, with a fresh-coloured face, at the next table (who would give ahandsome sum to be able to rise and go away, but cannot do it) to theverge of madness, by anecdotes of Bagstock, Sir, at Dombey's wedding, and Old Joe's devilish gentle manly friend, Lord Feenix. While CousinFeenix, who ought to be at Long's, and in bed, finds himself, instead, at a gaming-table, where his wilful legs have taken him, perhaps, in hisown despite. 

Night, like a giant, fills the church, from pavement to roof, and holdsdominion through the silent hours. Pale dawn again comes peeping throughthe windows: and, giving place to day, sees night withdraw into thevaults, and follows it, and drives it out, and hides among the dead. Thetimid mice again cower close together, when the great door clashes, and Mr Sownds and Mrs Miff treading the circle of their daily lives, unbroken as a marriage ring, come in. Again, the cocked hat and themortified bonnet stand in the background at the marriage hour; andagain this man taketh this woman, and this woman taketh this man, on thesolemn terms:

'To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, forricher for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do them part. '

The very words that Mr Carker rides into town repeating, with his mouthstretched to the utmost, as he picks his dainty way. 

CHAPTER 32. The Wooden Midshipman goes to Pieces

Honest Captain Cuttle, as the weeks flew over him in his fortifiedretreat, by no means abated any of his prudent provisions againstsurprise, because of the non-appearance of the enemy. The Captain arguedthat his present security was too profound and wonderful to enduremuch longer; he knew that when the wind stood in a fair quarter, theweathercock was seldom nailed there; and he was too well acquainted withthe determined and dauntless character of Mrs MacStinger, to doubt thatthat heroic woman had devoted herself to the task of his discovery andcapture. Trembling beneath the weight of these reasons, Captain Cuttlelived a very close and retired life; seldom stirring abroad until afterdark; venturing even then only into the obscurest streets; never goingforth at all on Sundays; and both within and without the walls of hisretreat, avoiding bonnets, as if they were worn by raging lions. 

The Captain never dreamed that in the event of his being pounced upon byMrs MacStinger, in his walks, it would be possible to offer resistance. He felt that it could not be done. He saw himself, in his mind's eye, put meekly in a hackney-coach, and carried off to his old lodgings. Heforesaw that, once immured there, he was a lost man: his hat gone; MrsMacStinger watchful of him day and night; reproaches heaped upon hishead, before the infant family; himself the guilty object of suspicionand distrust; an ogre in the children's eyes, and in their mother's adetected traitor. 

A violent perspiration, and a lowness of spirits, always came over theCaptain as this gloomy picture presented itself to his imagination. Itgenerally did so previous to his stealing out of doors at night for airand exercise. Sensible of the risk he ran, the Captain took leave ofRob, at those times, with the solemnity which became a man who mightnever return: exhorting him, in the event of his (the Captain's) beinglost sight of, for a time, to tread in the paths of virtue, and keep thebrazen instruments well polished. 

But not to throw away a chance; and to secure to himself a means, incase of the worst, of holding communication with the external world;Captain Cuttle soon conceived the happy idea of teaching Rob the Grindersome secret signal, by which that adherent might make his presence andfidelity known to his commander, in the hour of adversity. After muchcogitation, the Captain decided in favour of instructing him towhistle the marine melody, 'Oh cheerily, cheerily!' and Rob the Grinderattaining a point as near perfection in that accomplishment as alandsman could hope to reach, the Captain impressed these mysteriousinstructions on his mind:

'Now, my lad, stand by! If ever I'm took--'

'Took, Captain!' interposed Rob, with his round eyes wide open. 

'Ah!' said Captain Cuttle darkly, 'if ever I goes away, meaning to comeback to supper, and don't come within hail again, twenty-four hoursarter my loss, go you to Brig Place and whistle that 'ere tune near myold moorings--not as if you was a meaning of it, you understand, but asif you'd drifted there, promiscuous. If I answer in that tune, you sheeroff, my lad, and come back four-and-twenty hours arterwards; if I answerin another tune, do you stand off and on, and wait till I throw outfurther signals. Do you understand them orders, now?'

'What am I to stand off and on of, Captain?' inquired Rob. 'Thehorse-road?'

'Here's a smart lad for you!' cried the Captain eyeing him sternly, 'asdon't know his own native alphabet! Go away a bit and come back againalternate--d'ye understand that?'

'Yes, Captain, ' said Rob. 

'Very good my lad, then, ' said the Captain, relenting. 'Do it!'

That he might do it the better, Captain Cuttle sometimes condescended, of an evening after the shop was shut, to rehearse this scene:retiring into the parlour for the purpose, as into the lodgings of asupposititious MacStinger, and carefully observing the behaviour of hisally, from the hole of espial he had cut in the wall. Rob the Grinderdischarged himself of his duty with so much exactness and judgment, whenthus put to the proof, that the Captain presented him, at divers times, with seven sixpences, in token of satisfaction; and gradually feltstealing over his spirit the resignation of a man who had made provisionfor the worst, and taken every reasonable precaution against anunrelenting fate. 

Nevertheless, the Captain did not tempt ill-fortune, by being a whitmore venturesome than before. Though he considered it a point of goodbreeding in himself, as a general friend of the family, to attend MrDombey's wedding (of which he had heard from Mr Perch), and to show thatgentleman a pleasant and approving countenance from the gallery, he hadrepaired to the church in a hackney cabriolet with both windows up;and might have scrupled even to make that venture, in his dread ofMrs MacStinger, but that the lady's attendance on the ministry of theReverend Melchisedech rendered it peculiarly unlikely that she would befound in communion with the Establishment. 

The Captain got safe home again, and fell into the ordinary routine ofhis new life, without encountering any more direct alarm from the enemy, than was suggested to him by the daily bonnets in the street. But othersubjects began to lay heavy on the Captain's mind. Walter's ship wasstill unheard of. No news came of old Sol Gills. Florence did not evenknow of the old man's disappearance, and Captain Cuttle had not theheart to tell her. Indeed the Captain, as his own hopes of the generous, handsome, gallant-hearted youth, whom he had loved, according to hisrough manner, from a child, began to fade, and faded more and more fromday to day, shrunk with instinctive pain from the thought of exchanginga word with Florence. If he had had good news to carry to her, thehonest Captain would have braved the newly decorated house and splendidfurniture--though these, connected with the lady he had seen at church, were awful to him--and made his way into her presence. With a darkhorizon gathering around their common hopes, however, that darkenedevery hour, the Captain almost felt as if he were a new misfortuneand affliction to her; and was scarcely less afraid of a visit fromFlorence, than from Mrs MacStinger herself. 

It was a chill dark autumn evening, and Captain Cuttle had ordered afire to be kindled in the little back parlour, now more than ever likethe cabin of a ship. The rain fell fast, and the wind blew hard; andstraying out on the house-top by that stormy bedroom of his old friend, to take an observation of the weather, the Captain's heart died withinhim, when he saw how wild and desolate it was. Not that he associatedthe weather of that time with poor Walter's destiny, or doubted that ifProvidence had doomed him to be lost and shipwrecked, it was over, longago; but that beneath an outward influence, quite distinct from thesubject-matter of his thoughts, the Captain's spirits sank, and hishopes turned pale, as those of wiser men had often done before him, andwill often do again. 

Captain Cuttle, addressing his face to the sharp wind and slanting rain, looked up at the heavy scud that was flying fast over the wilderness ofhouse-tops, and looked for something cheery there in vain. The prospectnear at hand was no better. In sundry tea-chests and other rough boxesat his feet, the pigeons of Rob the Grinder were cooing like so manydismal breezes getting up. A crazy weathercock of a midshipman, witha telescope at his eye, once visible from the street, but long brickedout, creaked and complained upon his rusty pivot as the shrill blastspun him round and round, and sported with him cruelly. Upon theCaptain's coarse blue vest the cold raindrops started like steelbeads; and he could hardly maintain himself aslant against the stiffNor'-Wester that came pressing against him, importunate to topple himover the parapet, and throw him on the pavement below. If there were anyHope alive that evening, the Captain thought, as he held his hat on, itcertainly kept house, and wasn't out of doors; so the Captain, shakinghis head in a despondent manner, went in to look for it. 

Captain Cuttle descended slowly to the little back parlour, and, seatedin his accustomed chair, looked for it in the fire; but it was notthere, though the fire was bright. He took out his tobacco-box and pipe, and composing himself to smoke, looked for it in the red glow from thebowl, and in the wreaths of vapour that curled upward from his lips; butthere was not so much as an atom of the rust of Hope's anchor in either. He tried a glass of grog; but melancholy truth was at the bottom of thatwell, and he couldn't finish it. He made a turn or two in the shop, andlooked for Hope among the instruments; but they obstinately worked outreckonings for the missing ship, in spite of any opposition he couldoffer, that ended at the bottom of the lone sea. 

The wind still rushing, and the rain still pattering, against the closedshutters, the Captain brought to before the wooden Midshipman upon thecounter, and thought, as he dried the little officer's uniform withhis sleeve, how many years the Midshipman had seen, during which fewchanges--hardly any--had transpired among his ship's company; how thechanges had come all together, one day, as it might be; and of what asweeping kind they web Here was the little society of the back parlourbroken up, and scattered far and wide. Here was no audience for LovelyPeg, even if there had been anybody to sing it, which there was not; forthe Captain was as morally certain that nobody but he could execute thatballad, he was that he had not the spirit, under existing circumstances, to attempt it. There was no bright face of 'Wal'r' In the house;--herethe Captain transferred his sleeve for a moment from the Midshipman'suniform to his own cheek;--the familiar wig and buttons of Sol Gillswere a vision of the past; Richard Whittington was knocked on thehead; and every plan and project in connexion with the Midshipman, laydrifting, without mast or rudder, on the waste of waters. 

As the Captain, with a dejected face, stood revolving these thoughts, and polishing the Midshipman, partly in the tenderness of oldacquaintance, and partly in the absence of his mind, a knocking atthe shop-door communicated a frightful start to the frame of Rob theGrinder, seated on the counter, whose large eyes had been intently fixedon the Captain's face, and who had been debating within himself, for thefive hundredth time, whether the Captain could have done a murder, thathe had such an evil conscience, and was always running away. 

'What's that?' said Captain Cuttle, softly. 

'Somebody's knuckles, Captain, ' answered Rob the Grinder. 

The Captain, with an abashed and guilty air, immediately walked ontiptoe to the little parlour and locked himself in. Rob, opening thedoor, would have parleyed with the visitor on the threshold if thevisitor had come in female guise; but the figure being of the male sex, and Rob's orders only applying to women, Rob held the door open andallowed it to enter: which it did very quickly, glad to get out of thedriving rain. 

'A job for Burgess and Co. At any rate, ' said the visitor, looking overhis shoulder compassionately at his own legs, which were very wet andcovered with splashes. 'Oh, how-de-do, Mr Gills?'

The salutation was addressed to the Captain, now emerging from the backparlour with a most transparent and utterly futile affectation of comingout by accidence. 

'Thankee, ' the gentleman went on to say in the same breath; 'I'm verywell indeed, myself, I'm much obliged to you. My name is Toots, --MisterToots. '

The Captain remembered to have seen this young gentleman at thewedding, and made him a bow. Mr Toots replied with a chuckle; and beingembarrassed, as he generally was, breathed hard, shook hands with theCaptain for a long time, and then falling on Rob the Grinder, inthe absence of any other resource, shook hands with him in a mostaffectionate and cordial manner. 

'I say! I should like to speak a word to you, Mr Gills, if you please, 'said Toots at length, with surprising presence of mind. 'I say! MissD. O. M. You know!'

The Captain, with responsive gravity and mystery, immediately waved hishook towards the little parlour, whither Mr Toots followed him. 

'Oh! I beg your pardon though, ' said Mr Toots, looking up In theCaptain's face as he sat down in a chair by the fire, which the Captainplaced for him; 'you don't happen to know the Chicken at all; do you, MrGills?'

'The Chicken?' said the Captain. 

'The Game Chicken, ' said Mr Toots. 

The Captain shaking his head, Mr Toots explained that the man alludedto was the celebrated public character who had covered himself and hiscountry with glory in his contest with the Nobby Shropshire One; butthis piece of information did not appear to enlighten the Captain verymuch. 

'Because he's outside: that's all, ' said Mr Toots. 'But it's of noconsequence; he won't get very wet, perhaps. '

'I can pass the word for him in a moment, ' said the Captain. 

'Well, if you would have the goodness to let him sit in the shop withyour young man, ' chuckled Mr Toots, 'I should be glad; because, youknow, he's easily offended, and the damp's rather bad for his stamina. I'll call him in, Mr Gills. '

With that, Mr Toots repairing to the shop-door, sent a peculiar whistleinto the night, which produced a stoical gentleman in a shaggy whitegreat-coat and a flat-brimmed hat, with very short hair, a broken nose, and a considerable tract of bare and sterile country behind each ear. 

'Sit down, Chicken, ' said Mr Toots. 

The compliant Chicken spat out some small pieces of straw on whichhe was regaling himself, and took in a fresh supply from a reserve hecarried in his hand. 

'There ain't no drain of nothing short handy, is there?' said theChicken, generally. 'This here sluicing night is hard lines to a man aslives on his condition. 

Captain Cuttle proffered a glass of rum, which the Chicken, throwingback his head, emptied into himself, as into a cask, after proposing thebrief sentiment, 'Towards us!' Mr Toots and the Captain returning thento the parlour, and taking their seats before the fire, Mr Toots began:

'Mr Gills--'

'Awast!' said the Captain. 'My name's Cuttle. '

Mr Toots looked greatly disconcerted, while the Captain proceededgravely. 

'Cap'en Cuttle is my name, and England is my nation, this here is mydwelling-place, and blessed be creation--Job, ' said the Captain, as anindex to his authority. 

'Oh! I couldn't see Mr Gills, could I?' said Mr Toots; 'because--'

'If you could see Sol Gills, young gen'l'm'n, ' said the Captain, impressively, and laying his heavy hand on Mr Toots's knee, 'old Sol, mind you--with your own eyes--as you sit there--you'd be welcomer to me, than a wind astern, to a ship becalmed. But you can't see Sol Gills. Andwhy can't you see Sol Gills?' said the Captain, apprised by the face ofMr Toots that he was making a profound impression on that gentleman'smind. 'Because he's inwisible. '

Mr Toots in his agitation was going to reply that it was of noconsequence at all. But he corrected himself, and said, 'Lor bless me!'

'That there man, ' said the Captain, 'has left me in charge here by apiece of writing, but though he was a'most as good as my sworn brother, I know no more where he's gone, or why he's gone; if so be to seek hisnevy, or if so be along of being not quite settled in his mind; than youdo. One morning at daybreak, he went over the side, ' said the Captain, 'without a splash, without a ripple I have looked for that man high andlow, and never set eyes, nor ears, nor nothing else, upon him from thathour. '

'But, good Gracious, Miss Dombey don't know--' Mr Toots began. 

'Why, I ask you, as a feeling heart, ' said the Captain, dropping hisvoice, 'why should she know? why should she be made to know, until suchtime as there wam't any help for it? She took to old Sol Gills, did thatsweet creetur, with a kindness, with a affability, with a--what's thegood of saying so? you know her. '

'I should hope so, ' chuckled Mr Toots, with a conscious blush thatsuffused his whole countenance. 

'And you come here from her?' said the Captain. 

'I should think so, ' chuckled Mr Toots. 

'Then all I need observe, is, ' said the Captain, 'that you know a angel, and are chartered a angel. '

Mr Toots instantly seized the Captain's hand, and requested the favourof his friendship. 

'Upon my word and honour, ' said Mr Toots, earnestly, 'I should be verymuch obliged to you if you'd improve my acquaintance I should like toknow you, Captain, very much. I really am In want of a friend, I am. Little Dombey was my friend at old Blimber's, and would have been now, if he'd have lived. The Chicken, ' said Mr Toots, in a forlorn whisper, 'is very well--admirable in his way--the sharpest man perhaps in theworld; there's not a move he isn't up to, everybody says so--but I don'tknow--he's not everything. So she is an angel, Captain. If there is anangel anywhere, it's Miss Dombey. That's what I've always said. Reallythough, you know, ' said Mr Toots, 'I should be very much obliged to youif you'd cultivate my acquaintance. '

Captain Cuttle received this proposal in a polite manner, but stillwithout committing himself to its acceptance; merely observing, 'Ay, ay, my lad. We shall see, we shall see;' and reminding Mr Toots of hisimmediate mission, by inquiring to what he was indebted for the honourof that visit. 

'Why the fact is, ' replied Mr Toots, 'that it's the young woman I comefrom. Not Miss Dombey--Susan, you know. 

The Captain nodded his head once, with a grave expression of faceindicative of his regarding that young woman with serious respect. 

'And I'll tell you how it happens, ' said Mr Toots. 'You know, I go andcall sometimes, on Miss Dombey. I don't go there on purpose, you know, but I happen to be in the neighbourhood very often; and when I findmyself there, why--why I call. '

'Nat'rally, ' observed the Captain. 

'Yes, ' said Mr Toots. 'I called this afternoon. Upon my word and honour, I don't think it's possible to form an idea of the angel Miss Dombey wasthis afternoon. '

The Captain answered with a jerk of his head, implying that it might notbe easy to some people, but was quite so to him. 

'As I was coming out, ' said Mr Toots, 'the young woman, in the mostunexpected manner, took me into the pantry. 

The Captain seemed, for the moment, to object to this proceeding; andleaning back in his chair, looked at Mr Toots with a distrustful, if notthreatening visage. 

'Where she brought out, ' said Mr Toots, 'this newspaper. She told methat she had kept it from Miss Dombey all day, on account of somethingthat was in it, about somebody that she and Dombey used to know; andthen she read the passage to me. Very well. Then she said--wait aminute; what was it she said, though!'

Mr Toots, endeavouring to concentrate his mental powers on thisquestion, unintentionally fixed the Captain's eye, and was so muchdiscomposed by its stern expression, that his difficulty in resuming thethread of his subject was enhanced to a painful extent. 

'Oh!' said Mr Toots after long consideration. 'Oh, ah! Yes! She saidthat she hoped there was a bare possibility that it mightn't be true;and that as she couldn't very well come out herself, without surprisingMiss Dombey, would I go down to Mr Solomon Gills the Instrument-maker'sin this street, who was the party's Uncle, and ask whether he believedit was true, or had heard anything else in the City. She said, if hecouldn't speak to me, no doubt Captain Cuttle could. By the bye!' saidMr Toots, as the discovery flashed upon him, 'you, you know!'

The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr Toots's hand, and breathedshort and hurriedly. 

'Well, pursued Mr Toots, 'the reason why I'm rather late is, because Iwent up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweedthat grows there, for Miss Dombey's bird. But I came on here, directlyafterwards. You've seen the paper, I suppose?'

The Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he shouldfind himself advertised at full length by Mrs MacStinger, shook hishead. 

'Shall I read the passage to you?' inquired Mr Toots. 

The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence:

'"Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived inthis port to-day, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reportsthat being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in"--in such and such a latitude, you know, ' said Mr Toots, after makinga feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them. 

'Ay!' cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. 'Heaveahead, my lad!'

'--latitude, ' repeated Mr Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain, 'and longitude so-and-so, --"the look-out observed, half an hour beforesunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of amile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat washoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found toconsist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of anEnglish brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portionof the stem on which the words and letters 'Son and H-' were yet plainlylegible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon the floatingfragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze springing up inthe night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no doubt that allsurmises as to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son and Heir, port ofLondon, bound for Barbados, are now set at rest for ever; that she brokeup in the last hurricane; and that every soul on board perished. "'

Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survivedwithin him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. Duringthe reading of the paragraph, and for a minute or two afterwards, he satwith his gaze fixed on the modest Mr Toots, like a man entranced; then, suddenly rising, and putting on his glazed hat, which, in his visitor'shonour, he had laid upon the table, the Captain turned his back, andbent his head down on the little chimneypiece. 

'Oh' upon my word and honour, ' cried Mr Toots, whose tender heart wasmoved by the Captain's unexpected distress, 'this is a most wretchedsort of affair this world is! Somebody's always dying, or going anddoing something uncomfortable in it. I'm sure I never should have lookedforward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. Inever saw such a world. It's a great deal worse than Blimber's. '

Captain Cuttle, without altering his position, signed to Mr Toots notto mind him; and presently turned round, with his glazed hat thrust backupon his ears, and his hand composing and smoothing his brown face. 

'Wal'r, my dear lad, ' said the Captain, 'farewell! Wal'r my child, my boy, and man, I loved you! He warn't my flesh and blood, ' said theCaptain, looking at the fire--'I ain't got none--but something of what afather feels when he loses a son, I feel in losing Wal'r. For why?' saidthe Captain. 'Because it ain't one loss, but a round dozen. Where's thatthere young school-boy with the rosy face and curly hair, that used tobe as merry in this here parlour, come round every week, as a piece ofmusic? Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there fresh lad, that nothingcouldn't tire nor put out, and that sparkled up and blushed so, when wejoked him about Heart's Delight, that he was beautiful to look at?Gone down with Wal'r. Where's that there man's spirit, all afire, thatwouldn't see the old man hove down for a minute, and cared nothing foritself? Gone down with Wal'r. It ain't one Wal'r. There was a dozenWal'rs that I know'd and loved, all holding round his neck when he wentdown, and they're a-holding round mine now!'

Mr Toots sat silent: folding and refolding the newspaper as small aspossible upon his knee. 

'And Sol Gills, ' said the Captain, gazing at the fire, 'poor nevylessold Sol, where are you got to! you was left in charge of me; his lastwords was, "Take care of my Uncle!" What came over you, Sol, when youwent and gave the go-bye to Ned Cuttle; and what am I to put In myaccounts that he's a looking down upon, respecting you! Sol Gills, SolGills!' said the Captain, shaking his head slowly, 'catch sight of thatthere newspaper, away from home, with no one as know'd Wal'r by, to saya word; and broadside to you broach, and down you pitch, head foremost!'

Drawing a heavy sigh, the Captain turned to Mr Toots, and roused himselfto a sustained consciousness of that gentleman's presence. 

'My lad, ' said the Captain, 'you must tell the young woman honestly thatthis here fatal news is too correct. They don't romance, you see, onsuch pints. It's entered on the ship's log, and that's the truest bookas a man can write. To-morrow morning, ' said the Captain, 'I'll step outand make inquiries; but they'll lead to no good. They can't do it. Ifyou'll give me a look-in in the forenoon, you shall know what I haveheerd; but tell the young woman from Cap'en Cuttle, that it's over. Over!' And the Captain, hooking off his glazed hat, pulled hishandkerchief out of the crown, wiped his grizzled head despairingly, and tossed the handkerchief in again, with the indifference of deepdejection. 

'Oh! I assure you, ' said Mr Toots, 'really I am dreadfully sorry. Uponmy word I am, though I wasn't acquainted with the party. Do you thinkMiss Dombey will be very much affected, Captain Gills--I mean MrCuttle?'

'Why, Lord love you, ' returned the Captain, with something of compassionfor Mr Toots's innocence. When she warn't no higher than that, they wereas fond of one another as two young doves. '

'Were they though!' said Mr Toots, with a considerably lengthened face. 

'They were made for one another, ' said the Captain, mournfully; 'butwhat signifies that now!'

'Upon my word and honour, ' cried Mr Toots, blurting out his wordsthrough a singular combination of awkward chuckles and emotion, 'I'meven more sorry than I was before. You know, Captain Gills, I--Ipositively adore Miss Dombey;--I--I am perfectly sore with loving her;'the burst with which this confession forced itself out of the unhappyMr Toots, bespoke the vehemence of his feelings; 'but what would be thegood of my regarding her in this manner, if I wasn't truly sorry forher feeling pain, whatever was the cause of it. Mine ain't a selfishaffection, you know, ' said Mr Toots, in the confidence engendered byhis having been a witness of the Captain's tenderness. 'It's the sortof thing with me, Captain Gills, that if I could be run over--or--ortrampled upon--or--or thrown off a very high place-or anything of thatsort--for Miss Dombey's sake, it would be the most delightful thing thatcould happen to me. 

All this, Mr Toots said in a suppressed voice, to prevent its reachingthe jealous ears of the Chicken, who objected to the softer emotions;which effort of restraint, coupled with the intensity of his feelings, made him red to the tips of his ears, and caused him to present such anaffecting spectacle of disinterested love to the eyes of Captain Cuttle, that the good Captain patted him consolingly on the back, and bade himcheer up. 

'Thankee, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'it's kind of you, in the midstof your own troubles, to say so. I'm very much obliged to you. As Isaid before, I really want a friend, and should be glad to have youracquaintance. Although I am very well off, ' said Mr Toots, with energy, 'you can't think what a miserable Beast I am. The hollow crowd, youknow, when they see me with the Chicken, and characters of distinctionlike that, suppose me to be happy; but I'm wretched. I suffer for MissDombey, Captain Gills. I can't get through my meals; I have no pleasurein my tailor; I often cry when I'm alone. I assure you it'll be asatisfaction to me to come back to-morrow, or to come back fifty times. '

Mr Toots, with these words, shook the Captain's hand; and disguisingsuch traces of his agitation as could be disguised on so short a notice, before the Chicken's penetrating glance, rejoined that eminent gentlemanin the shop. The Chicken, who was apt to be jealous of his ascendancy, eyed Captain Cuttle with anything but favour as he took leave of MrToots, but followed his patron without being otherwise demonstrativeof his ill-will: leaving the Captain oppressed with sorrow; and Robthe Grinder elevated with joy, on account of having had the honour ofstaring for nearly half an hour at the conqueror of the Nobby ShropshireOne. 

Long after Rob was fast asleep in his bed under the counter, the Captainsat looking at the fire; and long after there was no fire to look at, the Captain sat gazing on the rusty bars, with unavailing thoughts ofWalter and old Sol crowding through his mind. Retirement to the stormychamber at the top of the house brought no rest with it; and the Captainrose up in the morning, sorrowful and unrefreshed. 

As soon as the City offices were opened, the Captain issued forth tothe counting-house of Dombey and Son. But there was no opening of theMidshipman's windows that morning. Rob the Grinder, by the Captain'sorders, left the shutters closed, and the house was as a house of death. 

It chanced that Mr Carker was entering the office, as Captain Cuttlearrived at the door. Receiving the Manager's benison gravely andsilently, Captain Cuttle made bold to accompany him into his own room. 

'Well, Captain Cuttle, ' said Mr Carker, taking up his usual positionbefore the fireplace, and keeping on his hat, 'this is a bad business. '

'You have received the news as was in print yesterday, Sir?' said theCaptain. 

'Yes, ' said Mr Carker, 'we have received it! It was accurately stated. The underwriters suffer a considerable loss. We are very sorry. No help!Such is life!'

Mr Carker pared his nails delicately with a penknife, and smiled at theCaptain, who was standing by the door looking at him. 

'I excessively regret poor Gay, ' said Carker, 'and the crew. Iunderstand there were some of our very best men among 'em. It alwayshappens so. Many men with families too. A comfort to reflect that poorGay had no family, Captain Cuttle!'

The Captain stood rubbing his chin, and looking at the Manager. TheManager glanced at the unopened letters lying on his desk, and took upthe newspaper. 

'Is there anything I can do for you, Captain Cuttle?' he asked lookingoff it, with a smiling and expressive glance at the door. 

'I wish you could set my mind at rest, Sir, on something it's uneasyabout, ' returned the Captain. 

'Ay!' exclaimed the Manager, 'what's that? Come, Captain Cuttle, I musttrouble you to be quick, if you please. I am much engaged. '

'Lookee here, Sir, ' said the Captain, advancing a step. 'Afore my friendWal'r went on this here disastrous voyage--

'Come, come, Captain Cuttle, ' interposed the smiling Manager, 'don'ttalk about disastrous voyages in that way. We have nothing to do withdisastrous voyages here, my good fellow. You must have begun very earlyon your day's allowance, Captain, if you don't remember that there arehazards in all voyages, whether by sea or land. You are not made uneasyby the supposition that young what's-his-name was lost in bad weatherthat was got up against him in these offices--are you? Fie, Captain!Sleep, and soda-water, are the best cures for such uneasiness as that. 

'My lad, ' returned the Captain, slowly--'you are a'most a lad to me, and so I don't ask your pardon for that slip of a word, --if you find anypleasure in this here sport, you ain't the gentleman I took you for. Andif you ain't the gentleman I took you for, may be my mind has call tobe uneasy. Now this is what it is, Mr Carker. --Afore that poor lad wentaway, according to orders, he told me that he warn't a going away forhis own good, or for promotion, he know'd. It was my belief that hewas wrong, and I told him so, and I come here, your head governor beingabsent, to ask a question or two of you in a civil way, for my ownsatisfaction. Them questions you answered--free. Now it'll ease my mindto know, when all is over, as it is, and when what can't be cured mustbe endoored--for which, as a scholar, you'll overhaul the book it's in, and thereof make a note--to know once more, in a word, that I warn'tmistaken; that I warn't back'ard in my duty when I didn't tell the oldman what Wal'r told me; and that the wind was truly in his sail, whenhe highsted of it for Barbados Harbour. Mr Carker, ' said the Captain, inthe goodness of his nature, 'when I was here last, we was very pleasanttogether. If I ain't been altogether so pleasant myself this morning, onaccount of this poor lad, and if I have chafed again any observation ofyours that I might have fended off, my name is Ed'ard Cuttle, and I askyour pardon. '

'Captain Cuttle, ' returned the Manager, with all possible politeness, 'Imust ask you to do me a favour. '

'And what is it, Sir?' inquired the Captain. 

'To have the goodness to walk off, if you please, ' rejoined the Manager, stretching forth his arm, 'and to carry your jargon somewhere else. '

Every knob in the Captain's face turned white with astonishment andindignation; even the red rim on his forehead faded, like a rainbowamong the gathering clouds. 

'I tell you what, Captain Cuttle, ' said the Manager, shaking hisforefinger at him, and showing him all his teeth, but still amiablysmiling, 'I was much too lenient with you when you came here before. Youbelong to an artful and audacious set of people. In my desire to saveyoung what's-his-name from being kicked out of this place, neck andcrop, my good Captain, I tolerated you; but for once, and only once. Now, go, my friend!'

The Captain was absolutely rooted to the ground, and speechless--

'Go, ' said the good-humoured Manager, gathering up his skirts, andstanding astride upon the hearth-rug, 'like a sensible fellow, and letus have no turning out, or any such violent measures. If Mr Dombeywere here, Captain, you might be obliged to leave in a more ignominiousmanner, possibly. I merely say, Go!'

The Captain, laying his ponderous hand upon his chest, to assist himselfin fetching a deep breath, looked at Mr Carker from head to foot, andlooked round the little room, as if he did not clearly understand wherehe was, or in what company. 

'You are deep, Captain Cuttle, ' pursued Carker, with the easy andvivacious frankness of a man of the world who knew the world too wellto be ruffled by any discovery of misdoing, when it did notimmediately concern himself, 'but you are not quite out of soundings, either--neither you nor your absent friend, Captain. What have you donewith your absent friend, hey?'

Again the Captain laid his hand upon his chest. After drawing anotherdeep breath, he conjured himself to 'stand by!' But In a whisper. 

'You hatch nice little plots, and hold nice little councils, andmake nice little appointments, and receive nice little visitors, too, Captain, hey?' said Carker, bending his brows upon him, withoutshowing his teeth any the less: 'but it's a bold measure to come hereafterwards. Not like your discretion! You conspirators, and hiders, and runners-away, should know better than that. Will you oblige me bygoing?'

'My lad, ' gasped the Captain, in a choked and trembling voice, and witha curious action going on in the ponderous fist; 'there's a many words Icould wish to say to you, but I don't rightly know where they're stowedjust at present. My young friend, Wal'r, was drownded only last night, according to my reckoning, and it puts me out, you see. But you andme will come alongside o'one another again, my lad, ' said the Captain, holding up his hook, if we live. '

'It will be anything but shrewd in you, my good fellow, if we do, 'returned the Manager, with the same frankness; 'for you may rely, I giveyou fair warning, upon my detecting and exposing you. I don't pretendto be a more moral man than my neighbours, my good Captain; but theconfidence of this House, or of any member of this House, is not to beabused and undermined while I have eyes and ears. Good day!' said MrCarker, nodding his head. 

Captain Cuttle, looking at him steadily (Mr Carker looked full assteadily at the Captain), went out of the office and left him standingastride before the fire, as calm and pleasant as if there were no morespots upon his soul than on his pure white linen, and his smooth sleekskin. 

The Captain glanced, in passing through the outer counting-house, atthe desk where he knew poor Walter had been used to sit, now occupied byanother young boy, with a face almost as fresh and hopeful as his on theday when they tapped the famous last bottle but one of the old Madeira, in the little back parlour. The nation of ideas, thus awakened, did theCaptain a great deal of good; it softened him in the very height of hisanger, and brought the tears into his eyes. 

Arrived at the wooden Midshipman's again, and sitting down in a cornerof the dark shop, the Captain's indignation, strong as it was, couldmake no head against his grief. Passion seemed not only to do wrong andviolence to the memory of the dead, but to be infected by death, andto droop and decline beside it. All the living knaves and liars in theworld, were nothing to the honesty and truth of one dead friend. 

The only thing the honest Captain made out clearly, in this state ofmind, besides the loss of Walter, was, that with him almost the wholeworld of Captain Cuttle had been drowned. If he reproached himselfsometimes, and keenly too, for having ever connived at Walter's innocentdeceit, he thought at least as often of the Mr Carker whom no sea couldever render up; and the Mr Dombey, whom he now began to perceive was asfar beyond human recall; and the 'Heart's Delight, ' with whom he mustnever foregather again; and the Lovely Peg, that teak-built and trimballad, that had gone ashore upon a rock, and split into mere planksand beams of rhyme. The Captain sat in the dark shop, thinking of thesethings, to the entire exclusion of his own injury; and looking withas sad an eye upon the ground, as if in contemplation of their actualfragments, as they floated past. 

But the Captain was not unmindful, for all that, of such decent andrest observances in memory of poor Walter, as he felt within his power. Rousing himself, and rousing Rob the Grinder (who in the unnaturaltwilight was fast asleep), the Captain sallied forth with his attendantat his heels, and the door-key in his pocket, and repairing to one ofthose convenient slop-selling establishments of which there is abundantchoice at the eastern end of London, purchased on the spot two suits ofmourning--one for Rob the Grinder, which was immensely too small, andone for himself, which was immensely too large. He also provided Robwith a species of hat, greatly to be admired for its symmetry andusefulness, as well as for a happy blending of the mariner with thecoal-heaver; which is usually termed a sou'wester; and which wassomething of a novelty in connexion with the instrument business. Intheir several garments, which the vendor declared to be such a miraclein point of fit as nothing but a rare combination of fortuitouscircumstances ever brought about, and the fashion of which wasunparalleled within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the Captain andGrinder immediately arrayed themselves: presenting a spectacle fraughtwith wonder to all who beheld it. 

In this altered form, the Captain received Mr Toots. 'I'm took aback, my lad, at present, ' said the Captain, 'and will only confirm that thereill news. Tell the young woman to break it gentle to the young lady, and for neither of 'em never to think of me no more--'special, mind you, that is--though I will think of them, when night comes on a hurricaneand seas is mountains rowling, for which overhaul your Doctor Watts, brother, and when found make a note on. '

The Captain reserved, until some fitter time, the consideration of MrToots's offer of friendship, and thus dismissed him. Captain Cuttle'sspirits were so low, in truth, that he half determined, that day, totake no further precautions against surprise from Mrs MacStinger, but toabandon himself recklessly to chance, and be indifferent to whatmight happen. As evening came on, he fell into a better frame of mind, however; and spoke much of Walter to Rob the Grinder, whose attentionand fidelity he likewise incidentally commended. Rob did not blush tohear the Captain earnest in his praises, but sat staring at him, andaffecting to snivel with sympathy, and making a feint of being virtuous, and treasuring up every word he said (like a young spy as he was) withvery promising deceit. 

When Rob had turned in, and was fast asleep, the Captain trimmed thecandle, put on his spectacles--he had felt it appropriate to take tospectacles on entering into the Instrument Trade, though his eyes werelike a hawk's--and opened the prayer-book at the Burial Service. Andreading softly to himself, in the little back parlour, and stopping nowand then to wipe his eyes, the Captain, In a true and simple spirit, committed Walter's body to the deep. 

CHAPTER 33. Contrasts

Turn we our eyes upon two homes; not lying side by side, but wide apart, though both within easy range and reach of the great city of London. 

The first is situated in the green and wooded country near Norwood. It is not a mansion; it is of no pretensions as to size; but it isbeautifully arranged, and tastefully kept. The lawn, the soft, smoothslope, the flower-garden, the clumps of trees where graceful forms ofash and willow are not wanting, the conservatory, the rustic verandahwith sweet-smelling creeping plants entwined about the pillars, thesimple exterior of the house, the well-ordered offices, though all uponthe diminutive scale proper to a mere cottage, bespeak an amount ofelegant comfort within, that might serve for a palace. This indicationis not without warrant; for, within, it is a house of refinement andluxury. Rich colours, excellently blended, meet the eye at every turn;in the furniture--its proportions admirably devised to suit the shapesand sizes of the small rooms; on the walls; upon the floors; tingeingand subduing the light that comes in through the odd glass doors andwindows here and there. There are a few choice prints and pictures too;in quaint nooks and recesses there is no want of books; and there aregames of skill and chance set forth on tables--fantastic chessmen, dice, backgammon, cards, and billiards. 

And yet amidst this opulence of comfort, there is something in thegeneral air that is not well. Is it that the carpets and the cushionsare too soft and noiseless, so that those who move or repose amongthem seem to act by stealth? Is it that the prints and pictures do notcommemorate great thoughts or deeds, or render nature in the Poetry oflandscape, hall, or hut, but are of one voluptuous cast--mere shows ofform and colour--and no more? Is it that the books have all their goldoutside, and that the titles of the greater part qualify them to becompanions of the prints and pictures? Is it that the completeness andthe beauty of the place are here and there belied by an affectation ofhumility, in some unimportant and inexpensive regard, which is as falseas the face of the too truly painted portrait hanging yonder, or itsoriginal at breakfast in his easy chair below it? Or is it that, withthe daily breath of that original and master of all here, there issuesforth some subtle portion of himself, which gives a vague expression ofhimself to everything about him?

It is Mr Carker the Manager who sits in the easy chair. A gaudy parrotin a burnished cage upon the table tears at the wires with her beak, and goes walking, upside down, in its dome-top, shaking her house andscreeching; but Mr Carker is indifferent to the bird, and looks with amusing smile at a picture on the opposite wall. 

'A most extraordinary accidental likeness, certainly, ' says he. 

Perhaps it is a Juno; perhaps a Potiphar's Wife'; perhaps some scornfulNymph--according as the Picture Dealers found the market, when theychristened it. It is the figure of a woman, supremely handsome, who, turning away, but with her face addressed to the spectator, flashes herproud glance upon him. 

It is like Edith. 

With a passing gesture of his hand at the picture--what! a menace? No;yet something like it. A wave as of triumph? No; yet more like that. Aninsolent salute wafted from his lips? No; yet like that too--he resumeshis breakfast, and calls to the chafing and imprisoned bird, whocoming down into a pendant gilded hoop within the cage, like a greatwedding-ring, swings in it, for his delight. 

The second home is on the other side of London, near to where the busygreat north road of bygone days is silent and almost deserted, except bywayfarers who toil along on foot. It is a poor small house, barelyand sparely furnished, but very clean; and there is even an attempt todecorate it, shown in the homely flowers trained about the porch and inthe narrow garden. The neighbourhood in which it stands has as little ofthe country to recommend it, as it has of the town. It is neither of thetown nor country. The former, like the giant in his travelling boots, has made a stride and passed it, and has set his brick-and-mortar heela long way in advance; but the intermediate space between the giant'sfeet, as yet, is only blighted country, and not town; and, here, amonga few tall chimneys belching smoke all day and night, and among thebrick-fields and the lanes where turf is cut, and where the fencestumble down, and where the dusty nettles grow, and where a scrap ortwo of hedge may yet be seen, and where the bird-catcher still comesoccasionally, though he swears every time to come no more--this secondhome is to be found. '

She who inhabits it, is she who left the first in her devotion to anoutcast brother. She withdrew from that home its redeeming spirit, andfrom its master's breast his solitary angel: but though his liking forher is gone, after this ungrateful slight as he considers it; and thoughhe abandons her altogether in return, an old idea of her is not quiteforgotten even by him. Let her flower-garden, in which he never sets hisfoot, but which is yet maintained, among all his costly alterations, asif she had quitted it but yesterday, bear witness!

Harriet Carker has changed since then, and on her beauty there hasfallen a heavier shade than Time of his unassisted self can cast, all-potent as he is--the shadow of anxiety and sorrow, and the dailystruggle of a poor existence. But it is beauty still; and still agentle, quiet, and retiring beauty that must be sought out, for itcannot vaunt itself; if it could, it would be what it is, no more. 

Yes. This slight, small, patient figure, neatly dressed in homelystuffs, and indicating nothing but the dull, household virtues, that have so little in common with the received idea of heroism andgreatness, unless, indeed, any ray of them should shine through thelives of the great ones of the earth, when it becomes a constellationand is tracked in Heaven straightway--this slight, small, patientfigure, leaning on the man still young but worn and grey, is she, hissister, who, of all the world, went over to him in his shame and puther hand in his, and with a sweet composure and determination, led himhopefully upon his barren way. 

'It is early, John, ' she said. 'Why do you go so early?'

'Not many minutes earlier than usual, Harriet. If I have the time tospare, I should like, I think--it's a fancy--to walk once by the housewhere I took leave of him. '

'I wish I had ever seen or known him, John. '

'It is better as it is, my dear, remembering his fate. '

'But I could not regret it more, though I had known him. Is not yoursorrow mine? And if I had, perhaps you would feel that I was a bettercompanion to you in speaking about him, than I may seem now. 

'My dearest sister! Is there anything within the range of rejoicing orregret, in which I am not sure of your companionship?'

'I hope you think not, John, for surely there is nothing!'

'How could you be better to me, or nearer to me then, than you are inthis, or anything?' said her brother. 'I feel that you did know him, Harriet, and that you shared my feelings towards him. '

She drew the hand which had been resting on his shoulder, round hisneck, and answered, with some hesitation:

'No, not quite. '

'True, true!' he said; 'you think I might have done him no harm if I hadallowed myself to know him better?'

'Think! I know it. '

'Designedly, Heaven knows I would not, ' he replied, shaking his headmournfully; 'but his reputation was too precious to be perilled by suchassociation. Whether you share that knowledge, or do not, my dear--'

'I do not, ' she said quietly. 

'It is still the truth, Harriet, and my mind is lighter when I think ofhim for that which made it so much heavier then. ' He checked himself inhis tone of melancholy, and smiled upon her as he said 'Good-bye!'

'Good-bye, dear John! In the evening, at the old time and place, I shallmeet you as usual on your way home. Good-bye. '

The cordial face she lifted up to his to kiss him, was his home, hislife, his universe, and yet it was a portion of his punishment andgrief; for in the cloud he saw upon it--though serene and calm as anyradiant cloud at sunset--and in the constancy and devotion of her life, and in the sacrifice she had made of ease, enjoyment, and hope, he sawthe bitter fruits of his old crime, for ever ripe and fresh. 

She stood at the door looking after him, with her hands loosely claspedin each other, as he made his way over the frowzy and uneven patch ofground which lay before their house, which had once (and not long ago)been a pleasant meadow, and was now a very waste, with a disorderly cropof beginnings of mean houses, rising out of the rubbish, as if they hadbeen unskilfully sown there. Whenever he looked back--as once or twicehe did--her cordial face shone like a light upon his heart; but when heplodded on his way, and saw her not, the tears were in her eyes as shestood watching him. 

Her pensive form was not long idle at the door. There was daily duty todischarge, and daily work to do--for such commonplace spirits that arenot heroic, often work hard with their hands--and Harriet was soon busywith her household tasks. These discharged, and the poor house madequite neat and orderly, she counted her little stock of money, withan anxious face, and went out thoughtfully to buy some necessaries fortheir table, planning and conniving, as she went, how to save. So sordidare the lives of such lo natures, who are not only not heroic to theirvalets and waiting-women, but have neither valets nor waiting-women tobe heroic to withal!

While she was absent, and there was no one in the house, thereapproached it by a different way from that the brother had taken, a gentleman, a very little past his prime of life perhaps, but of ahealthy florid hue, an upright presence, and a bright clear aspect, thatwas gracious and good-humoured. His eyebrows were still black, andso was much of his hair; the sprinkling of grey observable among thelatter, graced the former very much, and showed his broad frank brow andhonest eyes to great advantage. 

After knocking once at the door, and obtaining no response, thisgentleman sat down on a bench in the little porch to wait. A certainskilful action of his fingers as he hummed some bars, and beat timeon the seat beside him, seemed to denote the musician; and theextraordinary satisfaction he derived from humming something very slowand long, which had no recognisable tune, seemed to denote that he was ascientific one. 

The gentleman was still twirling a theme, which seemed to go round andround and round, and in and in and in, and to involve itself like acorkscrew twirled upon a table, without getting any nearer to anything, when Harriet appeared returning. He rose up as she advanced, and stoodwith his head uncovered. 

'You are come again, Sir!' she said, faltering. 

'I take that liberty, ' he answered. 'May I ask for five minutes of yourleisure?'

After a moment's hesitation, she opened the door, and gave him admissionto the little parlour. The gentleman sat down there, drew his chairto the table over against her, and said, in a voice that perfectlycorresponded to his appearance, and with a simplicity that was veryengaging:

'Miss Harriet, you cannot be proud. You signified to me, when I calledt'other morning, that you were. Pardon me if I say that I looked intoyour face while you spoke, and that it contradicted you. I look intoit again, ' he added, laying his hand gently on her arm, for an instant, 'and it contradicts you more and more. '

She was somewhat confused and agitated, and could make no ready answer. 

'It is the mirror of truth, ' said her visitor, 'and gentleness. Excusemy trusting to it, and returning. '

His manner of saying these words, divested them entirely of thecharacter of compliments. It was so plain, grave, unaffected, andsincere, that she bent her head, as if at once to thank him, andacknowledge his sincerity. 

'The disparity between our ages, ' said the gentleman, 'and the plainnessof my purpose, empower me, I am glad to think, to speak my mind. That ismy mind; and so you see me for the second time. '

'There is a kind of pride, Sir, ' she returned, after a moment's silence, 'or what may be supposed to be pride, which is mere duty. I hope Icherish no other. '

'For yourself, ' he said. 

'For myself. '

'But--pardon me--' suggested the gentleman. 'For your brother John?'

'Proud of his love, I am, ' said Harriet, looking full upon her visitor, and changing her manner on the instant--not that it was less composedand quiet, but that there was a deep impassioned earnestness in it thatmade the very tremble in her voice a part of her firmness, 'and proud ofhim. Sir, you who strangely know the story of his life, and repeated itto me when you were here last--'

'Merely to make my way into your confidence, ' interposed the gentleman. 'For heaven's sake, don't suppose--'

'I am sure, ' she said, 'you revived it, in my hearing, with a kind andgood purpose. I am quite sure of it. '

'I thank you, ' returned her visitor, pressing her hand hastily. 'I ammuch obliged to you. You do me justice, I assure you. You were going tosay, that I, who know the story of John Carker's life--'

'May think it pride in me, ' she continued, 'when I say that I am proudof him! I am. You know the time was, when I was not--when I could notbe--but that is past. The humility of many years, the uncomplainingexpiation, the true repentance, the terrible regret, the pain I knowhe has even in my affection, which he thinks has cost me dear, thoughHeaven knows I am happy, but for his sorrow I--oh, Sir, after what Ihave seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and areever wronged, never, for any wrong, inflict a punishment that cannot berecalled; while there is a GOD above us to work changes in the hearts Hemade. '

'Your brother is an altered man, ' returned the gentleman, compassionately. 'I assure you I don't doubt it. '

'He was an altered man when he did wrong, ' said Harriet. 'He is analtered man again, and is his true self now, believe me, Sir. '

'But we go on, said her visitor, rubbing his forehead, in an absentmanner, with his hand, and then drumming thoughtfully on the table, 'wego on in our clockwork routine, from day to day, and can't make out, or follow, these changes. They--they're a metaphysical sort of thing. We--we haven't leisure for it. We--we haven't courage. They're nottaught at schools or colleges, and we don't know how to set about it. Inshort, we are so d-------d business-like, ' said the gentleman, walkingto the window, and back, and sitting down again, in a state of extremedissatisfaction and vexation. 

'I am sure, ' said the gentleman, rubbing his forehead again; anddrumming on the table as before, 'I have good reason to believe thata jog-trot life, the same from day to day, would reconcile one toanything. One don't see anything, one don't hear anything, one don'tknow anything; that's the fact. We go on taking everything for granted, and so we go on, until whatever we do, good, bad, or indifferent, we dofrom habit. Habit is all I shall have to report, when I am called uponto plead to my conscience, on my death-bed. "Habit, " says I; "I wasdeaf, dumb, blind, and paralytic, to a million things, from habit. "''Very business-like indeed, Mr What's-your-name, ' says Conscience, ''but it won't do here!"'

The gentleman got up and walked to the window again and back: seriouslyuneasy, though giving his uneasiness this peculiar expression. 

'Miss Harriet, ' he said, resuming his chair, 'I wish you would let meserve you. Look at me; I ought to look honest, for I know I am so, atpresent. Do I?'

'Yes, ' she answered with a smile. 

'I believe every word you have said, ' he returned. 'I am full ofself-reproach that I might have known this and seen this, and knownyou and seen you, any time these dozen years, and that I never have. Ihardly know how I ever got here--creature that I am, not only of my ownhabit, but of other people's! But having done so, let me do something. I ask it in all honour and respect. You inspire me with both, in thehighest degree. Let me do something. '

'We are contented, Sir. '

'No, no, not quite, ' returned the gentleman. 'I think not quite. Thereare some little comforts that might smooth your life, and his. And his!'he repeated, fancying that had made some impression on her. 'I have beenin the habit of thinking that there was nothing wanting to be done forhim; that it was all settled and over; in short, of not thinking at allabout it. I am different now. Let me do something for him. You too, 'said the visitor, with careful delicacy, 'have need to watch your healthclosely, for his sake, and I fear it fails. '

'Whoever you may be, Sir, ' answered Harriet, raising her eyes to hisface, 'I am deeply grateful to you. I feel certain that in all yousay, you have no object in the world but kindness to us. But years havepassed since we began this life; and to take from my brother any part ofwhat has so endeared him to me, and so proved his better resolution--anyfragment of the merit of his unassisted, obscure, and forgottenreparation--would be to diminish the comfort it will be to him and me, when that time comes to each of us, of which you spoke just now. I thankyou better with these tears than any words. Believe it, pray. 

The gentleman was moved, and put the hand she held out, to his lips, much as a tender father might kiss the hand of a dutiful child. But morereverently. 

'If the day should ever come, said Harriet, 'when he is restored, inpart, to the position he lost--'

'Restored!' cried the gentleman, quickly. 'How can that be hoped for? Inwhose hands does the power of any restoration lie? It is no mistake ofmine, surely, to suppose that his having gained the priceless blessingof his life, is one cause of the animosity shown to him by his brother. '

'You touch upon a subject that is never breathed between us; not evenbetween us, ' said Harriet. 

'I beg your forgiveness, ' said the visitor. 'I should have known it. Ientreat you to forget that I have done so, inadvertently. And now, as Idare urge no more--as I am not sure that I have a right to do so--thoughHeaven knows, even that doubt may be habit, ' said the gentleman, rubbinghis head, as despondently as before, 'let me; though a stranger, yet nostranger; ask two favours. '

'What are they?' she inquired. 

'The first, that if you should see cause to change your resolution, youwill suffer me to be as your right hand. My name shall then be at yourservice; it is useless now, and always insignificant. '

'Our choice of friends, ' she answered, smiling faintly, 'is not sogreat, that I need any time for consideration. I can promise that. '

'The second, that you will allow me sometimes, say every Mondaymorning, at nine o'clock--habit again--I must be businesslike, ' said thegentleman, with a whimsical inclination to quarrel with himself on thathead, 'in walking past, to see you at the door or window. I don't ask tocome in, as your brother will be gone out at that hour. I don't ask tospeak to you. I merely ask to see, for the satisfaction of my own mind, that you are well, and without intrusion to remind you, by the sight ofme, that you have a friend--an elderly friend, grey-haired already, andfast growing greyer--whom you may ever command. '

The cordial face looked up in his; confided in it; and promised. 

'I understand, as before, ' said the gentleman, rising, 'that youpurpose not to mention my visit to John Carker, lest he should be at alldistressed by my acquaintance with his history. I am glad of it, forit is out of the ordinary course of things, and--habit again!' said thegentleman, checking himself impatiently, 'as if there were no bettercourse than the ordinary course!'

With that he turned to go, and walking, bareheaded, to the outsideof the little porch, took leave of her with such a happy mixture ofunconstrained respect and unaffected interest, as no breeding could havetaught, no truth mistrusted, and nothing but a pure and single heartexpressed. 

Many half-forgotten emotions were awakened in the sister's mind by thisvisit. It was so very long since any other visitor had crossed theirthreshold; it was so very long since any voice of apathy had made sadmusic in her ears; that the stranger's figure remained present to her, hours afterwards, when she sat at the window, plying her needle; and hiswords seemed newly spoken, again and again. He had touched the springthat opened her whole life; and if she lost him for a short space, itwas only among the many shapes of the one great recollection of whichthat life was made. 

Musing and working by turns; now constraining herself to be steady ather needle for a long time together, and now letting her work fall, unregarded, on her lap, and straying wheresoever her busier thoughtsled, Harriet Carker found the hours glide by her, and the day steal on. The morning, which had been bright and clear, gradually became overcast;a sharp wind set in; the rain fell heavily; and a dark mist droopingover the distant town, hid it from the view. 

She often looked with compassion, at such a time, upon the stragglerswho came wandering into London, by the great highway hard by, and who, footsore and weary, and gazing fearfully at the huge town before them, as if foreboding that their misery there would be but as a drop of waterin the sea, or as a grain of sea-sand on the shore, went shrinking on, cowering before the angry weather, and looking as if the very elementsrejected them. Day after day, such travellers crept past, but always, asshe thought, In one direction--always towards the town. Swallowed up inone phase or other of its immensity, towards which they seemed impelledby a desperate fascination, they never returned. Food for the hospitals, the churchyards, the prisons, the river, fever, madness, vice, anddeath, --they passed on to the monster, roaring in the distance, and werelost. 

The chill wind was howling, and the rain was falling, and the day wasdarkening moodily, when Harriet, raising her eyes from the work on whichshe had long since been engaged with unremitting constancy, saw one ofthese travellers approaching. 

A woman. A solitary woman of some thirty years of age; tall;well-formed; handsome; miserably dressed; the soil of many country roadsin varied weather--dust, chalk, clay, gravel--clotted on her grey cloakby the streaming wet; no bonnet on her head, nothing to defend her richblack hair from the rain, but a torn handkerchief; with the flutteringends of which, and with her hair, the wind blinded her so that she oftenstopped to push them back, and look upon the way she was going. 

She was in the act of doing so, when Harriet observed her. As her hands, parting on her sunburnt forehead, swept across her face, and threwaside the hindrances that encroached upon it, there was a reckless andregardless beauty in it: a dauntless and depraved indifference to morethan weather: a carelessness of what was cast upon her bare head fromHeaven or earth: that, coupled with her misery and loneliness, touchedthe heart of her fellow-woman. She thought of all that was perverted anddebased within her, no less than without: of modest graces of the mind, hardened and steeled, like these attractions of the person; of the manygifts of the Creator flung to the winds like the wild hair; of allthe beautiful ruin upon which the storm was beating and the night wascoming. 

Thinking of this, she did not turn away with a delicate indignation--toomany of her own compassionate and tender sex too often do--but pitiedher. 

Her fallen sister came on, looking far before her, trying with her eagereyes to pierce the mist in which the city was enshrouded, and glancing, now and then, from side to side, with the bewildered--and uncertainaspect of a stranger. Though her tread was bold and courageous, she wasfatigued, and after a moment of irresolution, --sat down upon a heap ofstones; seeking no shelter from the rain, but letting it rain on her asit would. 

She was now opposite the house; raising her head after resting it for amoment on both hands, her eyes met those of Harriet. 

In a moment, Harriet was at the door; and the other, rising from herseat at her beck, came slowly, and with no conciliatory look, towardsher. 

'Why do you rest in the rain?' said Harriet, gently. 

'Because I have no other resting-place, ' was the reply. 

'But there are many places of shelter near here. This, ' referring to thelittle porch, 'is better than where you were. You are very welcome torest here. '

The wanderer looked at her, in doubt and surprise, but without anyexpression of thankfulness; and sitting down, and taking off one of herworn shoes to beat out the fragments of stone and dust that were inside, showed that her foot was cut and bleeding. 

Harriet uttering an expression of pity, the traveller looked up with acontemptuous and incredulous smile. 

'Why, what's a torn foot to such as me?' she said. 'And what's a tornfoot in such as me, to such as you?'

'Come in and wash it, ' answered Harriet, mildly, 'and let me give yousomething to bind it up. '

The woman caught her arm, and drawing it before her own eyes, hid themagainst it, and wept. Not like a woman, but like a stern man surprisedinto that weakness; with a violent heaving of her breast, and strugglefor recovery, that showed how unusual the emotion was with her. 

She submitted to be led into the house, and, evidently more in gratitudethan in any care for herself, washed and bound the injured place. Harriet then put before her fragments of her own frugal dinner, and whenshe had eaten of them, though sparingly, besought her, before resumingher road (which she showed her anxiety to do), to dry her clothes beforethe fire. Again, more in gratitude than with any evidence of concernin her own behalf, she sat down in front of it, and unbinding thehandkerchief about her head, and letting her thick wet hair fall downbelow her waist, sat drying it with the palms of her hands, and lookingat the blaze. 

'I daresay you are thinking, ' she said, lifting her head suddenly, 'thatI used to be handsome, once. I believe I was--I know I was--Look here!'She held up her hair roughly with both hands; seizing it as if she wouldhave torn it out; then, threw it down again, and flung it back as thoughit were a heap of serpents. 

'Are you a stranger in this place?' asked Harriet. 

'A stranger!' she returned, stopping between each short reply, andlooking at the fire. 'Yes. Ten or a dozen years a stranger. I have hadno almanack where I have been. Ten or a dozen years. I don't know thispart. It's much altered since I went away. '

'Have you been far?'

'Very far. Months upon months over the sea, and far away even then. I have been where convicts go, ' she added, looking full upon herentertainer. 'I have been one myself. '

'Heaven help you and forgive you!' was the gentle answer. 

'Ah! Heaven help me and forgive me!' she returned, nodding her head atthe fire. 'If man would help some of us a little more, God would forgiveus all the sooner perhaps. '

But she was softened by the earnest manner, and the cordial face so fullof mildness and so free from judgment, of her, and said, less hardily:

'We may be about the same age, you and me. If I am older, it is notabove a year or two. Oh think of that!'

She opened her arms, as though the exhibition of her outward form wouldshow the moral wretch she was; and letting them drop at her sides, hungdown her head. 

'There is nothing we may not hope to repair; it is never too late toamend, ' said Harriet. 'You are penitent?'

'No, ' she answered. 'I am not! I can't be. I am no such thing. Whyshould I be penitent, and all the world go free? They talk to me of mypenitence. Who's penitent for the wrongs that have been done to me?'

She rose up, bound her handkerchief about her head, and turned to moveaway. 

'Where are you going?' said Harriet. 

'Yonder, ' she answered, pointing with her hand. 'To London. '

'Have you any home to go to?'

'I think I have a mother. She's as much a mother, as her dwelling is ahome, ' she answered with a bitter laugh. 

'Take this, ' cried Harriet, putting money in her hand. 'Try to do well. It is very little, but for one day it may keep you from harm. '

'Are you married?' said the other, faintly, as she took it. 

'No. I live here with my brother. We have not much to spare, or I wouldgive you more. '

'Will you let me kiss you?'

Seeing no scorn or repugnance in her face, the object of her charitybent over her as she asked the question, and pressed her lips againsther cheek. Once more she caught her arm, and covered her eyes with it;and then was gone. 

Gone into the deepening night, and howling wind, and pelting rain;urging her way on towards the mist-enshrouded city where the blurredlights gleamed; and with her black hair, and disordered head-gear, fluttering round her reckless face. 

CHAPTER 34. Another Mother and Daughter

In an ugly and dark room, an old woman, ugly and dark too, sat listeningto the wind and rain, and crouching over a meagre fire. More constantto the last-named occupation than the first, she never changed herattitude, unless, when any stray drops of rain fell hissing on thesmouldering embers, to raise her head with an awakened attention tothe whistling and pattering outside, and gradually to let it fall againlower and lower and lower as she sunk into a brooding state of thought, in which the noises of the night were as indistinctly regarded as isthe monotonous rolling of a sea by one who sits in contemplation on itsshore. 

There was no light in the room save that which the fire afforded. Glaring sullenly from time to time like the eye of a fierce beast halfasleep, it revealed no objects that needed to be jealous of a betterdisplay. A heap of rags, a heap of bones, a wretched bed, two or threemutilated chairs or stools, the black walls and blacker ceiling, wereall its winking brightness shone upon. As the old woman, with a giganticand distorted image of herself thrown half upon the wall behind her, half upon the roof above, sat bending over the few loose bricks withinwhich it was pent, on the damp hearth of the chimney--for there was nostove--she looked as if she were watching at some witch's altar for afavourable token; and but that the movement of her chattering jaws andtrembling chin was too frequent and too fast for the slow flickering ofthe fire, it would have seemed an illusion wrought by the light, asit came and went, upon a face as motionless as the form to which itbelonged. 

If Florence could have stood within the room and looked upon theoriginal of the shadow thrown upon the wall and roof as it cowered thusover the fire, a glance might have sufficed to recall the figure ofGood Mrs Brown; notwithstanding that her childish recollection of thatterrible old woman was as grotesque and exaggerated a presentment of thetruth, perhaps, as the shadow on the wall. But Florence was not thereto look on; and Good Mrs Brown remained unrecognised, and sat staring ather fire, unobserved. 

Attracted by a louder sputtering than usual, as the rain came hissingdown the chimney in a little stream, the old woman raised her head, impatiently, to listen afresh. And this time she did not drop it again;for there was a hand upon the door, and a footstep in the room. 

'Who's that?' she said, looking over her shoulder. 

'One who brings you news, was the answer, in a woman's voice. 

'News? Where from?'

'From abroad. '

'From beyond seas?' cried the old woman, starting up. 

'Ay, from beyond seas. '

The old woman raked the fire together, hurriedly, and going close toher visitor who had entered, and shut the door, and who now stood in themiddle of the room, put her hand upon the drenched cloak, and turned theunresisting figure, so as to have it in the full light of the fire. Shedid not find what she had expected, whatever that might be; for she letthe cloak go again, and uttered a querulous cry of disappointment andmisery. 

'What is the matter?' asked her visitor. 

'Oho! Oho!' cried the old woman, turning her face upward, with aterrible howl. 

'What is the matter?' asked the visitor again. 

'It's not my gal!' cried the old woman, tossing up her arms, andclasping her hands above her head. 'Where's my Alice? Where's myhandsome daughter? They've been the death of her!'

'They've not been the death of her yet, if your name's Marwood, ' saidthe visitor. 

'Have you seen my gal, then?' cried the old woman. 'Has she wrote tome?'

'She said you couldn't read, ' returned the other. 

'No more I can!' exclaimed the old woman, wringing her hands. 

'Have you no light here?' said the other, looking round the room. 

The old woman, mumbling and shaking her head, and muttering to herselfabout her handsome daughter, brought a candle from a cupboard in thecorner, and thrusting it into the fire with a trembling hand, lighted itwith some difficulty and set it on the table. Its dirty wick burnt dimlyat first, being choked in its own grease; and when the bleared eyes andfailing sight of the old woman could distinguish anything by its light, her visitor was sitting with her arms folded, her eyes turned downwards, and a handkerchief she had worn upon her head lying on the table by herside. 

'She sent to me by word of mouth then, my gal, Alice?' mumbled the oldwoman, after waiting for some moments. 'What did she say?'

'Look, ' returned the visitor. 

The old woman repeated the word in a scared uncertain way; and, shadingher eyes, looked at the speaker, round the room, and at the speaker onceagain. 

'Alice said look again, mother;' and the speaker fixed her eyes uponher. 

Again the old woman looked round the room, and at her visitor, and roundthe room once more. Hastily seizing the candle, and rising from herseat, she held it to the visitor's face, uttered a loud cry, set downthe light, and fell upon her neck!

'It's my gal! It's my Alice! It's my handsome daughter, living andcome back!' screamed the old woman, rocking herself to and fro upon thebreast that coldly suffered her embrace. 'It's my gal! It's my Alice!It's my handsome daughter, living and come back!' she screamed again, dropping on the floor before her, clasping her knees, laying her headagainst them, and still rocking herself to and fro with every franticdemonstration of which her vitality was capable. 

'Yes, mother, ' returned Alice, stooping forward for a moment and kissingher, but endeavouring, even in the act, to disengage herself from herembrace. 'I am here, at last. Let go, mother; let go. Get up, and sit inyour chair. What good does this do?'

'She's come back harder than she went!' cried the mother, looking up inher face, and still holding to her knees. 'She don't care for me! afterall these years, and all the wretched life I've led!'

'Why> mother!' said Alice, shaking her ragged skirts to detach the oldwoman from them: 'there are two sides to that. There have been yearsfor me as well as you, and there has been wretchedness for me as well asyou. Get up, get up!'

Her mother rose, and cried, and wrung her hands, and stood at a littledistance gazing on her. Then she took the candle again, and going roundher, surveyed her from head to foot, making a low moaning all the time. Then she put the candle down, resumed her chair, and beating her handstogether to a kind of weary tune, and rolling herself from side to side, continued moaning and wailing to herself. 

Alice got up, took off her wet cloak, and laid it aside. That done, shesat down as before, and with her arms folded, and her eyes gazing at thefire, remained silently listening with a contemptuous face to her oldmother's inarticulate complainings. 

'Did you expect to see me return as youthful as I went away, mother?'she said at length, turning her eyes upon the old woman. 'Did you thinka foreign life, like mine, was good for good looks? One would believeso, to hear you!'

'It ain't that!' cried the mother. 'She knows it!'

'What is it then?' returned the daughter. 'It had best be something thatdon't last, mother, or my way out is easier than my way in. 

'Hear that!' exclaimed the mother. 'After all these years she threatensto desert me in the moment of her coming back again!'

'I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for meas well as you, ' said Alice. 'Come back harder? Of course I have comeback harder. What else did you expect?'

'Harder to me! To her own dear mother!' cried the old woman

'I don't know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn't, 'she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, andcompressed lips as if she were bent on excluding, by force, everysofter feeling from her breast. 'Listen, mother, to a word or two. Ifwe understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps. I went away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutifulenough, and have come back no better, you may swear. But have you beenvery dutiful to me?'

'I!' cried the old woman. 'To my gal! A mother dutiful to her ownchild!'

'It sounds unnatural, don't it?' returned the daughter, looking coldlyon her with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; 'but I havethought of it sometimes, in the course of my lone years, till I have gotused to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it hasalways been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then--topass away the time--whether no one ever owed any duty to me. 

Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, butwhether angrily or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physicalinfirmity, did not appear. 

'There was a child called Alice Marwood, ' said the daughter, with alaugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself, 'born, among poverty and neglect, and nursed in it. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her. '

'Nobody!' echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking herbreast. 

'The only care she knew, ' returned the daughter, 'was to be beaten, andstinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better withoutthat. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd oflittle wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of thischildhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been huntedand worried to death for ugliness. '

'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother. 

'I am going on, ' returned the daughter. 'There was a girl called AliceMarwood. She was handsome. She was taught too late, and taught allwrong. She was too well cared for, too well trained, too well helped on, too much looked after. You were very fond of her--you were better offthen. What came to that girl comes to thousands every year. It was onlyruin, and she was born to it. '

'After all these years!' whined the old woman. 'My gal begins withthis. '

'She'll soon have ended, ' said the daughter. 'There was a criminalcalled Alice Marwood--a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. Andshe was tried, and she was sentenced. And lord, how the gentlemen in theCourt talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and onher having perverted the gifts of nature--as if he didn't know betterthan anybody there, that they had been made curses to her!--and how hepreached about the strong arm of the Law--so very strong to save her, when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!--and how solemn andreligious it all was! I have thought of that, many times since, to besure!'

She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone thatmade the howl of the old woman musical. 

'So Alice Marwood was transported, mother, ' she pursued, 'and was sentto learn her duty, where there was twenty times less duty, and morewickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is comeback a woman. Such a woman as she ought to be, after all this. In goodtime, there will be more solemnity, and more fine talk, and more strongarm, most likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemenneedn't be afraid of being thrown out of work. There's crowds of littlewretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in, that'll keep them to it till they've made their fortunes. '

The old woman leaned her elbows on the table, and resting her face uponher two hands, made a show of being in great distress--or really was, perhaps. 

'There! I have done, mother, ' said the daughter, with a motion of herhead, as if in dismissal of the subject. 'I have said enough. Don't letyou and I talk of being dutiful, whatever we do. Your childhood was likemine, I suppose. So much the worse for both of us. I don't want to blameyou, or to defend myself; why should I? That's all over long ago. ButI am a woman--not a girl, now--and you and I needn't make a show of ourhistory, like the gentlemen in the Court. We know all about it, wellenough. '

Lost and degraded as she was, there was a beauty in her, both offace and form, which, even in its worst expression, could not but berecognised as such by anyone regarding her with the least attention. Asshe subsided into silence, and her face which had been harshly agitated, quieted down; while her dark eyes, fixed upon the fire, exchanged thereckless light that had animated them, for one that was softened bysomething like sorrow; there shone through all her wayworn misery andfatigue, a ray of the departed radiance of the fallen angel. '

Her mother, after watching her for some time without speaking, venturedto steal her withered hand a little nearer to her across the table; andfinding that she permitted this, to touch her face, and smooth her hair. With the feeling, as it seemed, that the old woman was at least sincerein this show of interest, Alice made no movement to check her; so, advancing by degrees, she bound up her daughter's hair afresh, took offher wet shoes, if they deserved the name, spread something dry upon hershoulders, and hovered humbly about her, muttering to herself, as sherecognised her old features and expression more and more. 

'You are very poor, mother, I see, ' said Alice, looking round, when shehad sat thus for some time. 

'Bitter poor, my deary, ' replied the old woman. 

She admired her daughter, and was afraid of her. Perhaps her admiration, such as it was, had originated long ago, when she first found anythingthat was beautiful appearing in the midst of the squalid fight ofher existence. Perhaps her fear was referable, in some sort, to theretrospect she had so lately heard. Be this as it might, she stood, submissively and deferentially, before her child, and inclined her head, as if in a pitiful entreaty to be spared any further reproach. 

'How have you lived?'

'By begging, my deary. 

'And pilfering, mother?'

'Sometimes, Ally--in a very small way. I am old and timid. I have takentrifles from children now and then, my deary, but not often. I havetramped about the country, pet, and I know what I know. I have watched. '

'Watched?' returned the daughter, looking at her. 

'I have hung about a family, my deary, ' said the mother, even morehumbly and submissively than before. 

'What family?'

'Hush, darling. Don't be angry with me. I did it for the love of you. Inmemory of my poor gal beyond seas. ' She put out her hand deprecatingly, and drawing it back again, laid it on her lips. 

'Years ago, my deary, ' she pursued, glancing timidly at the attentiveand stem face opposed to her, 'I came across his little child, bychance. '

'Whose child?'

'Not his, Alice deary; don't look at me like that; not his. How could itbe his? You know he has none. '

'Whose then?' returned the daughter. 'You said his. '

'Hush, Ally; you frighten me, deary. Mr Dombey's--only Mr Dombey's. Since then, darling, I have seen them often. I have seen him. '

In uttering this last word, the old woman shrunk and recoiled, as ifwith sudden fear that her daughter would strike her. But though thedaughter's face was fixed upon her, and expressed the most vehementpassion, she remained still: except that she clenched her arms tighterand tighter within each other, on her bosom, as if to restrain themby that means from doing an injury to herself, or someone else, in theblind fury of the wrath that suddenly possessed her. 

'Little he thought who I was!' said the old woman, shaking her clenchedhand. 

'And little he cared!' muttered her daughter, between her teeth. 

'But there we were, said the old woman, 'face to face. I spoke to him, and he spoke to me. I sat and watched him as he went away down a longgrove of trees: and at every step he took, I cursed him soul and body. '

'He will thrive in spite of that, ' returned the daughter disdainfully. 

'Ay, he is thriving, ' said the mother. 

She held her peace; for the face and form before her were unshapedby rage. It seemed as if the bosom would burst with the emotions thatstrove within it. The effort that constrained and held it pent up, wasno less formidable than the rage itself: no less bespeaking the violentand dangerous character of the woman who made it. But it succeeded, andshe asked, after a silence:

'Is he married?'

'No, deary, ' said the mother. 

'Going to be?'

'Not that I know of, deary. But his master and friend is married. Oh, wemay give him joy! We may give 'em all joy!' cried the old woman, huggingherself with her lean arms in her exultation. 'Nothing but joy to uswill come of that marriage. Mind me!'

The daughter looked at her for an explanation. 

'But you are wet and tired; hungry and thirsty, ' said the old woman, hobbling to the cupboard; 'and there's little here, and little'--divingdown into her pocket, and jingling a few half--pence on thetable--'little here. Have you any money, Alice, deary?'

The covetous, sharp, eager face, with which she 'asked the question andlooked on, as her daughter took out of her bosom the little gift she hadso lately received, told almost as much of the history of this parentand child as the child herself had told in words. 

'Is that all?' said the mother. 

'I have no more. I should not have this, but for charity. '

'But for charity, eh, deary?' said the old woman, bending greedily overthe table to look at the money, which she appeared distrustful of herdaughter's still retaining in her hand, and gazing on. 'Humph! six andsix is twelve, and six eighteen--so--we must make the most of it. I'llgo buy something to eat and drink. '

With greater alacrity than might have been expected in one of herappearance--for age and misery seemed to have made her as decrepit asugly--she began to occupy her trembling hands in tying an old bonnet onher head, and folding a torn shawl about herself: still eyeing the moneyin her daughter's hand, with the same sharp desire. 

'What joy is to come to us of this marriage, mother?' asked thedaughter. 'You have not told me that. '

'The joy, ' she replied, attiring herself, with fumbling fingers, 'of nolove at all, and much pride and hate, my deary. The joy of confusion andstrife among 'em, proud as they are, and of danger--danger, Alice!'

'What danger?'

'I have seen what I have seen. I know what I know!' chuckled the mother. 'Let some look to it. Let some be upon their guard. My gal may keep goodcompany yet!'

Then, seeing that in the wondering earnestness with which her daughterregarded her, her hand involuntarily closed upon the money, the oldwoman made more speed to secure it, and hurriedly added, 'but I'll gobuy something; I'll go buy something. '

As she stood with her hand stretched out before her daughter, herdaughter, glancing again at the money, put it to her lips before partingwith it. 

'What, Ally! Do you kiss it?' chuckled the old woman. 'That's like me--Ioften do. Oh, it's so good to us!' squeezing her own tarnished halfpenceup to her bag of a throat, 'so good to us in everything but not comingin heaps!'

'I kiss it, mother, ' said the daughter, 'or I did then--I don't knowthat I ever did before--for the giver's sake. '

'The giver, eh, deary?' retorted the old woman, whose dimmed eyesglistened as she took it. 'Ay! I'll kiss it for the giver's sake, too, when the giver can make it go farther. But I'll go spend it, deary. I'llbe back directly. '

'You seem to say you know a great deal, mother, ' said the daughter, following her to the door with her eyes. 'You have grown very wise sincewe parted. '

'Know!' croaked the old woman, coming back a step or two, 'I know morethan you think I know more than he thinks, deary, as I'll tell you byand bye. I know all. '

The daughter smiled incredulously. 

'I know of his brother, Alice, ' said the old woman, stretching out herneck with a leer of malice absolutely frightful, 'who might have beenwhere you have been--for stealing money--and who lives with his sister, over yonder, by the north road out of London. '

'Where?'

'By the north road out of London, deary. You shall see the house if youlike. It ain't much to boast of, genteel as his own is. No, no, no, 'cried the old woman, shaking her head and laughing; for her daughter hadstarted up, 'not now; it's too far off; it's by the milestone, where thestones are heaped;--to-morrow, deary, if it's fine, and you are in thehumour. But I'll go spend--'

'Stop!' and the daughter flung herself upon her, with her former passionraging like a fire. 'The sister is a fair-faced Devil, with brown hair?'

The old woman, amazed and terrified, nodded her head. 

'I see the shadow of him in her face! It's a red house standing byitself. Before the door there is a small green porch. '

Again the old woman nodded. 

'In which I sat to-day! Give me back the money. '

'Alice! Deary!'

'Give me back the money, or you'll be hurt. '

She forced it from the old woman's hand as she spoke, and utterlyindifferent to her complainings and entreaties, threw on the garmentsshe had taken off, and hurried out, with headlong speed. 

The mother followed, limping after her as she could, and expostulatingwith no more effect upon her than upon the wind and rain and darknessthat encompassed them. Obdurate and fierce in her own purpose, andindifferent to all besides, the daughter defied the weather and thedistance, as if she had known no travel or fatigue, and made for thehouse where she had been relieved. After some quarter of an hour'swalking, the old woman, spent and out of breath, ventured to hold byher skirts; but she ventured no more, and they travelled on in silencethrough the wet and gloom. If the mother now and then uttered a word ofcomplaint, she stifled it lest her daughter should break away from herand leave her behind; and the daughter was dumb. 

It was within an hour or so of midnight, when they left the regularstreets behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutralground where the house was situated. The town lay in the distance, luridand lowering; the bleak wind howled over the open space; all around wasblack, wild, desolate. 

'This is a fit place for me!' said the daughter, stopping to look back. 'I thought so, when I was here before, to-day. '

'Alice, my deary, ' cried the mother, pulling her gently by the skirt. 'Alice!'

'What now, mother?'

'Don't give the money back, my darling; please don't. We can't affordit. We want supper, deary. Money is money, whoever gives it. Say whatyou will, but keep the money. '

'See there!' was all the daughter's answer. 'That is the house I mean. Is that it?'

The old woman nodded in the affirmative; and a few more paces broughtthem to the threshold. There was the light of fire and candle in theroom where Alice had sat to dry her clothes; and on her knocking at thedoor, John Carker appeared from that room. 

He was surprised to see such visitors at such an hour, and asked Alicewhat she wanted. 

'I want your sister, ' she said. 'The woman who gave me money to-day. '

At the sound of her raised voice, Harriet came out. 

'Oh!' said Alice. 'You are here! Do you remember me?'

'Yes, ' she answered, wondering. 

The face that had humbled itself before her, looked on her now with suchinvincible hatred and defiance; and the hand that had gently touchedher arm, was clenched with such a show of evil purpose, as if it wouldgladly strangle her; that she drew close to her brother for protection. 

'That I could speak with you, and not know you! That I could come nearyou, and not feel what blood was running in your veins, by the tinglingof my own!' said Alice, with a menacing gesture. 

'What do you mean? What have I done?'

'Done!' returned the other. 'You have sat me by your fire; you havegiven me food and money; you have bestowed your compassion on me! You!whose name I spit upon!'

The old woman, with a malevolence that made her ugliness quite awful, shook her withered hand at the brother and sister in confirmation of herdaughter, but plucked her by the skirts again, nevertheless, imploringher to keep the money. 

'If I dropped a tear upon your hand, may it wither it up! If I spoke agentle word in your hearing, may it deafen you! If I touched you with mylips, may the touch be poison to you! A curse upon this roof that gaveme shelter! Sorrow and shame upon your head! Ruin upon all belonging toyou!'

As she said the words, she threw the money down upon the ground, andspurned it with her foot. 

'I tread it in the dust: I wouldn't take it if it paved my way toHeaven! I would the bleeding foot that brought me here to-day, hadrotted off, before it led me to your house!'

Harriet, pale and trembling, restrained her brother, and suffered her togo on uninterrupted. 

'It was well that I should be pitied and forgiven by you, or anyone ofyour name, in the first hour of my return! It was well that you shouldact the kind good lady to me! I'll thank you when I die; I'll pray foryou, and all your race, you may be sure!'

With a fierce action of her hand, as if she sprinkled hatred onthe ground, and with it devoted those who were standing there todestruction, she looked up once at the black sky, and strode out intothe wild night. 

The mother, who had plucked at her skirts again and again in vain, andhad eyed the money lying on the threshold with an absorbing greed thatseemed to concentrate her faculties upon it, would have prowled about, until the house was dark, and then groped in the mire on the chance ofrepossessing herself of it. But the daughter drew her away, and theyset forth, straight, on their return to their dwelling; the old womanwhimpering and bemoaning their loss upon the road, and fretfullybewailing, as openly as she dared, the undutiful conduct of her handsomegirl in depriving her of a supper, on the very first night of theirreunion. 

Supperless to bed she went, saving for a few coarse fragments; andthose she sat mumbling and munching over a scrap of fire, long after herundutiful daughter lay asleep. 

Were this miserable mother, and this miserable daughter, only thereduction to their lowest grade, of certain social vices sometimesprevailing higher up? In this round world of many circles withincircles, do we make a weary journey from the high grade to the low, tofind at last that they lie close together, that the two extremes touch, and that our journey's end is but our starting-place? Allowing for greatdifference of stuff and texture, was the pattern of this woof repeatedamong gentle blood at all?

Say, Edith Dombey! And Cleopatra, best of mothers, let us have yourtestimony!

CHAPTER 35. The Happy Pair

The dark blot on the street is gone. Mr Dombey's mansion, if it be a gapamong the other houses any longer, is only so because it is not to bevied with in its brightness, and haughtily casts them off. The sayingis, that home is home, be it never so homely. If it hold good in theopposite contingency, and home is home be it never so stately, what analtar to the Household Gods is raised up here!

Lights are sparkling in the windows this evening, and the ruddy glowof fires is warm and bright upon the hangings and soft carpets, and thedinner waits to be served, and the dinner-table is handsomely set forth, though only for four persons, and the side board is cumbrous with plate. It is the first time that the house has been arranged for occupationsince its late changes, and the happy pair are looked for every minute. 

Only second to the wedding morning, in the interest and expectation itengenders among the household, is this evening of the coming home. Mrs Perch is in the kitchen taking tea; and has made the tour ofthe establishment, and priced the silks and damasks by the yard, andexhausted every interjection in the dictionary and out of it expressiveof admiration and wonder. The upholsterer's foreman, who has lefthis hat, with a pocket-handkerchief in it, both smelling stronglyof varnish, under a chair in the hall, lurks about the house, gazingupwards at the cornices, and downward at the carpets, and occasionally, in a silent transport of enjoyment, taking a rule out of his pocket, andskirmishingly measuring expensive objects, with unutterable feelings. Cook is in high spirits, and says give her a place where there's plentyof company (as she'll bet you sixpence there will be now), for she isof a lively disposition, and she always was from a child, and she don'tmind who knows it; which sentiment elicits from the breast of Mrs Percha responsive murmur of support and approbation. All the housemaid hopesis, happiness for 'em--but marriage is a lottery, and the more shethinks about it, the more she feels the independence and the safety ofa single life. Mr Towlinson is saturnine and grim' and says that's hisopinion too, and give him War besides, and down with the French--forthis young man has a general impression that every foreigner is aFrenchman, and must be by the laws of nature. 

At each new sound of wheels, they all stop> whatever they are saying, and listen; and more than once there is a general starting up and a cryof 'Here they are!' But here they are not yet; and Cook begins to mournover the dinner, which has been put back twice, and the upholsterer'sforeman still goes lurking about the rooms, undisturbed in his blissfulreverie!

Florence is ready to receive her father and her new Mama Whether theemotions that are throbbing in her breast originate In pleasure or inpain, she hardly knows. But the fluttering heart sends added colour toher cheeks, and brightness to her eyes; and they say downstairs, drawingtheir heads together--for they always speak softly when they speak ofher--how beautiful Miss Florence looks to-night, and what a sweet younglady she has grown, poor dear! A pause succeeds; and then Cook, feeling, as president, that her sentiments are waited for, wonders whether--andthere stops. The housemaid wonders too, and so does Mrs Perch, who hasthe happy social faculty of always wondering when other people wonder, without being at all particular what she wonders at. Mr Towlinson, whonow descries an opportunity of bringing down the spirits of the ladiesto his own level, says wait and see; he wishes some people were wellout of this. Cook leads a sigh then, and a murmur of 'Ah, it's astrange world, it is indeed!' and when it has gone round the table, addspersuasively, 'but Miss Florence can't well be the worse for any change, Tom. ' Mr Towlinson's rejoinder, pregnant with frightful meaning, is 'Oh, can't she though!' and sensible that a mere man can scarcely be moreprophetic, or improve upon that, he holds his peace. 

Mrs Skewton, prepared to greet her darling daughter and dear son-in-lawwith open arms, is appropriately attired for that purpose in a veryyouthful costume, with short sleeves. At present, however, her ripecharms are blooming in the shade of her own apartments, whence she hadnot emerged since she took possession of them a few hours ago, and whereshe is fast growing fretful, on account of the postponement of dinner. The maid who ought to be a skeleton, but is in truth a buxom damsel, is, on the other hand, In a most amiable state: considering her quarterlystipend much safer than heretofore, and foreseeing a great improvementin her board and lodging. 

Where are the happy pair, for whom this brave home is waiting? Dosteam, tide, wind, and horses, all abate their speed, to linger on suchhappiness? Does the swarm of loves and graces hovering about them retardtheir progress by its numbers? Are there so many flowers in theirhappy path, that they can scarcely move along, without entanglement inthornless roses, and sweetest briar?

They are here at last! The noise of wheels is heard, grows louder, anda carriage drives up to the door! A thundering knock from the obnoxiousforeigner anticipates the rush of Mr Towlinson and party to open it; andMr Dombey and his bride alight, and walk in arm in arm. 

'My sweetest Edith!' cries an agitated voice upon the stairs. 'Mydearest Dombey!' and the short sleeves wreath themselves about the happycouple in turn, and embrace them. 

Florence had come down to the hall too, but did not advance: reservingher timid welcome until these nearer and dearer transports shouldsubside. But the eyes of Edith sought her out, upon the threshold; anddismissing her sensitive parent with a slight kiss on the cheek, shehurried on to Florence and embraced her. 

'How do you do, Florence?' said Mr Dombey, putting out his hand. 

As Florence, trembling, raised it to her lips, she met his glance. Thelook was cold and distant enough, but it stirred her heart to think thatshe observed in it something more of interest than he had evershown before. It even expressed a kind of faint surprise, and not adisagreeable surprise, at sight of her. She dared not raise her eyesto his any more; but she felt that he looked at her once again, and notless favourably. Oh what a thrill of joy shot through her, awakenedby even this intangible and baseless confirmation of her hope that shewould learn to win him, through her new and beautiful Mama!

'You will not be long dressing, Mrs Dombey, I presume?' said Mr Dombey. 

'I shall be ready immediately. '

'Let them send up dinner in a quarter of an hour. '

With that Mr Dombey stalked away to his own dressing-room, and MrsDombey went upstairs to hers. Mrs Skewton and Florence repaired to thedrawing-room, where that excellent mother considered it incumbent on herto shed a few irrepressible tears, supposed to be forced from her by herdaughter's felicity; and which she was still drying, very gingerly, witha laced corner of her pocket-handkerchief, when her son-in-law appeared. 

'And how, my dearest Dombey, did you find that delightfullest of cities, Paris?' she asked, subduing her emotion. 

'It was cold, ' returned Mr Dombey. 

'Gay as ever, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'of course. 

'Not particularly. I thought it dull, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Fie, my dearest Dombey!' archly; 'dull!'

'It made that impression upon me, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, with gravepoliteness. 'I believe Mrs Dombey found it dull too. She mentioned onceor twice that she thought it so. '

'Why, you naughty girl!' cried Mrs Skewton, rallying her dear child, who now entered, 'what dreadfully heretical things have you been sayingabout Paris?'

Edith raised her eyebrows with an air of weariness; and passing thefolding-doors which were thrown open to display the suite of rooms intheir new and handsome garniture, and barely glancing at them as shepassed, sat down by Florence. 

'My dear Dombey, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'how charmingly these people havecarried out every idea that we hinted. They have made a perfect palaceof the house, positively. '

'It is handsome, ' said Mr Dombey, looking round. 'I directed that noexpense should be spared; and all that money could do, has been done, Ibelieve. '

'And what can it not do, dear Dombey?' observed Cleopatra. 

'It is powerful, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey. 

He looked in his solemn way towards his wife, but not a word said she. 

'I hope, Mrs Dombey, ' addressing her after a moment's silence, withespecial distinctness; 'that these alterations meet with your approval?'

'They are as handsome as they can be, ' she returned, with haughtycarelessness. 'They should be so, of' course. And I suppose they are. '

An expression of scorn was habitual to the proud face, and seemedinseparable from it; but the contempt with which it received any appealto admiration, respect, or consideration on the ground of his riches, no matter how slight or ordinary in itself, was a new and differentexpression, unequalled in intensity by any other of which it wascapable. Whether Mr Dombey, wrapped in his own greatness, was at allaware of this, or no, there had not been wanting opportunities alreadyfor his complete enlightenment; and at that moment it might have beeneffected by the one glance of the dark eye that lighted on him, after ithad rapidly and scornfully surveyed the theme of his self-glorification. He might have read in that one glance that nothing that his wealth coulddo, though it were increased ten thousand fold, could win him for itsown sake, one look of softened recognition from the defiant woman, linked to him, but arrayed with her whole soul against him. He mighthave read in that one glance that even for its sordid and mercenaryinfluence upon herself, she spurned it, while she claimed its utmostpower as her right, her bargain--as the base and worthless recompensefor which she had become his wife. He might have read in it that, everbaring her own head for the lightning of her own contempt and pride tostrike, the most innocent allusion to the power of his riches degradedher anew, sunk her deeper in her own respect, and made the blight andwaste within her more complete. 

But dinner was announced, and Mr Dombey led down Cleopatra; Edith andhis daughter following. Sweeping past the gold and silver demonstrationon the sideboard as if it were heaped-up dirt, and deigning to bestow nolook upon the elegancies around her, she took her place at his board forthe first time, and sat, like a statue, at the feast. 

Mr Dombey, being a good deal in the statue way himself, was well enoughpleased to see his handsome wife immovable and proud and cold. Herdeportment being always elegant and graceful, this as a generalbehaviour was agreeable and congenial to him. Presiding, therefore, withhis accustomed dignity, and not at all reflecting on his wife by anywarmth or hilarity of his own, he performed his share of the honours ofthe table with a cool satisfaction; and the installation dinner, thoughnot regarded downstairs as a great success, or very promising beginning, passed oil, above, in a sufficiently polite, genteel, and frosty manner. 

Soon after tea' Mrs Skewton, who affected to be quite overcome and wornOut by her emotions of happiness, arising in the contemplation of herdear child united to the man of her heart, but who, there is reason tosuppose, found this family party somewhat dull, as she yawned for onehour continually behind her fan, retired to bed. Edith, also, silentlywithdrew and came back' no more. Thus, it happened that Florence, whohad been upstairs to have some conversation with Diogenes, returning tothe drawing-room with her little work-basket, found no one there but herfather, who was walking to and fro, in dreary magnificence. 

'I beg your pardon. Shall I go away, Papa?' said Florence faintly, hesitating at the door. 

'No, ' returned Mr Dombey, looking round over his shoulder; you can comeand go here, Florence, as you please. This is not my private room. 

Florence entered, and sat down at a distant little table with her work:finding herself for the first time in her life--for the very first timewithin her memory from her infancy to that hour--alone with her father, as his companion. She, his natural companion, his only child, who in herlonely life and grief had known the suffering of a breaking heart; who, in her rejected love, had never breathed his name to God at night, butwith a tearful blessing, heavier on him than a curse; who had prayedto die young, so she might only die in his arms; who had, all through, repaid the agony of slight and coldness, and dislike, with patientunexacting love, excusing him, and pleading for him, like his betterangel!

She trembled, and her eyes were dim. His figure seemed to grow in heightand bulk before her as he paced the room: now it was all blurred andindistinct; now clear again, and plain; and now she seemed to think thatthis had happened, just the same, a multitude of years ago. She yearnedtowards him, and yet shrunk from his approach. Unnatural emotion in achild, innocent of wrong! Unnatural the hand that had directed the sharpplough, which furrowed up her gentle nature for the sowing of its seeds!

Bent upon not distressing or offending him by her distress, Florencecontrolled herself, and sat quietly at her work. After a few more turnsacross and across the room, he left off pacing it; and withdrawinginto a shadowy corner at some distance, where there was an easy chair, covered his head with a handkerchief, and composed himself to sleep. 

It was enough for Florence to sit there watching him; turning her eyestowards his chair from time to time; watching him with her thoughts, when her face was intent upon her work; and sorrowfully glad to thinkthat he could sleep, while she was there, and that he was not maderestless by her strange and long-forbidden presence. 

What would have been her thoughts if she had known that he was steadilyregarding her; that the veil upon his face, by accident or by design, was so adjusted that his sight was free, and that it never wanderedfrom her face face an instant That when she looked towards him' In theobscure dark corner, her speaking eyes, more earnest and patheticin their voiceless speech than all the orators of all the world, andimpeaching him more nearly in their mute address, met his, and did notknow it! That when she bent her head again over her work, he drewhis breath more easily, but with the same attention looked upon herstill--upon her white brow and her falling hair, and busy hands; andonce attracted, seemed to have no power to turn his eyes away!

And what were his thoughts meanwhile? With what emotions did he prolongthe attentive gaze covertly directed on his unknown daughter? Was therereproach to him in the quiet figure and the mild eyes? Had he begun toher disregarded claims and did they touch him home at last, and wakenhim to some sense of his cruel injustice?

There are yielding moments in the lives of the sternest and harshestmen, though such men often keep their secret well. The sight of her inher beauty, almost changed into a woman without his knowledge, may havestruck out some such moments even In his life of pride. Some passingthought that he had had a happy home within his reach-had had ahousehold spirit bending at has feet--had overlooked it in hisstiffnecked sullen arrogance, and wandered away and lost himself, mayhave engendered them. Some simple eloquence distinctly heard, thoughonly uttered in her eyes, unconscious that he read them as 'By thedeath-beds I have tended, by the childhood I have suffered, by ourmeeting in this dreary house at midnight, by the cry wrung from me inthe anguish of my heart, oh, father, turn to me and seek a refuge in mylove before it is too late!' may have arrested them. Meaner and lowerthoughts, as that his dead boy was now superseded by new ties, and hecould forgive the having been supplanted in his affection, may haveoccasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with allthe ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as helooked, he softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she becameblended with the child he had loved, and he could hardly separate thetwo. As he looked, he saw her for an instant by a clearer and a brighterlight, not bending over that child's pillow as his rival--monstrousthought--but as the spirit of his home, and in the action tendinghimself no less, as he sat once more with his bowed-down head upon hishand at the foot of the little bed. He felt inclined to speak to her, and call her to him. The words 'Florence, come here!' were rising to hislips--but slowly and with difficulty, they were so very strange--whenthey were checked and stifled by a footstep on the stair. 

It was his wife's. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe, and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was notthe change in her that startled him. 

'Florence, dear, ' she said, 'I have been looking for you everywhere. '

As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped and kissed herhand. He hardly knew his wife. She was so changed. It was not merelythat her smile was new to him--though that he had never seen; but hermanner, the tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, andconfidence, and winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was notEdith. 

'Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep. '

It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and heknew that face and manner very well. 

'I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence. '

Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!

'I left here early, ' pursued Edith, 'purposely to sit upstairs and talkwith you. But, going to your room, I found my bird was flown, and I havebeen waiting there ever since, expecting its return. 

If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more tenderlyand gently to her breast, than she did Florence. 

'Come, dear!'

'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes, ' hesitatedFlorence. 

'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith, looking full upon her. 

Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her work-basket Edithdrew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room likesisters. Her very step was different and new to him' Mr Dombey thought, as his eyes followed her to the door. 

He sat in his shadowy corner so long, that the church clocks struck thehour three times before he moved that night. All that while his face wasstill intent upon the spot where Florence had been seated. The room grewdarker, as the candles waned and went out; but a darkness gathered onhis face, exceeding any that the night could cast, and rested there. 

Florence and Edith, seated before the fire in the remote room wherelittle Paul had died, talked together for a long time. Diogenes, who wasof the party, had at first objected to the admission of Edith, and, even In deference to his mistress's wish, had only permitted it undergrowling protest. But, emerging by little and little from the ante-room, whither he had retired in dudgeon, he soon appeared to comprehend, thatwith the most amiable intentions he had made one of those mistakes whichwill occasionally arise in the best-regulated dogs' minds; as a friendlyapology for which he stuck himself up on end between the two, in a veryhot place in front of the fire, and sat panting at it, with his tongueout, and a most imbecile expression of countenance, listening to theconversation. 

It turned, at first, on Florence's books and favourite pursuits, and onthe manner in which she had beguiled the interval since the marriage. The last theme opened up to her a subject which lay very near her heart, and she said, with the tears starting to her eyes:

'Oh, Mama! I have had a great sorrow since that day. '

'You a great sorrow, Florence!'

'Yes. Poor Walter is drowned. '

Florence spread her hands before her face, and wept with all her heart. Many as were the secret tears which Walter's fate had cost her, theyflowed yet, when she thought or spoke of him. 

'But tell me, dear, ' said Edith, soothing her. 'Who was Walter? What washe to you?'

'He was my brother, Mama. After dear Paul died, we said we would bebrother and sister. I had known him a long time--from a little child. Heknew Paul, who liked him very much; Paul said, almost at the last, "Takecare of Walter, dear Papa! I was fond of him!" Walter had been broughtin to see him, and was there then--in this room. 

'And did he take care of Walter?' inquired Edith, sternly. 

'Papa? He appointed him to go abroad. He was drowned in shipwreck on hisvoyage, ' said Florence, sobbing. 

'Does he know that he is dead?' asked Edith. 

'I cannot tell, Mama. I have no means of knowing. Dear Mama!' criedFlorence, clinging to her as for help, and hiding her face upon herbosom, 'I know that you have seen--'

'Stay! Stop, Florence. ' Edith turned so pale, and spoke so earnestly, that Florence did not need her restraining hand upon her lips. 'Tell meall about Walter first; let me understand this history all through. '

Florence related it, and everything belonging to it, even down to thefriendship of Mr Toots, of whom she could hardly speak in her distresswithout a tearful smile, although she was deeply grateful to him. Whenshe had concluded her account, to the whole of which Edith, holding herhand, listened with close attention, and when a silence had succeeded, Edith said:

'What is it that you know I have seen, Florence?'

'That I am not, ' said Florence, with the same mute appeal, and the samequick concealment of her face as before, 'that I am not a favouritechild, Mama. I never have been. I have never known how to be. I havemissed the way, and had no one to show it to me. Oh, let me learn fromyou how to become dearer to Papa Teach me! you, who can so well!' andclinging closer to her, with some broken fervent words of gratitude andendearment, Florence, relieved of her sad secret, wept long, but not aspainfully as of yore, within the encircling arms of her new mother. 

Pale even to her lips, and with a face that strove for composure untilits proud beauty was as fixed as death, Edith looked down upon theweeping girl, and once kissed her. Then gradually disengaging herself, and putting Florence away, she said, stately, and quiet as a marbleimage, and in a voice that deepened as she spoke, but had no other tokenof emotion in it:

'Florence, you do not know me! Heaven forbid that you should learn fromme!'

'Not learn from you?' repeated Florence, in surprise. 

'That I should teach you how to love, or be loved, Heaven forbid!' saidEdith. 'If you could teach me, that were better; but it is too late. Youare dear to me, Florence. I did not think that anything could ever be sodear to me, as you are in this little time. '

She saw that Florence would have spoken here, so checked her with herhand, and went on. 

'I will be your true friend always. I will cherish you, as much, if notas well as anyone in this world could. You may trust in me--I know itand I say it, dear, --with the whole confidence even of your pure heart. There are hosts of women whom he might have married, better and truer inall other respects than I am, Florence; but there is not one who couldcome here, his wife, whose heart could beat with greater truth to youthan mine does. '

'I know it, dear Mama!' cried Florence. 'From that first most happy dayI have known it. '

'Most happy day!' Edith seemed to repeat the words involuntarily, andwent on. 'Though the merit is not mine, for I thought little of youuntil I saw you, let the undeserved reward be mine in your trust andlove. And in this--in this, Florence; on the first night of my taking upmy abode here; I am led on as it is best I should be, to say it for thefirst and last time. '

Florence, without knowing why, felt almost afraid to hear her proceed, but kept her eyes riveted on the beautiful face so fixed upon her own. 

'Never seek to find in me, ' said Edith, laying her hand upon her breast, 'what is not here. Never if you can help it, Florence, fall off from mebecause it is not here. Little by little you will know me better, andthe time will come when you will know me, as I know myself. Then, be aslenient to me as you can, and do not turn to bitterness the only sweetremembrance I shall have. 

The tears that were visible in her eyes as she kept them fixed onFlorence, showed that the composed face was but as a handsome mask; butshe preserved it, and continued:

'I have seen what you say, and know how true it is. But believe me--youwill soon, if you cannot now--there is no one on this earth lessqualified to set it right or help you, Florence, than I. Never ask mewhy, or speak to me about it or of my husband, more. There should be, sofar, a division, and a silence between us two, like the grave itself. '

She sat for some time silent; Florence scarcely venturing to breathemeanwhile, as dim and imperfect shadows of the truth, and all its dailyconsequences, chased each other through her terrified, yet incredulousimagination. Almost as soon as she had ceased to speak, Edith's facebegan to subside from its set composure to that quieter and morerelenting aspect, which it usually wore when she and Florence were alonetogether. She shaded it, after this change, with her hands; and when shearose, and with an affectionate embrace bade Florence good-night, wentquickly, and without looking round. 

But when Florence was in bed, and the room was dark except for the glowof the fire, Edith returned, and saying that she could not sleep, andthat her dressing-room was lonely, drew a chair upon the hearth, andwatched the embers as they died away. Florence watched them too fromher bed, until they, and the noble figure before them, crowned with itsflowing hair, and in its thoughtful eyes reflecting back their light, became confused and indistinct, and finally were lost in slumber. 

In her sleep, however, Florence could not lose an undefined impressionof what had so recently passed. It formed the subject of her dreams, andhaunted her; now in one shape, now in another; but always oppressively;and with a sense of fear. She dreamed of seeking her father inwildernesses, of following his track up fearful heights, and down intodeep mines and caverns; of being charged with something that wouldrelease him from extraordinary suffering--she knew not what, or why--yetnever being able to attain the goal and set him free. Then she saw himdead, upon that very bed, and in that very room, and knew that he hadnever loved her to the last, and fell upon his cold breast, passionatelyweeping. Then a prospect opened, and a river flowed, and a plaintivevoice she knew, cried, 'It is running on, Floy! It has never stopped!You are moving with it!' And she saw him at a distance stretching outhis arms towards her, while a figure such as Walter's used to be, stoodnear him, awfully serene and still. In every vision, Edith came andwent, sometimes to her joy, sometimes to her sorrow, until they werealone upon the brink of a dark grave, and Edith pointing down, shelooked and saw--what!--another Edith lying at the bottom. 

In the terror of this dream, she cried out and awoke, she thought. Asoft voice seemed to whisper in her ear, 'Florence, dear Florence, itis nothing but a dream!' and stretching out her arms, she returned thecaress of her new Mama, who then went out at the door in the light ofthe grey morning. In a moment, Florence sat up wondering whether thishad really taken place or not; but she was only certain that it was greymorning indeed, and that the blackened ashes of the fire were on thehearth, and that she was alone. 

So passed the night on which the happy pair came home. 

CHAPTER 36. Housewarming

Many succeeding days passed in like manner; except that there werenumerous visits received and paid, and that Mrs Skewton held littlelevees in her own apartments, at which Major Bagstock was a frequentattendant, and that Florence encountered no second look from her father, although she saw him every day. Nor had she much communication in wordswith her new Mama, who was imperious and proud to all the house buther--Florence could not but observe that--and who, although she alwayssent for her or went to her when she came home from visiting, and wouldalways go into her room at night, before retiring to rest, however latethe hour, and never lost an opportunity of being with her, was often hersilent and thoughtful companion for a long time together. 

Florence, who had hoped for so much from this marriage, could not helpsometimes comparing the bright house with the faded dreary place out ofwhich it had arisen, and wondering when, in any shape, it would begin tobe a home; for that it was no home then, for anyone, though everythingwent on luxuriously and regularly, she had always a secret misgiving. Many an hour of sorrowful reflection by day and night, and many a tearof blighted hope, Florence bestowed upon the assurance her new Mama hadgiven her so strongly, that there was no one on the earth more powerlessthan herself to teach her how to win her father's heart. And soonFlorence began to think--resolved to think would be the truerphrase--that as no one knew so well, how hopeless of being subdued orchanged her father's coldness to her was, so she had given her thiswarning, and forbidden the subject in very compassion. Unselfish here, as in her every act and fancy, Florence preferred to bear the pain ofthis new wound, rather than encourage any faint foreshadowings of thetruth as it concerned her father; tender of him, even in her wanderingthoughts. As for his home, she hoped it would become a better one, whenits state of novelty and transition should be over; and for herself, thought little and lamented less. 

If none of the new family were particularly at home in private, it wasresolved that Mrs Dombey at least should be at home in public, withoutdelay. A series of entertainments in celebration of the late nuptials, and in cultivation of society, were arranged, chiefly by Mr Dombey andMrs Skewton; and it was settled that the festive proceedings shouldcommence by Mrs Dombey's being at home upon a certain evening, and byMr and Mrs Dombey's requesting the honour of the company of a great manyincongruous people to dinner on the same day. 

Accordingly, Mr Dombey produced a list of sundry eastern magnates whowere to be bidden to this feast on his behalf; to which Mrs Skewton, acting for her dearest child, who was haughtily careless on the subject, subjoined a western list, comprising Cousin Feenix, not yet returnedto Baden-Baden, greatly to the detriment of his personal estate; and avariety of moths of various degrees and ages, who had, at various times, fluttered round the light of her fair daughter, or herself, without anylasting injury to their wings. Florence was enrolled as a member ofthe dinner-party, by Edith's command--elicited by a moment's doubt andhesitation on the part of Mrs Skewton; and Florence, with a wonderingheart, and with a quick instinctive sense of everything that grated onher father in the least, took her silent share in the proceedings of theday. 

The proceedings commenced by Mr Dombey, in a cravat of extraordinaryheight and stiffness, walking restlessly about the drawing-roomuntil the hour appointed for dinner; punctual to which, an East IndiaDirector, ' of immense wealth, in a waistcoat apparently constructed inserviceable deal by some plain carpenter, but really engendered in thetailor's art, and composed of the material called nankeen, arrived andwas received by Mr Dombey alone. The next stage of the proceedingswas Mr Dombey's sending his compliments to Mrs Dombey, with a correctstatement of the time; and the next, the East India Director's fallingprostrate, in a conversational point of view, and as Mr Dombey was notthe man to pick him up, staring at the fire until rescue appeared in theshape of Mrs Skewton; whom the director, as a pleasant start in life forthe evening, mistook for Mrs Dombey, and greeted with enthusiasm. 

The next arrival was a Bank Director, reputed to be able to buy upanything--human Nature generally, if he should take it in his head toinfluence the money market in that direction--but who was a wonderfullymodest-spoken man, almost boastfully so, and mentioned his 'littleplace' at Kingston-upon-Thames, and its just being barely equal togiving Dombey a bed and a chop, if he would come and visit it. Ladies, he said, it was not for a man who lived in his quiet way to take uponhimself to invite--but if Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Dombey, should ever find themselves in that direction, and would do him thehonour to look at a little bit of a shrubbery they would find there, anda poor little flower-bed or so, and a humble apology for a pinery, andtwo or three little attempts of that sort without any pretension, they would distinguish him very much. Carrying out his character, this gentleman was very plainly dressed, in a wisp of cambric for aneckcloth, big shoes, a coat that was too loose for him, and a pair oftrousers that were too spare; and mention being made of the Opera by MrsSkewton, he said he very seldom went there, for he couldn't afford it. It seemed greatly to delight and exhilarate him to say so: and he beamedon his audience afterwards, with his hands in his pockets, and excessivesatisfaction twinkling in his eyes. 

Now Mrs Dombey appeared, beautiful and proud, and as disdainful anddefiant of them all as if the bridal wreath upon her head had been agarland of steel spikes put on to force concession from her which shewould die sooner than yield. With her was Florence. When they enteredtogether, the shadow of the night of the return again darkened MrDombey's face. But unobserved; for Florence did not venture to raise hereyes to his, and Edith's indifference was too supreme to take the leastheed of him. 

The arrivals quickly became numerous. More directors, chairmen of publiccompanies, elderly ladies carrying burdens on their heads for fulldress, Cousin Feenix, Major Bagstock, friends of Mrs Skewton, with thesame bright bloom on their complexion, and very precious necklaces onvery withered necks. Among these, a young lady of sixty-five, remarkablycoolly dressed as to her back and shoulders, who spoke with an engaginglisp, and whose eyelids wouldn't keep up well, without a great deal oftrouble on her part, and whose manners had that indefinable charm whichso frequently attaches to the giddiness of youth. As the greater part ofMr Dombey's list were disposed to be taciturn, and the greater partof Mrs Dombey's list were disposed to be talkative, and there was nosympathy between them, Mrs Dombey's list, by magnetic agreement, enteredinto a bond of union against Mr Dombey's list, who, wandering aboutthe rooms in a desolate manner, or seeking refuge in corners, entangledthemselves with company coming in, and became barricaded behind sofas, and had doors opened smartly from without against their heads, andunderwent every sort of discomfiture. 

When dinner was announced, Mr Dombey took down an old lady like acrimson velvet pincushion stuffed with bank notes, who might have beenthe identical old lady of Threadneedle Street, she was so rich, andlooked so unaccommodating; Cousin Feenix took down Mrs Dombey; MajorBagstock took down Mrs Skewton; the young thing with the shoulders wasbestowed, as an extinguisher, upon the East India Director; and theremaining ladies were left on view in the drawing-room by the remaininggentlemen, until a forlorn hope volunteered to conduct them downstairs, and those brave spirits with their captives blocked up the dining-roomdoor, shutting out seven mild men in the stony-hearted hall. Whenall the rest were got in and were seated, one of these mild men stillappeared, in smiling confusion, totally destitute and unprovided for, and, escorted by the butler, made the complete circuit of the tabletwice before his chair could be found, which it finally was, on MrsDombey's left hand; after which the mild man never held up his headagain. 

Now, the spacious dining-room, with the company seated round theglittering table, busy with their glittering spoons, and knives andforks, and plates, might have been taken for a grown-up expositionof Tom Tiddler's ground, where children pick up gold and silver. ' MrDombey, as Tiddler, looked his character to admiration; and the longplateau of precious metal frosted, separating him from Mrs Dombey, whereon frosted Cupids offered scentless flowers to each of them, wasallegorical to see. 

Cousin Feenix was in great force, and looked astonishingly young. Buthe was sometimes thoughtless in his good humour--his memory occasionallywandering like his legs--and on this occasion caused the company toshudder. It happened thus. The young lady with the back, who regardedCousin Feenix with sentiments of tenderness, had entrapped the EastIndia Director into leading her to the chair next him; in return forwhich good office, she immediately abandoned the Director, who, beingshaded on the other side by a gloomy black velvet hat surmounting a bonyand speechless female with a fan, yielded to a depression of spirits andwithdrew into himself. Cousin Feenix and the young lady were very livelyand humorous, and the young lady laughed so much at something CousinFeenix related to her, that Major Bagstock begged leave to inquire onbehalf of Mrs Skewton (they were sitting opposite, a little lower down), whether that might not be considered public property. 

'Why, upon my life, ' said Cousin Feenix, 'there's nothing in it; itreally is not worth repeating: in point of fact, it's merely an anecdoteof Jack Adams. I dare say my friend Dombey;' for the general attentionwas concentrated on Cousin Feenix; 'may remember Jack Adams, Jack Adams, not Joe; that was his brother. Jack--little Jack--man with a cast inhis eye, and slight impediment in his speech--man who sat for somebody'sborough. We used to call him in my parliamentary time W. P. Adams, inconsequence of his being Warming Pan for a young fellow who was in hisminority. Perhaps my friend Dombey may have known the man?'

Mr Dombey, who was as likely to have known Guy Fawkes, replied inthe negative. But one of the seven mild men unexpectedly leaped intodistinction, by saying he had known him, and adding--'always woreHessian boots!'

'Exactly, ' said Cousin Feenix, bending forward to see the mild man, andsmile encouragement at him down the table. 'That was Jack. Joe wore--'

'Tops!' cried the mild man, rising in public estimation every Instant. 

'Of course, ' said Cousin Feenix, 'you were intimate with em?'

'I knew them both, ' said the mild man. With whom Mr Dombey immediatelytook wine. 

'Devilish good fellow, Jack!' said Cousin Feenix, again bending forward, and smiling. 

'Excellent, ' returned the mild man, becoming bold on his success. 'Oneof the best fellows I ever knew. '

'No doubt you have heard the story?' said Cousin Feenix. 

'I shall know, ' replied the bold mild man, 'when I have heard yourLudship tell it. ' With that, he leaned back in his chair and smiled atthe ceiling, as knowing it by heart, and being already tickled. 

'In point of fact, it's nothing of a story in itself, ' said CousinFeenix, addressing the table with a smile, and a gay shake of his head, 'and not worth a word of preface. But it's illustrative of theneatness of Jack's humour. The fact is, that Jack was invited down to amarriage--which I think took place in Berkshire?'

'Shropshire, ' said the bold mild man, finding himself appealed to. 

'Was it? Well! In point of fact it might have been in any shire, ' saidCousin Feenix. 'So my friend being invited down to this marriage inAnyshire, ' with a pleasant sense of the readiness of this joke, 'goes. Just as some of us, having had the honour of being invited to themarriage of my lovely and accomplished relative with my friend Dombey, didn't require to be asked twice, and were devilish glad to be presenton so interesting an occasion. --Goes--Jack goes. Now, this marriage was, in point of fact, the marriage of an uncommonly fine girl with a man forwhom she didn't care a button, but whom she accepted on account ofhis property, which was immense. When Jack returned to town, afterthe nuptials, a man he knew, meeting him in the lobby of the Houseof Commons, says, "Well, Jack, how are the ill-matched couple?""Ill-matched, " says Jack "Not at all. It's a perfectly and equaltransaction. She is regularly bought, and you may take your oath he isas regularly sold!"'

In his full enjoyment of this culminating point of his story, theshudder, which had gone all round the table like an electric spark, struck Cousin Feenix, and he stopped. Not a smile occasioned by the onlygeneral topic of conversation broached that day, appeared on any face. A profound silence ensued; and the wretched mild man, who had been asinnocent of any real foreknowledge of the story as the child unborn, hadthe exquisite misery of reading in every eye that he was regarded as theprime mover of the mischief. 

Mr Dombey's face was not a changeful one, and being cast in its mould ofstate that day, showed little other apprehension of the story, if any, than that which he expressed when he said solemnly, amidst the silence, that it was 'Very good. ' There was a rapid glance from Edith towardsFlorence, but otherwise she remained, externally, impassive andunconscious. 

Through the various stages of rich meats and wines, continual gold andsilver, dainties of earth, air, fire, and water, heaped-up fruits, andthat unnecessary article in Mr Dombey's banquets--ice--the dinner slowlymade its way: the later stages being achieved to the sonorous musicof incessant double knocks, announcing the arrival of visitors, whoseportion of the feast was limited to the smell thereof. When Mrs Dombeyrose, it was a sight to see her lord, with stiff throat and erect head, hold the door open for the withdrawal of the ladies; and to see how sheswept past him with his daughter on her arm. 

Mr Dombey was a grave sight, behind the decanters, in a state ofdignity; and the East India Director was a forlorn sight near theunoccupied end of the table, in a state of solitude; and the Major was amilitary sight, relating stories of the Duke of York to six of the sevenmild men (the ambitious one was utterly quenched); and the Bank Directorwas a lowly sight, making a plan of his little attempt at a pinery, with dessert-knives, for a group of admirers; and Cousin Feenix wasa thoughtful sight, as he smoothed his long wristbands and stealthilyadjusted his wig. But all these sights were of short duration, beingspeedily broken up by coffee, and the desertion of the room. 

There was a throng in the state-rooms upstairs, increasing every minute;but still Mr Dombey's list of visitors appeared to have some nativeimpossibility of amalgamation with Mrs Dombey's list, and no one couldhave doubted which was which. The single exception to this rule perhapswas Mr Carker, who now smiled among the company, and who, as he stood inthe circle that was gathered about Mrs Dombey--watchful of her, ofthem, his chief, Cleopatra and the Major, Florence, and everythingaround--appeared at ease with both divisions of guests, and not markedas exclusively belonging to either. 

Florence had a dread of him, which made his presence in the room anightmare to her. She could not avoid the recollection of it, for hereyes were drawn towards him every now and then, by an attraction ofdislike and distrust that she could not resist. Yet her thoughts werebusy with other things; for as she sat apart--not unadmired or unsought, but in the gentleness of her quiet spirit--she felt how little part herfather had in what was going on, and saw, with pain, how ill at ease heseemed to be, and how little regarded he was as he lingered aboutnear the door, for those visitors whom he wished to distinguish withparticular attention, and took them up to introduce them to his wife, who received them with proud coldness, but showed no interest or wish toplease, and never, after the bare ceremony of reception, in consultationof his wishes, or in welcome of his friends, opened her lips. It wasnot the less perplexing or painful to Florence, that she who acted thus, treated her so kindly and with such loving consideration, that it almostseemed an ungrateful return on her part even to know of what was passingbefore her eyes. 

Happy Florence would have been, might she have ventured to bear herfather company, by so much as a look; and happy Florence was, in littlesuspecting the main cause of his uneasiness. But afraid of seemingto know that he was placed at any did advantage, lest he should beresentful of that knowledge; and divided between her impulse towardshim, and her grateful affection for Edith; she scarcely dared to raiseher eyes towards either. Anxious and unhappy for them both, the thoughtstole on her through the crowd, that it might have been better for themif this noise of tongues and tread of feet had never come there, --ifthe old dulness and decay had never been replaced by novelty andsplendour, --if the neglected child had found no friend in Edith, but hadlived her solitary life, unpitied and forgotten. 

Mrs Chick had some such thoughts too, but they were not so quietlydeveloped in her mind. This good matron had been outraged in the firstinstance by not receiving an invitation to dinner. That blow partiallyrecovered, she had gone to a vast expense to make such a figure beforeMrs Dombey at home, as should dazzle the senses of that lady, and heapmortification, mountains high, on the head of Mrs Skewton. 

'But I am made, ' said Mrs Chick to Mr Chick, 'of no more account thanFlorence! Who takes the smallest notice of me? No one!'

'No one, my dear, ' assented Mr Chick, who was seated by the side of MrsChick against the wall, and could console himself, even there, by softlywhistling. 

'Does it at all appear as if I was wanted here?' exclaimed Mrs Chick, with flashing eyes. 

'No, my dear, I don't think it does, ' said Mr Chic

'Paul's mad!' said Mrs Chic

Mr Chick whistled. 

'Unless you are a monster, which I sometimes think you are, ' said MrsChick with candour, 'don't sit there humming tunes. How anyone with themost distant feelings of a man, can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, dressed as she is, going on like that, with Major Bagstock, for whom, among other precious things, we are indebted to your Lucretia Tox. '

'My Lucretia Tox, my dear!' said Mr Chick, astounded. 

'Yes, ' retorted Mrs Chick, with great severity, 'your Lucretia Tox--Isay how anybody can see that mother-in-law of Paul's, and that haughtywife of Paul's, and these indecent old frights with their backs andshoulders, and in short this at home generally, and hum--' on whichword Mrs Chick laid a scornful emphasis that made Mr Chick start, 'is, Ithank Heaven, a mystery to me!

Mr Chick screwed his mouth into a form irreconcilable with humming orwhistling, and looked very contemplative. 

'But I hope I know what is due to myself, ' said Mrs Chick, swellingwith indignation, 'though Paul has forgotten what is due to me. I am notgoing to sit here, a member of this family, to be taken no notice of. Iam not the dirt under Mrs Dombey's feet, yet--not quite yet, ' said MrsChick, as if she expected to become so, about the day after to-morrow. 'And I shall go. I will not say (whatever I may think) that this affairhas been got up solely to degrade and insult me. I shall merely go. Ishall not be missed!'

Mrs Chick rose erect with these words, and took the arm of Mr Chick, whoescorted her from the room, after half an hour's shady sojourn there. And it is due to her penetration to observe that she certainly was notmissed at all. 

But she was not the only indignant guest; for Mr Dombey's list (stillconstantly in difficulties) were, as a body, indignant with Mrs Dombey'slist, for looking at them through eyeglasses, and audibly wondering whoall those people were; while Mrs Dombey's list complained of weariness, and the young thing with the shoulders, deprived of the attentions ofthat gay youth Cousin Feenix (who went away from the dinner-table), confidentially alleged to thirty or forty friends that she was bored todeath. All the old ladies with the burdens on their heads, had greateror less cause of complaint against Mr Dombey; and the Directors andChairmen coincided in thinking that if Dombey must marry, he had betterhave married somebody nearer his own age, not quite so handsome, anda little better off. The general opinion among this class of gentlemenwas, that it was a weak thing in Dombey, and he'd live to repent it. Hardly anybody there, except the mild men, stayed, or went away, withoutconsidering himself or herself neglected and aggrieved by Mr Dombey orMrs Dombey; and the speechless female in the black velvet hat was foundto have been stricken mute, because the lady in the crimson velvethad been handed down before her. The nature even of the mild men gotcorrupted, either from their curdling it with too much lemonade, or fromthe general inoculation that prevailed; and they made sarcastic jokesto one another, and whispered disparagement on stairs and in bye-places. The general dissatisfaction and discomfort so diffused itself, that theassembled footmen in the hall were as well acquainted with it asthe company above. Nay, the very linkmen outside got hold of it, andcompared the party to a funeral out of mourning, with none of thecompany remembered in the will. At last, the guests were all gone, andthe linkmen too; and the street, crowded so long with carriages, wasclear; and the dying lights showed no one in the rooms, but Mr Dombeyand Mr Carker, who were talking together apart, and Mrs Dombey and hermother: the former seated on an ottoman; the latter reclining in theCleopatra attitude, awaiting the arrival of her maid. Mr Dombey havingfinished his communication to Carker, the latter advanced obsequiouslyto take leave. 

'I trust, ' he said, 'that the fatigues of this delightful evening willnot inconvenience Mrs Dombey to-morrow. '

'Mrs Dombey, ' said Mr Dombey, advancing, 'has sufficiently sparedherself fatigue, to relieve you from any anxiety of that kind. I regretto say, Mrs Dombey, that I could have wished you had fatigued yourself alittle more on this occasion. 

She looked at him with a supercilious glance, that it seemed not worthher while to protract, and turned away her eyes without speaking. 

'I am sorry, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, 'that you should not have thoughtit your duty--

She looked at him again. 

'Your duty, Madam, ' pursued Mr Dombey, 'to have received my friends witha little more deference. Some of those whom you have been pleasedto slight to-night in a very marked manner, Mrs Dombey, confer adistinction upon you, I must tell you, in any visit they pay you. 

'Do you know that there is someone here?' she returned, now looking athim steadily. 

'No! Carker! I beg that you do not. I insist that you do not, ' cried MrDombey, stopping that noiseless gentleman in his withdrawal. 'Mr Carker, Madam, as you know, possesses my confidence. He is as well acquaintedas myself with the subject on which I speak. I beg to tell you, for yourinformation, Mrs Dombey, that I consider these wealthy and importantpersons confer a distinction upon me:' and Mr Dombey drew himself up, ashaving now rendered them of the highest possible importance. 

'I ask you, ' she repeated, bending her disdainful, steady gaze upon him, 'do you know that there is someone here, Sir?'

'I must entreat, ' said Mr Carker, stepping forward, 'I must beg, I mustdemand, to be released. Slight and unimportant as this difference is--'

Mrs Skewton, who had been intent upon her daughter's face, took him uphere. 

'My sweetest Edith, ' she said, 'and my dearest Dombey; our excellentfriend Mr Carker, for so I am sure I ought to mention him--'

Mr Carker murmured, 'Too much honour. '

'--has used the very words that were in my mind, and that I havebeen dying, these ages, for an opportunity of introducing. Slight andunimportant! My sweetest Edith, and my dearest Dombey, do we not knowthat any difference between you two--No, Flowers; not now. 

Flowers was the maid, who, finding gentlemen present, retreated withprecipitation. 

'That any difference between you two, ' resumed Mrs Skewton, 'withthe Heart you possess in common, and the excessively charming bond offeeling that there is between you, must be slight and unimportant? Whatwords could better define the fact? None. Therefore I am glad to takethis slight occasion--this trifling occasion, that is so repletewith Nature, and your individual characters, and all that--so trulycalculated to bring the tears into a parent's eyes--to say that I attachno importance to them in the least, except as developing these minorelements of Soul; and that, unlike most Mamas-in-law (that odiousphrase, dear Dombey!) as they have been represented to me to exist inthis I fear too artificial world, I never shall attempt to interposebetween you, at such a time, and never can much regret, after all, suchlittle flashes of the torch of What's-his-name--not Cupid, but the otherdelightful creature. 

There was a sharpness in the good mother's glance at both herchildren as she spoke, that may have been expressive of a direct andwell-considered purpose hidden between these rambling words. Thatpurpose, providently to detach herself in the beginning from all theclankings of their chain that were to come, and to shelter herself withthe fiction of her innocent belief in their mutual affection, and theiradaptation to each other. 

'I have pointed out to Mrs Dombey, ' said Mr Dombey, in his most statelymanner, 'that in her conduct thus early in our married life, to which Iobject, and which, I request, may be corrected. Carker, ' with a nod ofdismissal, 'good-night to you!'

Mr Carker bowed to the imperious form of the Bride, whose sparkling eyewas fixed upon her husband; and stopping at Cleopatra's couch on hisway out, raised to his lips the hand she graciously extended to him, inlowly and admiring homage. 

If his handsome wife had reproached him, or even changed countenance, or broken the silence in which she remained, by one word, now that theywere alone (for Cleopatra made off with all speed), Mr Dombey would havebeen equal to some assertion of his case against her. But the intense, unutterable, withering scorn, with which, after looking upon him, shedropped her eyes, as if he were too worthless and indifferent to her tobe challenged with a syllable--the ineffable disdain and haughtinessin which she sat before him--the cold inflexible resolve with which herevery feature seemed to bear him down, and put him by--these, he hadno resource against; and he left her, with her whole overbearing beautyconcentrated on despising him. 

Was he coward enough to watch her, an hour afterwards, on the old wellstaircase, where he had once seen Florence in the moonlight, toiling upwith Paul? Or was he in the dark by accident, when, looking up, he sawher coming, with a light, from the room where Florence lay, and markedagain the face so changed, which he could not subdue?

But it could never alter as his own did. It never, in its uttermostpride and passion, knew the shadow that had fallen on his, in the darkcorner, on the night of the return; and often since; and which deepenedon it now, as he looked up. 

CHAPTER 37. More Warnings than One

Florence, Edith, and Mrs Skewton were together next day, and thecarriage was waiting at the door to take them out. For Cleopatra hadher galley again now, and Withers, no longer the-wan, stood upright ina pigeon-breasted jacket and military trousers, behind her wheel-lesschair at dinner-time and butted no more. The hair of Withers was radiantwith pomatum, in these days of down, and he wore kid gloves and smelt ofthe water of Cologne. 

They were assembled in Cleopatra's room The Serpent of old Nile (notto mention her disrespectfully) was reposing on her sofa, sipping hermorning chocolate at three o'clock in the afternoon, and Flowers theMaid was fastening on her youthful cuffs and frills, and performing akind of private coronation ceremony on her, with a peach-coloured velvetbonnet; the artificial roses in which nodded to uncommon advantage, asthe palsy trifled with them, like a breeze. 

'I think I am a little nervous this morning, Flowers, ' said Mrs Skewton. 'My hand quite shakes. '

'You were the life of the party last night, Ma'am, you know, ' returnedFlowers, 'and you suffer for it, to-day, you see. '

Edith, who had beckoned Florence to the window, and was looking out, with her back turned on the toilet of her esteemed mother, suddenlywithdrew from it, as if it had lightened. 

'My darling child, ' cried Cleopatra, languidly, 'you are not nervous?Don't tell me, my dear Edith, that you, so enviably self-possessed, are beginning to be a martyr too, like your unfortunately constitutedmother! Withers, someone at the door. '

'Card, Ma'am, ' said Withers, taking it towards Mrs Dombey. 

'I am going out, ' she said without looking at it. 

'My dear love, ' drawled Mrs Skewton, 'how very odd to send that messagewithout seeing the name! Bring it here, Withers. Dear me, my love; MrCarker, too! That very sensible person!'

'I am going out, ' repeated Edith, in so imperious a tone that Withers, going to the door, imperiously informed the servant who was waiting, 'Mrs Dombey is going out. Get along with you, ' and shut it on him. '

But the servant came back after a short absence, and whispered toWithers again, who once more, and not very willingly, presented himselfbefore Mrs Dombey. 

'If you please, Ma'am, Mr Carker sends his respectful compliments, andbegs you would spare him one minute, if you could--for business, Ma'am, if you please. '

'Really, my love, ' said Mrs Skewton in her mildest manner; for herdaughter's face was threatening; 'if you would allow me to offer a word, I should recommend--'

'Show him this way, ' said Edith. As Withers disappeared to executethe command, she added, frowning on her mother, 'As he comes at yourrecommendation, let him come to your room. '

'May I--shall I go away?' asked Florence, hurriedly. 

Edith nodded yes, but on her way to the door Florence met the visitorcoming in. With the same disagreeable mixture of familiarity andforbearance, with which he had first addressed her, he addressed her nowin his softest manner--hoped she was quite well--needed not to ask, withsuch looks to anticipate the answer--had scarcely had the honour to knowher, last night, she was so greatly changed--and held the door open forher to pass out; with a secret sense of power in her shrinking fromhim, that all the deference and politeness of his manner could not quiteconceal. 

He then bowed himself for a moment over Mrs Skewton's condescendinghand, and lastly bowed to Edith. Coldly returning his salute withoutlooking at him, and neither seating herself nor inviting him to beseated, she waited for him to speak. 

Entrenched in her pride and power, and with all the obduracy of herspirit summoned about her, still her old conviction that she and hermother had been known by this man in their worst colours, from theirfirst acquaintance; that every degradation she had suffered in her owneyes was as plain to him as to herself; that he read her life as thoughit were a vile book, and fluttered the leaves before her in slightlooks and tones of voice which no one else could detect; weakenedand undermined her. Proudly as she opposed herself to him, with hercommanding face exacting his humility, her disdainful lip repulsinghim, her bosom angry at his intrusion, and the dark lashes of hereyes sullenly veiling their light, that no ray of it might shine uponhim--and submissively as he stood before her, with an entreating injuredmanner, but with complete submission to her will--she knew, in her ownsoul, that the cases were reversed, and that the triumph and superioritywere his, and that he knew it full well. 

'I have presumed, ' said Mr Carker, 'to solicit an interview, and I haveventured to describe it as being one of business, because--'

'Perhaps you are charged by Mr Dombey with some message of reproof, 'said Edit 'You possess Mr Dombey's confidence in such an unusual degree, Sir, that you would scarcely surprise me if that were your business. '

'I have no message to the lady who sheds a lustre upon his name, ' saidMr Carker. 'But I entreat that lady, on my own behalf to be just to avery humble claimant for justice at her hands--a mere dependant ofMr Dombey's--which is a position of humility; and to reflect upon myperfect helplessness last night, and the impossibility of my avoidingthe share that was forced upon me in a very painful occasion. '

'My dearest Edith, ' hinted Cleopatra in a low voice, as she held hereye-glass aside, 'really very charming of Mr What's-his-name. And fullof heart!'

'For I do, ' said Mr Carker, appealing to Mrs Skewton with a look ofgrateful deference, --'I do venture to call it a painful occasion, thoughmerely because it was so to me, who had the misfortune to be present. Soslight a difference, as between the principals--between those who loveeach other with disinterested devotion, and would make any sacrifice ofself in such a cause--is nothing. As Mrs Skewton herself expressed, withso much truth and feeling last night, it is nothing. '

Edith could not look at him, but she said after a few moments. 

'And your business, Sir--'

'Edith, my pet, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'all this time Mr Carker is standing!My dear Mr Carker, take a seat, I beg. '

He offered no reply to the mother, but fixed his eyes on the prouddaughter, as though he would only be bidden by her, and was resolvedto be bidden by her. Edith, in spite of herself sat down, and slightlymotioned with her hand to him to be seated too. No action could becolder, haughtier, more insolent in its air of supremacy and disrespect, but she had struggled against even that concession ineffectually, and itwas wrested from her. That was enough! Mr Carker sat down. 

'May I be allowed, Madam, ' said Carker, turning his white teeth on MrsSkewton like a light--'a lady of your excellent sense and quick feelingwill give me credit, for good reason, I am sure--to address what I haveto say, to Mrs Dombey, and to leave her to impart it to you who are herbest and dearest friend--next to Mr Dombey?'

Mrs Skewton would have retired, but Edith stopped her. Edith would havestopped him too, and indignantly ordered him to speak openly or not atall, but that he said, in a low Voice--'Miss Florence--the young ladywho has just left the room--'

Edith suffered him to proceed. She looked at him now. As he bentforward, to be nearer, with the utmost show of delicacy and respect, andwith his teeth persuasively arrayed, in a self-depreciating smile, shefelt as if she could have struck him dead. 

'Miss Florence's position, ' he began, 'has been an unfortunate one. I have a difficulty in alluding to it to you, whose attachment to herfather is naturally watchful and jealous of every word that applies tohim. ' Always distinct and soft in speech, no language could describe theextent of his distinctness and softness, when he said these words, orcame to any others of a similar import. 'But, as one who is devoted toMr Dombey in his different way, and whose life is passed in admirationof Mr Dombey's character, may I say, without offence to your tendernessas a wife, that Miss Florence has unhappily been neglected--by herfather. May I say by her father?'

Edith replied, 'I know it. '

'You know it!' said Mr Carker, with a great appearance of relief. 'Itremoves a mountain from my breast. May I hope you know how the neglectoriginated; in what an amiable phase of Mr Dombey's pride--character Imean?'

'You may pass that by, Sir, ' she returned, 'and come the sooner to theend of what you have to say. '

'Indeed, I am sensible, Madam, ' replied Carker, --'trust me, I am deeplysensible, that Mr Dombey can require no justification in anything toyou. But, kindly judge of my breast by your own, and you will forgive myinterest in him, if in its excess, it goes at all astray. 

What a stab to her proud heart, to sit there, face to face with him, andhave him tendering her false oath at the altar again and again for heracceptance, and pressing it upon her like the dregs of a sickeningcup she could not own her loathing of or turn away from'. How shame, remorse, and passion raged within her, when, upright and majestic in herbeauty before him, she knew that in her spirit she was down at his feet!

'Miss Florence, ' said Carker, 'left to the care--if one may call itcare--of servants and mercenary people, in every way her inferiors, necessarily wanted some guide and compass in her younger days, and, naturally, for want of them, has been indiscreet, and has in some degreeforgotten her station. There was some folly about one Walter, a commonlad, who is fortunately dead now: and some very undesirable association, I regret to say, with certain coasting sailors, of anything but goodrepute, and a runaway old bankrupt. '

'I have heard the circumstances, Sir, ' said Edith, flashing herdisdainful glance upon him, 'and I know that you pervert them. You maynot know it. I hope so. '

'Pardon me, ' said Mr Carker, 'I believe that nobody knows them so wellas I. Your generous and ardent nature, Madam--the same nature which isso nobly imperative in vindication of your beloved and honoured husband, and which has blessed him as even his merits deserve--I must respect, defer to, bow before. But, as regards the circumstances, which is indeedthe business I presumed to solicit your attention to, I can haveno doubt, since, in the execution of my trust as Mr Dombey'sconfidential--I presume to say--friend, I have fully ascertained them. In my execution of that trust; in my deep concern, which you can so wellunderstand, for everything relating to him, intensified, if you will(for I fear I labour under your displeasure), by the lower motive ofdesire to prove my diligence, and make myself the more acceptable;I have long pursued these circumstances by myself and trustworthyinstruments, and have innumerable and most minute proofs. '

She raised her eyes no higher than his mouth, but she saw the means ofmischief vaunted in every tooth it contained. 

'Pardon me, Madam, ' he continued, 'if in my perplexity, I presume totake counsel with you, and to consult your pleasure. I think I haveobserved that you are greatly interested in Miss Florence?'

What was there in her he had not observed, and did not know? Humbledand yet maddened by the thought, in every new presentment of it, howeverfaint, she pressed her teeth upon her quivering lip to force composureon it, and distantly inclined her head in reply. 

'This interest, Madam--so touching an evidence of everything associatedwith Mr Dombey being dear to you--induces me to pause before I make himacquainted with these circumstances, which, as yet, he does not know. It so shakes me, if I may make the confession, in my allegiance, thaton the intimation of the least desire to that effect from you, I wouldsuppress them. '

Edith raised her head quickly, and starting back, bent her dark glanceupon him. He met it with his blandest and most deferential smile, andwent on. 

'You say that as I describe them, they are perverted. I fear not--I fearnot: but let us assume that they are. The uneasiness I have for sometime felt on the subject, arises in this: that the mere circumstance ofsuch association often repeated, on the part of Miss Florence, howeverinnocently and confidingly, would be conclusive with Mr Dombey, alreadypredisposed against her, and would lead him to take some step (I knowhe has occasionally contemplated it) of separation and alienation of herfrom his home. Madam, bear with me, and remember my intercourse with MrDombey, and my knowledge of him, and my reverence for him, almostfrom childhood, when I say that if he has a fault, it is a loftystubbornness, rooted in that noble pride and sense of power which belongto him, and which we must all defer to; which is not assailable like theobstinacy of other characters; and which grows upon itself from day today, and year to year. 

She bent her glance upon him still; but, look as steadfast as she would, her haughty nostrils dilated, and her breath came somewhat deeper, andher lip would slightly curl, as he described that in his patron to whichthey must all bow down. He saw it; and though his expression did notchange, she knew he saw it. 

'Even so slight an incident as last night's, ' he said, 'if I might referto it once more, would serve to illustrate my meaning, better than agreater one. Dombey and Son know neither time, nor place, nor season, but bear them all down. But I rejoice in its occurrence, for it hasopened the way for me to approach Mrs Dombey with this subjectto-day, even if it has entailed upon me the penalty of her temporarydispleasure. Madam, in the midst of my uneasiness and apprehension onthis subject, I was summoned by Mr Dombey to Leamington. There I sawyou. There I could not help knowing what relation you would shortlyoccupy towards him--to his enduring happiness and yours. There Iresolved to await the time of your establishment at home here, and to doas I have now done. I have, at heart, no fear that I shall be wantingin my duty to Mr Dombey, if I bury what I know in your breast; forwhere there is but one heart and mind between two persons--as in sucha marriage--one almost represents the other. I can acquit my consciencetherefore, almost equally, by confidence, on such a theme, in you orhim. For the reasons I have mentioned I would select you. May I aspireto the distinction of believing that my confidence is accepted, and thatI am relieved from my responsibility?'

He long remembered the look she gave him--who could see it, and forgetit?--and the struggle that ensued within her. At last she said:

'I accept it, Sir You will please to consider this matter at an end, andthat it goes no farther. '

He bowed low, and rose. She rose too, and he took leave with allhumility. But Withers, meeting him on the stairs, stood amazed at thebeauty of his teeth, and at his brilliant smile; and as he rode awayupon his white-legged horse, the people took him for a dentist, such wasthe dazzling show he made. The people took her, when she rode out in hercarriage presently, for a great lady, as happy as she was rich and fine. But they had not seen her, just before, in her own room with no one by;and they had not heard her utterance of the three words, 'Oh Florence, Florence!'

Mrs Skewton, reposing on her sofa, and sipping her chocolate, had heardnothing but the low word business, for which she had a mortal aversion, insomuch that she had long banished it from her vocabulary, and had gonenigh, in a charming manner and with an immense amount of heart, to saynothing of soul, to ruin divers milliners and others in consequence. Therefore Mrs Skewton asked no questions, and showed no curiosity. Indeed, the peach-velvet bonnet gave her sufficient occupation out ofdoors; for being perched on the back of her head, and the day beingrather windy, it was frantic to escape from Mrs Skewton's company, and would be coaxed into no sort of compromise. When the carriage wasclosed, and the wind shut out, the palsy played among the artificialroses again like an almshouse-full of superannuated zephyrs; andaltogether Mrs Skewton had enough to do, and got on but indifferently. 

She got on no better towards night; for when Mrs Dombey, in herdressing-room, had been dressed and waiting for her half an hour, and MrDombey, in the drawing-room, had paraded himself into a state of solemnfretfulness (they were all three going out to dinner), Flowers the Maidappeared with a pale face to Mrs Dombey, saying:

'If you please, Ma'am, I beg your pardon, but I can't do nothing withMissis!'

'What do you mean?' asked Edith. 

'Well, Ma'am, ' replied the frightened maid, 'I hardly know. She's makingfaces!'

Edith hurried with her to her mother's room. Cleopatra was arrayed infull dress, with the diamonds, short sleeves, rouge, curls, teeth, andother juvenility all complete; but Paralysis was not to be deceived, hadknown her for the object of its errand, and had struck her at her glass, where she lay like a horrible doll that had tumbled down. 

They took her to pieces in very shame, and put the little of her thatwas real on a bed. Doctors were sent for, and soon came. Powerfulremedies were resorted to; opinions given that she would rally from thisshock, but would not survive another; and there she lay speechless, andstaring at the ceiling, for days; sometimes making inarticulate soundsin answer to such questions as did she know who were present, and thelike: sometimes giving no reply either by sign or gesture, or in herunwinking eyes. 

At length she began to recover consciousness, and in some degree thepower of motion, though not yet of speech. One day the use of her righthand returned; and showing it to her maid who was in attendance on her, and appearing very uneasy in her mind, she made signs for a pencil andsome paper. This the maid immediately provided, thinking she was goingto make a will, or write some last request; and Mrs Dombey being fromhome, the maid awaited the result with solemn feelings. 

After much painful scrawling and erasing, and putting in of wrongcharacters, which seemed to tumble out of the pencil of their ownaccord, the old woman produced this document:

 'Rose-coloured curtains. '

The maid being perfectly transfixed, and with tolerable reason, Cleopatra amended the manuscript by adding two words more, when it stoodthus:

 'Rose-coloured curtains for doctors. '

The maid now perceived remotely that she wished these articles to beprovided for the better presentation of her complexion to the faculty;and as those in the house who knew her best, had no doubt of thecorrectness of this opinion, which she was soon able to establish forherself the rose-coloured curtains were added to her bed, and she mendedwith increased rapidity from that hour. She was soon able to sit up, in curls and a laced cap and nightgown, and to have a little artificialbloom dropped into the hollow caverns of her cheeks. 

It was a tremendous sight to see this old woman in her finery leeringand mincing at Death, and playing off her youthful tricks upon him as ifhe had been the Major; but an alteration in her mind that ensued on theparalytic stroke was fraught with as much matter for reflection, and wasquite as ghastly. 

Whether the weakening of her intellect made her more cunning and falsethan before, or whether it confused her between what she had assumedto be and what she really had been, or whether it had awakened anyglimmering of remorse, which could neither struggle into light nor getback into total darkness, or whether, in the jumble of her faculties, a combination of these effects had been shaken up, which is perhaps themore likely supposition, the result was this:--That she became hugelyexacting in respect of Edith's affection and gratitude and attention toher; highly laudatory of herself as a most inestimable parent; and veryjealous of having any rival in Edith's regard. Further, in place ofremembering that compact made between them for an avoidance of thesubject, she constantly alluded to her daughter's marriage as a proofof her being an incomparable mother; and all this, with the weakness andpeevishness of such a state, always serving for a sarcastic commentaryon her levity and youthfulness. 

'Where is Mrs Dombey? she would say to her maid. 

'Gone out, Ma'am. '

'Gone out! Does she go out to shun her Mama, Flowers?'

'La bless you, no, Ma'am. Mrs Dombey has only gone out for a ride withMiss Florence. '

'Miss Florence. Who's Miss Florence? Don't tell me about Miss Florence. What's Miss Florence to her, compared to me?'

The apposite display of the diamonds, or the peach-velvet bonnet (shesat in the bonnet to receive visitors, weeks before she could stir outof doors), or the dressing of her up in some gaud or other, usuallystopped the tears that began to flow hereabouts; and she would remain ina complacent state until Edith came to see her; when, at a glance of theproud face, she would relapse again. 

'Well, I am sure, Edith!' she would cry, shaking her head. 

'What is the matter, mother?'

'Matter! I really don't know what is the matter. The world is coming tosuch an artificial and ungrateful state, that I begin to think there'sno Heart--or anything of that sort--left in it, positively. Withers ismore a child to me than you are. He attends to me much more than my owndaughter. I almost wish I didn't look so young--and all that kind ofthing--and then perhaps I should be more considered. '

'What would you have, mother?'

'Oh, a great deal, Edith, ' impatiently. 

'Is there anything you want that you have not? It is your own fault ifthere be. '

'My own fault!' beginning to whimper. 'The parent I have been to you, Edith: making you a companion from your cradle! And when you neglect me, and have no more natural affection for me than if I was a stranger--nota twentieth part of the affection that you have for Florence--but I amonly your mother, and should corrupt her in a day!--you reproach me withits being my own fault. '

'Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why will you always dwellon this?'

'Isn't it natural that I should dwell on this, when I am all affectionand sensitiveness, and am wounded in the cruellest way, whenever youlook at me?'

'I do not mean to wound you, mother. Have you no remembrance of what hasbeen said between us? Let the Past rest. '

'Yes, rest! And let gratitude to me rest; and let affection for merest; and let me rest in my out-of-the-way room, with no society andno attention, while you find new relations to make much of, who haveno earthly claim upon you! Good gracious, Edith, do you know what anelegant establishment you are at the head of?'

'Yes. Hush!'

'And that gentlemanly creature, Dombey? Do you know that you are marriedto him, Edith, and that you have a settlement and a position, and acarriage, and I don't know what?'

'Indeed, I know it, mother; well. '

'As you would have had with that delightful good soul--what did theycall him?--Granger--if he hadn't died. And who have you to thank for allthis, Edith?'

'You, mother; you. '

'Then put your arms round my neck, and kiss me; and show me, Edith, that you know there never was a better Mama than I have been to you. Anddon't let me become a perfect fright with teasing and wearing myself atyour ingratitude, or when I'm out again in society no soul will know me, not even that hateful animal, the Major. '

But, sometimes, when Edith went nearer to her, and bending down herstately head, Put her cold cheek to hers, the mother would draw back asIf she were afraid of her, and would fall into a fit of trembling, andcry out that there was a wandering in her wits. And sometimes she wouldentreat her, with humility, to sit down on the chair beside her bed, andwould look at her (as she sat there brooding) with a face that even therose-coloured curtains could not make otherwise than scared and wild. 

The rose-coloured curtains blushed, in course of time, on Cleopatra'sbodily recovery, and on her dress--more juvenile than ever, to repairthe ravages of illness--and on the rouge, and on the teeth, and onthe curls, and on the diamonds, and the short sleeves, and the wholewardrobe of the doll that had tumbled down before the mirror. Theyblushed, too, now and then, upon an indistinctness in her speech whichshe turned off with a girlish giggle, and on an occasional failing Inher memory, that had no rule in it, but came and went fantastically, asif in mockery of her fantastic self. 

But they never blushed upon a change in the new manner of her thoughtand speech towards her daughter. And though that daughter oftencame within their influence, they never blushed upon her lovelinessirradiated by a smile, or softened by the light of filial love, in itsstem beauty. 

CHAPTER 38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance

The forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by her friend Louisa Chick, and bereftof Mr Dombey's countenance--for no delicate pair of wedding cards, united by a silver thread, graced the chimney-glass in Princess'sPlace, or the harpsichord, or any of those little posts of displaywhich Lucretia reserved for holiday occupation--became depressed in herspirits, and suffered much from melancholy. For a time the Bird Waltzwas unheard in Princess's Place, the plants were neglected, and dustcollected on the miniature of Miss Tox's ancestor with the powdered headand pigtail. 

Miss Tox, however, was not of an age or of a disposition long to abandonherself to unavailing regrets. Only two notes of the harpsichord weredumb from disuse when the Bird Waltz again warbled and trilled inthe crooked drawing-room: only one slip of geranium fell a victim toimperfect nursing, before she was gardening at her green baskets again, regularly every morning; the powdered-headed ancestor had not been undera cloud for more than six weeks, when Miss Tox breathed on his benignantvisage, and polished him up with a piece of wash-leather. 

Still, Miss Tox was lonely, and at a loss. Her attachments, howeverludicrously shown, were real and strong; and she was, as she expressedit, 'deeply hurt by the unmerited contumely she had met with fromLouisa. ' But there was no such thing as anger in Miss Tox's composition. If she had ambled on through life, in her soft spoken way, without anyopinions, she had, at least, got so far without any harsh passions. The mere sight of Louisa Chick in the street one day, at a considerabledistance, so overpowered her milky nature, that she was fain to seekimmediate refuge in a pastrycook's, and there, in a musty little backroom usually devoted to the consumption of soups, and pervaded by anox-tail atmosphere, relieve her feelings by weeping plentifully. 

Against Mr Dombey Miss Tox hardly felt that she had any reason ofcomplaint. Her sense of that gentleman's magnificence was such, thatonce removed from him, she felt as if her distance always had beenimmeasurable, and as if he had greatly condescended in tolerating her atall. No wife could be too handsome or too stately for him, according toMiss Tox's sincere opinion. It was perfectly natural that in lookingfor one, he should look high. Miss Tox with tears laid down thisproposition, and fully admitted it, twenty times a day. She neverrecalled the lofty manner in which Mr Dombey had made her subservient tohis convenience and caprices, and had graciously permitted her to beone of the nurses of his little son. She only thought, in her own words, 'that she had passed a great many happy hours in that house, which shemust ever remember with gratification, and that she could never cease toregard Mr Dombey as one of the most impressive and dignified of men. '

Cut off, however, from the implacable Louisa, and being shy of the Major(whom she viewed with some distrust now), Miss Tox found it very irksometo know nothing of what was going on in Mr Dombey's establishment. Andas she really had got into the habit of considering Dombey and Son asthe pivot on which the world in general turned, she resolved, ratherthan be ignorant of intelligence which so strongly interested her, tocultivate her old acquaintance, Mrs Richards, who she knew, sinceher last memorable appearance before Mr Dombey, was in the habit ofsometimes holding communication with his servants. Perhaps Miss Tox, in seeking out the Toodle family, had the tender motive hidden in herbreast of having somebody to whom she could talk about Mr Dombey, nomatter how humble that somebody might be. 

At all events, towards the Toodle habitation Miss Tox directed her stepsone evening, what time Mr Toodle, cindery and swart, was refreshinghimself with tea, in the bosom of his family. Mr Toodle had only threestages of existence. He was either taking refreshment in the bosom justmentioned, or he was tearing through the country at from twenty-fiveto fifty miles an hour, or he was sleeping after his fatigues. He wasalways in a whirlwind or a calm, and a peaceable, contented, easy-goingman Mr Toodle was in either state, who seemed to have made over all hisown inheritance of fuming and fretting to the engines with which he wasconnected, which panted, and gasped, and chafed, and wore themselvesout, in a most unsparing manner, while Mr Toodle led a mild and equablelife. 

'Polly, my gal, ' said Mr Toodle, with a young Toodle on each knee, andtwo more making tea for him, and plenty more scattered about--Mr Toodlewas never out of children, but always kept a good supply on hand--'youain't seen our Biler lately, have you?'

'No, ' replied Polly, 'but he's almost certain to look in tonight. It'shis right evening, and he's very regular. '

'I suppose, ' said Mr Toodle, relishing his meal infinitely, 'as ourBiler is a doin' now about as well as a boy can do, eh, Polly?'

'Oh! he's a doing beautiful!' responded Polly. 

'He ain't got to be at all secret-like--has he, Polly?' inquired MrToodle. 

'No!' said Mrs Toodle, plumply. 

'I'm glad he ain't got to be at all secret-like, Polly, ' observed MrToodle in his slow and measured way, and shovelling in his bread andbutter with a clasp knife, as if he were stoking himself, 'because thatdon't look well; do it, Polly?'

'Why, of course it don't, father. How can you ask!'

'You see, my boys and gals, ' said Mr Toodle, looking round upon hisfamily, 'wotever you're up to in a honest way, it's my opinion as youcan't do better than be open. If you find yourselves in cuttings or intunnels, don't you play no secret games. Keep your whistles going, andlet's know where you are. 

The rising Toodles set up a shrill murmur, expressive of theirresolution to profit by the paternal advice. 

'But what makes you say this along of Rob, father?' asked his wife, anxiously. 

'Polly, old ooman, ' said Mr Toodle, 'I don't know as I said itpartickler along o' Rob, I'm sure. I starts light with Rob only; I comesto a branch; I takes on what I finds there; and a whole train of ideasgets coupled on to him, afore I knows where I am, or where theycomes from. What a Junction a man's thoughts is, ' said Mr Toodle, 'to-be-sure!'

This profound reflection Mr Toodle washed down with a pint mug of tea, and proceeded to solidify with a great weight of bread and butter;charging his young daughters meanwhile, to keep plenty of hot water inthe pot, as he was uncommon dry, and should take the indefinite quantityof 'a sight of mugs, ' before his thirst was appeased. 

In satisfying himself, however, Mr Toodle was not regardless of theyounger branches about him, who, although they had made their ownevening repast, were on the look-out for irregular morsels, aspossessing a relish. These he distributed now and then to the expectantcircle, by holding out great wedges of bread and butter, to be bittenat by the family in lawful succession, and by serving out small doses oftea in like manner with a spoon; which snacks had such a relish in themouths of these young Toodles, that, after partaking of the same, theyperformed private dances of ecstasy among themselves, and stood onone leg apiece, and hopped, and indulged in other saltatory tokens ofgladness. These vents for their excitement found, they gradually closedabout Mr Toodle again, and eyed him hard as he got through more breadand butter and tea; affecting, however, to have no further expectationsof their own in reference to those viands, but to be conversing onforeign subjects, and whispering confidentially. 

Mr Toodle, in the midst of this family group, and setting an awfulexample to his children in the way of appetite, was conveying the twoyoung Toodles on his knees to Birmingham by special engine, and wascontemplating the rest over a barrier of bread and butter, when Rob theGrinder, in his sou'wester hat and mourning slops, presented himself, and was received with a general rush of brothers and sisters. 

'Well, mother!' said Rob, dutifully kissing her; 'how are you, mother?'

'There's my boy!' cried Polly, giving him a hug and a pat on the back. 'Secret! Bless you, father, not he!'

This was intended for Mr Toodle's private edification, but Rob theGrinder, whose withers were not unwrung, caught the words as they werespoken. 

'What! father's been a saying something more again me, has he?' criedthe injured innocent. 'Oh, what a hard thing it is that when a covehas once gone a little wrong, a cove's own father should be alwaysa throwing it in his face behind his back! It's enough, ' cried Rob, resorting to his coat-cuff in anguish of spirit, 'to make a cove go anddo something, out of spite!'

'My poor boy!' cried Polly, 'father didn't mean anything. '

'If father didn't mean anything, ' blubbered the injured Grinder, 'whydid he go and say anything, mother? Nobody thinks half so bad of me asmy own father does. What a unnatural thing! I wish somebody'd take andchop my head off. Father wouldn't mind doing it, I believe, and I'd muchrather he did that than t'other. '

At these desperate words all the young Toodles shrieked; a patheticeffect, which the Grinder improved by ironically adjuring them not tocry for him, for they ought to hate him, they ought, if they was goodboys and girls; and this so touched the youngest Toodle but one, who waseasily moved, that it touched him not only in his spirit but in his windtoo; making him so purple that Mr Toodle in consternation carried himout to the water-butt, and would have put him under the tap, but for hisbeing recovered by the sight of that instrument. 

Matters having reached this point, Mr Toodle explained, and the virtuousfeelings of his son being thereby calmed, they shook hands, and harmonyreigned again. 

'Will you do as I do, Biler, my boy?' inquired his father, returning tohis tea with new strength. 

'No, thank'ee, father. Master and I had tea together. '

'And how is master, Rob?' said Polly. 

'Well, I don't know, mother; not much to boast on. There ain't nobis'ness done, you see. He don't know anything about it--the Cap'endon't. There was a man come into the shop this very day, and says, "Iwant a so-and-so, " he says--some hard name or another. "A which?" saysthe Cap'en. "A so-and-so, " says the man. "Brother, " says the Cap'en, "will you take a observation round the shop. " "Well, " says the man, "I've done. " "Do you see wot you want?" says the Cap'en "No, I don't, "says the man. "Do you know it wen you do see it?" says the Cap'en. "No, I don't, " says the man. "Why, then I tell you wot, my lad, " says theCap'en, "you'd better go back and ask wot it's like, outside, for nomore don't I!"'

'That ain't the way to make money, though, is it?' said Polly. 

'Money, mother! He'll never make money. He has such ways as I never see. He ain't a bad master though, I'll say that for him. But that ain't muchto me, for I don't think I shall stop with him long. '

'Not stop in your place, Rob!' cried his mother; while Mr Toodle openedhis eyes. 

'Not in that place, p'raps, ' returned the Grinder, with a wink. 'Ishouldn't wonder--friends at court you know--but never you mind, mother, just now; I'm all right, that's all. '

The indisputable proof afforded in these hints, and in the Grinder'smysterious manner, of his not being subject to that failing which MrToodle had, by implication, attributed to him, might have led to arenewal of his wrongs, and of the sensation in the family, but for theopportune arrival of another visitor, who, to Polly's great surprise, appeared at the door, smiling patronage and friendship on all there. 

'How do you do, Mrs Richards?' said Miss Tox. 'I have come to see you. May I come in?'

The cheery face of Mrs Richards shone with a hospitable reply, and MissTox, accepting the proffered chair, and grab fully recognising Mr Toodleon her way to it, untied her bonnet strings, and said that in the firstplace she must beg the dear children, one and all, to come and kiss her. 

The ill-starred youngest Toodle but one, who would appear, from thefrequency of his domestic troubles, to have been born under anunlucky planet, was prevented from performing his part in this generalsalutation by having fixed the sou'wester hat (with which he had beenpreviously trifling) deep on his head, hind side before, and beingunable to get it off again; which accident presenting to his terrifiedimagination a dismal picture of his passing the rest of his days indarkness, and in hopeless seclusion from his friends and family, causedhim to struggle with great violence, and to utter suffocating cries. Being released, his face was discovered to be very hot, and red, anddamp; and Miss Tox took him on her lap, much exhausted. 

'You have almost forgotten me, Sir, I daresay, ' said Miss Tox to MrToodle. 

'No, Ma'am, no, ' said Toodle. 'But we've all on us got a little oldersince then. '

'And how do you find yourself, Sir?' inquired Miss Tox, blandly. 

'Hearty, Ma'am, thank'ee, ' replied Toodle. 'How do you find yourself, Ma'am? Do the rheumaticks keep off pretty well, Ma'am? We must allexpect to grow into 'em, as we gets on. '

'Thank you, ' said Miss Tox. 'I have not felt any inconvenience from thatdisorder yet. '

'You're wery fortunate, Ma'am, ' returned Mr Toodle. 'Many people atyour time of life, Ma'am, is martyrs to it. There was my mother--' Butcatching his wife's eye here, Mr Toodle judiciously buried the rest inanother mug of tea. 

'You never mean to say, Mrs Richards, ' cried Miss Tox, looking at Rob, 'that that is your--'

'Eldest, Ma'am, ' said Polly. 'Yes, indeed, it is. That's the littlefellow, Ma'am, that was the innocent cause of so much. '

'This here, Ma'am, ' said Toodle, 'is him with the short legs--and theywas, ' said Mr Toodle, with a touch of poetry in his tone, 'unusual shortfor leathers--as Mr Dombey made a Grinder on. '

The recollection almost overpowered Miss Tox. The subject of it had apeculiar interest for her directly. She asked him to shake hands, andcongratulated his mother on his frank, ingenuous face. Rob, overhearingher, called up a look, to justify the eulogium, but it was hardly theright look. 

'And now, Mrs Richards, ' said Miss Tox, --'and you too, Sir, ' addressingToodle--'I'll tell you, plainly and truly, what I have come here for. You may be aware, Mrs Richards--and, possibly, you may be aware too, Sir--that a little distance has interposed itself between me and some ofmy friends, and that where I used to visit a good deal, I do not visitnow. '

Polly, who, with a woman's tact, understood this at once, expressed asmuch in a little look. Mr Toodle, who had not the faintest idea of whatMiss Tox was talking about, expressed that also, in a stare. 

'Of course, ' said Miss Tox, 'how our little coolness has arisen is of nomoment, and does not require to be discussed. It is sufficient for me tosay, that I have the greatest possible respect for, and interest in, Mr Dombey;' Miss Tox's voice faltered; 'and everything that relates tohim. '

Mr Toodle, enlightened, shook his head, and said he had heerd it said, and, for his own part, he did think, as Mr Dombey was a difficultsubject. 

'Pray don't say so, Sir, if you please, ' returned Miss Tox. 'Let meentreat you not to say so, Sir, either now, or at any future time. Suchobservations cannot but be very painful to me; and to a gentleman, whose mind is constituted as, I am quite sure, yours is, can afford nopermanent satisfaction. '

Mr Toodle, who had not entertained the least doubt of offering a remarkthat would be received with acquiescence, was greatly confounded. 

'All that I wish to say, Mrs Richards, ' resumed Miss Tox, --'and Iaddress myself to you too, Sir, --is this. That any intelligence of theproceedings of the family, of the welfare of the family, of the healthof the family, that reaches you, will be always most acceptable to me. That I shall be always very glad to chat with Mrs Richards about thefamily, and about old time And as Mrs Richards and I never had the leastdifference (though I could wish now that we had been better acquainted, but I have no one but myself to blame for that), I hope she will notobject to our being very good friends now, and to my coming backwardsand forwards here, when I like, without being a stranger. Now, I reallyhope, Mrs Richards, ' said Miss Tox--earnestly, 'that you will take this, as I mean it, like a good-humoured creature, as you always were. '

Polly was gratified, and showed it. Mr Toodle didn't know whether he wasgratified or not, and preserved a stolid calmness. 

'You see, Mrs Richards, ' said Miss Tox--'and I hope you see too, Sir--there are many little ways in which I can be slightly usefulto you, if you will make no stranger of me; and in which I shall bedelighted to be so. For instance, I can teach your children something. I shall bring a few little books, if you'll allow me, and some work, and of an evening now and then, they'll learn--dear me, they'll learn agreat deal, I trust, and be a credit to their teacher. '

Mr Toodle, who had a great respect for learning, jerked his headapprovingly at his wife, and moistened his hands with dawningsatisfaction. 

'Then, not being a stranger, I shall be in nobody's way, ' said Miss Tox, 'and everything will go on just as if I were not here. Mrs Richards willdo her mending, or her ironing, or her nursing, whatever it is, withoutminding me: and you'll smoke your pipe, too, if you're so disposed, Sir, won't you?'

'Thank'ee, Mum, ' said Mr Toodle. 'Yes; I'll take my bit of backer. '

'Very good of you to say so, Sir, ' rejoined Miss Tox, 'and I really doassure you now, unfeignedly, that it will be a great comfort to me, andthat whatever good I may be fortunate enough to do the children, youwill more than pay back to me, if you'll enter into this little bargaincomfortably, and easily, and good-naturedly, without another word aboutit. '

The bargain was ratified on the spot; and Miss Tox found herself somuch at home already, that without delay she instituted a preliminaryexamination of the children all round--which Mr Toodle much admired--andbooked their ages, names, and acquirements, on a piece of paper. Thisceremony, and a little attendant gossip, prolonged the time until aftertheir usual hour of going to bed, and detained Miss Tox at the Toodlefireside until it was too late for her to walk home alone. The gallantGrinder, however, being still there, politely offered to attend her toher own door; and as it was something to Miss Tox to be seen home by ayouth whom Mr Dombey had first inducted into those manly garments whichare rarely mentioned by name, ' she very readily accepted the proposal. 

After shaking hands with Mr Toodle and Polly, and kissing all thechildren, Miss Tox left the house, therefore, with unlimited popularity, and carrying away with her so light a heart that it might have given MrsChick offence if that good lady could have weighed it. 

Rob the Grinder, in his modesty, would have walked behind, but Miss Toxdesired him to keep beside her, for conversational purposes; and, as sheafterwards expressed it to his mother, 'drew him out, ' upon the road. 

He drew out so bright, and clear, and shining, that Miss Tox was charmedwith him. The more Miss Tox drew him out, the finer he came--like wire. There never was a better or more promising youth--a more affectionate, steady, prudent, sober, honest, meek, candid young man--than Rob drewout, that night. 

'I am quite glad, ' said Miss Tox, arrived at her own door, 'to know you. I hope you'll consider me your friend, and that you'll come and see meas often as you like. Do you keep a money-box?'

'Yes, Ma'am, ' returned Rob; 'I'm saving up, against I've got enough toput in the Bank, Ma'am. 

'Very laudable indeed, ' said Miss Tox. 'I'm glad to hear it. Put thishalf-crown into it, if you please. '

'Oh thank you, Ma'am, ' replied Rob, 'but really I couldn't think ofdepriving you. '

'I commend your independent spirit, ' said Miss Tox, 'but it's nodeprivation, I assure you. I shall be offended if you don't take it, asa mark of my good-will. Good-night, Robin. '

'Good-night, Ma'am, ' said Rob, 'and thank you!'

Who ran sniggering off to get change, and tossed it away with a pieman. But they never taught honour at the Grinders' School, where the systemthat prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy. Insomuch, that many of the friends and masters of past Grinders said, if this were what came of education for the common people, let ushave none. Some more rational said, let us have a better one. But thegoverning powers of the Grinders' Company were always ready for them, bypicking out a few boys who had turned out well in spite of the system, and roundly asserting that they could have only turned out well becauseof it. Which settled the business of those objectors out of hand, andestablished the glory of the Grinders' Institution. 

CHAPTER 39. Further Adventures of Captain Edward Cuttle, Mariner

Time, sure of foot and strong of will, had so pressed onward, that theyear enjoined by the old Instrument-maker, as the term during which hisfriend should refrain from opening the sealed packet accompanying theletter he had left for him, was now nearly expired, and Captain Cuttlebegan to look at it, of an evening, with feelings of mystery anduneasiness. 

The Captain, in his honour, would as soon have thought of opening theparcel one hour before the expiration of the term, as he would havethought of opening himself, to study his own anatomy. He merely broughtit out, at a certain stage of his first evening pipe, laid it on thetable, and sat gazing at the outside of it, through the smoke, in silentgravity, for two or three hours at a spell. Sometimes, when he hadcontemplated it thus for a pretty long while, the Captain would hitchhis chair, by degrees, farther and farther off, as if to get beyondthe range of its fascination; but if this were his design, he neversucceeded: for even when he was brought up by the parlour wall, thepacket still attracted him; or if his eyes, in thoughtful wandering, roved to the ceiling or the fire, its image immediately followed, andposted itself conspicuously among the coals, or took up an advantageousposition on the whitewash. 

In respect of Heart's Delight, the Captain's parental and admirationknew no change. But since his last interview with Mr Carker, CaptainCuttle had come to entertain doubts whether his former intervention inbehalf of that young lady and his dear boy Wal'r, had proved altogetherso favourable as he could have wished, and as he at the time believed. The Captain was troubled with a serious misgiving that he had done moreharm than good, in short; and in his remorse and modesty he made thebest atonement he could think of, by putting himself out of the way ofdoing any harm to anyone, and, as it were, throwing himself overboardfor a dangerous person. 

Self-buried, therefore, among the instruments, the Captain never wentnear Mr Dombey's house, or reported himself in any way to Florence orMiss Nipper. He even severed himself from Mr Perch, on the occasion ofhis next visit, by dryly informing that gentleman, that he thanked himfor his company, but had cut himself adrift from all such acquaintance, as he didn't know what magazine he mightn't blow up, without meaning ofit. In this self-imposed retirement, the Captain passed whole days andweeks without interchanging a word with anyone but Rob the Grinder, whomhe esteemed as a pattern of disinterested attachment and fidelity. Inthis retirement, the Captain, gazing at the packet of an evening, wouldsit smoking, and thinking of Florence and poor Walter, until they bothseemed to his homely fancy to be dead, and to have passed away intoeternal youth, the beautiful and innocent children of his firstremembrance. 

The Captain did not, however, in his musings, neglect his ownimprovement, or the mental culture of Rob the Grinder. That young manwas generally required to read out of some book to the Captain, for onehour, every evening; and as the Captain implicitly believed that allbooks were true, he accumulated, by this means, many remarkable facts. On Sunday nights, the Captain always read for himself, before going tobed, a certain Divine Sermon once delivered on a Mount; and although hewas accustomed to quote the text, without book, after his own manner, he appeared to read it with as reverent an understanding of its heavenlyspirit, as if he had got it all by heart in Greek, and had been ableto write any number of fierce theological disquisitions on its everyphrase. 

Rob the Grinder, whose reverence for the inspired writings, underthe admirable system of the Grinders' School, had been developed bya perpetual bruising of his intellectual shins against all the propernames of all the tribes of Judah, and by the monotonous repetition ofhard verses, especially by way of punishment, and by the parading of himat six years old in leather breeches, three times a Sunday, very highup, in a very hot church, with a great organ buzzing against his drowsyhead, like an exceedingly busy bee--Rob the Grinder made a mighty showof being edified when the Captain ceased to read, and generally yawnedand nodded while the reading was in progress. The latter fact beingnever so much as suspected by the good Captain. 

Captain Cuttle, also, as a man of business; took to keeping books. Inthese he entered observations on the weather, and on the currents of thewaggons and other vehicles: which he observed, in that quarter, to setwestward in the morning and during the greater part of the day, andeastward towards the evening. Two or three stragglers appearing in oneweek, who 'spoke him'--so the Captain entered it--on the subject ofspectacles, and who, without positively purchasing, said they would lookin again, the Captain decided that the business was improving, and madean entry in the day-book to that effect: the wind then blowing (which hefirst recorded) pretty fresh, west and by north; having changed in thenight. 

One of the Captain's chief difficulties was Mr Toots, who calledfrequently, and who without saying much seemed to have an idea that thelittle back parlour was an eligible room to chuckle in, as he would sitand avail himself of its accommodations in that regard by the half-hourtogether, without at all advancing in intimacy with the Captain. TheCaptain, rendered cautious by his late experience, was unable quite tosatisfy his mind whether Mr Toots was the mild subject he appeared tobe, or was a profoundly artful and dissimulating hypocrite. His frequentreference to Miss Dombey was suspicious; but the Captain had a secretkindness for Mr Toots's apparent reliance on him, and forbore to decideagainst him for the present; merely eyeing him, with a sagacity not tobe described, whenever he approached the subject that was nearest to hisheart. 

'Captain Gills, ' blurted out Mr Toots, one day all at once, as hismanner was, 'do you think you could think favourably of that propositionof mine, and give me the pleasure of your acquaintance?'

'Why, I tell you what it is, my lad, ' replied the Captain, who had atlength concluded on a course of action; 'I've been turning that there, over. '

'Captain Gills, it's very kind of you, ' retorted Mr Toots. 'I'm muchobliged to you. Upon my word and honour, Captain Gills, it would be acharity to give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. It really would. '

'You see, brother, ' argued the Captain slowly, 'I don't know you. 

'But you never can know me, Captain Gills, ' replied Mr Toots, steadfastto his point, 'if you don't give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. 

The Captain seemed struck by the originality and power of this remark, and looked at Mr Toots as if he thought there was a great deal more inhim than he had expected. 

'Well said, my lad, ' observed the Captain, nodding his headthoughtfully; 'and true. Now look'ee here: You've made some observationsto me, which gives me to understand as you admire a certain sweetcreetur. Hey?'

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, gesticulating violently with the hand inwhich he held his hat, 'Admiration is not the word. Upon my honour, youhave no conception what my feelings are. If I could be dyed black, andmade Miss Dombey's slave, I should consider it a compliment. If, atthe sacrifice of all my property, I could get transmigrated into MissDombey's dog--I--I really think I should never leave off wagging mytail. I should be so perfectly happy, Captain Gills!'

Mr Toots said it with watery eyes, and pressed his hat against his bosomwith deep emotion. 

'My lad, ' returned the Captain, moved to compassion, 'if you're inarnest--

'Captain Gills, ' cried Mr Toots, 'I'm in such a state of mind, and am sodreadfully in earnest, that if I could swear to it upon a hot pieceof iron, or a live coal, or melted lead, or burning sealing-wax, Oranything of that sort, I should be glad to hurt myself, as a relief tomy feelings. ' And Mr Toots looked hurriedly about the room, as if forsome sufficiently painful means of accomplishing his dread purpose. 

The Captain pushed his glazed hat back upon his head, stroked hisface down with his heavy hand--making his nose more mottled in theprocess--and planting himself before Mr Toots, and hooking him by thelapel of his coat, addressed him in these words, while Mr Toots lookedup into his face, with much attention and some wonder. 

'If you're in arnest, you see, my lad, ' said the Captain, 'you're aobject of clemency, and clemency is the brightest jewel in the crown ofa Briton's head, for which you'll overhaul the constitution as laid downin Rule Britannia, and, when found, that is the charter as them gardenangels was a singing of, so many times over. Stand by! This hereproposal o' you'rn takes me a little aback. And why? Because I holdsmy own only, you understand, in these here waters, and haven't got noconsort, and may be don't wish for none. Steady! You hailed me first, along of a certain young lady, as you was chartered by. Now if you andme is to keep one another's company at all, that there young creetur'sname must never be named nor referred to. I don't know what harm mayn'thave been done by naming of it too free, afore now, and thereby I bringsup short. D'ye make me out pretty clear, brother?'

'Well, you'll excuse me, Captain Gills, ' replied Mr Toots, 'if I don'tquite follow you sometimes. But upon my word I--it's a hard thing, Captain Gills, not to be able to mention Miss Dombey. I really havegot such a dreadful load here!'--Mr Toots pathetically touched hisshirt-front with both hands--'that I feel night and day, exactly as ifsomebody was sitting upon me. 

'Them, ' said the Captain, 'is the terms I offer. If they're hard uponyou, brother, as mayhap they are, give 'em a wide berth, sheer off, andpart company cheerily!'

'Captain Gills, ' returned Mr Toots, 'I hardly know how it is, but afterwhat you told me when I came here, for the first time, I--I feel thatI'd rather think about Miss Dombey in your society than talk about herin almost anybody else's. Therefore, Captain Gills, if you'll give methe pleasure of your acquaintance, I shall be very happy to accept iton your own conditions. I wish to be honourable, Captain Gills, ' said MrToots, holding back his extended hand for a moment, 'and therefore Iam obliged to say that I can not help thinking about Miss Dombey. It'simpossible for me to make a promise not to think about her. '

'My lad, ' said the Captain, whose opinion of Mr Toots was much improvedby this candid avowal, 'a man's thoughts is like the winds, and nobodycan't answer for 'em for certain, any length of time together. Is it atreaty as to words?'

'As to words, Captain Gills, ' returned Mr Toots, 'I think I can bindmyself. '

Mr Toots gave Captain Cuttle his hand upon it, then and there; and theCaptain with a pleasant and gracious show of condescension, bestowedhis acquaintance upon him formally. Mr Toots seemed much relievedand gladdened by the acquisition, and chuckled rapturously during theremainder of his visit. The Captain, for his part, was not ill pleasedto occupy that position of patronage, and was exceedingly well satisfiedby his own prudence and foresight. 

But rich as Captain Cuttle was in the latter quality, he received asurprise that same evening from a no less ingenuous and simple youth, than Rob the Grinder. That artless lad, drinking tea at the same table, and bending meekly over his cup and saucer, having taken sidelongobservations of his master for some time, who was reading the newspaperwith great difficulty, but much dignity, through his glasses, brokesilence by saying--

'Oh! I beg your pardon, Captain, but you mayn't be in want of anypigeons, may you, Sir?'

'No, my lad, ' replied the Captain. 

'Because I was wishing to dispose of mine, Captain, ' said Rob. 

'Ay, ay?' cried the Captain, lifting up his bushy eyebrows a little. 

'Yes; I'm going, Captain, if you please, ' said Rob. 

'Going? Where are you going?' asked the Captain, looking round at himover the glasses. 

'What? didn't you know that I was going to leave you, Captain?' askedRob, with a sneaking smile. 

The Captain put down the paper, took off his spectacles, and brought hiseyes to bear on the deserter. 

'Oh yes, Captain, I am going to give you warning. I thought you'dhave known that beforehand, perhaps, ' said Rob, rubbing his hands, andgetting up. 'If you could be so good as provide yourself soon, Captain, it would be a great convenience to me. You couldn't provide yourself byto-morrow morning, I am afraid, Captain: could you, do you think?'

'And you're a going to desert your colours, are you, my lad?' said theCaptain, after a long examination of his face. 

'Oh, it's very hard upon a cove, Captain, ' cried the tender Rob, injuredand indignant in a moment, 'that he can't give lawful warning, withoutbeing frowned at in that way, and called a deserter. You haven't anyright to call a poor cove names, Captain. It ain't because I'm a servantand you're a master, that you're to go and libel me. What wrong have Idone? Come, Captain, let me know what my crime is, will you?'

The stricken Grinder wept, and put his coat-cuff in his eye. 

'Come, Captain, ' cried the injured youth, 'give my crime a name! Whathave I been and done? Have I stolen any of the property? have I set thehouse a-fire? If I have, why don't you give me in charge, and try it?But to take away the character of a lad that's been a good servant toyou, because he can't afford to stand in his own light for your good, what a injury it is, and what a bad return for faithful service! This isthe way young coves is spiled and drove wrong. I wonder at you, Captain, I do. '

All of which the Grinder howled forth in a lachrymose whine, and backingcarefully towards the door. 

'And so you've got another berth, have you, my lad?' said the Captain, eyeing him intently. 

'Yes, Captain, since you put it in that shape, I have got anotherberth, ' cried Rob, backing more and more; 'a better berth than I've gothere, and one where I don't so much as want your good word, Captain, which is fort'nate for me, after all the dirt you've throw'd at me, because I'm poor, and can't afford to stand in my own light for yourgood. Yes, I have got another berth; and if it wasn't for leaving youunprovided, Captain, I'd go to it now, sooner than I'd take them namesfrom you, because I'm poor, and can't afford to stand in my own lightfor your good. Why do you reproach me for being poor, and not standingin my own light for your good, Captain? How can you so demean yourself?'

'Look ye here, my boy, ' replied the peaceful Captain. 'Don't you pay outno more of them words. '

'Well, then, don't you pay in no more of your words, Captain, ' retortedthe roused innocent, getting louder in his whine, and backing into theshop. 'I'd sooner you took my blood than my character. '

'Because, ' pursued the Captain calmly, 'you have heerd, may be, of sucha thing as a rope's end. '

'Oh, have I though, Captain?' cried the taunting Grinder. 'No I haven't. I never heerd of any such a article!'

'Well, ' said the Captain, 'it's my belief as you'll know more aboutit pretty soon, if you don't keep a bright look-out. I can read yoursignals, my lad. You may go. '

'Oh! I may go at once, may I, Captain?' cried Rob, exulting in hissuccess. 'But mind! I never asked to go at once, Captain. You are notto take away my character again, because you send me off of your ownaccord. And you're not to stop any of my wages, Captain!'

His employer settled the last point by producing the tin canister andtelling the Grinder's money out in full upon the table. Rob, snivellingand sobbing, and grievously wounded in his feelings, took up thepieces one by one, with a sob and a snivel for each, and tied them upseparately in knots in his pockethandkerchief; then he ascended to theroof of the house and filled his hat and pockets with pigeons;then, came down to his bed under the counter and made up his bundle, snivelling and sobbing louder, as if he were cut to the heart by oldassociations; then he whined, 'Good-night, Captain. I leave you withoutmalice!' and then, going out upon the door-step, pulled the littleMidshipman's nose as a parting indignity, and went away down the streetgrinning triumphantly. 

The Captain, left to himself, resumed his perusal of the news as ifnothing unusual or unexpected had taken place, and went reading on withthe greatest assiduity. But never a word did Captain Cuttle understand, though he read a vast number, for Rob the Grinder was scampering up onecolumn and down another all through the newspaper. 

It is doubtful whether the worthy Captain had ever felt himself quiteabandoned until now; but now, old Sol Gills, Walter, and Heart's Delightwere lost to him indeed, and now Mr Carker deceived and jeered himcruelly. They were all represented in the false Rob, to whom he had heldforth many a time on the recollections that were warm within him; he hadbelieved in the false Rob, and had been glad to believe in him; he hadmade a companion of him as the last of the old ship's company; he hadtaken the command of the little Midshipman with him at his right hand;he had meant to do his duty by him, and had felt almost as kindlytowards the boy as if they had been shipwrecked and cast upon a desertplace together. And now, that the false Rob had brought distrust, treachery, and meanness into the very parlour, which was a kind ofsacred place, Captain Cuttle felt as if the parlour might have gone downnext, and not surprised him much by its sinking, or given him any verygreat concern. 

Therefore Captain Cuttle read the newspaper with profound attention andno comprehension, and therefore Captain Cuttle said nothing whateverabout Rob to himself, or admitted to himself that he was thinking abouthim, or would recognise in the most distant manner that Rob had anythingto do with his feeling as lonely as Robinson Crusoe. 

In the same composed, business-like way, the Captain stepped overto Leadenhall Market in the dusk, and effected an arrangement with aprivate watchman on duty there, to come and put up and take down theshutters of the wooden Midshipman every night and morning. He thencalled in at the eating-house to diminish by one half the daily rationstheretofore supplied to the Midshipman, and at the public-house to stopthe traitor's beer. 'My young man, ' said the Captain, in explanation tothe young lady at the bar, 'my young man having bettered himself, Miss. 'Lastly, the Captain resolved to take possession of the bed under thecounter, and to turn in there o' nights instead of upstairs, as soleguardian of the property. 

From this bed Captain Cuttle daily rose thenceforth, and clapped onhis glazed hat at six o'clock in the morning, with the solitary air ofCrusoe finishing his toilet with his goat-skin cap; and although hisfears of a visitation from the savage tribe, MacStinger, were somewhatcooled, as similar apprehensions on the part of that lone marinerused to be by the lapse of a long interval without any symptoms of thecannibals, he still observed a regular routine of defensive operations, and never encountered a bonnet without previous survey from his castleof retreat. In the meantime (during which he received no call from MrToots, who wrote to say he was out of town) his own voice began to havea strange sound in his ears; and he acquired such habits of profoundmeditation from much polishing and stowing away of the stock, and frommuch sitting behind the counter reading, or looking out of window, thatthe red rim made on his forehead by the hard glazed hat, sometimes achedagain with excess of reflection. 

The year being now expired, Captain Cuttle deemed it expedient to openthe packet; but as he had always designed doing this in the presence ofRob the Grinder, who had brought it to him, and as he had an ideathat it would be regular and ship-shape to open it in the presenceof somebody, he was sadly put to it for want of a witness. In thisdifficulty, he hailed one day with unusual delight the announcement inthe Shipping Intelligence of the arrival of the Cautious Clara, CaptainJohn Bunsby, from a coasting voyage; and to that philosopher immediatelydispatched a letter by post, enjoining inviolable secrecy as to hisplace of residence, and requesting to be favoured with an early visit, in the evening season. 

Bunsby, who was one of those sages who act upon conviction, tooksome days to get the conviction thoroughly into his mind, that he hadreceived a letter to this effect. But when he had grappled with thefact, and mastered it, he promptly sent his boy with the message, 'He'sa coming to-night. ' Who being instructed to deliver those words anddisappear, fulfilled his mission like a tarry spirit, charged with amysterious warning. 

The Captain, well pleased to receive it, made preparation of pipes andrum and water, and awaited his visitor in the back parlour. At the hourof eight, a deep lowing, as of a nautical Bull, outside the shop-door, succeeded by the knocking of a stick on the panel, announced to thelistening ear of Captain Cuttle, that Bunsby was alongside; whom heinstantly admitted, shaggy and loose, and with his stolid mahoganyvisage, as usual, appearing to have no consciousness of anything beforeit, but to be attentively observing something that was taking place inquite another part of the world. 

'Bunsby, ' said the Captain, grasping him by the hand, 'what cheer, mylad, what cheer?'

'Shipmet, ' replied the voice within Bunsby, unaccompanied by any sign onthe part of the Commander himself, 'hearty, hearty. '

'Bunsby!' said the Captain, rendering irrepressible homage to hisgenius, 'here you are! a man as can give an opinion as is brighter thandi'monds--and give me the lad with the tarry trousers as shines to melike di'monds bright, for which you'll overhaul the Stanfell's Budget, and when found make a note. ' Here you are, a man as gave an opinion inthis here very place, that has come true, every letter on it, ' which theCaptain sincerely believed. 

'Ay, ay?' growled Bunsby. 

'Every letter, ' said the Captain. 

'For why?' growled Bunsby, looking at his friend for the first time. 'Which way? If so, why not? Therefore. ' With these oracular words--theyseemed almost to make the Captain giddy; they launched him upon such asea of speculation and conjecture--the sage submitted to be helped offwith his pilot-coat, and accompanied his friend into the back parlour, where his hand presently alighted on the rum-bottle, from which hebrewed a stiff glass of grog; and presently afterwards on a pipe, whichhe filled, lighted, and began to smoke. 

Captain Cuttle, imitating his visitor in the matter of theseparticulars, though the rapt and imperturbable manner of the greatCommander was far above his powers, sat in the opposite corner of thefireside, observing him respectfully, and as if he waited for someencouragement or expression of curiosity on Bunsby's part which shouldlead him to his own affairs. But as the mahogany philosopher gave noevidence of being sentient of anything but warmth and tobacco, exceptonce, when taking his pipe from his lips to make room for his glass, heincidentally remarked with exceeding gruffness, that his name wasJack Bunsby--a declaration that presented but small opening forconversation--the Captain bespeaking his attention in a shortcomplimentary exordium, narrated the whole history of Uncle Sol'sdeparture, with the change it had produced in his own life and fortunes;and concluded by placing the packet on the table. 

After a long pause, Mr Bunsby nodded his head. 

'Open?' said the Captain. 

Bunsby nodded again. 

The Captain accordingly broke the seal, and disclosed to view two foldedpapers, of which he severally read the endorsements, thus: 'Last Willand Testament of Solomon Gills. ' 'Letter for Ned Cuttle. '

Bunsby, with his eye on the coast of Greenland, seemed to listen for thecontents. The Captain therefore hemmed to clear his throat, and read theletter aloud. 

'"My dear Ned Cuttle. When I left home for the West Indies"--'

Here the Captain stopped, and looked hard at Bunsby, who looked fixedlyat the coast of Greenland. 

'--"in forlorn search of intelligence of my dear boy, I knew that if youwere acquainted with my design, you would thwart it, or accompany me;and therefore I kept it secret. If you ever read this letter, Ned, I amlikely to be dead. You will easily forgive an old friend's folly then, and will feel for the restlessness and uncertainty in which he wanderedaway on such a wild voyage. So no more of that. I have little hope thatmy poor boy will ever read these words, or gladden your eyes withthe sight of his frank face any more. " No, no; no more, ' said CaptainCuttle, sorrowfully meditating; 'no more. There he lays, all his days--'

Mr Bunsby, who had a musical ear, suddenly bellowed, 'In the Baysof Biscay, O!' which so affected the good Captain, as an appropriatetribute to departed worth, that he shook him by the hand inacknowledgment, and was fain to wipe his eyes. 

'Well, well!' said the Captain with a sigh, as the Lament of Bunsbyceased to ring and vibrate in the skylight. 'Affliction sore, long timehe bore, and let us overhaul the wollume, and there find it. '

'Physicians, ' observed Bunsby, 'was in vain. '

'Ay, ay, to be sure, ' said the Captain, 'what's the good o' them in twoor three hundred fathoms o' water!' Then, returning to the letter, heread on:--'"But if he should be by, when it is opened;"' the Captaininvoluntarily looked round, and shook his head; '"or should know of itat any other time;"' the Captain shook his head again; '"my blessing onhim! In case the accompanying paper is not legally written, it mattersvery little, for there is no one interested but you and he, and my plainwish is, that if he is living he should have what little there may be, and if (as I fear) otherwise, that you should have it, Ned. Youwill respect my wish, I know. God bless you for it, and for all yourfriendliness besides, to Solomon Gills. " Bunsby!' said the Captain, appealing to him solemnly, 'what do you make of this? There you sit, aman as has had his head broke from infancy up'ards, and has got a newopinion into it at every seam as has been opened. Now, what do you makeo' this?'

'If so be, ' returned Bunsby, with unusual promptitude, 'as he's dead, my opinion is he won't come back no more. If so be as he's alive, myopinion is he will. Do I say he will? No. Why not? Because the bearingsof this obserwation lays in the application on it. '

'Bunsby!' said Captain Cuttle, who would seem to have estimated thevalue of his distinguished friend's opinions in proportion to theimmensity of the difficulty he experienced in making anything out ofthem; 'Bunsby, ' said the Captain, quite confounded by admiration, 'youcarry a weight of mind easy, as would swamp one of my tonnage soon. Butin regard o' this here will, I don't mean to take no steps towards theproperty--Lord forbid!--except to keep it for a more rightful owner; andI hope yet as the rightful owner, Sol Gills, is living and'll come back, strange as it is that he ain't forwarded no dispatches. Now, what isyour opinion, Bunsby, as to stowing of these here papers away again, andmarking outside as they was opened, such a day, in the presence of JohnBunsby and Ed'ard Cuttle?'

Bunsby, descrying no objection, on the coast of Greenland or elsewhere, to this proposal, it was carried into execution; and that great man, bringing his eye into the present for a moment, affixed his sign-manualto the cover, totally abstaining, with characteristic modesty, fromthe use of capital letters. Captain Cuttle, having attached his ownleft-handed signature, and locked up the packet in the iron safe, entreated his guest to mix another glass and smoke another pipe; anddoing the like himself, fell a musing over the fire on the possiblefortunes of the poor old Instrument-maker. 

And now a surprise occurred, so overwhelming and terrific that CaptainCuttle, unsupported by the presence of Bunsby, must have sunk beneathit, and been a lost man from that fatal hour. 

How the Captain, even in the satisfaction of admitting such a guest, could have only shut the door, and not locked it, of which negligencehe was undoubtedly guilty, is one of those questions that must for everremain mere points of speculation, or vague charges against destiny. But by that unlocked door, at this quiet moment, did the fell MacStingerdash into the parlour, bringing Alexander MacStinger in her parentalarms, and confusion and vengeance (not to mention Juliana MacStinger, and the sweet child's brother, Charles MacStinger, popularly known aboutthe scenes of his youthful sports, as Chowley) in her train. She cameso swiftly and so silently, like a rushing air from the neighbourhood ofthe East India Docks, that Captain Cuttle found himself in the very actof sitting looking at her, before the calm face with which he had beenmeditating, changed to one of horror and dismay. 

But the moment Captain Cuttle understood the full extent of hismisfortune, self-preservation dictated an attempt at flight. Darting atthe little door which opened from the parlour on the steep little rangeof cellar-steps, the Captain made a rush, head-foremost, at the latter, like a man indifferent to bruises and contusions, who only sought tohide himself in the bowels of the earth. In this gallant effort hewould probably have succeeded, but for the affectionate dispositionsof Juliana and Chowley, who pinning him by the legs--one of thosedear children holding on to each--claimed him as their friend, withlamentable cries. In the meantime, Mrs MacStinger, who never enteredupon any action of importance without previously inverting AlexanderMacStinger, to bring him within the range of a brisk battery of slaps, and then sitting him down to cool as the reader first beheld him, performed that solemn rite, as if on this occasion it were a sacrificeto the Furies; and having deposited the victim on the floor, made at theCaptain with a strength of purpose that appeared to threaten scratchesto the interposing Bunsby. 

The cries of the two elder MacStingers, and the wailing of youngAlexander, who may be said to have passed a piebald childhood, forasmuchas he was black in the face during one half of that fairy period ofexistence, combined to make this visitation the more awful. But whensilence reigned again, and the Captain, in a violent perspiration, stoodmeekly looking at Mrs MacStinger, its terrors were at their height. 

'Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle!' said Mrs MacStinger, making her chinrigid, and shaking it in unison with what, but for the weakness of hersex, might be described as her fist. 'Oh, Cap'en Cuttle, Cap'en Cuttle, do you dare to look me in the face, and not be struck down in theberth!'

The Captain, who looked anything but daring, feebly muttered 'Standby!'

'Oh I was a weak and trusting Fool when I took you under my roof, Cap'enCuttle, I was!' cried Mrs MacStinger. 'To think of the benefits I'veshowered on that man, and the way in which I brought my children up tolove and honour him as if he was a father to 'em, when there ain't ahousekeeper, no nor a lodger in our street, don't know that I lost moneyby that man, and by his guzzlings and his muzzlings'--Mrs MacStingerused the last word for the joint sake of alliteration and aggravation, rather than for the expression of any idea--'and when they cried out oneand all, shame upon him for putting upon an industrious woman, up earlyand late for the good of her young family, and keeping her poor place soclean that a individual might have ate his dinner, yes, and his tea too, if he was so disposed, off any one of the floors or stairs, in spiteof all his guzzlings and his muzzlings, such was the care and painsbestowed upon him!'

Mrs MacStinger stopped to fetch her breath; and her face flushed withtriumph in this second happy introduction of Captain Cuttle's muzzlings. 

'And he runs awa-a-a-y!'cried Mrs MacStinger, with a lengthening out ofthe last syllable that made the unfortunate Captain regard himself asthe meanest of men; 'and keeps away a twelve-month! From a woman! Suchis his conscience! He hasn't the courage to meet her hi-i-igh;' longsyllable again; 'but steals away, like a fellon. Why, if that baby ofmine, ' said Mrs MacStinger, with sudden rapidity, 'was to offer to goand steal away, I'd do my duty as a mother by him, till he was coveredwith wales!'

The young Alexander, interpreting this into a positive promise, to beshortly redeemed, tumbled over with fear and grief, and lay upon thefloor, exhibiting the soles of his shoes and making such a deafeningoutcry, that Mrs MacStinger found it necessary to take him up in herarms, where she quieted him, ever and anon, as he broke out again, by ashake that seemed enough to loosen his teeth. 

'A pretty sort of a man is Cap'en Cuttle, ' said Mrs MacStinger, with asharp stress on the first syllable of the Captain's name, 'to take onfor--and to lose sleep for--and to faint along of--and to think deadforsooth--and to go up and down the blessed town like a madwoman, askingquestions after! Oh, a pretty sort of a man! Ha ha ha ha! He's worth allthat trouble and distress of mind, and much more. That's nothing, blessyou! Ha ha ha ha! Cap'en Cuttle, ' said Mrs MacStinger, with severereaction in her voice and manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-cominghome. 

The frightened Captain looked into his hat, as if he saw nothing for itbut to put it on, and give himself up. 

'Cap'en Cuttle, ' repeated Mrs MacStinger, in the same determined manner, 'I wish to know if you're a-coming home, Sir. '

The Captain seemed quite ready to go, but faintly suggested something tothe effect of 'not making so much noise about it. '

'Ay, ay, ay, ' said Bunsby, in a soothing tone. 'Awast, my lass, awast!'

'And who may you be, if you please!' retorted Mrs MacStinger, withchaste loftiness. 'Did you ever lodge at Number Nine, Brig Place, Sir?My memory may be bad, but not with me, I think. There was a Mrs Jollsonlived at Number Nine before me, and perhaps you're mistaking me for her. That is my only ways of accounting for your familiarity, Sir. '

'Come, come, my lass, awast, awast!' said Bunsby. 

Captain Cuttle could hardly believe it, even of this great man, thoughhe saw it done with his waking eyes; but Bunsby, advancing boldly, puthis shaggy blue arm round Mrs MacStinger, and so softened her by hismagic way of doing it, and by these few words--he said no more--thatshe melted into tears, after looking upon him for a few moments, andobserved that a child might conquer her now, she was so low in hercourage. 

Speechless and utterly amazed, the Captain saw him gradually persuadethis inexorable woman into the shop, return for rum and water and acandle, take them to her, and pacify her without appearing to utter oneword. Presently he looked in with his pilot-coat on, and said, 'Cuttle, I'm a-going to act as convoy home;' and Captain Cuttle, more to hisconfusion than if he had been put in irons himself, for safe transportto Brig Place, saw the family pacifically filing off, with MrsMacStinger at their head. He had scarcely time to take down hiscanister, and stealthily convey some money into the hands of JulianaMacStinger, his former favourite, and Chowley, who had the claim uponhim that he was naturally of a maritime build, before the Midshipman wasabandoned by them all; and Bunsby whispering that he'd carry on smart, and hail Ned Cuttle again before he went aboard, shut the door uponhimself, as the last member of the party. 

Some uneasy ideas that he must be walking in his sleep, or that he hadbeen troubled with phantoms, and not a family of flesh and blood, besetthe Captain at first, when he went back to the little parlour, and foundhimself alone. Illimitable faith in, and immeasurable admiration of, theCommander of the Cautious Clara, succeeded, and threw the Captain into awondering trance. 

Still, as time wore on, and Bunsby failed to reappear, the Captain beganto entertain uncomfortable doubts of another kind. Whether Bunsby hadbeen artfully decoyed to Brig Place, and was there detained in safecustody as hostage for his friend; in which case it would become theCaptain, as a man of honour, to release him, by the sacrifice of his ownliberty. Whether he had been attacked and defeated by Mrs MacStinger, and was ashamed to show himself after his discomfiture. Whether MrsMacStinger, thinking better of it, in the uncertainty of her temper, had turned back to board the Midshipman again, and Bunsby, pretending toconduct her by a short cut, was endeavouring to lose the family amidthe wilds and savage places of the City. Above all, what it would behovehim, Captain Cuttle, to do, in case of his hearing no more, either ofthe MacStingers or of Bunsby, which, in these wonderful and unforeseenconjunctions of events, might possibly happen. 

He debated all this until he was tired; and still no Bunsby. He madeup his bed under the counter, all ready for turning in; and still noBunsby. At length, when the Captain had given him up, for that nightat least, and had begun to undress, the sound of approaching wheels washeard, and, stopping at the door, was succeeded by Bunsby's hail. 

The Captain trembled to think that Mrs MacStinger was not to be got ridof, and had been brought back in a coach. 

But no. Bunsby was accompanied by nothing but a large box, which hehauled into the shop with his own hands, and as soon as he had hauledin, sat upon. Captain Cuttle knew it for the chest he had left atMrs MacStinger's house, and looking, candle in hand, at Bunsby moreattentively, believed that he was three sheets in the wind, or, inplain words, drunk. It was difficult, however, to be sure of this; theCommander having no trace of expression in his face when sober. 

'Cuttle, ' said the Commander, getting off the chest, and opening thelid, 'are these here your traps?'

Captain Cuttle looked in and identified his property. 

'Done pretty taut and trim, hey, shipmet?' said Bunsby. 

The grateful and bewildered Captain grasped him by the hand, and waslaunching into a reply expressive of his astonished feelings, whenBunsby disengaged himself by a jerk of his wrist, and seemed to make aneffort to wink with his revolving eye, the only effect of which attempt, in his condition, was nearly to over-balance him. He then abruptlyopened the door, and shot away to rejoin the Cautious Clara with allspeed--supposed to be his invariable custom, whenever he considered hehad made a point. 

As it was not his humour to be often sought, Captain Cuttle decidednot to go or send to him next day, or until he should make his graciouspleasure known in such wise, or failing that, until some little timeshould have lapsed. The Captain, therefore, renewed his solitary lifenext morning, and thought profoundly, many mornings, noons, and nights, of old Sol Gills, and Bunsby's sentiments concerning him, and the hopesthere were of his return. Much of such thinking strengthened CaptainCuttle's hopes; and he humoured them and himself by watching for theInstrument-maker at the door--as he ventured to do now, in his strangeliberty--and setting his chair in its place, and arranging the littleparlour as it used to be, in case he should come home unexpectedly. Helikewise, in his thoughtfulness, took down a certain little miniatureof Walter as a schoolboy, from its accustomed nail, lest it shouldshock the old man on his return. The Captain had his presentiments, too, sometimes, that he would come on such a day; and one particular Sunday, even ordered a double allowance of dinner, he was so sanguine. But come, old Solomon did not; and still the neighbours noticed how the seafaringman in the glazed hat, stood at the shop-door of an evening, looking upand down the street. 

CHAPTER 40. Domestic Relations

It was not in the nature of things that a man of Mr Dombey's mood, opposed to such a spirit as he had raised against himself, should besoftened in the imperious asperity of his temper; or that the cold hardarmour of pride in which he lived encased, should be made more flexibleby constant collision with haughty scorn and defiance. It is the curseof such a nature--it is a main part of the heavy retribution on itselfit bears within itself--that while deference and concession swellits evil qualities, and are the food it grows upon, resistance and aquestioning of its exacting claims, foster it too, no less. The evilthat is in it finds equally its means of growth and propagation inopposites. It draws support and life from sweets and bitters; bowed downbefore, or unacknowledged, it still enslaves the breast in which ithas its throne; and, worshipped or rejected, is as hard a master as theDevil in dark fables. 

Towards his first wife, Mr Dombey, in his cold and lofty arrogance, hadborne himself like the removed Being he almost conceived himself to be. He had been 'Mr Dombey' with her when she first saw him, and he was 'MrDombey' when she died. He had asserted his greatness during their wholemarried life, and she had meekly recognised it. He had kept his distantseat of state on the top of his throne, and she her humble station onits lowest step; and much good it had done him, so to live in solitarybondage to his one idea. He had imagined that the proud character of hissecond wife would have been added to his own--would have merged into it, and exalted his greatness. He had pictured himself haughtier than ever, with Edith's haughtiness subservient to his. He had never entertainedthe possibility of its arraying itself against him. And now, when hefound it rising in his path at every step and turn of his daily life, fixing its cold, defiant, and contemptuous face upon him, this pride ofhis, instead of withering, or hanging down its head beneath the shock, put forth new shoots, became more concentrated and intense, more gloomy, sullen, irksome, and unyielding, than it had ever been before. 

Who wears such armour, too, bears with him ever another heavyretribution. It is of proof against conciliation, love, and confidence;against all gentle sympathy from without, all trust, all tenderness, allsoft emotion; but to deep stabs in the self-love, it is as vulnerable asthe bare breast to steel; and such tormenting festers rankle there, as follow on no other wounds, no, though dealt with the mailed hand ofPride itself, on weaker pride, disarmed and thrown down. 

Such wounds were his. He felt them sharply, in the solitude of hisold rooms; whither he now began often to retire again, and pass longsolitary hours. It seemed his fate to be ever proud and powerful; everhumbled and powerless where he would be most strong. Who seemed fated towork out that doom?

Who? Who was it who could win his wife as she had won his boy? Who wasit who had shown him that new victory, as he sat in the dark corner? Whowas it whose least word did what his utmost means could not? Who was itwho, unaided by his love, regard or notice, thrived and grew beautifulwhen those so aided died? Who could it be, but the same child at whomhe had often glanced uneasily in her motherless infancy, with a kind ofdread, lest he might come to hate her; and of whom his foreboding wasfulfilled, for he DID hate her in his heart?

Yes, and he would have it hatred, and he made it hatred, though somesparkles of the light in which she had appeared before him on thememorable night of his return home with his Bride, occasionally hungabout her still. He knew now that she was beautiful; he did not disputethat she was graceful and winning, and that in the bright dawn of herwomanhood she had come upon him, a surprise. But he turned even thisagainst her. In his sullen and unwholesome brooding, the unhappy man, with a dull perception of his alienation from all hearts, and a vagueyearning for what he had all his life repelled, made a distorted pictureof his rights and wrongs, and justified himself with it against her. Theworthier she promised to be of him, the greater claim he was disposed toantedate upon her duty and submission. When had she ever shown him dutyand submission? Did she grace his life--or Edith's? Had her attractionsbeen manifested first to him--or Edith? Why, he and she had never been, from her birth, like father and child! They had always been estranged. She had crossed him every way and everywhere. She was leagued againsthim now. Her very beauty softened natures that were obdurate to him, andinsulted him with an unnatural triumph. 

It may have been that in all this there were mutterings of an awakenedfeeling in his breast, however selfishly aroused by his position ofdisadvantage, in comparison with what she might have made his life. Buthe silenced the distant thunder with the rolling of his sea of pride. He would bear nothing but his pride. And in his pride, a heap ofinconsistency, and misery, and self-inflicted torment, he hated her. 

To the moody, stubborn, sullen demon, that possessed him, his wifeopposed her different pride in its full force. They never could have leda happy life together; but nothing could have made it more unhappy, thanthe wilful and determined warfare of such elements. His pride was setupon maintaining his magnificent supremacy, and forcing recognition ofit from her. She would have been racked to death, and turned but herhaughty glance of calm inflexible disdain upon him, to the last. Suchrecognition from Edith! He little knew through what a storm and struggleshe had been driven onward to the crowning honour of his hand. He littleknew how much she thought she had conceded, when she suffered him tocall her wife. 

Mr Dombey was resolved to show her that he was supreme. There must be nowill but his. Proud he desired that she should be, but she must be proudfor, not against him. As he sat alone, hardening, he would often hearher go out and come home, treading the round of London life with no moreheed of his liking or disliking, pleasure or displeasure, than if hehad been her groom. Her cold supreme indifference--his own unquestionedattribute usurped--stung him more than any other kind of treatment couldhave done; and he determined to bend her to his magnificent and statelywill. 

He had been long communing with these thoughts, when one night he soughther in her own apartment, after he had heard her return home late. Shewas alone, in her brilliant dress, and had but that moment come from hermother's room. Her face was melancholy and pensive, when he came uponher; but it marked him at the door; for, glancing at the mirror beforeit, he saw immediately, as in a picture-frame, the knitted brow, anddarkened beauty that he knew so well. 

'Mrs Dombey, ' he said, entering, 'I must beg leave to have a few wordswith you. '

'To-morrow, ' she replied. 

'There is no time like the present, Madam, ' he returned. 'You mistakeyour position. I am used to choose my own times; not to have them chosenfor me. I think you scarcely understand who and what I am, Mrs Dombey. 

'I think, ' she answered, 'that I understand you very well. '

She looked upon him as she said so, and folding her white arms, sparkling with gold and gems, upon her swelling breast, turned away hereyes. 

If she had been less handsome, and less stately in her cold composure, she might not have had the power of impressing him with the sense ofdisadvantage that penetrated through his utmost pride. But she had thepower, and he felt it keenly. He glanced round the room: saw how thesplendid means of personal adornment, and the luxuries of dress, werescattered here and there, and disregarded; not in mere caprice andcarelessness (or so he thought), but in a steadfast haughty disregard ofcostly things: and felt it more and more. Chaplets of flowers, plumes offeathers, jewels, laces, silks and satins; look where he would, hesaw riches, despised, poured out, and made of no account. The verydiamonds--a marriage gift--that rose and fell impatiently upon herbosom, seemed to pant to break the chain that clasped them round herneck, and roll down on the floor where she might tread upon them. 

He felt his disadvantage, and he showed it. Solemn and strange amongthis wealth of colour and voluptuous glitter, strange and constrainedtowards its haughty mistress, whose repellent beauty it repeated, andpresented all around him, as in so many fragments of a mirror, he wasconscious of embarrassment and awkwardness. Nothing that ministeredto her disdainful self-possession could fail to gall him. Galled andirritated with himself, he sat down, and went on, in no improved humour:

'Mrs Dombey, it is very necessary that there should be someunderstanding arrived at between us. Your conduct does not please me, Madam. '

She merely glanced at him again, and again averted her eyes; but shemight have spoken for an hour, and expressed less. 

'I repeat, Mrs Dombey, does not please me. I have already taken occasionto request that it may be corrected. I now insist upon it. '

'You chose a fitting occasion for your first remonstrance, Sir, and youadopt a fitting manner, and a fitting word for your second. You insist!To me!'

'Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, with his most offensive air of state, 'I havemade you my wife. You bear my name. You are associated with my positionand my reputation. I will not say that the world in general may bedisposed to think you honoured by that association; but I will say thatI am accustomed to "insist, " to my connexions and dependents. '

'Which may you be pleased to consider me? she asked. 

'Possibly I may think that my wife should partake--or does partake, andcannot help herself--of both characters, Mrs Dombey. '

She bent her eyes upon him steadily, and set her trembling lips. Hesaw her bosom throb, and saw her face flush and turn white. All this hecould know, and did: but he could not know that one word was whisperingin the deep recesses of her heart, to keep her quiet; and that the wordwas Florence. 

Blind idiot, rushing to a precipice! He thought she stood in awe of him. 

'You are too expensive, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey. 'You are extravagant. You waste a great deal of money--or what would be a great deal in thepockets of most gentlemen--in cultivating a kind of society that isuseless to me, and, indeed, that upon the whole is disagreeable to me. Ihave to insist upon a total change in all these respects. I know that inthe novelty of possessing a tithe of such means as Fortune has placedat your disposal, ladies are apt to run into a sudden extreme. Therehas been more than enough of that extreme. I beg that Mrs Granger's verydifferent experiences may now come to the instruction of Mrs Dombey. '

Still the fixed look, the trembling lips, the throbbing breast, theface now crimson and now white; and still the deep whisper Florence, Florence, speaking to her in the beating of her heart. 

His insolence of self-importance dilated as he saw this alteration inher. Swollen no less by her past scorn of him, and his so recent feelingof disadvantage, than by her present submission (as he took it to be), it became too mighty for his breast, and burst all bounds. Why, whocould long resist his lofty will and pleasure! He had resolved toconquer her, and look here!

'You will further please, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, in a tone of sovereigncommand, 'to understand distinctly, that I am to be deferred to andobeyed. That I must have a positive show and confession of deferencebefore the world, Madam. I am used to this. I require it as my right. In short I will have it. I consider it no unreasonable return for theworldly advancement that has befallen you; and I believe nobody willbe surprised, either at its being required from you, or at your makingit. --To Me--To Me!' he added, with emphasis. 

No word from her. No change in her. Her eyes upon him. 

'I have learnt from your mother, Mrs Dombey, ' said Mr Dombey, withmagisterial importance, 'what no doubt you know, namely, that Brighton isrecommended for her health. Mr Carker has been so good. '

She changed suddenly. Her face and bosom glowed as if the red light ofan angry sunset had been flung upon them. Not unobservant of the change, and putting his own interpretation upon it, Mr Dombey resumed:

'Mr Carker has been so good as to go down and secure a house there, fora time. On the return of the establishment to London, I shall take suchsteps for its better management as I consider necessary. One of these, will be the engagement at Brighton (if it is to be effected), of a veryrespectable reduced person there, a Mrs Pipchin, formerly employed in asituation of trust in my family, to act as housekeeper. An establishmentlike this, presided over but nominally, Mrs Dombey, requires a competenthead. '

She had changed her attitude before he arrived at these words, and nowsat--still looking at him fixedly--turning a bracelet round and roundupon her arm; not winding it about with a light, womanly touch, butpressing and dragging it over the smooth skin, until the white limbshowed a bar of red. 

'I observed, ' said Mr Dombey--'and this concludes what I deem itnecessary to say to you at present, Mrs Dombey--I observed a moment ago, Madam, that my allusion to Mr Carker was received in a peculiar manner. On the occasion of my happening to point out to you, before thatconfidential agent, the objection I had to your mode of receiving myvisitors, you were pleased to object to his presence. You will have toget the better of that objection, Madam, and to accustom yourself toit very probably on many similar occasions; unless you adopt the remedywhich is in your own hands, of giving me no cause of complaint. MrCarker, ' said Mr Dombey, who, after the emotion he had just seen, set great store by this means of reducing his proud wife, and who wasperhaps sufficiently willing to exhibit his power to that gentleman ina new and triumphant aspect, 'Mr Carker being in my confidence, MrsDombey, may very well be in yours to such an extent. I hope, MrsDombey, ' he continued, after a few moments, during which, in hisincreasing haughtiness, he had improved on his idea, 'I may not findit necessary ever to entrust Mr Carker with any message of objection orremonstrance to you; but as it would be derogatory to my position andreputation to be frequently holding trivial disputes with a lady uponwhom I have conferred the highest distinction that it is in my powerto bestow, I shall not scruple to avail myself of his services if I seeoccasion. '

'And now, ' he thought, rising in his moral magnificence, and risinga stiffer and more impenetrable man than ever, 'she knows me and myresolution. '

The hand that had so pressed the bracelet was laid heavily upon herbreast, but she looked at him still, with an unaltered face, and said ina low voice:

'Wait! For God's sake! I must speak to you. '

Why did she not, and what was the inward struggle that rendered herincapable of doing so, for minutes, while, in the strong constraint sheput upon her face, it was as fixed as any statue's--looking upon himwith neither yielding nor unyielding, liking nor hatred, pride nothumility: nothing but a searching gaze?

'Did I ever tempt you to seek my hand? Did I ever use any art to winyou? Was I ever more conciliating to you when you pursued me, than Ihave been since our marriage? Was I ever other to you than I am?'

'It is wholly unnecessary, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, 'to enter upon suchdiscussions. '

'Did you think I loved you? Did you know I did not? Did you ever care, Man! for my heart, or propose to yourself to win the worthless thing?Was there any poor pretence of any in our bargain? Upon your side, or onmine?'

'These questions, ' said Mr Dombey, 'are all wide of the purpose, Madam. '

She moved between him and the door to prevent his going away, anddrawing her majestic figure to its height, looked steadily upon himstill. 

'You answer each of them. You answer me before I speak, I see. How canyou help it; you who know the miserable truth as well as I? Now, tellme. If I loved you to devotion, could I do more than render up my wholewill and being to you, as you have just demanded? If my heart were pureand all untried, and you its idol, could you ask more; could you havemore?'

'Possibly not, Madam, ' he returned coolly. 

'You know how different I am. You see me looking on you now, and you canread the warmth of passion for you that is breathing in my face. ' Not acurl of the proud lip, not a flash of the dark eye, nothing but the sameintent and searching look, accompanied these words. 'You know my generalhistory. You have spoken of my mother. Do you think you can degrade, orbend or break, me to submission and obedience?'

Mr Dombey smiled, as he might have smiled at an inquiry whether hethought he could raise ten thousand pounds. 

'If there is anything unusual here, ' she said, with a slight motion ofher hand before her brow, which did not for a moment flinch from itsimmovable and otherwise expressionless gaze, 'as I know there areunusual feelings here, ' raising the hand she pressed upon her bosom, andheavily returning it, 'consider that there is no common meaning in theappeal I am going to make you. Yes, for I am going;' she said it as inprompt reply to something in his face; 'to appeal to you. '

Mr Dombey, with a slightly condescending bend of his chin that rustledand crackled his stiff cravat, sat down on a sofa that was near him, tohear the appeal. 

'If you can believe that I am of such a nature now, '--he fancied he sawtears glistening in her eyes, and he thought, complacently, that he hadforced them from her, though none fell on her cheek, and she regardedhim as steadily as ever, --'as would make what I now say almostincredible to myself, said to any man who had become my husband, but, above all, said to you, you may, perhaps, attach the greater weight toit. In the dark end to which we are tending, and may come, we shall notinvolve ourselves alone (that might not be much) but others. '

Others! He knew at whom that word pointed, and frowned heavily. 

'I speak to you for the sake of others. Also your own sake; and formine. Since our marriage, you have been arrogant to me; and I haverepaid you in kind. You have shown to me and everyone around us, everyday and hour, that you think I am graced and distinguished by youralliance. I do not think so, and have shown that too. It seems you donot understand, or (so far as your power can go) intend that each of usshall take a separate course; and you expect from me instead, a homageyou will never have. '

Although her face was still the same, there was emphatic confirmation ofthis 'Never' in the very breath she drew. 

'I feel no tenderness towards you; that you know. You would care nothingfor it, if I did or could. I know as well that you feel none towardsme. But we are linked together; and in the knot that ties us, as I havesaid, others are bound up. We must both die; we are both connected withthe dead already, each by a little child. Let us forbear. '

Mr Dombey took a long respiration, as if he would have said, Oh! wasthis all!

'There is no wealth, ' she went on, turning paler as she watched him, while her eyes grew yet more lustrous in their earnestness, 'that couldbuy these words of me, and the meaning that belongs to them. Once castaway as idle breath, no wealth or power can bring them back. I meanthem; I have weighed them; and I will be true to what I undertake. Ifyou will promise to forbear on your part, I will promise to forbear onmine. We are a most unhappy pair, in whom, from different causes, everysentiment that blesses marriage, or justifies it, is rooted out; but inthe course of time, some friendship, or some fitness for each other, mayarise between us. I will try to hope so, if you will make the endeavourtoo; and I will look forward to a better and a happier use of age than Ihave made of youth or prime. 

Throughout she had spoken in a low plain voice, that neither rose norfell; ceasing, she dropped the hand with which she had enforced herselfto be so passionless and distinct, but not the eyes with which she hadso steadily observed him. 

'Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, with his utmost dignity, 'I cannot entertainany proposal of this extraordinary nature. 

She looked at him yet, without the least change. 

'I cannot, ' said Mr Dombey, rising as he spoke, 'consent to temporiseor treat with you, Mrs Dombey, upon a subject as to which you are inpossession of my opinions and expectations. I have stated my ultimatum, Madam, and have only to request your very serious attention to it. '

To see the face change to its old expression, deepened in intensity!To see the eyes droop as from some mean and odious object! To see thelighting of the haughty brow! To see scorn, anger, indignation, andabhorrence starting into sight, and the pale blank earnestness vanishlike a mist! He could not choose but look, although he looked to hisdismay. 

'Go, Sir!' she said, pointing with an imperious hand towards thedoor. 'Our first and last confidence is at an end. Nothing can make usstranger to each other than we are henceforth. '

'I shall take my rightful course, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, 'undeterred, you may be sure, by any general declamation. '

She turned her back upon him, and, without reply, sat down before herglass. 

'I place my reliance on your improved sense of duty, and more correctfeeling, and better reflection, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey. 

She answered not one word. He saw no more expression of any heed ofhim, in the mirror, than if he had been an unseen spider on the wall, or beetle on the floor, or rather, than if he had been the one or other, seen and crushed when she last turned from him, and forgotten among theignominious and dead vermin of the ground. 

He looked back, as he went out at the door, upon the well-lightedand luxurious room, the beautiful and glittering objects everywheredisplayed, the shape of Edith in its rich dress seated before her glass, and the face of Edith as the glass presented it to him; and betookhimself to his old chamber of cogitation, carrying away with him avivid picture in his mind of all these things, and a rambling andunaccountable speculation (such as sometimes comes into a man's head)how they would all look when he saw them next. 

For the rest, Mr Dombey was very taciturn, and very dignified, and veryconfident of carrying out his purpose; and remained so. 

He did not design accompanying the family to Brighton; but he graciouslyinformed Cleopatra at breakfast, on the morning of departure, whicharrived a day or two afterwards, that he might be expected down, soon. There was no time to be lost in getting Cleopatra to any placerecommended as being salutary; for, indeed, she seemed upon the wane, and turning of the earth, earthy. 

Without having undergone any decided second attack of her malady, theold woman seemed to have crawled backward in her recovery from thefirst. She was more lean and shrunken, more uncertain in her imbecility, and made stranger confusions in her mind and memory. Among othersymptoms of this last affliction, she fell into the habit of confoundingthe names of her two sons-in-law, the living and the deceased; andin general called Mr Dombey, either 'Grangeby, ' or 'Domber, ' orindifferently, both. 

But she was youthful, very youthful still; and in her youthfulnessappeared at breakfast, before going away, in a new bonnet made express, and a travelling robe that was embroidered and braided like an oldbaby's. It was not easy to put her into a fly-away bonnet now, or tokeep the bonnet in its place on the back of her poor nodding head, whenit was got on. In this instance, it had not only the extraneous effectof being always on one side, but of being perpetually tapped on thecrown by Flowers the maid, who attended in the background duringbreakfast to perform that duty. 

'Now, my dearest Grangeby, ' said Mrs Skewton, 'you must posively prom, 'she cut some of her words short, and cut out others altogether, 'comedown very soon. '

'I said just now, Madam, ' returned Mr Dombey, loudly and laboriously, 'that I am coming in a day or two. '

'Bless you, Domber!'

Here the Major, who was come to take leave of the ladies, and who wasstaring through his apoplectic eyes at Mrs Skewton's face with thedisinterested composure of an immortal being, said:

'Begad, Ma'am, you don't ask old Joe to come!'

'Sterious wretch, who's he?' lisped Cleopatra. But a tap on the bonnetfrom Flowers seeming to jog her memory, she added, 'Oh! You meanyourself, you naughty creature!'

'Devilish queer, Sir, ' whispered the Major to Mr Dombey. 'Bad case. Never did wrap up enough;' the Major being buttoned to the chin. 'Why who should J. B. Mean by Joe, but old Joe Bagstock--Joseph--yourslave--Joe, Ma'am? Here! Here's the man! Here are the Bagstock bellows, Ma'am!' cried the Major, striking himself a sounding blow on the chest. 

'My dearest Edith--Grangeby--it's most trordinry thing, ' said Cleopatra, pettishly, 'that Major--'

'Bagstock! J. B. !' cried the Major, seeing that she faltered for hisname. 

'Well, it don't matter, ' said Cleopatra. 'Edith, my love, you know Inever could remember names--what was it? oh!--most trordinry thing thatso many people want to come down to see me. I'm not going for long. I'mcoming back. Surely they can wait, till I come back!'

Cleopatra looked all round the table as she said it, and appeared veryuneasy. 

'I won't have Vistors--really don't want visitors, ' she said; 'littlerepose--and all that sort of thing--is what I quire. No odious brutesmust proach me till I've shaken off this numbness;' and in a grislyresumption of her coquettish ways, she made a dab at the Major with herfan, but overset Mr Dombey's breakfast cup instead, which was in quite adifferent direction. 

Then she called for Withers, and charged him to see particularly thatword was left about some trivial alterations in her room, which must beall made before she came back, and which must be set about immediately, as there was no saying how soon she might come back; for she had a greatmany engagements, and all sorts of people to call upon. Withers receivedthese directions with becoming deference, and gave his guarantee fortheir execution; but when he withdrew a pace or two behind her, itappeared as if he couldn't help looking strangely at the Major, whocouldn't help looking strangely at Mr Dombey, who couldn't help lookingstrangely at Cleopatra, who couldn't help nodding her bonnet over oneeye, and rattling her knife and fork upon her plate in using them, as ifshe were playing castanets. 

Edith alone never lifted her eyes to any face at the table, and neverseemed dismayed by anything her mother said or did. She listened toher disjointed talk, or at least, turned her head towards her whenaddressed; replied in a few low words when necessary; and sometimesstopped her when she was rambling, or brought her thoughts back witha monosyllable, to the point from which they had strayed. The mother, however unsteady in other things, was constant in this--that she wasalways observant of her. She would look at the beautiful face, in itsmarble stillness and severity, now with a kind of fearful admiration;now in a giggling foolish effort to move it to a smile; now withcapricious tears and jealous shakings of her head, as imagining herselfneglected by it; always with an attraction towards it, that neverfluctuated like her other ideas, but had constant possession of her. From Edith she would sometimes look at Florence, and back again atEdith, in a manner that was wild enough; and sometimes she would try tolook elsewhere, as if to escape from her daughter's face; but back to itshe seemed forced to come, although it never sought hers unless sought, or troubled her with one single glance. 

The best concluded, Mrs Skewton, affecting to lean girlishly upon theMajor's arm, but heavily supported on the other side by Flowers themaid, and propped up behind by Withers the page, was conducted to thecarriage, which was to take her, Florence, and Edith to Brighton. 

'And is Joseph absolutely banished?' said the Major, thrusting in hispurple face over the steps. 'Damme, Ma'am, is Cleopatra so hard-heartedas to forbid her faithful Antony Bagstock to approach the presence?'

'Go along!' said Cleopatra, 'I can't bear you. You shall see me when Icome back, if you are very good. '

'Tell Joseph, he may live in hope, Ma'am, ' said the Major; 'or he'll diein despair. '

Cleopatra shuddered, and leaned back. 'Edith, my dear, ' she said. 'Tellhim--'

'What?'

'Such dreadful words, ' said Cleopatra. 'He uses such dreadful words!'

Edith signed to him to retire, gave the word to go on, and left theobjectionable Major to Mr Dombey. To whom he returned, whistling. 

'I'll tell you what, Sir, ' said the Major, with his hands behind him, and his legs very wide asunder, 'a fair friend of ours has removed toQueer Street. '

'What do you mean, Major?' inquired Mr Dombey. 

'I mean to say, Dombey, ' returned the Major, 'that you'll soon be anorphan-in-law. '

Mr Dombey appeared to relish this waggish description of himself so verylittle, that the Major wound up with the horse's cough, as an expressionof gravity. 

'Damme, Sir, ' said the Major, 'there is no use in disguising a fact. Joeis blunt, Sir. That's his nature. If you take old Josh at all, youtake him as you find him; and a devilish rusty, old rasper, of aclose-toothed, J. B. File, you do find him. Dombey, ' said the Major, 'your wife's mother is on the move, Sir. '

'I fear, ' returned Mr Dombey, with much philosophy, 'that Mrs Skewton isshaken. '

'Shaken, Dombey!' said the Major. 'Smashed!'

'Change, however, ' pursued Mr Dombey, 'and attention, may do much yet. '

'Don't believe it, Sir, ' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, she neverwrapped up enough. If a man don't wrap up, ' said the Major, taking inanother button of his buff waistcoat, 'he has nothing to fall back upon. But some people will die. They will do it. Damme, they will. They'reobstinate. I tell you what, Dombey, it may not be ornamental; it may notbe refined; it may be rough and tough; but a little of the genuine oldEnglish Bagstock stamina, Sir, would do all the good in the world to thehuman breed. '

After imparting this precious piece of information, the Major, whowas certainly true-blue, whatever other endowments he may have had orwanted, coming within the 'genuine old English' classification, whichhas never been exactly ascertained, took his lobster-eyes and hisapoplexy to the club, and choked there all day. 

Cleopatra, at one time fretful, at another self-complacent, sometimesawake, sometimes asleep, and at all times juvenile, reached Brighton thesame night, fell to pieces as usual, and was put away in bed; where agloomy fancy might have pictured a more potent skeleton than the maid, who should have been one, watching at the rose-coloured curtains, whichwere carried down to shed their bloom upon her. 

It was settled in high council of medical authority that she should takea carriage airing every day, and that it was important she shouldget out every day, and walk if she could. Edith was ready to attendher--always ready to attend her, with the same mechanical attention andimmovable beauty--and they drove out alone; for Edith had an uneasinessin the presence of Florence, now that her mother was worse, and toldFlorence, with a kiss, that she would rather they two went alone. 

Mrs Skewton, on one particular day, was in the irresolute, exacting, jealous temper that had developed itself on her recovery from her firstattack. After sitting silent in the carriage watching Edith for sometime, she took her hand and kissed it passionately. The hand was neithergiven nor withdrawn, but simply yielded to her raising of it, and beingreleased, dropped down again, almost as if it were insensible. At thisshe began to whimper and moan, and say what a mother she had been, andhow she was forgotten! This she continued to do at capricious intervals, even when they had alighted: when she herself was halting along with thejoint support of Withers and a stick, and Edith was walking by her side, and the carriage slowly following at a little distance. 

It was a bleak, lowering, windy day, and they were out upon the Downswith nothing but a bare sweep of land between them and the sky. Themother, with a querulous satisfaction in the monotony of her complaint, was still repeating it in a low voice from time to time, and the proudform of her daughter moved beside her slowly, when there came advancingover a dark ridge before them, two other figures, which in the distance, were so like an exaggerated imitation of their own, that Edith stopped. 

Almost as she stopped, the two figures stopped; and that one which toEdith's thinking was like a distorted shadow of her mother, spoke to theother, earnestly, and with a pointing hand towards them. That one seemedinclined to turn back, but the other, in which Edith recognised enoughthat was like herself to strike her with an unusual feeling, not quitefree from fear, came on; and then they came on together. 

The greater part of this observation, she made while walking towardsthem, for her stoppage had been momentary. Nearer observation showed herthat they were poorly dressed, as wanderers about the country; that theyounger woman carried knitted work or some such goods for sale; and thatthe old one toiled on empty-handed. 

And yet, however far removed she was in dress, in dignity, in beauty, Edith could not but compare the younger woman with herself, still. Itmay have been that she saw upon her face some traces which she knew werelingering in her own soul, if not yet written on that index; but, asthe woman came on, returning her gaze, fixing her shining eyes uponher, undoubtedly presenting something of her own air and stature, andappearing to reciprocate her own thoughts, she felt a chill creep overher, as if the day were darkening, and the wind were colder. 

They had now come up. The old woman, holding out her hand importunately, stopped to beg of Mrs Skewton. The younger one stopped too, and she andEdith looked in one another's eyes. 

'What is it that you have to sell?' said Edith. 

'Only this, ' returned the woman, holding out her wares, without lookingat them. 'I sold myself long ago. '

'My Lady, don't believe her, ' croaked the old woman to Mrs Skewton;'don't believe what she says. She loves to talk like that. She's myhandsome and undutiful daughter. She gives me nothing but reproaches, my Lady, for all I have done for her. Look at her now, my Lady, how sheturns upon her poor old mother with her looks. '

As Mrs Skewton drew her purse out with a trembling hand, and eagerlyfumbled for some money, which the other old woman greedily watchedfor--their heads all but touching, in their hurry and decrepitude--Edithinterposed:

'I have seen you, ' addressing the old woman, 'before. '

'Yes, my Lady, ' with a curtsey. 'Down in Warwickshire. The morning amongthe trees. When you wouldn't give me nothing. But the gentleman, he giveme something! Oh, bless him, bless him!' mumbled the old woman, holdingup her skinny hand, and grinning frightfully at her daughter. 

'It's of no use attempting to stay me, Edith!' said Mrs Skewton, angrilyanticipating an objection from her. 'You know nothing about it. I won'tbe dissuaded. I am sure this is an excellent woman, and a good mother. '

'Yes, my Lady, yes, ' chattered the old woman, holding out her avaricioushand. 'Thankee, my Lady. Lord bless you, my Lady. Sixpence more, mypretty Lady, as a good mother yourself. '

'And treated undutifully enough, too, my good old creature, sometimes, Iassure you, ' said Mrs Skewton, whimpering. 'There! Shake hands with me. You're a very good old creature--full of what's-his-name--and all that. You're all affection and et cetera, ain't you?'

'Oh, yes, my Lady!'

'Yes, I'm sure you are; and so's that gentlemanly creature Grangeby. Imust really shake hands with you again. And now you can go, you know;and I hope, ' addressing the daughter, 'that you'll show more gratitude, and natural what's-its-name, and all the rest of it--but I neverremember names--for there never was a better mother than the good oldcreature's been to you. Come, Edith!'

As the ruin of Cleopatra tottered off whimpering, and wiping its eyeswith a gingerly remembrance of rouge in their neighbourhood, the oldwoman hobbled another way, mumbling and counting her money. Not one wordmore, nor one other gesture, had been exchanged between Edith and theyounger woman, but neither had removed her eyes from the other for amoment. They had remained confronted until now, when Edith, as awakeningfrom a dream, passed slowly on. 

'You're a handsome woman, ' muttered her shadow, looking after her; 'butgood looks won't save us. And you're a proud woman; but pride won't saveus. We had need to know each other when we meet again!'

CHAPTER 41. New Voices in the Waves

All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition oftheir mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soarand hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight;the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country faraway. 

With a tender melancholy pleasure, Florence finds herself again on theold ground so sadly trodden, yet so happily, and thinks of him inthe quiet place, where he and she have many and many a time conversedtogether, with the water welling up about his couch. And now, as shesits pensive there, she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, hislittle story told again, his very words repeated; and finds that allher life and hopes, and griefs, since--in the solitary house, and inthe pageant it has changed to--have a portion in the burden of themarvellous song. 

And gentle Mr Toots, who wanders at a distance, looking wistfullytowards the figure that he dotes upon, and has followed there, butcannot in his delicacy disturb at such a time, likewise hears therequiem of little Dombey on the waters, rising and falling in the lullsof their eternal madrigal in praise of Florence. Yes! and he faintlyunderstands, poor Mr Toots, that they are saying something of a timewhen he was sensible of being brighter and not addle-brained; and thetears rising in his eyes when he fears that he is dull and stupid now, and good for little but to be laughed at, diminish his satisfaction intheir soothing reminder that he is relieved from present responsibilityto the Chicken, by the absence of that game head of poultry in thecountry, training (at Toots's cost) for his great mill with the LarkeyBoy. 

But Mr Toots takes courage, when they whisper a kind thought to him;and by slow degrees and with many indecisive stoppages on the way, approaches Florence. Stammering and blushing, Mr Toots affects amazementwhen he comes near her, and says (having followed close on the carriagein which she travelled, every inch of the way from London, loving evento be choked by the dust of its wheels) that he never was so surprisedin all his life. 

'And you've brought Diogenes, too, Miss Dombey!' says Mr Toots, thrilledthrough and through by the touch of the small hand so pleasantly andfrankly given him. 

No doubt Diogenes is there, and no doubt Mr Toots has reason to observehim, for he comes straightway at Mr Toots's legs, and tumbles overhimself in the desperation with which he makes at him, like a very dogof Montargis. But he is checked by his sweet mistress. 

'Down, Di, down. Don't you remember who first made us friends, Di? Forshame!'

Oh! Well may Di lay his loving cheek against her hand, and run off, andrun back, and run round her, barking, and run headlong at anybody comingby, to show his devotion. Mr Toots would run headlong at anybody, too. A military gentleman goes past, and Mr Toots would like nothing betterthan to run at him, full tilt. 

'Diogenes is quite in his native air, isn't he, Miss Dombey?' says MrToots. 

Florence assents, with a grateful smile. 

'Miss Dombey, ' says Mr Toots, 'beg your pardon, but if you would like towalk to Blimber's, I--I'm going there. '

Florence puts her arm in that of Mr Toots without a word, and they walkaway together, with Diogenes going on before. Mr Toots's legs shakeunder him; and though he is splendidly dressed, he feels misfits, andsees wrinkles, in the masterpieces of Burgess and Co. , and wishes he hadput on that brightest pair of boots. 

Doctor Blimber's house, outside, has as scholastic and studious an airas ever; and up there is the window where she used to look for the paleface, and where the pale face brightened when it saw her, and the wastedlittle hand waved kisses as she passed. The door is opened by the sameweak-eyed young man, whose imbecility of grin at sight of Mr Toots isfeebleness of character personified. They are shown into the Doctor'sstudy, where blind Homer and Minerva give them audience as of yore, tothe sober ticking of the great clock in the hall; and where the globesstand still in their accustomed places, as if the world were stationarytoo, and nothing in it ever perished in obedience to the universal law, that, while it keeps it on the roll, calls everything to earth. 

And here is Doctor Blimber, with his learned legs; and here is MrsBlimber, with her sky-blue cap; and here Cornelia, with her sandy littlerow of curls, and her bright spectacles, still working like a sexton inthe graves of languages. Here is the table upon which he sat forlornand strange, the 'new boy' of the school; and hither comes the distantcooing of the old boys, at their old lives in the old room on the oldprinciple!

'Toots, ' says Doctor Blimber, 'I am very glad to see you, Toots. '

Mr Toots chuckles in reply. 

'Also to see you, Toots, in such good company, ' says Doctor Blimber. 

Mr Toots, with a scarlet visage, explains that he has met Miss Dombeyby accident, and that Miss Dombey wishing, like himself, to see the oldplace, they have come together. 

'You will like, ' says Doctor Blimber, 'to step among our young friends, Miss Dombey, no doubt. All fellow-students of yours, Toots, once. Ithink we have no new disciples in our little portico, my dear, ' saysDoctor Blimber to Cornelia, 'since Mr Toots left us. '

'Except Bitherstone, ' returns Cornelia. 

'Ay, truly, ' says the Doctor. 'Bitherstone is new to Mr Toots. '

New to Florence, too, almost; for, in the schoolroom, Bitherstone--nolonger Master Bitherstone of Mrs Pipchin's--shows in collars and aneckcloth, and wears a watch. But Bitherstone, born beneath someBengal star of ill-omen, is extremely inky; and his Lexicon has got sodropsical from constant reference, that it won't shut, and yawns asif it really could not bear to be so bothered. So does Bitherstone itsmaster, forced at Doctor Blimber's highest pressure; but in the yawn ofBitherstone there is malice and snarl, and he has been heard to say thathe wishes he could catch 'old Blimber' in India. He'd precious soon findhimself carried up the country by a few of his (Bitherstone's) Coolies, and handed over to the Thugs; he can tell him that. 

Briggs is still grinding in the mill of knowledge; and Tozer, too;and Johnson, too; and all the rest; the older pupils being principallyengaged in forgetting, with prodigious labour, everything they knewwhen they were younger. All are as polite and as pale as ever; and amongthem, Mr Feeder, B. A. , with his bony hand and bristly head, is stillhard at it; with his Herodotus stop on just at present, and his otherbarrels on a shelf behind him. 

A mighty sensation is created, even among these grave young gentlemen, by a visit from the emancipated Toots; who is regarded with a kind ofawe, as one who has passed the Rubicon, and is pledged never to comeback, and concerning the cut of whose clothes, and fashion of whosejewellery, whispers go about, behind hands; the bilious Bitherstone, who is not of Mr Toots's time, affecting to despise the latter to thesmaller boys, and saying he knows better, and that he should like tosee him coming that sort of thing in Bengal, where his mother had got anemerald belonging to him that was taken out of the footstool of a Rajah. Come now!

Bewildering emotions are awakened also by the sight of Florence, withwhom every young gentleman immediately falls in love, again; except, as aforesaid, the bilious Bitherstone, who declines to do so, out ofcontradiction. Black jealousies of Mr Toots arise, and Briggs is ofopinion that he ain't so very old after all. But this disparaginginsinuation is speedily made nought by Mr Toots saying aloud to MrFeeder, B. A. , 'How are you, Feeder?' and asking him to come and dinewith him to-day at the Bedford; in right of which feats he might set upas Old Parr, if he chose, unquestioned. 

There is much shaking of hands, and much bowing, and a great desire onthe part of each young gentleman to take Toots down in Miss Dombey'sgood graces; and then, Mr Toots having bestowed a chuckle on his olddesk, Florence and he withdraw with Mrs Blimber and Cornelia; and DoctorBlimber is heard to observe behind them as he comes out last, and shutsthe door, 'Gentlemen, we will now resume our studies, ' For that andlittle else is what the Doctor hears the sea say, or has heard it sayingall his life. 

Florence then steals away and goes upstairs to the old bedroom with MrsBlimber and Cornelia; Mr Toots, who feels that neither he nor anybodyelse is wanted there, stands talking to the Doctor at the study-door, orrather hearing the Doctor talk to him, and wondering how he ever thoughtthe study a great sanctuary, and the Doctor, with his round turned legs, like a clerical pianoforte, an awful man. Florence soon comes down andtakes leave; Mr Toots takes leave; and Diogenes, who has been worryingthe weak-eyed young man pitilessly all the time, shoots out at the door, and barks a glad defiance down the cliff; while Melia, and another ofthe Doctor's female domestics, looks out of an upper window, laughing'at that there Toots, ' and saying of Miss Dombey, 'But really though, now--ain't she like her brother, only prettier?'

Mr Toots, who saw when Florence came down that there were tears upon herface, is desperately anxious and uneasy, and at first fears that he didwrong in proposing the visit. But he is soon relieved by her sayingshe is very glad to have been there again, and by her talking quitecheerfully about it all, as they walked on by the sea. What with thevoices there, and her sweet voice, when they come near Mr Dombey'shouse, and Mr Toots must leave her, he is so enslaved that he has nota scrap of free-will left; when she gives him her hand at parting, hecannot let it go. 

'Miss Dombey, I beg your pardon, ' says Mr Toots, in a sad fluster, 'butif you would allow me to--to--

The smiling and unconscious look of Florence brings him to a dead stop. 

'If you would allow me to--if you would not consider it a liberty, MissDombey, if I was to--without any encouragement at all, if I was to hope, you know, ' says Mr Toots. 

Florence looks at him inquiringly. 

'Miss Dombey, ' says Mr Toots, who feels that he is in for it now, 'Ireally am in that state of adoration of you that I don't know what to dowith myself. I am the most deplorable wretch. If it wasn't at the cornerof the Square at present, I should go down on my knees, and beg andentreat of you, without any encouragement at all, just to let me hopethat I may--may think it possible that you--

'Oh, if you please, don't!' cries Florence, for the moment quite alarmedand distressed. 'Oh, pray don't, Mr Toots. Stop, if you please. Don'tsay 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 dolike you so much;' and here the ingenuous face smiles upon him with thepleasantest look of honesty in the world; 'that I am sure you are onlygoing to say good-bye!'

'Certainly, Miss Dombey, ' says Mr Toots, 'I--I--that's exactly what Imean. It's of no consequence. '

'Good-bye!' cries Florence. 

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

Poor Mr Toots goes home to his hotel in a state of desperation, lockshimself into his bedroom, flings himself upon his bed, and liesthere for a long time; as if it were of the greatest consequence, nevertheless. But Mr Feeder, B. A. , is coming to dinner, which happenswell 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 hospitableentertainment. 

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

Mr Feeder, however, as an intimate friend, is not excluded fromthe subject. Mr Toots merely requires that it should be mentionedmysteriously, and with feeling. After a few glasses of wine, he givesMiss Dombey's health, observing, 'Feeder, you have no idea of thesentiments with which I propose that toast. ' Mr Feeder replies, 'Oh, yes, I have, my dear Toots; and greatly they redound to your honour, oldboy. ' Mr Feeder is then agitated by friendship, and shakes hands; andsays, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, eitherby post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, hewould 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 hehas found the advantage of it himself. 

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

Thus these quiet spirits pass the evening; and when it has yielded placeto night, Mr Toots walks home with Mr Feeder, and parts with him atDoctor Blimber's door. But Mr Feeder only goes up the steps, and whenMr Toots is gone, comes down again, to stroll upon the beach alone, andthink about his prospects. Mr Feeder plainly hears the waves informinghim, 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 thehouse, and thinking that the Doctor will first paint it, and put it intothorough repair. 

Mr Toots is likewise roaming up and down, outside the casket thatcontains his jewel; and in a deplorable condition of mind, and notunsuspected 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 MrsSkewton's room; and while Florence, sleeping in another chamber, dreamslovingly, in the midst of the old scenes, and their old associationslive again, the figure which in grim reality is substituted for thepatient boy's on the same theatre, once more to connect it--but howdifferently!--with decay and death, is stretched there, wakeful andcomplaining. Ugly and haggard it lies upon its bed of unrest; and by it, in the terror of her unimpassioned loveliness--for it has terror inthe sufferer's failing eyes--sits Edith. What do the waves say, in thestillness 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 youdon't see it?'

'Indeed, mother, there is nothing. Should I sit unmoved, if there wereany such thing there?'

'Unmoved?' looking wildly at her--'it's gone now--and why are youso unmoved? That is not my fancy, Edith. It turns me cold to see yousitting 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 sideupon her pillow, runs on about neglect, and the mother she has been, andthe mother the good old creature was, whom they met, and the cold returnthe daughters of such mothers make. In the midst of her incoherence, she stops, looks at her daughter, cries out that her wits are going, andhides her face upon the bed. 

Edith, in compassion, bends over her and speaks to her. The sick oldwoman 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 gohome again?'

'Yes, mother, yes. '

'And what he said--what's-his-name, I never could remembernames--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 matterwith me. '

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

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

Such is the figure, painted and patched for the sun to mock, that isdrawn 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 itpeers among the crowd in vain. Such is the figure that is often wheeleddown to the margin of the sea, and stationed there; but on which nowind can blow freshness, and for which the murmur of the ocean has nosoothing word. She lies and listens to it by the hour; but its speechis dark and gloomy to her, and a dread is on her face, and when hereyes wander over the expanse, they see but a broad stretch of desolationbetween 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, inher bed at night, trembles at the thought of death in such a shape, andoften wakes and listens, thinking it has come. No one attends on herbut Edith. It is better that few eyes should see her; and her daughterwatches alone by the bedside. 

A shadow even on that shadowed face, a sharpening even of the sharpenedfeatures, and a thickening of the veil before the eyes into a pall thatshuts out the dim world, is come. Her wandering hands upon the coverletjoin feebly palm to palm, and move towards her daughter; and a voicenot 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 thesinking 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 toforgive my own. I told you that time past was at an end between us. Isay so now, again. Kiss me, mother. '

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

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

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

'Dombey, ' said Cousin Feenix, 'upon my soul, I am very much shocked tosee you on such a melancholy occasion. My poor aunt! She was a devilishlively 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 goodfor another twenty years. In point of fact, I said so to a man atBrooks's--little Billy Joper--you know him, no doubt--man with a glassin 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 hehas just enough of hand below his wristbands to do; 'I really don'tknow. There's a Mausoleum down at my place, in the park, but I'm afraidit's in bad repair, and, in point of fact, in a devil of a state. Butfor 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 theiron 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 admirablywell sketched too by Lady Jane Finchbury--woman with tight stays--butthey'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 CousinFeenix. '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 anyday you think best. I shall have great pleasure (melancholy pleasure, of course) in following my poor aunt to the confines of the--in pointof fact, to the grave, ' says Cousin Feenix, failing in the other turn ofspeech. 

'Would Monday do for leaving town?' says Mr Dombey. 

'Monday would suit me to perfection, ' replies Cousin Feenix. ThereforeMr Dombey arranges to take Cousin Feenix down on that day, and presentlytakes his leave, attended to the stairs by Cousin Feenix, who says, atparting, 'I'm really excessively sorry, Dombey, that you should have somuch trouble about it;' to which Mr Dombey answers, 'Not at all. '

At the appointed time, Cousin Feenix and Mr Dombey meet, and go down toBrighton, and representing, in their two selves, all the other mournersfor the deceased lady's loss, attend her remains to their place of rest. Cousin Feenix, sitting in the mourning-coach, recognises innumerableacquaintances on the road, but takes no other notice of them, indecorum, than checking them off aloud, as they go by, for Mr Dombey'sinformation, as 'Tom Johnson. Man with cork leg, from White's. What, are you here, Tommy? Foley on a blood mare. The Smalder girls'--and soforth. At the ceremony Cousin Feenix is depressed, observing, that theseare the occasions to make a man think, in point of fact, that he isgetting shaky; and his eyes are really moistened, when it is over. Buthe soon recovers; and so do the rest of Mrs Skewton's relatives andfriends, of whom the Major continually tells the club that she neverdid wrap up enough; while the young lady with the back, who has so muchtrouble with her eyelids, says, with a little scream, that she must havebeen enormously old, and that she died of all kinds of horrors, and youmustn't mention it. 

So Edith's mother lies unmentioned of her dear friends, who are deaf tothe waves that are hoarse with repetition of their mystery, and blindto the dust that is piled upon the shore, and to the white arms that arebeckoning, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. But allgoes on, as it was wont, upon the margin of the unknown sea; and Edithstanding there alone, and listening to its waves, has dank weed cast upat 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, butdressed in a substantial suit of brown livery, which, while itaffected to be a very sober and demure livery indeed, was really asself-satisfied and confident a one as tailor need desire to make, Robthe Grinder, thus transformed as to his outer man, and all regardlesswithin of the Captain and the Midshipman, except when he devoted a fewminutes 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 disembarrassedhimself of their company, now served his patron, Mr Carker. Inmate of MrCarker's house, and serving about his person, Rob kept his round eyeson the white teeth with fear and trembling, and felt that he had need toopen them wider than ever. 

He could not have quaked more, through his whole being, before theteeth, 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 andauthority in this patron of his that engrossed his whole attention andexacted his most implicit submission and obedience. He hardly consideredhimself safe in thinking about him when he was absent, lest he shouldfeel himself immediately taken by the throat again, as on the morningwhen he first became bound to him, and should see every one of the teethfinding him out, and taxing him with every fancy of his mind. Face toface with him, Rob had no more doubt that Mr Carker read his secretthoughts, or that he could read them by the least exertion of his willif he were so inclined, than he had that Mr Carker saw him when helooked at him. The ascendancy was so complete, and held him in suchenthralment, that, hardly daring to think at all, but with hismind filled with a constantly dilating impression of his patron'sirresistible command over him, and power of doing anything with him, hewould 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 wouldhave been an act of no common temerity to inquire--whether he yieldedso completely to this influence in any part, because he had floatingsuspicions of his patron's being a master of certain treacherous artsin which he had himself been a poor scholar at the Grinders' School. Butcertainly Rob admired him, as well as feared him. Mr Carker, perhaps, was better acquainted with the sources of his power, which lost nothingby his management of it. 

On the very night when he left the Captain's service, Rob, afterdisposing of his pigeons, and even making a bad bargain in his hurry, had gone straight down to Mr Carker's house, and hotly presentedhimself before his new master with a glowing face that seemed to expectcommendation. 

'What, scapegrace!' said Mr Carker, glancing at his bundle 'Have youleft your situation and come to me?'

'Oh if you please, Sir, ' faltered Rob, 'you said, you know, when I comehere 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 hisforefinger, observed:

'You'll come to an evil end, my vagabond friend, I foresee. There's ruinin store for you. 

'Oh if you please, don't, Sir!' cried Rob, with his legs trembling underhim. 'I'm sure, Sir, I only want to work for you, Sir, and to wait uponyou, Sir, and to do faithful whatever I'm bid, Sir. '

'You had better do faithfully whatever you are bid, ' returned hispatron, '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 meout, Sir, doing anything against your wishes, I give you leave to killme. '

'You dog!' said Mr Carker, leaning back in his chair, and smiling at himserenely. 'That's nothing to what I'd do to you, if you tried to deceiveme. '

'Yes, Sir, ' replied the abject Grinder, 'I'm sure you would be down uponme dreadful, Sir. I wouldn't attempt for to go and do it, Sir, not if Iwas bribed with golden guineas. '

Thoroughly checked in his expectations of commendation, the crestfallenGrinder stood looking at his patron, and vainly endeavouring not to lookat him, with the uneasiness which a cur will often manifest in a similarsituation. 

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

'Yes, if you please, Sir, ' returned Rob, who, in doing so, had actedon his patron's own instructions, but dared not justify himself by theleast insinuation to that effect. 

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

'Please, Sir, yes, Sir, ' returned Rob, tumbling with his hat, and stillfixed 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 thiscaution, and was bowing himself back to the door, greatly relieved bythe prospect of getting on the outside of it, when his patron stoppedhim. 

'Halloa!' he cried, calling him roughly back. 'You have been--shut thatdoor. '

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 andhonour, I wouldn't, Sir, I wish I may die if I would, Sir, for anythingthat could be promised to me. I should consider it is as much as allthe 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'rea lost rascal, ' and he smiled again, and again cautioned him with hisforefinger. 

The Grinder's breath came short and thick with consternation. He triedto protest the purity of his intentions, but could only stare at thesmiling gentleman in a stupor of submission, with which the smilinggentleman seemed well enough satisfied, for he ordered him downstairs, after observing him for some moments in silence, and gave him tounderstand that he was retained in his employment. This was the mannerof Rob the Grinder's engagement by Mr Carker, and his awe-strickendevotion 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, Robopened the garden gate to Mr Dombey, who was come to breakfast withhis master, by appointment. At the same moment his master himself came, hurrying forth to receive the distinguished guest, and give him welcomewith all his teeth. 

'I never thought, ' said Carker, when he had assisted him to alight fromhis horse, 'to see you here, I'm sure. This is an extraordinary day inmy calendar. No occasion is very special to a man like you, who may doanything; but to a man like me, the case is widely different. 

'You have a tasteful place here, Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, condescendingto 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 sayso. As far as it goes, it is a very commodious and well-arrangedplace--quite elegant. '

'As far as it goes, truly, ' returned Carker, with an air ofdisparagement' 'It wants that qualification. Well! we have saidenough about it; and though you can afford to praise it, I thank younonetheless. Will you walk in?'

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

'But perhaps to you, who are so far removed, it really does look betterthan it is, ' he said, with his false mouth distended to its fulleststretch. '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, drawinghimself up before the fire, in the attitude so often copied by hissecond in command, looked round at the pictures on the walls. Cursorilyas his cold eye wandered over them, Carker's keen glance accompaniedhis, and kept pace with his, marking exactly where it went, and what itsaw. As it rested on one picture in particular, Carker hardly seemed tobreathe, his sidelong scrutiny was so cat-like and vigilant, but the eyeof his great chief passed from that, as from the others, and appeared nomore impressed by it than by the rest. 

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

Mr Dombey was even graver than it was his custom to be, and quitesilent. The parrot, swinging in the gilded hoop within her gaudy cage, attempted in vain to attract notice, for Carker was too observant of hisvisitor to heed her; and the visitor, abstracted in meditation, lookedfixedly, not to say sullenly, over his stiff neckcloth, without raisinghis eyes from the table-cloth. As to Rob, who was in attendance, all hisfaculties and energies were so locked up in observation of his master, that he scarcely ventured to give shelter to the thought that thevisitor was the great gentleman before whom he had been carried as acertificate of the family health, in his childhood, and to whom he hadbeen 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 chinresting on his hand; and at the same time his eyes went up to thepicture, 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 conversationthat I wish to have with you. '

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

'No, ' said Mr Dombey, with magnificent indifference. 

'Not likely that a man like you would. Hardly possible, ' murmuredCarker. 'But he is one of that family from whom you took a nurse. Perhaps you may remember having generously charged yourself with hiseducation?'

'Is it that boy?' said Mr Dombey, with a frown. 'He does little creditto 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 servicebecause, being able to get no other employment, he conceived (had beentaught at home, I daresay) that he had some sort of claim upon you, andwas constantly trying to dog your heels with his petition. And althoughmy defined and recognised connexion with your affairs is merely of abusiness character, still I have that spontaneous interest in everythingbelonging to you, that--'

He stopped again, as if to discover whether he had led Mr Dombey farenough yet. And again, with his chin resting on his hand, he leered atthe 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, ashe 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 nowmentioned, is an example in point. I I am obliged to you, Carker. '

Mr Carker bent his head slowly, and very softly rubbed his hands, asif he were afraid by any action to disturb the current of Mr Dombey'sconfidence. 

'Your allusion to it is opportune, ' said Mr Dombey, after a littlehesitation; 'for it prepares the way to what I was beginning to sayto you, and reminds me that that involves no absolutely new relationsbetween us, although it may involve more personal confidence on my partthan I have hitherto--'

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

'Mrs Dombey and myself, ' said Mr Dombey, passing this compliment withaugust self-denial, 'are not quite agreed upon some points. We do notappear to understand each other yet' Mrs Dombey has something to learn. '

'Mrs Dombey is distinguished by many rare attractions; and has beenaccustomed, no doubt, to receive much adulation, ' said the smooth, sleekwatcher of his slightest look and tone. 'But where there is affection, duty, and respect, any little mistakes engendered by such causes aresoon set right. '

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

'Mrs Dombey and myself, ' he went on to say, 'had some discussion, beforeMrs Skewton's death, upon the causes of my dissatisfaction; of which youwill have formed a general understanding from having been a witness ofwhat passed between Mrs Dombey and myself on the evening when you wereat our--at my house. '

'When I so much regretted being present, ' said the smiling Carker. 'Proud as a man in my position nay must be of your familiarnotice--though I give you no credit for it; you may do anythingyou please without losing caste--and honoured as I was by an earlypresentation to Mrs Dombey, before she was made eminent by bearing yourname, I almost regretted that night, I assure you, that I had been theobject of such especial good fortune. '

That any man could, under any possible circumstances, regret the beingdistinguished by his condescension and patronage, was a moral phenomenonwhich Mr Dombey could not comprehend. He therefore responded, with aconsiderable accession of dignity. 'Indeed! And why, Carker?'

'I fear, ' returned the confidential agent, 'that Mrs Dombey, never verymuch disposed to regard me with favourable interest--one in my positioncould not expect that, from a lady naturally proud, and whose pridebecomes her so well--may not easily forgive my innocent part in thatconversation. 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 firstconsideration?'

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

'Mrs Dombey becomes a secondary consideration, when we are both inquestion, I imagine, ' said Mr Dombey. 'Is that so?'

'Is it so?' returned Carker. 'Do you know better than anyone, that youhave no need to ask?'

'Then I hope, Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, 'that your regret in theacquisition of Mrs Dombey's displeasure, may be almost counterbalancedby your satisfaction in retaining my confidence and good opinion. '

'I have the misfortune, I find, ' returned Carker, 'to have incurred thatdispleasure. Mrs Dombey has expressed it to you?'

'Mrs Dombey has expressed various opinions, ' said Mr Dombey, withmajestic coldness and indifference, 'in which I do not participate, andwhich I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr Dombeyacquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certainpoints of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessaryto insist. I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of herimmediately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to herown peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey thatif I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I shouldexpress my opinion to her through yourself, my confidential agent. '

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

'Now, Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, 'I do not hesitate to say to you thatI will carry my point. I am not to be trifled with. Mrs Dombey mustunderstand that my will is law, and that I cannot allow of one exceptionto the whole rule of my life. You will have the goodness to undertakethis charge, which, coming from me, is not unacceptable to you, I hope, whatever regret you may politely profess--for which I am obliged to youon 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 Ihave 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 yawningshow of teeth. 

'Yes; if you please to adopt that form of words, ' said Mr Dombey, in histone of state; 'and at present I do not conceive that Mrs Dombey doesthat credit to it, to which it is entitled. There is a principle ofopposition 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 fromear to ear. 

'You know me better, ' said Mr Dombey. 'I hope so. Though, indeed, I ambound to do Mrs Dombey the justice of saying, however inconsistent itmay seem with her subsequent conduct (which remains unchanged), thaton my expressing my disapprobation and determination to her, withsome severity, on the occasion to which I have referred, my admonitionappeared to produce a very powerful effect. ' Mr Dombey delivered himselfof those words with most portentous stateliness. 'I wish you to havethe goodness, then, to inform Mrs Dombey, Carker, from me, that I mustrecall our former conversation to her remembrance, in some surprise thatit has not yet had its effect. That I must insist upon her regulatingher conduct by the injunctions laid upon her in that conversation. ThatI am not satisfied with her conduct. That I am greatly dissatisfied withit. And that I shall be under the very disagreeable necessity of makingyou the bearer of yet more unwelcome and explicit communications, ifshe has not the good sense and the proper feeling to adapt herself tomy wishes, as the first Mrs Dombey did, and, I believe I may add, as anyother 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 agentlemanly 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 agenteyed it keenly. 

'I have approached a painful subject, ' he said, in a soft regretful toneof voice, irreconcilable with his eager eye. 'Pray forgive me. I forgetthese chains of association in the interest I have. Pray forgive me. '

But for all he said, his eager eye scanned Mr Dombey's downcast facenone the less closely; and then it shot a strange triumphant look at thepicture, as appealing to it to bear witness how he led him on again, andwhat was coming. 

Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, looking here and there upon the table, andsaying in a somewhat altered and more hurried voice, and with a palerlip, 'there is no occasion for apology. You mistake. The association iswith 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 youwill make that, if you please--matter of direct objection from me toMrs Dombey. You will please to tell her that her show of devotion for mydaughter is disagreeable to me. It is likely to be noticed. It is likelyto induce people to contrast Mrs Dombey in her relation towards mydaughter, with Mrs Dombey in her relation towards myself. You will havethe goodness to let Mrs Dombey know, plainly, that I object to it; andthat I expect her to defer, immediately, to my objection. Mrs Dombey maybe 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 inearnest, so much the less reluctant should she be to desist; for shewill not serve my daughter by any such display. If my wife has anysuperfluous gentleness, and duty over and above her proper submissionto me, she may bestow them where she pleases, perhaps; but I will havesubmission first!--Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, checking the unusual emotionwith which he had spoken, and falling into a tone more like that inwhich he was accustomed to assert his greatness, 'you will have thegoodness not to omit or slur this point, but to consider it a veryimportant part of your instructions. '

Mr Carker bowed his head, and rising from the table, and standingthoughtfully before the fire, with his hand to his smooth chin, lookeddown at Mr Dombey with the evil slyness of some monkish carving, halfhuman and half brute; or like a leering face on an old water-spout. MrDombey, recovering his composure by degrees, or cooling his emotionin his sense of having taken a high position, sat gradually stiffeningagain, and looking at the parrot as she swung to and fro, in her greatwedding ring. 

'I beg your pardon, ' said Carker, after a silence, suddenly resuming hischair, 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 ofyour 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 continuedwith a smile, and softly laying his velvet hand, as a cat might havelaid its sheathed claws, on Mr Dombey's arm; 'if I perfectly understandwhat is in your mind, I am so much more likely to be useful, and to havethe happiness of being effectually employed. I think I do understand. Ihave not the honour of Mrs Dombey's good opinion. In my position, I haveno reason to expect it; but I take the fact to be, that I have not gotit?'

'Possibly not, ' said Mr Dombey. 

'Consequently, ' pursued Carker, 'your making the communications to MrsDombey through me, is sure to be particularly unpalatable to that lady?'

'It appears to me, ' said Mr Dombey, with haughty reserve, and yet withsome embarrassment, 'that Mrs Dombey's views upon the subject form nopart of it as it presents itself to you and me, Carker. But it may beso. '

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

'I am not accustomed, Carker, as you know, ' said Mr Dombey, 'to givesuch 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 foundupon it, that is indeed another thing, and the mere statement that youhave one will be sufficient. But I have not supposed, I confess, thatany 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 beproud--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 anddevotion--for is she not your wife!--no new cause of dislike; but a wishfrom you is, of course, paramount to every other consideration onearth. Besides, when Mrs Dombey is converted from these little errorsof judgment, incidental, I would presume to say, to the novelty of hersituation, I shall hope that she will perceive in the slight part Itake, only a grain--my removed and different sphere gives room forlittle more--of the respect for you, and sacrifice of all considerationsto you, of which it will be her pleasure and privilege to garner up agreat store every day. '

Mr Dombey seemed, at the moment, again to see her with her handstretched out towards the door, and again to hear through the mildspeech of his confidential agent an echo of the words, 'Nothing can makeus stranger to each other than we are henceforth!' But he shook off thefancy, and did not shake in his resolution, and said, 'Certainly, nodoubt. '

'There is nothing more, ' quoth Carker, drawing his chair back to its oldplace--for they had taken little breakfast as yet--and pausing for ananswer before he sat down. 

'Nothing, ' said Mr Dombey, 'but this. You will be good enough toobserve, Carker, that no message to Mrs Dombey with which you are ormay be charged, admits of reply. You will be good enough to bring me noreply. Mrs Dombey is informed that it does not become me to temporise ortreat upon any matter that is at issue between us, and that what I sayis final. '

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

Mr Carker was in capital spirits, and talked much. Mr Dombey receivedhis conversation with the sovereign air of a man who had a right tobe talked to, and occasionally condescended to throw in a few words tocarry on the conversation. So they rode on characteristically enough. But Mr Dombey, in his dignity, rode with very long stirrups, and a veryloose rein, and very rarely deigned to look down to see where his horsewent. In consequence of which it happened that Mr Dombey's horse, whilegoing at a round trot, stumbled on some loose stones, threw him, rolledover him, and lashing out with his iron-shod feet, in his struggles toget 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 amoment. Otherwise that morning's confidence would have been Mr Dombey'slast. Yet even with the flush and hurry of this action red upon him, hebent over his prostrate chief with every tooth disclosed, and mutteredas he stooped down, 'I have given good cause of offence to Mrs Dombeynow, if she knew it!'

Mr Dombey being insensible, and bleeding from the head and face, wascarried by certain menders of the road, under Carker's direction, tothe nearest public-house, which was not far off, and where he was soonattended by divers surgeons, who arrived in quick succession from allparts, and who seemed to come by some mysterious instinct, as vulturesare said to gather about a camel who dies in the desert. After beingat some pains to restore him to consciousness, these gentlemen examinedinto the nature of his injuries. 

One surgeon who lived hard by was strong for a compound fracture of theleg, which was the landlord's opinion also; but two surgeons who livedat a distance, and were only in that neighbourhood by accident, combatedthis opinion so disinterestedly, that it was decided at last that thepatient, though severely cut and bruised, had broken no bones but alesser rib or so, and might be carefully taken home before night. Hisinjuries being dressed and bandaged, which was a long operation, and heat length left to repose, Mr Carker mounted his horse again, and rodeaway to carry the intelligence home. 

Crafty and cruel as his face was at the best of times, though it was asufficiently fair face as to form and regularity of feature, it was atits worst when he set forth on this errand; animated by the craft andcruelty of thoughts within him, suggestions of remote possibility ratherthan of design or plot, that made him ride as if he hunted men andwomen. Drawing rein at length, and slackening in his speed, as he cameinto the more public roads, he checked his white-legged horse intopicking 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 tosee Mrs Dombey on an affair of importance. The servant who showed him toMr Dombey's own room, soon returned to say that it was not Mrs Dombey'shour for receiving visitors, and that he begged pardon for not havingmentioned it before. 

Mr Carker, who was quite prepared for a cold reception, wrote upon acard that he must take the liberty of pressing for an interview, andthat he would not be so bold as to do so, for the second time (thishe underlined), if he were not equally sure of the occasion beingsufficient for his justification. After a trifling delay, Mrs Dombey'smaid appeared, and conducted him to a morning room upstairs, where Edithand Florence were together. 

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

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

He was very sorry, he was deeply grieved; he couldn't say with whatunwillingness he came to prepare her for the intelligence of a veryslight accident. He entreated Mrs Dombey to compose herself. Upon hissacred 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, andhe 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 soonrecovered, and though certainly hurt was in no kind of danger. If thiswere not the truth, he, the distressed intruder, never could have hadthe courage to present himself before Mrs Dombey. It was the truthindeed, he solemnly assured her. 

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

He then went on to tell her where Mr Dombey was lying, and to requestthat 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 hera secret look and slightly shook his head. He saw how she battled withherself before she answered him with her handsome eyes, but he wrestedthe answer from her--he showed her that he would have it, or that hewould speak and cut Florence to the heart--and she gave it to him. Ashe had looked at the picture in the morning, so he looked at herafterwards, when she turned her eyes away. 

'I am directed to request, ' he said, 'that the new housekeeper--MrsPipchin, I think, is the name--'

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

'--may be informed that Mr Dombey wishes to have his bed prepared inhis own apartments downstairs, as he prefers those rooms to any other. I shall return to Mr Dombey almost immediately. That every possibleattention has been paid to his comfort, and that he is the object ofevery possible solicitude, I need not assure you, Madam. Let me againsay, there is no cause for the least alarm. Even you may be quite atease, believe me. '

He bowed himself out, with his extremest show of deference andconciliation; and having returned to Mr Dombey's room, and therearranged for a carriage being sent after him to the City, mounted hishorse again, and rode slowly thither. He was very thoughtful as he wentalong, and very thoughtful there, and very thoughtful in the carriageon his way back to the place where Mr Dombey had been left. It was onlywhen 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 achesand pains, was helped into his carriage, and propped with cloaks andpillows on one side of it, while his confidential agent bore him companyupon the other. As he was not to be shaken, they moved at little morethan 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 atthe door, and freshened the domestics with several little sprinklingsof wordy vinegar, while they assisted in conveying him to his room. MrCarker remained in attendance until he was safe in bed, and then, ashe declined to receive any female visitor, but the excellent Ogress whopresided over his household, waited on Mrs Dombey once more, with hisreport on her lord's condition. 

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

Edith did not withdraw the hand, nor did she strike his fair face withit, despite the flush upon her cheek, the bright light in her eyes, andthe 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 wasbruised, and bled; and held it from her, near the shining fire, as ifshe could have thrust it in and burned it. '

Far into the night she sat alone, by the sinking blaze, in dark andthreatening beauty, watching the murky shadows looming on the wall, asif her thoughts were tangible, and cast them there. Whatever shapesof outrage and affront, and black foreshadowings of things that mighthappen, flickered, indistinct and giant-like, before her, one resentedfigure 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 theestrangement between her father and Edith, and saw it widen more andmore, 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 madeit even heavier to bear than it had been before. 

It had been hard--how hard may none but Florence ever know!--to havethe natural affection of a true and earnest nature turned to agony; andslight, or stern repulse, substituted for the tenderest protection andthe dearest care. It had been hard to feel in her deep heart what shehad felt, and never know the happiness of one touch of response. But itwas 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 ofthem, by turns, with fear, distrust, and wonder. 

Yet Florence now began to do so; and the doing of it was a task imposedupon her by the very purity of her soul, as one she could not flyfrom. She saw her father cold and obdurate to Edith, as to her; hard, inflexible, unyielding. Could it be, she asked herself with startingtears, 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 statelyEdith was to everyone but her, with what disdain she treated him, howdistantly she kept apart from him, and what she had said on the nightwhen they came home; and quickly it would come on Florence, almost as acrime, that she loved one who was set in opposition to her father, andthat her father knowing of it, must think of her in his solitary room asthe unnatural child who added this wrong to the old fault, so much weptfor, of never having won his fatherly affection from her birth. The nextkind word from Edith, the next kind glance, would shake these thoughtsagain, and make them seem like black ingratitude; for who but she hadcheered the drooping heart of Florence, so lonely and so hurt, and beenits best of comforters! Thus, with her gentle nature yearning to themboth, feeling for the misery of both, and whispering doubts of her ownduty to both, Florence in her wider and expanded love, and by the sideof Edith, endured more than when she had hoarded up her undivided secretin the mournful house, and her beautiful Mama had never dawned upon it. 

One exquisite unhappiness that would have far outweighed this, Florencewas spared. She never had the least suspicion that Edith by hertenderness for her widened the separation from her father, or gave himnew cause of dislike. If Florence had conceived the possibility of suchan 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 fastand sure her quiet passage might have been beneath it to the presenceof that higher Father who does not reject his children's love, or spurntheir tried and broken hearts, Heaven knows! But it was otherwise, andthat was well. 

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

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

'And nice company he is, Miss Floy, ' said Susan Nipper. 'Oh, he's aprecious piece of goods! If ever he wants a character don't let him cometo 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, muchexasperated; 'but raly begging your pardon we're coming to such passesthat 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 meannothing again your ma-in-law who has always treated me as a lady shouldthough she is rather high I must say not that I have any right to objectto that particular, but when we come to Mrs Pipchinses and having themput 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 toooutrageous!'

'Papa thinks well of Mrs Pipchin, Susan, ' returned Florence, 'and has aright to choose his housekeeper, you know. Pray don't!'

'Well Miss Floy, ' returned the Nipper, 'when you say don't, I never doI hope but Mrs Pipchin acts like early gooseberries upon me Miss, andnothing less. '

Susan was unusually emphatic and destitute of punctuation in herdiscourse on this night, which was the night of Mr Dombey's beingbrought home, because, having been sent downstairs by Florence toinquire after him, she had been obliged to deliver her message to hermortal enemy Mrs Pipchin; who, without carrying it in to Mr Dombey, hadtaken upon herself to return what Miss Nipper called a huffish answer, on her own responsibility. This, Susan Nipper construed into presumptionon the part of that exemplary sufferer by the Peruvian mines, and a deedof disparagement upon her young lady, that was not to be forgiven; andso far her emphatic state was special. But she had been in a conditionof greatly increased suspicion and distrust, ever since the marriage;for, like most persons of her quality of mind, who form a strong andsincere attachment to one in the different station which Florenceoccupied, Susan was very jealous, and her jealousy naturally attached toEdith, who divided her old empire, and came between them. Proud and gladas Susan Nipper truly was, that her young mistress should be advancedtowards her proper place in the scene of her old neglect, and thatshe should have her father's handsome wife for her companion andprotectress, she could not relinquish any part of her own dominion tothe handsome wife, without a grudge and a vague feeling of ill-will, for which she did not fail to find a disinterested justification in hersharp perception of the pride and passion of the lady's character. Fromthe background to which she had necessarily retired somewhat, sincethe marriage, Miss Nipper looked on, therefore, at domestic affairsin general, with a resolute conviction that no good would come of MrsDombey: 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, 'itis very late. I shall want nothing more to-night. '

'Ah, Miss Floy!' returned the Nipper, 'I'm sure I often wish for themold times when I sat up with you hours later than this and fell asleepthrough 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'mthankful 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 armround the neck of her humble friend, drew her face down to hers, andbidding her good-night, kissed it; which so mollified Miss Nipper, thatshe fell a sobbing. 

'Now my dear Miss Floy, said Susan, 'let me go downstairs again andsee how your Pa is, I know you're wretched about him, do let me godownstairs 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 theprobability of Mrs Dombey's being in attendance on her husband, andsilently withdrew. Florence left alone, soon hid her head upon her handsas she had often done in other days, and did not restrain the tearsfrom coursing down her face. The misery of this domestic discord andunhappiness; the withered hope she cherished now, if hope it could becalled, of ever being taken to her father's heart; her doubts and fearsbetween the two; the yearning of her innocent breast to both; the heavydisappointment and regret of such an end as this, to what had been avision of bright hope and promise to her; all crowded on her mind andmade her tears flow fast. Her mother and her brother dead, her fatherunmoved towards her, Edith opposed to him and casting him away, butloving her, and loved by her, it seemed as if her affection could neverprosper, rest where it would. That weak thought was soon hushed, but thethoughts in which it had arisen were too true and strong to be dismissedwith 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 tardyhours in lonely suffering. A frightened thought which made her start andclasp her hands--though it was not a new one in her mind--that he mightdie, and never see her or pronounce her name, thrilled her whole frame. In her agitation she thought, and trembled while she thought, of oncemore stealing downstairs, and venturing to his door. 

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

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

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

It was as great a start to come upon his sleeping face as if she had notexpected to see it. Florence stood arrested on the spot, and if he hadawakened 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 itwas not this, that after the first quick glance, and first assuranceof his sleeping quietly, held Florence rooted to the ground. It wassomething very different from this, and more than this, that made himlook so solemn in her eye. 

She had never seen his face in all her life, but there had been uponit--or she fancied so--some disturbing consciousness of her. She hadnever seen his face in all her life, but hope had sunk within her, andher timid glance had dropped before its stern, unloving, and repellingharshness. As she looked upon it now, she saw it, for the first time, free from the cloud that had darkened her childhood. Calm, tranquilnight was reigning in its stead. He might have gone to sleep, foranything 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, itsmotionless response recalled the faces that were gone. So they looked, so would he; so she, his weeping child, who should say when! so all theworld of love and hatred and indifference around them! When that timeshould come, it would not be the heavier to him, for this that she wasgoing to do; and it might fall something lighter upon her. 

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

Awake, doomed man, while she is near! The time is flitting by; the houris 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 himtowards her, if it might be so; and if not, to forgive him if he waswrong, and pardon her the prayer which almost seemed impiety. And doingso, and looking back at him with blinded eyes, and stealing timidlyaway, 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 forthat slight figure when he wakes, and find it near him when the hour iscome!

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

The wind was blowing drearily. The lamps looked pale, and shook as ifthey were cold. There was a distant glimmer of something that was notquite darkness, rather than of light, in the sky; and foreboding nightwas shivering and restless, as the dying are who make a troubled end. Florence remembered how, as a watcher, by a sick-bed, she had notedthis bleak time, and felt its influence, as if in some hidden naturalantipathy to it; and now it was very, very gloomy. 

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

The door was not fastened within, and yielded smoothly to her hesitatinghand. She was surprised to find a bright light burning; still moresurprised, on looking in, to see that her Mama, but partially undressed, was sitting near the ashes of the fire, which had crumbled and droppedaway. Her eyes were intently bent upon the air; and in their light, andin her face, and in her form, and in the grasp with which she held theelbows of her chair as if about to start up, Florence saw such fierceemotion 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 thematter?'

'I have not been well, ' said Edith, shaking, and still looking at her inthe same strange way. 'I have had had dreams, my love. '

'And not yet been to bed, Mama?'

'No, ' she returned. 'Half-waking dreams. '

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

'I have been uneasy, Mama, in not seeing you to-night, and in notknowing how Papa was; and I--'

Florence stopped there, and said no more. 

'Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingledwith 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 thesame strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before;but she presently said, 'Nothing, nothing. A blow. ' And then shesaid, 'My Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weepingpassionately. 

'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, tomake 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 mythoughts, in spite of what we have agreed, ' said Florence, 'you will notblame me, will you?'

'It is useless, ' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that Ihave had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them comingback. '

'I do not understand, ' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face whichseemed to darken as she looked. 

'I have dreamed, ' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is allpowerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has beengalled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiledexcept upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with theconsciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner boldlyto 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 samepossessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and ruin. '

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

'I have dreamed, ' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness, arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserablepride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger, --oh mother, ohmother!--while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself foronce 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 hadlooked when Florence entered. 

'And I have dreamed, ' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achievea purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, butturns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, setupon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that itcannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate. '

Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and asshe looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'OhFlorence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' andhumbled 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 shesaid 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, withfolded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lyingdown 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 areweary and unhappy, too. '

'Not when you lie asleep so near me, sweet. '

They kissed each other, and Florence, worn out, gradually fell into agentle slumber; but as her eyes closed on the face beside her, it wasso sad to think upon the face downstairs, that her hand drew closerto Edith for some comfort; yet, even in the act, it faltered, lest itshould be deserting him. So, in her sleep, she tried to reconcile thetwo together, and to show them that she loved them both, but could notdo it, and her waking grief was part of her dreams. 

Edith, sitting by, looked down at the dark eyelashes lying wet on theflushed cheeks, and looked with gentleness and pity, for she knew thetruth. But no sleep hung upon her own eyes. As the day came on she stillsat watching and waking, with the placid hand in hers, and sometimeswhispered, as she looked at the hushed face, 'Be near me, Florence. Ihave 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 blackeyes, that abated somewhat of their sparkling, and suggested--whichwas not their usual character--the possibility of their being sometimesshut. There was likewise a swollen look about them, as if they had beencrying over-night. But the Nipper, so far from being cast down, wassingularly brisk and bold, and all her energies appeared to be bracedup for some great feat. This was noticeable even in her dress, which wasmuch more tight and trim than usual; and in occasional twitches of herhead as she went about the house, which were mightily expressive ofdetermination. 

In a word, she had formed a determination, and an aspiring one: it beingnothing less than this--to penetrate to Mr Dombey's presence, andhave speech of that gentleman alone. 'I have often said I would, ' sheremarked, in a threatening manner, to herself, that morning, with manytwitches of her head, 'and now I will!'

Spurring herself on to the accomplishment of this desperate design, witha sharpness that was peculiar to herself, Susan Nipper haunted the halland staircase during the whole forenoon, without finding a favourableopportunity for the assault. Not at all baffled by this discomfiture, which indeed had a stimulating effect, and put her on her mettle, shediminished nothing of her vigilance; and at last discovered, towardsevening, that her sworn foe Mrs Pipchin, under pretence of having sat upall night, was dozing in her own room, and that Mr Dombey was lying onhis sofa, unattended. 

With a twitch--not of her head merely, this time, but of her wholeself--the Nipper went on tiptoe to Mr Dombey's door, and knocked. 'Comein!' said Mr Dombey. Susan encouraged herself with a final twitch, andwent 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 heseemed so lost in astonishment at the presumption of the young woman asto be incapable of giving them utterance. 

'I have been in your service, Sir, ' said Susan Nipper, with her usualrapidity, 'now twelve 'year a waiting on Miss Floy my own young lady whocouldn't speak plain when I first come here and I was old in this housewhen Mrs Richards was new, I may not be Meethosalem, but I am not achild in arms. '

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

'There never was a dearer or a blesseder young lady than is my younglady, Sir, ' said Susan, 'and I ought to know a great deal better thansome 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 Ihave seen her in her loneliness and some have never seen her, and Isay to some and all--I do!' and here the black-eyed shook her head, andslightly stamped her foot; 'that she's the blessedest and dearest angelis Miss Floy that ever drew the breath of life, the more that I was tornto 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 indignationand astonishment; and kept his eyes upon the speaker as if he accusedthem, 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, forI love her--yes, I say to some and all I do!'--and here the black-eyedshook her head again, and slightly stamped her foot again, and checked asob; 'but true and faithful service gives me right to speak I hope, andspeak I must and will now, right or wrong. 

'What do you mean, woman?' said Mr Dombey, glaring at her. 'How do youdare?'

'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 myyoung lady Sir you don't indeed, you'd never know so little of her, ifyou did. '

Mr Dombey, in a fury, put his hand out for the bell-rope; but there wasno bell-rope on that side of the fire, and he could not rise and crossto the other without assistance. The quick eye of the Nipper detectedhis helplessness immediately, and now, as she afterwards observed, shefelt she had got him. 

'Miss Floy, ' said Susan Nipper, 'is the most devoted and most patientand most dutiful and beautiful of daughters, there ain't no gentleman, no Sir, though as great and rich as all the greatest and richest ofEngland put together, but might be proud of her and would and ought. Ifhe knew her value right, he'd rather lose his greatness and his fortunepiece by piece and beg his way in rags from door to door, I say to someand all, he would!' cried Susan Nipper, bursting into tears, 'thanbring the sorrow on her tender heart that I have seen it suffer in thishouse!'

'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 andseen so much--although I hope you'd never have the heart to send me fromMiss Floy for such a cause--will I go now till I have said the rest, Imay not be a Indian widow Sir and I am not and I would not so become butif I once made up my mind to burn myself alive, I'd do it! And I've mademy mind up to go on. '

Which was rendered no less clear by the expression of Susan Nipper'scountenance, 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 howtrue it is when I make so bold as say that I have hundreds and hundredsof times thought of speaking to you and never been able to make my mindup to it till last night, but last night decided of me. '

Mr Dombey, in a paroxysm of rage, made another grasp at the bell-ropethat was not there, and, in its absence, pulled his hair rather thannothing. 

'I have seen, ' said Susan Nipper, 'Miss Floy strive and strive whennothing but a child so sweet and patient that the best of women mighthave copied from her, I've seen her sitting nights together half thenight through to help her delicate brother with his learning, I'veseen her helping him and watching him at other times--some well knowwhen--I've seen her, with no encouragement and no help, grow up to be alady, thank God! that is the grace and pride of every company she goesin, and I've always seen her cruelly neglected and keenly feelingof it--I say to some and all, I have!--and never said one word, butordering one's self lowly and reverently towards one's betters, is notto be a worshipper of graven images, and I will and must speak!'

'Is there anybody there?' cried Mr Dombey, calling out. 'Where are themen? 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'tknow 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 myown room thinking she might be lonesome and might want me, and I saw hersteal downstairs and come to this door as if it was a guilty thing tolook at her own Pa, and then steal back again and go into them lonelydrawing-rooms, a-crying so, that I could hardly bear to hear it. I cannot bear to hear it, ' said Susan Nipper, wiping her black eyes, andfixing them undauntingly on Mr Dombey's infuriated face. 'It's not thefirst time I have heard it, not by many and many a time you don't knowyour own daughter, Sir, you don't know what you're doing, Sir, I say tosome and all, ' cried Susan Nipper, in a final burst, 'that it's a sinfulshame!'

'Why, hoity toity!' cried the voice of Mrs Pipchin, as the blackbombazeen 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 forher when they first became acquainted, and resigned the reply to MrDombey. 

'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 inorder, have reason to inquire. Do you know this woman?'

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

But the inflexible Nipper, merely honouring Mrs Pipchin with anotherlook, 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 theimpertinences 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 bemore out of all bounds and reason; but I regret to say, Sir, thatthis young woman is quite beyond control. She has been spoiled byMiss Dombey, and is amenable to nobody. You know you're not, ' said MrsPipchin, sharply, and shaking her head at Susan Nipper. 'For shame, youhussy! Go along with you!'

'If you find people in my service who are not to be controlled, MrsPipchin, ' said Mr Dombey, turning back towards the fire, 'you know whatto do with them, I presume. You know what you are here for? Take heraway!'

'Sir, I know what to do, ' retorted Mrs Pipchin, 'and of course shalldo it' Susan Nipper, ' snapping her up particularly short, 'a month'swarning from this hour. '

'Oh indeed!' cried Susan, loftily. 

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

'I intend to go this minute, you may rely upon it, ' said the volubleNipper. 'I have been in this house waiting on my young lady a dozen yearand I won't stop in it one hour under notice from a person owning to thename of Pipchin trust me, Mrs P. '

'A good riddance of bad rubbish!' said that wrathful old lady. 'Getalong with you, or I'll have you carried out!'

'My comfort is, ' said Susan, looking back at Mr Dombey, 'that I havetold a piece of truth this day which ought to have been told longbefore and can't be told too often or too plain and that no amount ofPipchinses--I hope the number of 'em mayn't be great' (here Mrs Pipchinuttered a very sharp 'Go along with you!' and Miss Nipper repeated thelook) 'can unsay what I have said, though they gave a whole year full ofwarnings beginning at ten o'clock in the forenoon and never leavingoff till twelve at night and died of the exhaustion which would be aJubilee!'

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

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

'Does that bold-faced slut, ' said the fell Pipchin, 'intend to take herwarning, or does she not?'

Miss Nipper replied from within that the person described did notinhabit that part of the house, but that her name was Pipchin, and shewas to be found in the housekeeper's room. 

'You saucy baggage!' retorted Mrs Pipchin, rattling at the handle of thedoor. 'Go along with you this minute. Pack up your things directly! Howdare 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 thebetter days that had seen Mrs Pipchin; and that for her part sheconsidered 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, ' saidSusan Nipper, 'nor to contaminate the key-hole with your eye, I'mpacking up and going you may take your affidavit. '

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

The object of her regret was not long in coming to her, for the newssoon spread over the house that Susan Nipper had had a disturbance withMrs Pipchin, and that they had both appealed to Mr Dombey, and thatthere had been an unprecedented piece of work in Mr Dombey's room, andthat Susan was going. The latter part of this confused rumour, Florencefound to be so correct, that Susan had locked the last trunk and wassitting 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'tspeak a word to me or I shall demean myself before them' Pipchinses, andI wouldn't have 'em see me cry Miss Floy for worlds!'

'Susan!' said Florence. 'My dear girl, my old friend! What shall I dowithout 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 nofault of mine. I am quite resigned. I couldn't stay my month or I couldnever 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 marbledoorpost, my own dear. '

'What is it? Why is it?' said Florence, 'Won't you tell me?' For Susanwas shaking her head. 

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

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

'My darling there's a many that may come to serve you and be glad toserve you and who'll serve you well and true, ' said Susan, 'but therecan't be one who'll serve you so affectionate as me or love you half asdearly, that's my comfort' Good-bye, sweet Miss Floy!'

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

'I've got a brother down in the country Miss--a farmer in Essex said theheart-broken Nipper, 'that keeps ever so many co-o-ows and pigs and Ishall go down there by the coach and sto-op with him, and don't mindme, for I've got money in the Savings Banks my dear, and needn't takeanother service just yet, which I couldn't, couldn't, couldn't do, myheart's own mistress!' Susan finished with a burst of sorrow, which wasopportunely broken by the voice of Mrs Pipchin talking downstairs; onhearing which, she dried her red and swollen eyes, and made a melancholyfeint of calling jauntily to Mr Towlinson to fetch a cab and carry downher boxes. 

Florence, pale and hurried and distressed, but withheld from uselessinterference even here, by her dread of causing any new division betweenher father and his wife (whose stern, indignant face had been a warningto her a few moments since), and by her apprehension of being in someway unconsciously connected already with the dismissal of herold servant and friend, followed, weeping, downstairs to Edith'sdressing-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 yourpardon, Ma'am, but Mr Dombey's orders are imperative. '

Edith, sitting under the hands of her maid--she was going out todinner--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 servantsabout, as she had routed her young Brighton boarders; to the everlastingacidulation of Master Bitherstone, 'and the sooner this house sees yourback the better. 

Susan had no spirits even for the look that belonged to Ma Pipchin byright; so she dropped her curtsey to Mrs Dombey (who inclined her headwithout one word, and whose eye avoided everyone but Florence), and gaveone last parting hug to her young mistress, and received her partingembrace in return. Poor Susan's face at this crisis, in the intensity ofher feelings and the determined suffocation of her sobs, lest one shouldbecome audible and be a triumph to Mrs Pipchin, presented a series ofthe most extraordinary physiognomical phenomena ever witnessed. 

'I beg your pardon, Miss, I'm sure, ' said Towlinson, outside thedoor with the boxes, addressing Florence, 'but Mr Toots is in thedrawing-room, and sends his compliments, and begs to know how Diogenesand Master is. '

Quick as thought, Florence glided out and hastened downstairs, whereMr Toots, in the most splendid vestments, was breathing very hard withdoubt 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 thedistress he saw in Florence's face; which caused him to stop short in afit of chuckles, and become an image of despair. 

'Dear Mr Toots, ' said Florence, 'you are so friendly to me, and sohonest, 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 somesentiment, 'I have long been a stranger. 

'Susan, who is an old friend of mine, the oldest friend I have, ' saidFlorence, '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 totake care of her until she is in the coach?'

'Miss Dombey, ' returned Mr Toots, 'you really do me an honour and akindness. This proof of your confidence, after the manner in which I wasBeast enough to conduct myself at Brighton--'

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

Florence had not the courage to go out, when she saw poor Susan in thehall, with Mrs Pipchin driving her forth, and Diogenes jumping abouther, and terrifying Mrs Pipchin to the last degree by making snapsat her bombazeen skirts, and howling with anguish at the sound of hervoice--for the good duenna was the dearest and most cherished aversionof his breast. But she saw Susan shake hands with the servants allround, and turn once to look at her old home; and she saw Diogenes boundout after the cab, and want to follow it, and testify an impossibilityof conviction that he had no longer any property in the fare; and thedoor was shut, and the hurry over, and her tears flowed fast for theloss 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 ina twinkling, and told Susan Nipper of his commission, at which she criedmore than before. 

'Upon my soul and body!' said Mr Toots, taking his seat beside her. 'Ifeel for you. Upon my word and honour I think you can hardly know yourown feelings better than I imagine them. I can conceive nothing moredreadful than to have to leave Miss Dombey. '

Susan abandoned herself to her grief now, and it really was touching tosee 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 mostmotherly people I ever saw--and she'll be delighted to make youcomfortable. 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 justifiedhis character of her, and by the Chicken who at first supposed, onseeing a lady in the vehicle, that Mr Dombey had been doubled up, ablyto his old recommendation, and Miss Dombey abducted. This gentlemanawakened in Miss Nipper some considerable astonishment; for, havingbeen defeated by the Larkey Boy, his visage was in a state of such greatdilapidation, as to be hardly presentable in society with comfort to thebeholders. The Chicken himself attributed this punishment to his havinghad the misfortune to get into Chancery early in the proceedings, whenhe was severely fibbed by the Larkey one, and heavily grassed. Butit appeared from the published records of that great contest that theLarkey Boy had had it all his own way from the beginning, and that theChicken had been tapped, and bunged, and had received pepper, and hadbeen made groggy, and had come up piping, and had endured a complicationof similar strange inconveniences, until he had been gone into andfinished. 

After a good repast, and much hospitality, Susan set out for thecoach-office in another cabriolet, with Mr Toots inside, as before, andthe Chicken on the box, who, whatever distinction he conferred on thelittle party by the moral weight and heroism of his character, wasscarcely ornamental to it, physically speaking, on account of hisplasters; which were numerous. But the Chicken had registered a vow, insecret, that he would never leave Mr Toots (who was secretly piningto get rid of him), for any less consideration than the good-will andfixtures 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 tomake 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 andconfused, 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, butin time--in a long time--to--to love me, you know? There!' said poor MrToots. 

'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 ofno consequence, thank'ee!'

CHAPTER 45. The Trusty Agent

Edith went out alone that day, and returned home early. It was but a fewminutes after ten o'clock, when her carriage rolled along the street inwhich she lived. 

There was the same enforced composure on her face, that there had beenwhen she was dressing; and the wreath upon her head encircled the samecold and steady brow. But it would have been better to have seen itsleaves and flowers reft into fragments by her passionate hand, orrendered shapeless by the fitful searches of a throbbing and bewilderedbrain for any resting-place, than adorning such tranquillity. Soobdurate, so unapproachable, so unrelenting, one would have thought thatnothing could soften such a woman's nature, and that everything in lifehad hardened it. 

Arrived at her own door, she was alighting, when some one coming quietlyfrom the hall, and standing bareheaded, offered her his arm. The servantbeing thrust aside, she had no choice but to touch it; and she then knewwhose 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 himfor the night. '

She bent her head, and was passing up the staircase, when he followedand 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 havemet you, let me press my petition. '

She looked down for a moment at his glistening mouth; and he looked upat her, standing above him in her stately dress, and thought, again, howbeautiful 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 gentlemanat the bottom of the stairs, and informing him with a slight motion ofher head, that he was at liberty to follow, she passed on. 

'I beg your pardon! Madam! Mrs Dombey!' cried the soft and nimbleCarker, at her side in a moment. 'May I be permitted to entreat thatMiss Dombey is not present?'

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

'I would spare Miss Dombey, ' said Carker, in a low voice, 'the knowledgeof what I have to say. At least, Madam, I would leave it to you todecide whether she shall know of it or not. I owe that to you. It is mybounden duty to you. After our former interview, it would be monstrousin 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 hespeedily lighted up and then left them. While he remained, not a wordwas spoken. Edith enthroned herself upon a couch by the fire; and MrCarker, 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 wishyou to hear me. '

'To be addressed by Mrs Dombey, ' he returned, 'even in accents ofunmerited reproach, is an honour I so greatly esteem, that although Iwere not her servant in all things, I should defer to such a wish, mostreadily. '

'If you are charged by the man whom you have just now left, Sir;' MrCarker raised his eyes, as if he were going to counterfeit surprise, but she met them, and stopped him, if such were his intention; 'with anymessage to me, do not attempt to deliver it, for I will not receiveit. I need scarcely ask you if you are come on such an errand. I haveexpected 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 wouldreturn to it in the face of her prohibition? Is it possible that MrsDombey, having no regard to my unfortunate position, is so determined toconsider me inseparable from my instructor as to do me great and wilfulinjustice?'

'Sir, ' returned Edith, bending her dark gaze full upon him, and speakingwith a rising passion that inflated her proud nostril and her swellingneck, and stirred the delicate white down upon a robe she wore, thrownloosely over shoulders that could hear its snowy neighbourhood. 'Why doyou present yourself to me, as you have done, and speak to me of loveand 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 youknow--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 usthere is aversion and contempt, and that I despise him hardly less thanI despise myself for being his! Injustice! If I had done justice to thetorment you have made me feel, and to my sense of the insult you haveput upon me, I should have slain you!'

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

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

He did not shrink beneath her gaze, but stood, until such outward signsof her anger as had escaped her control subsided, with the air of a manwho 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 foundno favour with you; and I knew why. Yes. I knew why. You have spoken soopenly 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 thefirst, that there was no affection on your part for Mr Dombey--how couldit possibly exist between such different subjects? And I have seen, since, that stronger feelings than indifference have been engendered inyour breast--how could that possibly be otherwise, either, circumstancedas you have been? But was it for me to presume to avow this knowledge toyou in so many words?'

'Was it for you, Sir, ' she replied, 'to feign that other belief, andaudaciously to thrust it on me day by day?'

'Madam, it was, ' he eagerly retorted. 'If I had done less, if I haddone anything but that, I should not be speaking to you thus; and Iforesaw--who could better foresee, for who has had greater experience ofMr Dombey than myself?--that unless your character should prove to be asyielding and obedient as that of his first submissive lady, which I didnot 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 suchan 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 fromthat limited commendation of Mr Dombey, in which I can honestlyindulge, in order that I may not have the misfortune of saying anythingdistasteful to one whose aversion and contempt, ' with great expression, 'are so keen. '

'Is it honest in you, Sir, ' said Edith, 'to confess to your "limitedcommendation, " 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 Ifear I must confess to. But our interest and convenience commonly obligemany of us to make professions that we cannot feel. We have partnershipsof interest and convenience, friendships of interest and convenience, dealings of interest and convenience, marriages of interest andconvenience, every day. '

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

'Madam, ' said Mr Carker, sitting down in a chair that was near her, withan air of the most profound and most considerate respect, 'why shouldI hesitate now, being altogether devoted to your service, to speakplainly? It was natural that a lady, endowed as you are, should think itfeasible to change her husband's character in some respects, and mouldhim to a better form. '

'It was not natural to me, Sir, ' she rejoined. 'I had never anyexpectation or intention of that kind. '

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

'At least it was natural, ' he resumed, 'that you should deem it quitepossible to live with Mr Dombey as his wife, at once without submittingto him, and without coming into such violent collision with him. But, Madam, you did not know Mr Dombey (as you have since ascertained), whenyou 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 goesyoked to his own triumphal car like a beast of burden, with no idea onearth but that it is behind him and is to be drawn on, over everythingand through everything. '

His teeth gleamed through his malicious relish of this conceit, as hewent 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 tobe so; but quite just. Mr Dombey, in the plenitude of his power, askedme--I had it from his own lips yesterday morning--to be his go-betweento you, because he knows I am not agreeable to you, and because heintends that I shall be a punishment for your contumacy; and besidesthat, because he really does consider, that I, his paid servant, am anambassador whom it is derogatory to the dignity--not of the lady to whomI have the happiness of speaking; she has no existence in his mind--butof his wife, a part of himself, to receive. You may imagine howregardless of me, how obtuse to the possibility of my having anyindividual sentiment or opinion he is, when he tells me, openly, that Iam so employed. You know how perfectly indifferent to your feelings heis, when he threatens you with such a messenger. As you, of course, havenot forgotten that he did. '

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

'I do not recall all this to widen the breach between yourself andMr Dombey, Madam--Heaven forbid! what would it profit me?--but as anexample of the hopelessness of impressing Mr Dombey with a sense thatanybody is to be considered when he is in question. We who are abouthim, have, in our various positions, done our part, I daresay, toconfirm him in his way of thinking; but if we had not done so, otherswould--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 todeal, in short, with none but submissive and dependent persons, who havebowed the knee, and bent the neck, before him. He has never known whatit 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 notpart, nor her eyes falter. He saw the soft down tremble once again, andhe saw her lay the plumage of the beautiful bird against her bosom fora moment; and he unfolded one more ring of the coil into which he hadgathered himself. 

'Mr Dombey, though a most honourable gentleman, ' he said, 'is so proneto 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 betterinstance than this!--he sincerely believes (you will excuse the folly ofwhat I am about to say; it not being mine) that his severe expressionof opinion to his present wife, on a certain special occasion she mayremember, before the lamented death of Mrs Skewton, produced a witheringeffect, and for the moment quite subdued her!'

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

'Madam, ' he resumed, 'I have done with this. Your own opinions are sostrong, and, I am persuaded, so unalterable, ' he repeated those wordsslowly and with great emphasis, 'that I am almost afraid to incur yourdispleasure anew, when I say that in spite of these defects and my fullknowledge of them, I have become habituated to Mr Dombey, and esteemhim. But when I say so, it is not, believe me, for the mere sake ofvaunting a feeling that is so utterly at variance with your own, andfor which you can have no sympathy'--oh how distinct and plain andemphasized this was!--'but to give you an assurance of the zeal withwhich, in this unhappy matter, I am yours, and the indignation withwhich 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 yousaid, fatigued. But the second object of this interview, I must notforget. I must recommend you, I must entreat you in the most earnestmanner, for sufficient reasons that I have, to be cautious in yourdemonstrations 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 andrising. '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, andstill 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 meto 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 hasnow the honour to possess your confidence, though the way to it has beenthrough your displeasure, I must violate the injunction you have laidupon 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 theeffect then!

'His instructions were, ' he said, in a low voice, 'that I should informyou 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 inearnest, he is confident it will be; for your continued show ofaffection 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 lookingthrough 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 haddropped beneath her, and in an instant would have fallen on the floor, but that he caught her in his arms. As instantaneously she threw himoff, the moment that he touched her, and, drawing back, confronted himagain, 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 impossibleto say what unforeseen consequences might arise, or how soon, from yourbeing unacquainted with his state of mind. I understand Miss Dombey isconcerned, now, at the dismissal of her old servant, which is likelyto have been a minor consequence in itself. You don't blame me forrequesting 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 andstrong, 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 positionand 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 thetransaction of business matters. You will allow me to see you again, andto 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 ofopportunity, or for any other reason. It will be necessary that youshould 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 tobe present; and that I seek an interview as one who has the happiness topossess your confidence, and who comes to render you every assistance inhis power, and, perhaps, on many occasions, to ward off evil from her?'

Looking at him still with the same apparent dread of releasing him fora 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 nearlyreached the door, said:

'I am forgiven, and have explained my fault. May I--for Miss Dombey'ssake, and for my own--take your hand before I go?'

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

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

She did not weep; she showed no greater agitation, outwardly, than whenshe was riding home. She laid as proud a head upon her pillow as she hadborne 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 daintypleasure, how imperious her passion was, how she had sat before him inher beauty, with the dark eyes that had never turned away but once; howthe white down had fluttered; how the bird's feathers had been strewnupon the ground. 

CHAPTER 46. Recognizant and Reflective

Among sundry minor alterations in Mr Carker's life and habits thatbegan to take place at this time, none was more remarkable than theextraordinary diligence with which he applied himself to business, andthe closeness with which he investigated every detail that the affairsof the House laid open to him. Always active and penetrating in suchmatters, his lynx-eyed vigilance now increased twenty-fold. Not onlydid his weary watch keep pace with every present point that every daypresented to him in some new form, but in the midst of these engrossingoccupations he found leisure--that is, he made it--to review the pasttransactions of the Firm, and his share in them, during a long seriesof years. Frequently when the clerks were all gone, the offices dark andempty, and all similar places of business shut up, Mr Carker, with thewhole anatomy of the iron room laid bare before him, would explore themysteries of books and papers, with the patient progress of a man whowas dissecting the minutest nerves and fibres of his subject. Perch, themessenger, who usually remained on these occasions, to entertain himselfwith the perusal of the Price Current by the light of one candle, orto doze over the fire in the outer office, at the imminent risk everymoment of diving head foremost into the coal-box, could not withhold thetribute of his admiration from this zealous conduct, although it muchcontracted his domestic enjoyments; and again, and again, expatiatedto Mrs Perch (now nursing twins) on the industry and acuteness of theirmanaging gentleman in the City. 

The same increased and sharp attention that Mr Carker bestowed on thebusiness of the House, he applied to his own personal affairs. Thoughnot a partner in the concern--a distinction hitherto reserved solely toinheritors of the great name of Dombey--he was in the receipt of somepercentage on its dealings; and, participating in all its facilitiesfor the employment of money to advantage, was considered, by the minnowsamong the tritons of the East, a rich man. It began to be said, amongthese shrewd observers, that Jem Carker, of Dombey's, was looking abouthim to see what he was worth; and that he was calling in his money ata good time, like the long-headed fellow he was; and bets were evenoffered 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 watchingof his chief, or with his cleanness, neatness, sleekness, or anycat-like quality he possessed. It was not so much that there was achange in him, in reference to any of his habits, as that the whole manwas intensified. Everything that had been observable in him before, wasobservable now, but with a greater amount of concentration. He did eachsingle thing, as if he did nothing else--a pretty certain indication ina man of that range of ability and purpose, that he is doing somethingwhich sharpens and keeps alive his keenest powers. 

The only decided alteration in him was, that as he rode to and fro alongthe streets, he would fall into deep fits of musing, like that inwhich he had come away from Mr Dombey's house, on the morning ofthat gentleman's disaster. At such times, he would keep clear of theobstacles in his way, mechanically; and would appear to see and hearnothing until arrival at his destination, or some sudden chance oreffort roused him. 

Walking his white-legged horse thus, to the counting-house of Dombey andSon one day, he was as unconscious of the observation of two pairs ofwomen's eyes, as of the fascinated orbs of Rob the Grinder, who, inwaiting a street's length from the appointed place, as a demonstrationof punctuality, vainly touched and retouched his hat to attractattention, and trotted along on foot, by his master's side, prepared tohold his stirrup when he should alight. 

'See where he goes!' cried one of these two women, an old creature, whostretched out her shrivelled arm to point him out to her companion, ayoung woman, who stood close beside her, withdrawn like herself into agateway. 

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

'I never thought to look at him again, ' she said, in a low voice; 'butit'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? Thereis change enough for twenty in me. Isn't that enough?'

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

'And of it, ' said her daughter impatiently. 'We are mud, underneath hishorse's feet. What should we be?'

In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made ahasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if herview could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and nothim, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew along breath, as if in the relief of his being gone. 

'Deary!' said the old woman then. 'Alice! Handsome gall Ally!' Shegently shook her sleeve to arouse her attention. 'Will you let him golike that, when you can wring money from him? Why, it's a wickedness, mydaughter. '

'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? WouldI touch a penny, if I knew it, that had gone through his whitehands--unless it was, indeed, that I could poison it, and send it backto 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, ' returnedher daughter. 'Let him give me that sort of riches, and I'll take themfrom 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 returningdown the street, leading the riderless horse, appeared to have someextraneous interest that it did not possess in itself, surveyed thatyoung man with the utmost earnestness; and seeming to have whateverdoubts she entertained, resolved as he drew nearer, glanced at herdaughter with brightened eyes and with her finger on her lip, andemerging from the gateway at the moment of his passing, touched him onthe shoulder. 

'Why, where's my sprightly Rob been, all this time!' she said, as heturned round. 

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

'Oh! why can't you leave a poor cove alone, Misses Brown, when he'sgetting an honest livelihood and conducting himself respectable? What doyou come and deprive a cove of his character for, by talking to him inthe streets, when he's taking his master's horse to a honest stable--ahorse 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 ifit 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, 'thathe talks to me, who knew him weeks and months together, my deary, andhave stood his friend many and many a time among the pigeon-fancyingtramps and bird-catchers. '

'Let the birds be, will you, Misses Brown?' retorted Rob, in a tone ofthe acutest anguish. 'I think a cove had better have to do with lionsthan them little creeturs, for they're always flying back in your facewhen you least expect it. Well, how d'ye do and what do you want?' Thesepolite inquiries the Grinder uttered, as it were under protest, and withgreat exasperation and vindictiveness. 

'Hark how he speaks to an old friend, my deary!' said Mrs Brown, againappealing to her daughter. 'But there's some of his old friends not sopatient as me. If I was to tell some that he knows, and has spotted andcheated with, where to find him--'

'Will you hold your tongue, Misses Brown?' interrupted the miserableGrinder, glancing quickly round, as though he expected to see hismaster's teeth shining at his elbow. 'What do you take a pleasure inruining a cove for? At your time of life too! when you ought to bethinking 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 herhand. '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 wastouched with a straw. ' And he blew upon the place where the old woman'shand had rested for a moment, and smoothed it gently with his finger, asif he seriously believed what he said. 

The old woman looking back to mumble and mouth at her daughter, whofollowed, kept close to Rob's heels as he walked on with the bridle inhis 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 goalong, Misses Brown, and not foller me!' blubbered Rob, with suddendefiance. 'If the young woman's a friend of yours, why don't she takeyou away, instead of letting you make yourself so disgraceful!'

'What!' croaked the old woman, putting her face close to his, with amalevolent grin upon it that puckered up the loose skin down in her verythroat. 'Do you deny your old chum! Have you lurked to my house fiftytimes, and slept sound in a corner when you had no other bed but thepaving-stones, and do you talk to me like this! Have I bought and soldwith you, and helped you in my way of business, schoolboy, sneak, andwhat not, and do you tell me to go along? Could I raise a crowd of oldcompany about you to-morrow morning, that would follow you to ruin likecopies 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 doingof? Don't put yourself in a passion! Don't let her go, if you please. Ihaven'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, 'lookhere! How can a cove stand talking in the street with his master'sprad a wanting to be took to be rubbed down, and his master up to everyindividgle thing that happens!'

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

'Come along to the stables, and have a glass of something that's goodfor you, Misses Brown, can't you?' said Rob, 'instead of going on, likethat, 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, ifit wasn't for the horse!'

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

Turning into a silent little square or court-yard that had a greatchurch tower rising above it, and a packer's warehouse, and abottle-maker's warehouse, for its places of business, Rob the Grinderdelivered the white-legged horse to the hostler of a quaint stable atthe corner; and inviting Mrs Brown and her daughter to seat themselvesupon a stone bench at the gate of that establishment, soon reappearedfrom a neighbouring public-house with a pewter measure and a glass. 

'Here's master--Mr Carker, child!' said the old woman, slowly, as hersentiment 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 noddinghead stopped for the moment, in the fixedness of her attention. 'We sawhim pass this morning, afore he got off his horse; when you were readyto take it. '

'Ay, ay, ' returned Rob, appearing to wish that his readiness had carriedhim 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 alittle apart, profoundly inattentive to his offer of the replenishedglass. 

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

'Hush!' said Rob, glancing cautiously up at the packer's, and at thebottle-maker's, as if, from any one of the tiers of warehouses, MrCarker 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 thechurch tower, as if he might be there, with a supernatural power ofhearing. 

'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 sosuddenly, 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, ' saidRob 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, eitherwith 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. Howcurious you are, Misses Brown! Least said, soonest mended. '

'Why there's no harm in it!' exclaimed the old woman, with a laugh, anda clap of her hands. 'Sprightly Rob, has grown tame since he has beenwell off! There's no harm in It. 

'No, there's no harm in it, I know, ' returned Rob, with the samedistrustful glance at the packer's and the bottle-maker's, and thechurch; 'but blabbing, if it's only about the number of buttons on mymaster's coat, won't do. I tell you it won't do with him. A cove hadbetter drown himself. He says so. I shouldn't have so much as told youwhat 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 asecret motion to her daughter. It was momentary, but the daughter, witha 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 thebench. '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 abouthis neck. 'You could go away, and grow almost out of knowledge, andnever come to tell your poor old friend how fortunate you were, proudlad! Oho, Oho!'

'Oh here's a dreadful go for a cove that's got a master wide awake inthe neighbourhood!' exclaimed the wretched Grinder. 'To be howled overlike this here!'

'Won't you come and see me, Robby?' cried Mrs Brown. 'Oho, won't youever 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 tearsupon her shrivelled face, and giving him a tender squeeze. 'At the oldplace, 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, andher head thrown back and shaking, 'if he's true to his word, I'll nevercome a-near him though I know where he is, and never breathe a syllableabout him! Never!'

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

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

But as the reluctant Grinder put it in her hand, her daughter, comingquietly back, caught the hand in hen, and twisted out the coin. 

'What, ' she said, 'mother! always money! money from the first, and tothe 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 inany other way opposing its restoration, hobbled at her daughter's sideout of the yard, and along the bye street upon which it opened. Theastonished and dismayed Rob staring after them, saw that they stopped, and fell to earnest conversation very soon; and more than once observeda darkly threatening action of the younger woman's hand (obviouslyhaving reference to someone of whom they spoke), and a crooning feebleimitation of it on the part of Mrs Brown, that made him earnestly hopehe might not be the subject of their discourse. 

With the present consolation that they were gone, and with theprospective comfort that Mrs Brown could not live for ever, and wasnot likely to live long to trouble him, the Grinder, not otherwiseregretting his misdeeds than as they were attended with suchdisagreeable incidental consequences, composed his ruffled features toa more serene expression by thinking of the admirable manner in which hehad disposed of Captain Cuttle (a reflection that seldom failed to puthim in a flow of spirits), and went to the Dombey Counting House toreceive his master's orders. 

There his master, so subtle and vigilant of eye, that Rob quaked beforehim, more than half expecting to be taxed with Mrs Brown, gave him theusual 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 usedispatch--a mysterious admonition, fraught in the Grinder's imaginationwith dismal warnings and threats; and more powerful with him than anywords. 

Alone again, in his own room, Mr Carker applied himself to work, andworked all day. He saw many visitors; overlooked a number of documents;went in and out, to and from, sundry places of mercantile resort; andindulged 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, hefell into his thoughtful mood once more. 

He was standing in his accustomed place and attitude, with his eyesintently fixed upon the ground, when his brother entered to bring backsome letters that had been taken out in the course of the day. He putthem quietly on the table, and was going immediately, when Mr Carker theManager, whose eyes had rested on him, on his entrance, as if they hadall this time had him for the subject of their contemplation, instead ofthe 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, withoutinquiring how our master is'. 

'We had word this morning in the Counting House, that Mr Dombey wasdoing well, ' replied his brother. 

'You are such a meek fellow, ' said the Manager, with a smile, --'but youhave 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 weresome other person present to whom he was appealing. 'He would be trulysorry! This brother of mine! This junior of the place, this slightedpiece of lumber, pushed aside with his face to the wall, like a rottenpicture, and left so, for Heaven knows how many years he's all gratitudeand respect, and devotion too, he would have me believe!'

'I would have you believe nothing, James, ' returned the other. 'Be asjust 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 unusualirascibility, 'to complain of in him? No proud treatment to resent, noinsolence, 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 somany years, especially as superior and inferior, without each havingsomething 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 veryfact 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 thankfulthat I alone (happily for all the rest) possess, surely there is no onein the House who would not say and feel at least as much. You donot think that anybody here would be indifferent to a mischance ormisfortune happening to the head of the House, or anything than trulysorry 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 acheap 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 kepthere 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 betweenus 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 wouldsay. I was only going to suggest to you that it would be a mistake tosuppose that it is only you, who have been selected here, above allothers, for advancement, confidence and distinction (selected, in thebeginning, I know, for your great ability and trustfulness), and whocommunicate more freely with Mr Dombey than anyone, and stand, it maybe said, on equal terms with him, and have been favoured and enriched byhim--that it would be a mistake to suppose that it is only you who aretender of his welfare and reputation. There is no one in the House, from yourself down to the lowest, I sincerely believe, who does notparticipate 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 bythese insulting words? Why do you so basely use them to me, unprovoked?'

'I tell you, ' said the Manager, 'that your hypocrisy and meekness--thatall 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 wereair! There is not a man employed here, standing between myself and thelowest 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 masterhumbled: who does not hate him, secretly: who does not wish him evilrather than good: and who would not turn upon him, if he had the powerand boldness. The nearer to his favour, the nearer to his insolence; thecloser to him, the farther from him. That's the creed here!'

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

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

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

'I have no suspicions, ' said the Manager. 'Mine are certainties. Youpusillanimous, abject, cringing dogs! All making the same show, allcanting the same story, all whining the same professions, all harbouringthe same transparent secret. '

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

'The faint-hearted, fawning knaves, ' he muttered, with his two shiningrows of teeth laid bare. 'There's not one among them, who wouldn't feignto be so shocked and outraged--! Bah! There's not one among them, butif he had at once the power, and the wit and daring to use it, wouldscatter Dombey's pride and lay it low, as ruthlessly as I rake out theseashes. '

As he broke them up and strewed them in the grate, he looked on with athoughtful smile at what he was doing. 'Without the same queenbeckoner too!' he added presently; 'and there is pride there, not tobe forgotten--witness our own acquaintance!' With that he fell into adeeper reverie, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until herose up like a man who had been absorbed in a book, and looking roundhim 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 approachedit, looked up at the windows The window where he had once seen Florencesitting with her dog attracted his attention first, though there was nolight in it; but he smiled as he carried his eyes up the tall front ofthe house, and seemed to leave that object superciliously behind. 

'Time was, ' he said, 'when it was well to watch even your rising littlestar, and know in what quarter there were clouds, to shadow you ifneedful. But a planet has arisen, and you are lost in its light. '

He turned the white-legged horse round the street corner, and soughtone shining window from among those at the back of the house. Associatedwith it was a certain stately presence, a gloved hand, the remembrancehow the feathers of a beautiful bird's wing had been showered down uponthe floor, and how the light white down upon a robe had stirred andrustled, as in the rising of a distant storm. These were the things hecarried with him as he turned away again, and rode through the darkeningand 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 hiscraft, and her pride and resentment, to endure his company, and littleby little to receive him as one who had the privilege to talk to herof her own defiant disregard of her own husband, and her abandonment ofhigh consideration for herself. They were associated with a woman whohated him deeply, and who knew him, and who mistrusted him because sheknew him, and because he knew her; but who fed her fierce resentment bysuffering him to draw nearer and yet nearer to her every day, in spiteof 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, whosefaintest shadow seen once and shuddered at, and never seen again, wouldhave been sufficient stain upon her soul. 

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

Yes. He saw her in his mind, exactly as she was. She bore him companywith 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 sometimeshaughty and repellent at his side, and some times down among his horse'sfeet, fallen and in the dust. But he always saw her as she was, withoutdisguise, 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 thelight of her bright room with his bent head, soft voice, and soothingsmile, he saw her yet as plainly. He even suspected the mystery of thegloved 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 afootprint 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, boundtogether by no tie but the manacle that joined their fettered hands, andstraining that so harshly, in their shrinking asunder, that it wore andchafed to the bone, Time, consoler of affliction and softener of anger, could do nothing to help them. Their pride, however different in kindand object, was equal in degree; and, in their flinty opposition, struck out fire between them which might smoulder or might blaze, ascircumstances 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, swellingwith every grain of sand that shifted in its glass, he urged her on, helittle thought to what, or considered how; but still his feeling towardsher, such as it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit ofunaccountably putting herself in opposition to the recognition of hisvast importance, and to the acknowledgment of her complete submission toit, and so far it was necessary to correct and reduce her; but otherwisehe still considered her, in his cold way, a lady capable of doinghonour, if she would, to his choice and name, and of reflecting crediton his proprietorship. 

Now, she, with all her might of passionate and proud resentment, benther dark glance from day to day, and hour to hour--from that night inher 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 ofhumiliations and exasperations against her; and that figure, still herhusband's. 

Was Mr Dombey's master-vice, that ruled him so inexorably, an unnaturalcharacteristic? It might be worthwhile, sometimes, to inquire whatNature is, and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforceddistortions so produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop anyson or daughter of our mighty mother within narrow range, and bind theprisoner to one idea, and foster it by servile worship of it on the partof the few timid or designing people standing round, and what is Natureto the willing captive who has never risen up upon the wings of a freemind--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 admonishthe unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnaturalin want of decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctionsbetween good and evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind, in looks, in everything. But follow the goodclergyman or doctor, who, with his life imperilled at every breathhe draws, goes down into their dens, lying within the echoes of ourcarriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement stones. Look roundupon the world of odious sights--millions of immortal creatures have noother 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 impuritythat is poisonous to health and life; and have every sense, conferredupon our race for its delight and happiness, offended, sickened anddisgusted, and made a channel by which misery and death alone can enter. Vainly attempt to think of any simple plant, or flower, or wholesomeweed, 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, holdforth on its unnatural sinfulness, and lament its being, so early, faraway from Heaven--but think a little of its having been conceived, andborn and bred, in Hell!

Those who study the physical sciences, and bring them to bear upon thehealth of Man, tell us that if the noxious particles that rise fromvitiated air were palpable to the sight, we should see them lowering ina dense black cloud above such haunts, and rolling slowly on to corruptthe better portions of a town. But if the moral pestilence that riseswith them, and in the eternal laws of our Nature, is inseparable fromthem, could be made discernible too, how terrible the revelation! Thenshould we see depravity, impiety, drunkenness, theft, murder, and a longtrain of nameless sins against the natural affections and repulsions ofmankind, overhanging the devoted spots, and creeping on, to blight theinnocent and spread contagion among the pure. Then should we see how thesame poisoned fountains that flow into our hospitals and lazar-houses, inundate the jails, and make the convict-ships swim deep, and rollacross the seas, and over-run vast continents with crime. Then shouldwe stand appalled to know, that where we generate disease to strike ourchildren down and entail itself on unborn generations, there also webreed, by the same certain process, infancy that knows no innocence, youth without modesty or shame, maturity that is mature in nothing butin suffering and guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the form webear, unnatural humanity! When we shall gather grapes from thorns, andfigs from thistles; when fields of grain shall spring up from theoffal in the bye-ways of our wicked cities, and roses bloom in the fatchurchyards 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 molepotent and benignant hand than the lame demon in the tale, and showa Christian people what dark shapes issue from amidst their homes, toswell 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 ofour too-long neglect; and from the thick and sullen air where Vice andFever propagate together, raining the tremendous social retributionswhich are ever pouring down, and ever coming thicker! Bright and blestthe morning that should rise on such a night: for men, delayed no moreby stumbling-blocks of their own making, which are but specks of dustupon the path between them and eternity, would then apply themselves, like creatures of one common origin, owing one duty to the Father of onefamily, 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 whonever have looked out upon the world of human life around them, to aknowledge of their own relation to it, and for making them acquaintedwith a perversion of nature in their own contracted sympathies andestimates; as great, and yet as natural in its development when oncebegun, as the lowest degradation known. '

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

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

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

Florence loved him still, but, by degrees, had come to love him ratheras some dear one who had been, or who might have been, than as the hardreality before her eyes. Something of the softened sadness with whichshe loved the memory of little Paul, or of her mother, seemed to enternow into her thoughts of him, and to make them, as it were, a dearremembrance. Whether it was that he was dead to her, and that partly forthis reason, partly for his share in those old objects of her affection, and partly for the long association of him with hopes that were witheredand tendernesses he had frozen, she could not have told; but the fatherwhom she loved began to be a vague and dreamy idea to her: hardly moresubstantially connected with her real life, than the image she wouldsometimes conjure up, of her dear brother yet alive, and growing to be aman, who would protect and cherish her. 

The change, if it may be called one, had stolen on her like the changefrom childhood to womanhood, and had come with it. Florence was almostseventeen, when, in her lonely musings, she was conscious of thesethoughts. '

She was often alone now, for the old association between her and herMama was greatly changed. At the time of her father's accident, and whenhe was lying in his room downstairs, Florence had first observed thatEdith avoided her. Wounded and shocked, and yet unable to reconcile thiswith her affection when they did meet, she sought her in her own room atnight, once more. 

'Mama, ' said Florence, stealing softly to her side, 'have I offendedyou?'

Edith answered 'No. '

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

'As I do you, ' said Edith. 'Ah, Florence, believe me never more thannow!'

'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 howto 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 Florenceknelt upon the ground before her; 'why it is, I cannot tell you. It isneither for me to say, nor you to hear; but that it is, and that it mustbe, I know. Should I do it if I did not?'

'Are we to be estranged, Mama?' asked Florence, gazing at her like onefrightened. 

Edith's silent lips formed 'Yes. '

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

'Florence! my life!' said Edith, hurriedly, 'listen to me. I cannotbear to see this grief. Be calmer. You see that I am composed, and is itnothing 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 willbe. 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 mustbe--that our association should be less frequent. The confidence therehas 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 Isay that companionship between us is, at the best, an ill-assorted andunholy union, of which I might have known no good could come. My wayhere has been through paths that you will never tread, and my wayhenceforth 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 wildavoidance that Florence had noticed once before. The same dark pride andrage succeeded, sweeping over her form and features like an angry chordacross the strings of a wild harp. But no softness or humility ensued onthat. She did not lay her head down now, and weep, and say that shehad no hope but in Florence. She held it up as if she were a beautifulMedusa, looking on him, face to face, to strike him dead. Yes, and shewould have done it, if she had had the charm. 

'Mama, ' said Florence, anxiously, 'there is a change in you, in morethan what you say to me, which alarms me. Let me stay with you alittle. '

'No, ' said Edith, 'no, dearest. I am best left alone now, and I do bestto keep apart from you, of all else. Ask me no questions, but believethat what I am when I seem fickle or capricious to you, I am not of myown will, or for myself. Believe, though we are stranger to each otherthan we have been, that I am unchanged to you within. Forgive mefor having ever darkened your dark home--I am a shadow on it, I knowwell--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 herroom, Edith looked on the retiring figure, as if her good angel went outin that form, and left her to the haughty and indignant passions thatnow 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. Fordays together, they would seldom meet, except at table, and when MrDombey was present. Then Edith, imperious, inflexible, and silent, neverlooked at her. Whenever Mr Carker was of the party, as he often was, during the progress of Mr Dombey's recovery, and afterwards, Edith heldherself more removed from her, and was more distant towards her, than atother times. Yet she and Florence never encountered, when there was noone by, but she would embrace her as affectionately as of old, thoughnot with the same relenting of her proud aspect; and often, when she hadbeen out late, she would steal up to Florence's room, as she had beenused to do, in the dark, and whisper 'Good-night, ' on her pillow. Whenunconscious, in her slumber, of such visits, Florence would sometimesawake, as from a dream of those words, softly spoken, and would seemto feel the touch of lips upon her face. But less and less often as themonths went on. 

And now the void in Florence's own heart began again, indeed, to makea solitude around her. As the image of the father whom she loved hadinsensibly become a mere abstraction, so Edith, following the fate ofall the rest about whom her affections had entwined themselves, wasfleeting, fading, growing paler in the distance, every day. Little bylittle, she receded from Florence, like the retiring ghost of what shehad been; little by little, the chasm between them widened and seemeddeeper; little by little, all the power of earnestness and tendernessshe had shown, was frozen up in the bold, angry hardihood with which shestood, upon the brink of a deep precipice unseen by Florence, daring tolook 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 tothink it some relief. No longer divided between her affection and dutyto the two, Florence could love both and do no injustice to either. Asshadows of her fond imagination, she could give them equal place in herown bosom, and wrong them with no doubts. 

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

Thus living, in a dream wherein the overflowing love of her youngheart expended itself on airy forms, and in a real world where she hadexperienced little but the rolling back of that strong tide upon itself, Florence grew to be seventeen. Timid and retiring as her solitary lifehad made her, it had not embittered her sweet temper, or herearnest nature. A child in innocent simplicity; a woman m her modestself-reliance, and her deep intensity of feeling; both child and womanseemed at once expressed in her face and fragile delicacy of shape, andgracefully to mingle there;--as if the spring should be unwilling todepart when summer came, and sought to blend the earlier beauties of theflowers 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 anexpression, such as had been seen in the dead boy; and the council inthe 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 MrCarker, who appeared to be a mediator between them, and who came andwent as if he were trying to make peace, but never could. They alldeplored the uncomfortable state of affairs, and all agreed that MrsPipchin (whose unpopularity was not to be surpassed) had some hand init; but, upon the whole, it was agreeable to have so good a subjectfor a rallying point, and they made a great deal of it, and enjoyedthemselves very much. 

The general visitors who came to the house, and those among whom Mr andMrs Dombey visited, thought it a pretty equal match, as to haughtiness, at all events, and thought nothing more about it. The young ladywith the back did not appear for some time after Mrs Skewton's death;observing to some particular friends, with her usual engaging littlescream, that she couldn't separate the family from a notion oftombstones, and horrors of that sort; but when she did come, she sawnothing wrong, except Mr Dombey's wearing a bunch of gold seals to hiswatch, which shocked her very much, as an exploded superstition. Thisyouthful fascinator considered a daughter-in-law objectionable inprinciple; otherwise, she had nothing to say against Florence, but thatshe sadly wanted 'style'--which might mean back, perhaps. Many, who onlycame to the house on state occasions, hardly knew who Florence was, andsaid, going home, 'Indeed, was that Miss Dombey, in the corner? Verypretty, 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 secondanniversary of her father's marriage to Edith (Mrs Skewton had beenlying stricken with paralysis when the first came round), with anuneasiness, amounting to dread. She had no other warrant for it, thanthe occasion, the expression of her father's face, in the hastyglance she caught of it, and the presence of Mr Carker, which, alwaysunpleasant to her, was more so on this day, than she had ever felt itbefore. 

Edith was richly dressed, for she and Mr Dombey were engaged in theevening 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 roseand led her to her chair. Beautiful and lustrous as she was, there wasthat in her face and air which seemed to separate her hopelessly fromFlorence, and from everyone, for ever more. And yet, for an instant, Florence saw a beam of kindness in her eyes, when they were turnedon her, that made the distance to which she had withdrawn herself, agreater cause of sorrow and regret than ever. 

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

'Mrs Dombey, you know, I suppose, that I have instructed the housekeeperthat 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 assumptionof 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, stillgoing majestically on, as if she had not spoken, 'to hold the occasionin very pleasant remembrance just now, there are appearances in thesethings which must be maintained before the world. If you have no respectfor yourself, Mrs Dombey--'

'I have none, ' she said. 

'Madam, ' cried Mr Dombey, striking his hand upon the table, 'hear me ifyou 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 havechanged, if death itself had looked. 

'Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, turning more quietly to that gentleman, 'asyou have been my medium of communication with Mrs Dombey on formeroccasions, and as I choose to preserve the decencies of life, so far asI am individually concerned, I will trouble you to have the goodness toinform Mrs Dombey that if she has no respect for herself, I havesome respect for myself, and therefore insist on my arrangements forto-morrow. 

'Tell your sovereign master, Sir, ' said Edith, 'that I will take leaveto speak to him on this subject by-and-bye, and that I will speak to himalone. '

'Mr Carker, Madam, ' said her husband, 'being in possession of the reasonwhich obliges me to refuse you that privilege, shall be absolved fromthe 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 theleast, was so clear, emphatic, and distinct, that it might have beenheard 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, 'whenand 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 athim with all outward composure, said, in the same voice:

'You shall!'

'I must tell you first, that there is a threatening appearance in yourmanner, Madam, ' said Mr Dombey, 'which does not become you. 

She laughed. The shaken diamonds in her hair started and trembled. Thereare fables of precious stones that would turn pale, their wearer beingin danger. Had these been such, their imprisoned rays of light wouldhave 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 hisdiscourse, 'it is by no means inconsistent with her duty to me, thatshe should know what conduct to avoid. At present you are a very strongexample 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, andvoice, and attitude; 'I would not rise and go away, and save you theutterance of one word, if the room were burning. '

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

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

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

'It may be natural enough, Mrs Dombey, ' he pursued, 'that you shouldbe uneasy in the presence of any auditors of these disagreeable truths;though why'--he could not hide his real feeling here, or keep his eyesfrom glancing gloomily at Florence--'why anyone can give them greaterforce and point than myself, whom they so nearly concern, I do notpretend to understand. It may be natural enough that you should objectto hear, in anybody's presence, that there is a rebellious principlewithin you which you cannot curb too soon; which you must curb, Mrs Dombey; and which, I regret to say, I remember to have seenmanifested--with some doubt and displeasure, on more than one occasionbefore our marriage--towards your deceased mother. But you have theremedy in your own hands. I by no means forgot, when I began, that mydaughter was present, Mrs Dombey. I beg you will not forget, to-morrow, that there are several persons present; and that, with some regard toappearances, you will receive your company in a becoming manner. 

'So it is not enough, ' said Edith, 'that you know what has passedbetween yourself and me; it is not enough that you can look here, 'pointing at Carker, who still listened, with his eyes cast down, 'and bereminded of the affronts you have put upon me; it is not enough that youcan look here, ' pointing to Florence with a hand that slightly trembledfor the first and only time, 'and think of what you have done, and ofthe ingenious agony, daily, hourly, constant, you have made me feel indoing it; it is not enough that this day, of all others in the year, ismemorable to me for a struggle (well-deserved, but not conceivable bysuch 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 whichI have fallen; when you know that you have made me sacrifice to herpeace, the only gentle feeling and interest of my life, when you knowthat for her sake, I would now if I could--but I can not, my soulrecoils from you too much--submit myself wholly to your will, and be themeekest vassal that you have!'

This was not the way to minister to Mr Dombey's greatness. The oldfeeling was roused by what she said, into a stronger and fiercerexistence than it had ever had. Again, his neglected child, at thisrough passage of his life, put forth by even this rebellious woman, aspowerful where he was powerless, and everything where he was nothing!

He turned on Florence, as if it were she who had spoken, and bade herleave the room. Florence with her covered face obeyed, trembling andweeping 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 turnedback!'

'The worse for you!' she answered, with her voice and manner stillunchanged. 'Ay!' for he turned sharply when she said so, 'what is theworse for me, is twenty million times the worse for you. Heed that, ifyou heed nothing else. '

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

'Mrs Dombey, ' said Mr Dombey, resuming as much as he could of hisarrogant composure, 'you will not conciliate me, or turn me from anypurpose, by this course of conduct. '

'It is the only true although it is a faint expression of what is withinme, ' she replied. 'But if I thought it would conciliate you, I wouldrepress it, if it were repressible by any human effort. I will donothing 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 ofto-morrow. I will be exhibited to no one, as the refractory slave youpurchased, such a time. If I kept my marriage day, I would keep it as aday of shame. Self-respect! appearances before the world! what are theseto me? You have done all you can to make them nothing to me, and theyare nothing. '

'Carker, ' said Mr Dombey, speaking with knitted brows, and after amoment's consideration, 'Mrs Dombey is so forgetful of herself and me inall this, and places me in a position so unsuited to my character, thatI must bring this state of matters to a close. '

'Release me, then, ' said Edith, immoveable in voice, in look, andbearing, as she had been throughout, 'from the chain by which I ambound. 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 Iwish for a separation between us, That there had better be one. That Irecommend it to him, Tell him it may take place on his own terms--hiswealth is nothing to me--but that it cannot be too soon. '

'Good Heaven, Mrs Dombey!' said her husband, with supreme amazement, 'doyou 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 everhear of Dombey and Son? People to say that Mr Dombey--Mr Dombey!--wasseparated from his wife! Common people to talk of Mr Dombey and hisdomestic affairs! Do you seriously think, Mrs Dombey, that I wouldpermit 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 beendead, than sitting there, in his magnificence, to hear her. 

'No, Mrs Dombey, ' he resumed. 'No, Madam. There is no possibility ofseparation between you and me, and therefore I the more advise you to beawakened 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, nowthat matters have come to this, to inform Mrs Dombey, that it is notthe 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 forobedience in those who owe obedience to me than I am my self. Themention that has been made of my daughter, and the use that is made ofmy daughter, in opposition to me, are unnatural. Whether my daughter isin actual concert with Mrs Dombey, I do not know, and do not care; butafter 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 makethis house the scene of contention it has become, I shall consider mydaughter responsible in some degree, on that lady's own avowal, andshall visit her with my severe displeasure. Mrs Dombey has asked"whether it is not enough, " that she had done this and that. You willplease to answer no, it is not enough. '

'A moment!' cried Carker, interposing, 'permit me! painful as myposition is, at the best, and unusually painful in seeming to entertaina different opinion from you, ' addressing Mr Dombey, 'I must ask, hadyou not better reconsider the question of a separation. I know howincompatible it appears with your high public position, and I know howdetermined you are when you give Mrs Dombey to understand'--the lightin his eyes fell upon her as he separated his words each from each, withthe distinctness of so many bells--'that nothing but death can ever partyou. Nothing else. But when you consider that Mrs Dombey, by living inthis house, and making it as you have said, a scene of contention, notonly has her part in that contention, but compromises Miss Dombey everyday (for I know how determined you are), will you not relieve her from acontinual irritation of spirit, and a continual sense of being unjustto another, almost intolerable? Does this not seem like--I do not sayit is--sacrificing Mrs Dombey to the preservation of your preeminent andunassailable position?'

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

'Carker, ' returned Mr Dombey, with a supercilious frown, and in a tonethat was intended to be final, 'you mistake your position in offeringadvice to me on such a point, and you mistake me (I am surprised tofind) in the character of your advice. I have no more to say. 

'Perhaps, ' said Carker, with an unusual and indefinable taunt inhis air, 'you mistook my position, when you honoured me with thenegotiations in which I have been engaged here'--with a motion of hishand towards Mrs Dombey. 

'Not at all, Sir, not at all, ' returned the other haughtily. 'You wereemployed--'

'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 accordedill with his words, though they were humbly spoken, he moved it roundtowards her, and kept his watching eyes that way. 

She had better have turned hideous and dropped dead, than have stood upwith such a smile upon her face, in such a fallen spirit's majesty ofscorn and beauty. She lifted her hand to the tiara of bright jewelsradiant on her head, and, plucking it off with a force that draggedand strained her rich black hair with heedless cruelty, and brought ittumbling wildly on her shoulders, cast the gems upon the ground. Fromeach arm, she unclasped a diamond bracelet, flung it down, and trod uponthe glittering heap. Without a word, without a shadow on the fire ofher bright eye, without abatement of her awful smile, she looked on MrDombey to the last, in moving to the door; and left him. 

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

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

She was crossing a gallery of communication that opened at some littledistance on the staircase, and was only lighted on great occasions, whenshe saw, through the opening, which was an arch, the figure of a mancoming down some few stairs opposite. Instinctively apprehensive ofher father, whom she supposed it was, she stopped, in the dark, gazingthrough 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 announcehis 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 ofwatching anyone, which, even under such innocent circumstances, is in amanner guilty and oppressive, made Florence shake from head to foot. Herblood seemed to run cold. As soon as she could--for at first she feltan insurmountable dread of moving--she went quickly to her own room andlocked her door; but even then, shut in with her dog beside her, felta chill sensation of horror, as if there were danger brooding somewherenear her. 

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

When the evening had set in, she heard, from the room in which she saton 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 hertearful 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 atme!--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, andshuddering 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 MrsPipchin, she supposed. She knew nothing more, until she found herselflying on her own bed, with Mrs Pipchin and some servants standing roundher. 

'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 thebest thing you can do, is to take off your things and go to bed thisminute. ' This was the sagacious woman's remedy for all complaints, particularly lowness of spirits, and inability to sleep; for whichoffences, many young victims in the days of the Brighton Castle had beencommitted to bed at ten o'clock in the morning. 

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

She determined not to go to bed until Edith returned, and if she couldnot speak to her, at least to be sure that she was safe at home. Whatindistinct and shadowy dread moved Florence to this resolution, she didnot know, and did not dare to think. She only knew that until Edith cameback, 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 ofwindow 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 moonflying like a storm-driven ship through the sea of clouds. 

All the house was gone to bed, except two servants who were waiting thereturn 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 wasmore 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 theglass, and the tears in her own eyes; and looked up at the hurry inthe sky, so different from the repose below, and yet so tranquil andsolitary. Three o'clock! There was a terror in every ash that droppedout 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 palefugitive hurrying away and hiding her guilty face. Four struck! Five! NoEdith yet. 

But now there was some cautious stir in the house; and Florence foundthat Mrs Pipchin had been awakened by one of those who sat up, had risenand 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 morninggown, and start when he was told his wife had not come home. Hedispatched a messenger to the stables to inquire whether the coachmanwas there; and while the man was gone, dressed himself very hurriedly. 

The man came back, in great haste, bringing the coachman with him, whosaid he had been at home and in bed, since ten o'clock. He had drivenhis mistress to her old house in Brook Street, where she had been met byMr 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 hadhardly steadiness enough to hear and understand what followed. --Who hadtold him, the man went on to say, that his mistress would not want thecarriage 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; forshe was there, in a moment, very pale too, and speaking incoherently. 

She said she had dressed her mistress early--full two hours before shewent out--and had been told, as she often was, that she would not bewanted 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 hadput it down there, and forgotten it--and came running upstairs with suchfury, 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 widelyspread, 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? Noone knew. But thrown down in a costly mass upon the ground, was everyornament she had had, since she had been his wife; every dress she hadworn; and everything she had possessed. This was the room in which hehad seen, in yonder mirror, the proud face discard him. This was theroom in which he had wondered, idly, how these things would look when heshould see them next!

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

Florence, not knowing what she did, put on a shawl and bonnet, in adream of running through the streets until she found Edith, and thenclasping her in her arms, to save and bring her back. But when shehurried out upon the staircase, and saw the frightened servants going upand down with lights, and whispering together, and falling away from herfather 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 forthis, felt as if her heart would burst with grief. 

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

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

Yielding at once to the impulse of her affection, timid at all othertimes, but bold in its truth to him in his adversity, and undaunted bypast repulse, Florence, dressed as she was, hurried downstairs. As sheset her light foot in the hall, he came out of his room. She hastenedtowards 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 cruelarm, and struck her, crosswise, with that heaviness, that she totteredon the marble floor; and as he dealt the blow, he told her what Edithwas, 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 himwith her trembling hands; she did not weep; she did not utter one wordof reproach. But she looked at him, and a cry of desolation issued fromher heart. For as she looked, she saw him murdering that fond idea towhich she had held in spite of him. She saw his cruelty, neglect, andhatred dominant above it, and stamping it down. She saw she had nofather upon earth, and ran out, orphaned, from his house. 

Ran out of his house. A moment, and her hand was on the lock, the crywas on her lips, his face was there, made paler by the yellow candleshastily put down and guttering away, and by the daylight coming in abovethe door. Another moment, and the close darkness of the shut-up house(forgotten to be opened, though it was long since day) yielded to theunexpected glare and freedom of the morning; and Florence, with her headbent 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 girlhurried through the sunshine of a bright morning, as if it were thedarkness of a winter night. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, insensible to everything but the deep wound in her breast, stunned bythe loss of all she loved, left like the sole survivor on a lonely shorefrom the wreck of a great vessel, she fled without a thought, without ahope, 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 ofthe day, so flushed and rosy in its conquest of the night, awakened noresponsive feelings in her so hurt bosom. Somewhere, anywhere, to hideher head! somewhere, anywhere, for refuge, never more to look upon theplace from which she fled!

But there were people going to and fro; there were opening shops, andservants at the doors of houses; there was the rising clash and roarof the day's struggle. Florence saw surprise and curiosity in the facesflitting past her; saw long shadows coming back upon the pavement; andheard voices that were strange to her asking her where she went, andwhat 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 ofrecalling her in some degree to herself, and reminding her of thenecessity of greater composure. 

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

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

'Oh, Di! oh, dear, true, faithful Di, how did you come here? How could Iever 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 ontogether; Di more off the ground than on it, endeavouring to kiss hismistress flying, tumbling over and getting up again without the leastconcern, dashing at big dogs in a jocose defiance of his species, terrifying with touches of his nose young housemaids who were cleaningdoorsteps, and continually stopping, in the midst of a thousandextravagances, to look back at Florence, and bark until all the dogswithin hearing answered, and all the dogs who could come out, came outto 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 moreloud, the passengers more numerous, the shops more busy, until shewas carried onward in a stream of life setting that way, andflowing, indifferently, past marts and mansions, prisons, churches, market-places, wealth, poverty, good, and evil, like the broad riverside by side with it, awakened from its dreams of rushes, willows, andgreen moss, and rolling on, turbid and troubled, among the works andcares of men, to the deep sea. 

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

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

The Captain, pale as Florence, pale in the very knobs upon his faceraised her like a baby, and laid her on the same old sofa upon which shehad 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 forher, 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 littledistance, with the greatest alarm and sympathy depicted on hiscountenance. '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'rdrownded in the briny deep, turn to, and histe up something or another, if able!'

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

'Cheerily, ' said the Captain. 'Cheerily! Stand by, my pretty one, standby! There! You're better now. Steady's the word, and steady it is. Keepher so! Drink a little drop o' this here, ' said the Captain. 'There youare! What cheer now, my pretty, what cheer now?'

At this stage of her recovery, Captain Cuttle, with an imperfectassociation of a Watch with a Physician's treatment of a patient, tookhis own down from the mantel-shelf, and holding it out on his hook, andtaking Florence's hand in his, looked steadily from one to the other, asexpecting the dial to do something. 

'What cheer, my pretty?' said the Captain. 'What cheer now? You've doneher some good, my lad, I believe, ' said the Captain, under hisbreath, and throwing an approving glance upon his watch. 'Put youback half-an-hour every morning, and about another quarter towards thearternoon, and you're a watch as can be ekalled by few and excelled bynone. What cheer, my lady lass!'

'Captain Cuttle! Is it you?' exclaimed Florence, raising herself alittle. 

'Yes, yes, my lady lass, ' said the Captain, hastily deciding in his ownmind upon the superior elegance of that form of address, as the mostcourtly he could think of. 

'Is Walter's Uncle here?' asked Florence. 

'Here, pretty?' returned the Captain. 'He ain't been here this many along 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 memorydear, 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, andspeaking 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 inthe world to go to. Do not send me away!'

'Send you away, my lady lass!' exclaimed the Captain. 'You, my Heart'sDelight! Stay a bit! We'll put up this here deadlight, and take a doubleturn on the key!'

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

When he came back to the side of Florence, she took his hand, and kissedit. The helplessness of the action, the appeal it made to him, theconfidence it expressed, the unspeakable sorrow in her face, the pain ofmind she had too plainly suffered, and was suffering then, hisknowledge of her past history, her present lonely, worn, and unprotectedappearance, all so rushed upon the good Captain together, that he fairlyoverflowed with compassion and gentleness. 

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

This the Captain said, reference and all, in one breath, and with muchsolemnity; 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 howshe trusted in him; and she did it' Clinging to this rough creature asthe last asylum of her bleeding heart, she laid her head upon his honestshoulder, and clasped him round his neck, and would have kneeled down tobless him, but that he divined her purpose, and held her up like a trueman. 

'Steady!' said the Captain. 'Steady! You're too weak to stand, yousee, my pretty, and must lie down here again. There, there!' To see theCaptain lift her on the sofa, and cover her with his coat, would havebeen worth a hundred state sights. 'And now, ' said the Captain, 'youmust 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 fallasleep there, like a angel. '

Captain Cuttle patted Diogenes when he made allusion to him, and Diogenes met that overture graciously, half-way. During theadministration of the restoratives he had clearly been in two mindswhether to fly at the Captain or to offer him his friendship; and he hadexpressed 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 thistime, his doubts were all removed. It was plain that he considered theCaptain one of the most amiable of men, and a man whom it was an honourto a dog to know. 

In evidence of these convictions, Diogenes attended on the Captainwhile he made some tea and toast, and showed a lively interest in hishousekeeping. But it was in vain for the kind Captain to make suchpreparations 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, myHeart's Delight, you'll get more way upon you. Now, I'll serve outyour allowance, my lad. ' To Diogenes. 'And you shall keep guard on yourmistress aloft. '

Diogenes, however, although he had been eyeing his intended breakfastwith a watering mouth and glistening eyes, instead of falling to, ravenously, when it was put before him, pricked up his ears, darted tothe shop-door, and barked there furiously: burrowing with his head atthe 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, withoutmaking any noise! Keep up a good heart, pretty. It's only people goingby. '

But for all that, Diogenes barked and barked, and burrowed and burrowed, with pertinacious fury; and whenever he stopped to listen, appeared toreceive some new conviction into his mind, for he set to, barking andburrowing again, a dozen times. Even when he was persuaded to return tohis breakfast, he came jogging back to it, with a very doubtful air; andwas 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, takenwith a bright idea. 

'Susan?' said Florence, shaking her head. 'Ah no! Susan has been gonefrom me a long time. '

'Not deserted, I hope?' said the Captain. 'Don't say that that thereyoung woman's run, my pretty!'

'Oh, no, no!' cried Florence. 'She is one of the truest hearts in theworld!'

The Captain was greatly relieved by this reply, and expressed hissatisfaction by taking off his hard glazed hat, and dabbing his headall over with his handkerchief, rolled up like a ball, observing severaltimes, with infinite complacency, and with a beaming countenance, thathe 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 attractionfor him at intervals; and he went snuffing about it, and growling tohimself, unable to forget the subject. This incident, coupled with theCaptain's observation of Florence's fatigue and faintness, decidedhim to prepare Sol Gills's chamber as a place of retirement for herimmediately. He therefore hastily betook himself to the top of thehouse, and made the best arrangement of it that his imagination and hismeans suggested. 

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

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

'My lady lass!' said the Captain, 'you're as safe here as if you was atthe top of St Paul's Cathedral, with the ladder cast off. Sleep is whatyou want, afore all other things, and may you be able to show yourselfsmart with that there balsam for the still small woice of a woundedmind! When there's anything you want, my Heart's Delight, as this herehumble house or town can offer, pass the word to Ed'ard Cuttle, as'llstand off and on outside that door, and that there man will wibrate withjoy. ' The Captain concluded by kissing the hand that Florence stretchedout to him, with the chivalry of any old knight-errant, and walking ontiptoe out of the room. 

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

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

'How are, you, my lad?' replied the Captain. 

'Well, I m pretty well, thank'ee, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots. 'Youknow I'm never quite what I could wish to be, now. I don't expect that Iever shall be any more. '

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

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'if I could have the pleasure of a wordwith you, it's--it's rather particular. '

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

'Certainly, Captain Gills, ' replied Mr Toots, who seldom had any notionof the Captain's meaning. 'To clap on, is exactly what I could wish todo. Naturally. '

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

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

'I beg your pardon, Captain Gills, but you don't happen to see anythingparticular in me, do you?'

'No, my lad, ' returned the Captain. 'No. '

'Because you know, ' said Mr Toots with a chuckle, 'I know I'm wastingaway. 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 dealrather go into a decline, if I could. I'm a mere brute you know, grazingupon the surface of the earth, Captain Gills. '

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

'But I was going to say, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots. 'Happening tobe this way early this morning--to tell you the truth, I was coming tobreakfast with you. As to sleep, you know, I never sleep now. I might bea Watchman, except that I don't get any pay, and he's got nothing on hismind. '

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

'Certainly, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots. 'Perfectly true! Happening tobe this way early this morning (an hour or so ago), and finding the doorshut--'

'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 keepa dog, you, Captain Gills?'

The Captain shook his head. 

'To be sure, ' said Mr Toots, 'that's exactly what I said. I knew youdidn'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 hisnatural size; and again the perspiration broke out on the Captain'sforehead, when he thought of Diogenes taking it into his head to comedown and make a third in the parlour. 

'The person said, ' continued Mr Toots, 'that he had heard a dog barkingin the shop: which I knew couldn't be, and I told him so. But he was aspositive 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 aperceptible increase in the nervousness of his manner. 'It's not forme 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 Idon't quite understand, and I think there's something rather weak inmy--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--hesaid "might, " very strongly--and that if you were requested to prepareyourself, 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 waitingthere; and he said was I coming back again, and I said yes; and hesaid did I know you, and I said, yes, I had the pleasure of youracquaintance--you had given me the pleasure of your acquaintance, aftersome persuasion; and he said, if that was the case, would I say to youwhat I have said, about existing circumstances and coming prepared, andas soon as ever I saw you, would I ask you to step round the corner, ifit was only for one minute, on most important business, to Mr Brogley'sthe Broker's. Now, I tell you what, Captain Gills--whatever it is, I amconvinced it's very important; and if you like to step round, now, I'llwait here till you come back. '

The Captain, divided between his fear of compromising Florence in someway by not going, and his horror of leaving Mr Toots in possession ofthe house with a chance of finding out the secret, was a spectacle ofmental disturbance that even Mr Toots could not be blind to. But thatyoung gentleman, considering his nautical friend as merely in a state ofpreparation 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 roundto Brogley's the Broker's: previously locking the door that communicatedwith 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 andhesitation, 'as you'll excuse my doing of it, brother. '

'Captain Gills, ' returned Mr Toots, 'whatever you do, is satisfactory tome. 

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

It was as well that he did so; for although the Captain was not gonelong, 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 hehad 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 thecase-bottle, when he fetched a deep breath, and sat down in a chair withhis hand before his face. 

'Captain Gills, ' said Toots, kindly, 'I hope and trust there's nothingwrong?'

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

'You have the appearance of being overcome, Captain Gills, ' observed MrToots. 

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

'Is there anything I can do, Captain Gills?' inquired Mr Toots. 'Ifthere is, make use of me. '

The Captain removed his hand from his face, looked at him with aremarkable 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 afavour 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, givingthe Captain's hand a preliminary slap before shaking it again, 'it'sdelightful to me to possess your good opinion. Thank'ee. 

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

'Not to me, Captain Gills, ' replied Mr Toots gravely. 'Not to me, Iassure you. The state of my feelings towards Miss Dombey is of thatunspeakable description, that my heart is a desert island, and she livesin 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 ideaof what unrequited affection is. I have been prescribed bark, but Idon't take it, for I don't wish to have any tone whatever given tomy constitution. I'd rather not. This, however, is forbidden ground. Captain Gills, goodbye!'

Captain Cuttle cordially reciprocating the warmth of Mr Toots'sfarewell, locked the door behind him, and shaking his head with the sameremarkable expression of pity and tenderness as he had regarded him withbefore, went up to see if Florence wanted him. 

There was an entire change in the Captain's face as he went upstairs. Hewiped his eyes with his handkerchief, and he polished the bridge of hisnose with his sleeve as he had done already that morning, but his facewas absolutely changed. Now, he might have been thought supremely happy;now, he might have been thought sad; but the kind of gravity that satupon his features was quite new to them, and was as great an improvementto 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 recognitionof Diogenes, who, stretched upon the ground by the side of her couch, wagged his tail, and winked his eyes at the Captain, without being atthe 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 herhead, 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 creptout again, and took his post of watch upon the stairs. All this, with atouch 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--thedelicate fingers that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy oftouch, and made to minister to pain and grief, or the rough hard CaptainCuttle hand, that the heart teaches, guides, and softens in a moment!

Florence slept upon her couch, forgetful of her homelessness andorphanage, and Captain Cuttle watched upon the stairs. A louder sob ormoan than usual, brought him sometimes to her door; but by degrees sheslept 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 daywas in its wane, and still, uneasy in mind and body, she slept on;unconscious of her strange bed, of the noise and turmoil in thestreet, and of the light that shone outside the shaded window. Perfectunconsciousness of what had happened in the home that existed no more, even the deep slumber of exhaustion could not produce. Some undefinedand 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 tearsthan the honest Captain, softly putting in his head from time to time atthe 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 thespires of city churches, as if with golden arrows that struck throughand 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 irradiatingsails of ships--and, looked towards, from quiet churchyards, uponhill-tops in the country, it was steeping distant prospects in a flushand glow that seemed to mingle earth and sky together in one glorioussuffusion--when Florence, opening her heavy eyes, lay at first, lookingwithout interest or recognition at the unfamiliar walls around her, andlistening in the same regardless manner to the noises in the street. Butpresently she started up upon her couch, gazed round with a surprisedand 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 thegleam of pleasure in her face, when she saw him, that he kissed hishook, 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 comehere? 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 backthe curtain of the window. 'See!'

Florence, with her hand upon the Captain's arm, so sorrowful andtimid, and the Captain with his rough face and burly figure, so quietlyprotective of her, stood in the rosy light of the bright evening sky, without saying a word. However strange the form of speech into which hemight have fashioned the feeling, if he had had to give it utterance, the Captain felt, as sensibly as the most eloquent of men could havedone, that there was something in the tranquil time and in its softenedbeauty that would make the wounded heart of Florence overflow; and thatit was better that such tears should have their way. So not a word spakeCaptain Cuttle. But when he felt his arm clasped closer, and when hefelt the lonely head come nearer to it, and lay itself against hishomely 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 godown below, and get some dinner ready. Will you come down of your ownself, arterwards, pretty, or shall Ed'ard Cuttle come and fetch you?'

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

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

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

What to do, or where to live, Florence--poor, inexperienced girl!--couldnot yet consider. She had indistinct dreams of finding, a long way off, some little sisters to instruct, who would be gentle with her, and towhom, under some feigned name, she might attach herself, and whowould grow up in their happy home, and marry, and be good to their oldgoverness, and perhaps entrust her, in time, with the education of theirown 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 toher now. She only knew that she had no Father upon earth, and she saidso, many times, with her suppliant head hidden from all, but her Fatherwho was in Heaven. 

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

The Captain had spread the cloth with great care, and was making someegg-sauce in a little saucepan: basting the fowl from time to timeduring the process with a strong interest, as it turned and browned on astring before the fire. Having propped Florence up with cushions onthe sofa, which was already wheeled into a warm corner for her greatercomfort, the Captain pursued his cooking with extraordinary skill, making hot gravy in a second little saucepan, boiling a handful ofpotatoes in a third, never forgetting the egg-sauce in the first, andmaking an impartial round of basting and stirring with the most usefulof spoons every minute. Besides these cares, the Captain had to keep hiseye on a diminutive frying-pan, in which some sausages were hissing andbubbling in a most musical manner; and there was never such a radiantcook 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 thebrighter. 

The dinner being at length quite ready, Captain Cuttle dished and servedit up, with no less dexterity than he had cooked it. He then dressed fordinner, 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 honoursof 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. Andpotato!' all which the Captain ranged symmetrically on a plate, andpouring hot gravy on the whole with the useful spoon, set before hischerished guest. 

'The whole row o' dead lights is up, for'ard, lady lass, ' observed theCaptain, encouragingly, 'and everythink is made snug. Try and pick abit, 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 obleegeme! He was your nat'ral born friend like, warn't he, Pet?'

Florence had no words to answer with. She only said, 'Oh, dear, dearPaul! oh, Walter!'

'The wery planks she walked on, ' murmured the Captain, looking at herdrooping face, 'was as high esteemed by Wal'r, as the water brooks isby the hart which never rejices! I see him now, the wery day as he wasrated on them Dombey books, a speaking of her with his face a glisteningwith 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 ifhe could be--for he's drownded, ain't he?'

Florence shook her head. 

'Yes, yes; drownded, ' said the Captain, soothingly; 'as I was saying, ifhe could be here he'd beg and pray of you, my precious, to pick a leetlebit, 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 tothe wind. '

Florence essayed to eat a morsel, for the Captain's pleasure. TheCaptain, 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, aftersitting for some time silently rubbing his chin, with his eyes fixedupon 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 soothingvoice. 

Florence could not but assent again. 

'He was older than you, my lady lass, ' pursued the Captain, 'but you waslike 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, butit seemed to be one to Captain Cuttle, for he came back to it again andagain. Florence, fain to push from her her untasted dinner, and to lieback on her sofa, gave him her hand, feeling that she had disappointedhim, though truly wishing to have pleased him after all his trouble, buthe held it in his own (which shook as he held it), and appearing to havequite forgotten all about the dinner and her want of appetite, went ongrowling at intervals, in a ruminating tone of sympathy, 'Poor Wal'r. Ay, ay! Drownded. Ain't he?' And always waited for her answer, in whichthe great point of these singular reflections appeared to consist. 

The fowl and sausages were cold, and the gravy and the egg-saucestagnant, before the Captain remembered that they were on the board, andfell to with the assistance of Diogenes, whose united efforts quicklydispatched the banquet. The Captain's delight and wonder at the quiethousewifery of Florence in assisting to clear the table, arrange theparlour, and sweep up the hearth--only to be equalled by the fervency ofhis protest when she began to assist him--were gradually raised to thatdegree, that at last he could not choose but do nothing himself, andstand looking at her as if she were some Fairy, daintily performingthese offices for him; the red rim on his forehead glowing again, in hisunspeakable admiration. 

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

The manner in which the Captain tried to make believe that the causeof these effects lay hidden in the pipe itself, and the way in which helooked into the bowl for it, and not finding it there, pretended to blowit out of the stem, was wonderfully pleasant. The pipe soon gettinginto better condition, he fell into that state of repose becoming a goodsmoker; but sat with his eyes fixed on Florence, and, with a beamingplacidity not to be described, and stopping every now and then todischarge a little cloud from his lips, slowly puffed it forth, as if itwere 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 smokingwith infinite gentleness. 

Unlike as they were externally--and there could scarcely be a moredecided contrast than between Florence in her delicate youth and beauty, and Captain Cuttle with his knobby face, his great broad weather-beatenperson, and his gruff voice--in simple innocence of the world's ways andthe world's perplexities and dangers, they were nearly on a level. Nochild could have surpassed Captain Cuttle in inexperience ofeverything but wind and weather; in simplicity, credulity, and generoustrustfulness. Faith, hope, and charity, shared his whole nature amongthem. An odd sort of romance, perfectly unimaginative, yet perfectlyunreal, and subject to no considerations of worldly prudence orpracticability, was the only partner they had in his character. Asthe Captain sat, and smoked, and looked at Florence, God knows whatimpossible pictures, in which she was the principal figure, presentedthemselves to his mind. Equally vague and uncertain, though not sosanguine, were her own thoughts of the life before her; and even as hertears made prismatic colours in the light she gazed at, so, through hernew and heavy grief, she already saw a rainbow faintly shining in thefar-off sky. A wandering princess and a good monster in a storybookmight have sat by the fireside, and talked as Captain Cuttle and poorFlorence talked--and not have looked very much unlike them. 

The Captain was not troubled with the faintest idea of any difficultyin retaining Florence, or of any responsibility thereby incurred. Havingput up the shutters and locked the door, he was quite satisfied onthis head. If she had been a Ward in Chancery, it would have made nodifference at all to Captain Cuttle. He was the last man in the world tobe troubled by any such considerations. 

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

The pride Captain Cuttle had, in giving his arm to Florence, andescorting her some two or three hundred yards, keeping a bright look-outall the time, and attracting the attention of everyone who passed them, by his great vigilance and numerous precautions, was extreme. Arrived atthe shop, the Captain felt it a point of delicacy to retire during themaking of the purchases, as they were to consist of wearing apparel; buthe previously deposited his tin canister on the counter, and informingthe young lady of the establishment that it contained fourteen poundtwo, requested her, in case that amount of property should not besufficient to defray the expenses of his niece's little outfit--atthe word 'niece, ' he bestowed a most significant look on Florence, accompanied with pantomime, expressive of sagacity and mystery--to havethe goodness to 'sing out, ' and he would make up the difference from hispocket. Casually consulting his big watch, as a deep means of dazzlingthe establishment, and impressing it with a sense of property, theCaptain then kissed his hook to his niece, and retired outside thewindow, where it was a choice sight to see his great face lookingin from time to time, among the silks and ribbons, with an obviousmisgiving 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 tosee 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 thestreet before them, 'take care on it for me, will you be so good, tillsuch time as I ask ye for it?'

'May I put it back in its usual place, ' said Florence, 'and keep itthere?'

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 tofind it again. It ain't o' no use to me, ' said the Captain. 'I wonder Ihaven't chucked it away afore now. 

The Captain was quite disheartened for the moment, but he revived atthe first touch of Florence's arm, and they returned with the sameprecautions as they had come; the Captain opening the door of the littleMidshipman's berth, and diving in, with a suddenness which his greatpractice only could have taught him. During Florence's slumber in themorning, he had engaged the daughter of an elderly lady who usually satunder a blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, selling poultry, to come andput her room in order, and render her any little services she required;and this damsel now appearing, Florence found everything about her asconvenient and orderly, if not as handsome, as in the terrible dream shehad once called Home. 

When they were alone again, the Captain insisted on her eating a sliceof dry toast' and drinking a glass of spiced negus (which he madeto perfection); and, encouraging her with every kind word andinconsequential quotation he could possibly think of, led her upstairsto her bedroom. But he too had something on his mind, and was not easyin his manner. 

'Good-night, dear heart, ' said Captain Cuttle to her at herchamber-door. 

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

At any other time the Captain would have been overbalanced by such atoken of her affection and gratitude; but now, although he was verysensible of it, he looked in her face with even more uneasiness than hehad 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, easilyalarmed in her then state of mind. 'Have you anything to tell me?'

'To tell you, lady lass!' replied the Captain, meeting her eyes inconfusion. 'No, no; what should I have to tell you, pretty! You don'texpect 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, '--' stilllingering, and still showing embarrassment. 

'Poor Wal'r!' said the Captain. 'My Wal'r, as I used to call you! OldSol 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, theCaptain bade her good-night, and descended the stairs, while Florenceremained at the top, holding the candle out to light him down. He waslost in the obscurity, and, judging from the sound of his recedingfootsteps, was in the act of turning into the little parlour, whenhis 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, hedisappeared. 

Florence was very sorry that she should unwittingly, though naturally, have awakened these associations in the mind of her protector, by takingrefuge there; and sitting down before the little table where the Captainhad 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 thoughtof home--no possibility of going back--no presentation of it as yetexisting, or as sheltering her father--once entered her thoughts. Shehad seen the murder done. In the last lingering natural aspect in whichshe had cherished him through so much, he had been torn out of herheart, defaced, and slain. The thought of it was so appalling toher, that she covered her eyes, and shrunk trembling from the leastremembrance of the deed, or of the cruel hand that did it. If her fondheart could have held his image after that, it must have broken; but itcould not; and the void was filled with a wild dread that fled from allconfronting with its shattered fragments--with such a dread as couldhave 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 markupon her bosom made her afraid of herself, as if she bore about hersomething wicked. She covered it up, with a hasty, faltering hand, andin 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 inthe shop and in the little parlour, for a full hour, and, appearingto have composed himself by that exercise, sat down with a grave andthoughtful face, and read out of a Prayer-book the forms of prayerappointed to be used at sea. These were not easily disposed of; the goodCaptain being a mighty slow, gruff reader, and frequently stopping ata hard word to give himself such encouragement as Now, my lad! With awill!' or, 'Steady, Ed'ard Cuttle, steady!' which had a great effectin helping him out of any difficulty. Moreover, his spectacles greatlyinterfered with his powers of vision. But notwithstanding thesedrawbacks, the Captain, being heartily in earnest, read the service tothe very last line, and with genuine feeling too; and approving of itvery much when he had done, turned in, under the counter (but not beforehe had been upstairs, and listened at Florence's door), with a serenebreast, 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, atdaybreak, found that she was awake: for she called to know if it werehe, on hearing footsteps near her door. 

'Yes' my lady lass, ' replied the Captain, in a growling whisper. 'Areyou all right, di'mond?'

Florence thanked him, and said 'Yes. '

The Captain could not lose so favourable an opportunity of applyinghis mouth to the keyhole, and calling through it, like a hoarse breeze, 'Poor Wal'r! Drownded, ain't he?' after which he withdrew, and turningin 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, wasmore calm and tranquil than she had been on the day preceding. Almostalways when she raised her eyes from her work, she observed the captainlooking at her, and thoughtfully stroking his chin; and he so oftenhitched his arm-chair close to her, as if he were going to say somethingvery confidential, and hitched it away again, as not being able tomake up his mind how to begin, that in the course of the day he cruisedcompletely round the parlour in that frail bark, and more than once wentashore against the wainscot or the closet door, in a very distressedcondition. 

It was not until the twilight that Captain Cuttle, fairly droppinganchor, at last, by the side of Florence, began to talk at allconnectedly. But when the light of the fire was shining on the wallsand ceiling of the little room, and on the tea-board and the cups andsaucers that were ranged upon the table, and on her calm face turnedtowards 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'swonders in the deep, my pretty. Think on it when the winds is roaringand the waves is rowling. Think on it when the stormy nights is so pitchdark, ' said the Captain, solemnly holding up his hook, 'as you can'tsee your hand afore you, excepting when the wiwid lightning reweals thesame; and when you drive, drive, drive through the storm and dark, asif 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 manmay say to his messmate (previously a overhauling of the wollume), "Astiff nor'wester's blowing, Bill; hark, don't you hear it roar now! Lordhelp 'em, how I pitys all unhappy folks ashore now!"' Which quotation, as particularly applicable to the terrors of the ocean, the Captaindelivered in a most impressive manner, concluding with a sonorous 'Standby!'

'Were you ever in a dreadful storm?' asked Florence. 

'Why ay, my lady lass, I've seen my share of bad weather, ' said theCaptain, tremulously wiping his head, 'and I've had my share of knockingabout; but--but it ain't of myself as I was a meaning to speak. Our dearboy, ' drawing closer to her, 'Wal'r, darling, as was drownded. '

The Captain spoke in such a trembling voice, and looked at Florence witha 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 wasa saying--Wal'r--he's--he's drownded. Ain't he?'

Florence looked at him intently; her colour came and went; and she laidher 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 secretwaters has closed up, and never told no tales. But there's escapes uponthe deep, too, and sometimes one man out of a score, --ah! maybe out ofa hundred, pretty, --has been saved by the mercy of God, and come homeafter being given over for dead, and told of all hands lost. I--I knowa story, Heart's Delight, ' stammered the Captain, 'o' this natur, aswas told to me once; and being on this here tack, and you and me sittingalone 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 orunderstand, involuntarily followed his glance, which went behind herinto the shop, where a lamp was burning. The instant that she turned herhead, the Captain sprung out of his chair, and interposed his hand. 

'There's nothing there, my beauty, ' said the Captain. 'Don't lookthere. '

'Why not?' asked Florence. 

The Captain murmured something about its being dull that way, and aboutthe fire being cheerful. He drew the door ajar, which had been standingopen until now, and resumed his seat. Florence followed him with hereyes, and looked intently in his face. 

'The story was about a ship, my lady lass, ' began the Captain, 'assailed 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'ardbound, pretty, only out'ard bound!'

The expression on Florence's face alarmed the Captain, who was himselfvery 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 inhis throat, and nervously proceeded:

'That there unfort'nate ship met with such foul weather, out at sea, asdon't blow once in twenty year, my darling. There was hurricanes ashoreas tore up forests and blowed down towns, and there was gales at sea inthem latitudes, as not the stoutest wessel ever launched could live in. Day arter day that there unfort'nate ship behaved noble, I'm told, anddid her duty brave, my pretty, but at one blow a'most her bulwarkswas stove in, her masts and rudder carved away, her best man sweptoverboard, and she left to the mercy of the storm as had no mercy butblowed harder and harder yet, while the waves dashed over her, and beather in, and every time they come a thundering at her, broke her like ashell. Every black spot in every mountain of water that rolled away wasa 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 mannedthat ship. '

'They were not all lost!' cried Florence. 'Some were saved!--Was one?'

'Aboard o' that there unfort'nate wessel, ' said the Captain, rising fromhis chair, and clenching his hand with prodigious energy and exultation, 'was a lad, a gallant lad--as I've heerd tell--that had loved, whenhe was a boy, to read and talk about brave actions in shipwrecks--I'veheerd him! I've heerd him!--and he remembered of 'em in his hour ofneed; for when the stoutest and oldest hands was hove down, he was firmand cheery. It warn't the want of objects to like and love ashore thatgave 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 thoughtit 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 lookround--'

Florence had hardly power to repeat, 'Why not?'

'Because there's nothing there, my deary, ' said the Captain. 'Don't betook aback, pretty creetur! Don't, for the sake of Wal'r, as was dearto all on us! That there lad, ' said the Captain, 'arter working with thebest, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no complaintnor 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 thesecond-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin' hearts thatwent aboard that ship, the only living creeturs--lashed to a fragment ofthe 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 onedead. '

'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 minutemore, my lady lass! with a good heart!--aboard that ship, they went along voyage, right away across the chart (for there warn't no touchingnowhere), 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 fromthe 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 greatemotion in his face, and suffering the bread to blaze and burn likefuel. 

'Was spared, ' repeated Florence, 'and-?'

'And come home in that ship, ' said the Captain, still looking in thesame direction, 'and--don't be frightened, pretty--and landed; and onemorning come cautiously to his own door to take a obserwation, knowingthat his friends would think him drownded, when he sheered off at theunexpected--'

'At the unexpected barking of a dog?' cried Florence, quickly. 

'Yes, ' roared the Captain. 'Steady, darling! courage! Don't look roundyet. See there! upon the wall!'

There was the shadow of a man upon the wall close to her. She startedup, 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 thegrave; a shipwrecked brother saved and at her side; and rushed into hisarms. 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 dearremembrance of the plaintive voice that said so, rushed upon her soul, like music in the night. 'Oh welcome home, dear Walter! Welcome to thisstricken 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 headwith the blackened toast upon his hook: and finding it an uncongenialsubstance 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 ofLovely Peg, broke down at the first word, and retired into the shop, whence he presently came back express, with a face all flushed andbesmeared, and the starch completely taken out of his shirt-collar, tosay these words:

'Wal'r, my lad, here is a little bit of property as I should wish tomake over, jintly!'

The Captain hastily produced the big watch, the teaspoons, thesugar-tongs, and the canister, and laying them on the table, swept themwith his great hand into Walter's hat; but in handing that singularstrong box to Walter, he was so overcome again, that he was fain to makeanother retreat into the shop, and absent himself for a longer space oftime than on his first retirement. 

But Walter sought him out, and brought him back; and then the Captain'sgreat apprehension was, that Florence would suffer from this new shock. He felt it so earnestly, that he turned quite rational, and positivelyinterdicted any further allusion to Walter's adventures for some daysto come. Captain Cuttle then became sufficiently composed to relievehimself 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 Florencewhispering her tearful congratulations on the other, the Captainsuddenly 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 fromFlorence to Walter, and from Walter to Florence. Nor was this effectproduced or at all heightened by the immense quantity of polishinghe had administered to his face with his coat-sleeve during the lasthalf-hour. It was solely the effect of his internal emotions. There wasa glory and delight within the Captain that spread itself over his wholevisage, and made a perfect illumination there. 

The pride with which the Captain looked upon the bronzed cheek and thecourageous eyes of his recovered boy; with which he saw the generousfervour of his youth, and all its frank and hopeful qualities, shiningonce more, in the fresh, wholesome manner, and the ardent face, wouldhave kindled something of this light in his countenance. The admirationand sympathy with which he turned his eyes on Florence, whose beauty, grace, and innocence could have won no truer or more zealous championthan himself, would have had an equal influence upon him. But thefulness of the glow he shed around him could only have been engenderedin his contemplation of the two together, and in all the fanciesspringing out of that association, that came sparkling and beaming intohis head, and danced about it. 

How they talked of poor old Uncle Sol, and dwelt on every littlecircumstance relating to his disappearance; how their joy was moderatedby the old man's absence and by the misfortunes of Florence; how theyreleased Diogenes, whom the Captain had decoyed upstairs some timebefore, lest he should bark again; the Captain, though he was in onecontinual flutter, and made many more short plunges into the shop, fullycomprehended. But he no more dreamed that Walter looked on Florence, asit were, from a new and far-off place; that while his eyes often soughtthe lovely face, they seldom met its open glance of sisterly affection, but withdrew themselves when hers were raised towards him; than hebelieved that it was Walter's ghost who sat beside him. He saw themtogether in their youth and beauty, and he knew the story of theiryounger days, and he had no inch of room beneath his great bluewaistcoat for anything save admiration of such a pair, and gratitude fortheir being reunited. 

They sat thus, until it grew late. The Captain would have been contentto 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 ahouseless sister in your place. '

'Dear Miss Dombey, ' replied Walter, hesitating--'if it is not too boldto call you so!

Walter!' she exclaimed, surprised. 

'If anything could make me happier in being allowed to see and speakto you, would it not be the discovery that I had any means on earth ofdoing 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 tome. I left you such a child, and find you--oh! something so different--'

'But your sister, Walter. You have not forgotten what we promised toeach other, when we parted?'

'Forgotten!' But he said no more. 

'And if you had--if suffering and danger had driven it from yourthoughts--which it has not--you would remember it now, Walter, when youfind me poor and abandoned, with no home but this, and no friends butthe two who hear me speak!'

'I would! Heaven knows I would!' said Walter. 

'Oh, Walter, ' exclaimed Florence, through her sobs and tears. 'Dearbrother! Show me some way through the world--some humble path that I maytake alone, and labour in, and sometimes think of you as one who willprotect and care for me as for a sister! Oh, help me, Walter, for I needhelp so much!'

'Miss Dombey! Florence! I would die to help you. But your friends areproud and rich. Your father--'

'No, no! Walter!' She shrieked, and put her hands up to her head, in anattitude of terror that transfixed him where he stood. 'Don't say thatword!'

He never, from that hour, forgot the voice and look with which shestopped him at the name. He felt that if he were to live a hundredyears, he never could forget it. 

Somewhere--anywhere--but never home! All past, all gone, all lost, andbroken up! The whole history of her untold slight and suffering was inthe cry and look; and he felt he never could forget it, and he neverdid. 

She laid her gentle face upon the Captain's shoulder, and related howand why she had fled. If every sorrowing tear she shed in doing so, hadbeen a curse upon the head of him she never named or blamed, it wouldhave been better for him, Walter thought, with awe, than to be renouncedout of such a strength and might of love. 

'There, precious!' said the Captain, when she ceased; and deep attentionthe Captain had paid to her while she spoke; listening, with his glazedhat 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 kissedit. 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 rightstation, she seemed farther off than even on the height that had madehim giddy in his boyish dreams. 

Captain Cuttle, perplexed by no such meditations, guarded Florence toher room, and watched at intervals upon the charmed ground outside herdoor--for such it truly was to him--until he felt sufficiently easyin his mind about her, to turn in under the counter. On abandoning hiswatch for that purpose, he could not help calling once, rapturously, through the keyhole, 'Drownded. Ain't he, pretty?'--or, when he gotdownstairs, making another trial at that verse of Lovely Peg. But itstuck in his throat somehow, and he could make nothing of it; so he wentto 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 allowanceof 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 theCaptain betimes in the morning, proposed that they should carry thithersuch furniture out of the little parlour as would grace it best, so thatFlorence might take possession of it when she rose. As nothing could bemore agreeable to Captain Cuttle than making himself very red and shortof breath in such a cause, he turned to (as he himself said) with awill; and, in a couple of hours, this garret was transformed into aspecies of land-cabin, adorned with all the choicest moveables out ofthe parlour, inclusive even of the Tartar frigate, which the Captainhung up over the chimney-piece with such extreme delight, that he coulddo nothing for half-an-hour afterwards but walk backward from it, lostin admiration. 

The Captain could be indueed by no persuasion of Walter's to wind up thebig watch, or to take back the canister, or to touch the sugar-tongs andteaspoons. 'No, no, my lad;' was the Captain's invariable reply to anysolicitation 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 greaterseclusion it afforded Florence, it admitted of the Midshipman beingrestored to his usual post of observation, and also of the shop shuttersbeing taken down. The latter ceremony, however little importance theunconscious Captain attached to it, was not wholly superfluous; for, on the previous day, so much excitement had been occasioned inthe neighbourhood, by the shutters remaining unopened, that theInstrument-maker's house had been honoured with an unusual share ofpublic observation, and had been intently stared at from the oppositeside of the way, by groups of hungry gazers, at any time between sunriseand sunset. The idlers and vagabonds had been particularly interested inthe Captain's fate; constantly grovelling in the mud to apply theireyes to the cellar-grating, under the shop-window, and delighting theirimaginations with the fancy that they could see a piece of his coat ashe hung in a corner; though this settlement of him was stoutly disputedby an opposite faction, who were of opinion that he lay murdered witha hammer, on the stairs. It was not without exciting some discontent, therefore, that the subject of these rumours was seen early in themorning standing at his shop-door as hale and hearty as if nothinghad happened; and the beadle of that quarter, a man of an ambitiouscharacter, who had expected to have the distinction of being present atthe breaking open of the door, and of giving evidence in full uniformbefore the coroner, went so far as to say to an opposite neighbour, thatthe chap in the glazed hat had better not try it on there--without moreparticularly mentioning what--and further, that he, the beadle, wouldkeep his eye upon him. 

'Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter, musing, when they stood resting fromtheir labours at the shop-door, looking down the old familiar street; itbeing still early in the morning; 'nothing at all of Uncle Sol, in allthat time!'

'Nothing at all, my lad, ' replied the Captain, shaking his head. 

'Gone in search of me, dear, kind old man, ' said Walter: 'yet neverwrite to you! But why not? He says, in effect, in this packet that yougave me, ' taking the paper from his pocket, which had been opened inthe presence of the enlightened Bunsby, 'that if you never hear fromhim before opening it, you may believe him dead. Heaven forbid! Butyou would have heard of him, even if he were dead! Someone would havewritten, surely, by his desire, if he could not; and have said, "on sucha day, there died in my house, " or "under my care, " or so forth, "MrSolomon Gills of London, who left this last remembrance and this lastrequest to you". '

The Captain, who had never climbed to such a clear height of probabilitybefore, was greatly impressed by the wide prospect it opened, andanswered, with a thoughtful shake of his head, 'Well said, my lad; werywell 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 sleeplessnight, and I cannot believe, Captain Cuttle, but that my Uncle Sol (Lordbless him!) is alive, and will return. I don't so much wonder at hisgoing away, because, leaving out of consideration that spice of themarvellous which was always in his character, and his great affectionfor me, before which every other consideration of his life becamenothing, as no one ought to know so well as I who had the best offathers in him, '--Walter's voice was indistinct and husky here, and helooked away, along the street, --'leaving that out of consideration, Isay, I have often read and heard of people who, having some near anddear relative, who was supposed to be shipwrecked at sea, have gone downto live on that part of the sea-shore where any tidings of the missingship might be expected to arrive, though only an hour or two sooner thanelsewhere, or have even gone upon her track to the place whither she wasbound, as if their going would create intelligence. I think I should dosuch 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 intendedto do so, or how he should die abroad, and you not know it through someother hand, I cannot make out. '

Captain Cuttle observed, with a shake of his head, that Jack Bunsbyhimself hadn't made it out, and that he was a man as could give a prettytaut opinion too. 

'If my Uncle had been a heedless young man, likely to be entrapped byjovial company to some drinking-place, where he was to be got rid of forthe sake of what money he might have about him, ' said Walter; 'or if hehad been a reckless sailor, going ashore with two or three months' payin his pocket, I could understand his disappearing, and leaving no tracebehind. 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 hepondered and pondered, 'what do you make of it, then?'

'Captain Cuttle, ' returned Walter, 'I don't know what to make of it. Isuppose 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, 'andthat it has been forgotten, or carelessly thrown aside, or lost. Eventhat is more probable to me, than the other event. In short, I notonly cannot bear to contemplate that other event, Captain Cuttle, but Ican't, and won't. '

'Hope, you see, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, sagely, 'Hope. It's thatas animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your LittleWarbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, itonly floats; it can't be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head ofHope, ' said the Captain, 'there's a anchor; but what's the good of myhaving 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 citizenand householder, bound to impart a morsel from his stores of wisdom toan inexperienced youth, than in his own proper person. Indeed, his facewas quite luminous as he spoke, with new hope, caught from Walter; andhe 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 supposeit is impossible that he can have written in the ordinary course--bymail 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 faintapproach to a severe expression, 'ain't I been on the look-out forany tidings of that man o' science, old Sol Gills, your Uncle, day andnight, ever since I lost him? Ain't my heart been heavy and watchfulalways, along of him and you? Sleeping and waking, ain't I been upon mypost, and wouldn't I scorn to quit it while this here Midshipman heldtogether!'

'Yes, Captain Cuttle, ' replied Walter, grasping his hand, 'I know youwould, and I know how faithful and earnest all you say and feel is. I amsure of it. You don't doubt that I am as sure of it as I am that my footis again upon this door-step, or that I again have hold of this truehand. Do you?'

'No, no, Wal'r, ' returned the Captain, with his beaming

'I'll hazard no more conjectures, ' said Walter, fervently shaking thehard hand of the Captain, who shook his with no less goodwill. 'All Iwill add is, Heaven forbid that I should touch my Uncle's possessions, Captain Cuttle! Everything that he left here, shall remain in the careof the truest of stewards and kindest of men--and if his name is notCuttle, 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 appearedto have deserted him. 

'I thought, before Miss Dombey stopped me when I spoke of her fatherlast 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 dutyto perform, and that it was, to prevail upon her to communicate with herfriends, and to return home. '

The Captain muttered a feeble 'Awast!' or a 'Stand by!' or somethingor other, equally pertinent to the occasion; but it was rendered soextremely feeble by the total discomfiture with which he received thisannouncement, that what it was, is mere matter of conjecture. 

'But, ' said Walter, 'that is over. I think so, no longer. I would soonerbe put back again upon that piece of wreck, on which I have so oftenfloated, 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 uncontrollablesatisfaction. '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, shouldstrive with the rough world! But we have seen the gulf that cuts off allbehind her, though no one but herself can know how deep it is; and thereis no return. 

Captain Cuttle, without quite understanding this, greatly approved ofit, and observed in a tone of strong corroboration, that the wind wasquite abaft. 

'She ought not to be alone here; ought she, Captain Cuttle?' saidWalter, anxiously. 

'Well, my lad, ' replied the Captain, after a little sagaciousconsideration. 'I don't know. You being here to keep her company, yousee, 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; butwhat would the guile and guilt of my heart be, if I pretended to believethat I had any right to approach her, familiarly, in that character--ifI pretended to forget that I am bound, in honour, not to do it?'

'Wal'r, my lad, ' hinted the Captain, with some revival of hisdiscomfiture, 'ain't there no other character as--'

'Oh!' returned Walter, 'would you have me die in her esteem--in suchesteem as hers--and put a veil between myself and her angel's face forever, by taking advantage of her being here for refuge, so trusting andso unprotected, to endeavour to exalt myself into her lover? What do Isay? There is no one in the world who would be more opposed to me if Icould do so, than you. '

'Wal'r, my lad, ' said the Captain, drooping more and more, 'prowidingas there is any just cause or impediment why two persons should not bejined together in the house of bondage, for which you'll overhaul theplace and make a note, I hope I should declare it as promised and wowedin 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 Ifind myself wery much down by the head, along o' this here, or butwhat I've gone clean about. But as to Lady lass, Wal'r, mind you, wot'srespect and duty to her, is respect and duty in my articles, howsumeverdisapinting; and therefore I follows in your wake, my lad, and feelas you are, no doubt, acting up to yourself. And there ain't no othercharacter, ain't there?' said the Captain, musing over the ruins of hisfallen castle, with a very despondent face. 

'Now, Captain Cuttle, ' said Walter, starting a fresh point with a gayerair, to cheer the Captain up--but nothing could do that; he was too muchconcerned--'I think we should exert ourselves to find someone who wouldbe a proper attendant for Miss Dombey while she remains here, and whomay be trusted. None of her relations may. It's clear Miss Dombey feelsthat 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 sentaway again the will of Heart's Delight. I made a signal for her whenLady lass first come, and she rated of her wery high, and said she hadbeen gone a long time. '

'Then, ' said Walter, 'do you ask Miss Dombey where she's gone, and we'lltry to find her. The morning's getting on, and Miss Dombey will soon berising. You are her best friend. Wait for her upstairs, and leave me totake care of all down here. '

The Captain, very crest-fallen indeed, echoed the sigh with which Waltersaid this, and complied. Florence was delighted with her new room, anxious to see Walter, and overjoyed at the prospect of greeting her oldfriend Susan. But Florence could not say where Susan was gone, exceptthat it was in Essex, and no one could say, she remembered, unless itwere Mr Toots. 

With this information the melancholy Captain returned to Walter, andgave him to understand that Mr Toots was the young gentleman whom he hadencountered on the door-step, and that he was a friend of his, and thathe was a young gentleman of property, and that he hopelessly adoredMiss Dombey. The Captain also related how the intelligence of Walter'ssupposed fate had first made him acquainted with Mr Toots, and how therewas solemn treaty and compact between them, that Mr Toots should be muteupon the subject of his love. 

The question then was, whether Florence could trust Mr Toots; andFlorence saying, with a smile, 'Oh, yes, with her whole heart!' itbecame important to find out where Mr Toots lived. This, Florence didn'tknow, 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 incame Mr Toots himself. 

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, rushing into the parlour without anyceremony, 'I'm in a state of mind bordering on distraction!'

Mr Toots had discharged those words, as from a mortar, before heobserved Walter, whom he recognised with what may be described as achuckle of misery. 

'You'll excuse me, Sir, ' said Mr Toots, holding his forehead, 'butI'm at present in that state that my brain is going, if not gone, andanything approaching to politeness in an individual so situated wouldbe a hollow mockery. Captain Gills, I beg to request the favour of aprivate interview. '

'Why, Brother, ' returned the Captain, taking him by the hand, 'you arethe man as we was on the look-out for. '

'Oh, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'what a look-out that must be, ofwhich 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 theChicken that if he offered to clean my boots, I'd stretch him a Corpsebefore me!'

All these indications of a disordered mind were verified in Mr Toots'sappearance, which was wild and savage. 

'See here, Brother, ' said the Captain. 'This here's old Sol Gills's nevyWal'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 thathe and Miss Dombey were made for one another?'

'Why, ay, my lad, ' replied the disconsolate Captain; 'I was of that mindonce. '

'And at this time!' exclaimed Mr Toots, with his hand to his foreheadagain. 'Of all others!--a hated rival! At least, he ain't a hatedrival, ' said Mr Toots, stopping short, on second thoughts, and takingaway his hand; 'what should I hate him for? No. If my affection has beentruly disinterested, Captain Gills, let me prove it now!'

Mr Toots shot back abruptly into the parlour, and said, wringing Walterby the hand:

'How-de-do? I hope you didn't take any cold. I--I shall be very glad ifyou'll give me the pleasure of your acquaintance. I wish you many happyreturns of the day. Upon my word and honour, ' said Mr Toots, warmingas he became better acquainted with Walter's face and figure, 'I'm veryglad to see you!'

'Thank you, heartily, ' said Walter. 'I couldn't desire a more genuineand genial welcome. '

'Couldn't you, though?' said Mr Toots, still shaking his hand. 'It'svery kind of you. I'm much obliged to you. How-de-do? I hope you lefteverybody quite well over the--that is, upon the--I mean wherever youcame from last, you know. '

All these good wishes, and better intentions, Walter responded tomanfully. 

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'I should wish to be strictlyhonourable; but I trust I may be allowed now, to allude to a certainsubject that--'

'Ay, ay, my lad, ' returned the Captain. 'Freely, freely. '

'Then, Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'and Lieutenant Walters--are youaware that the most dreadful circumstances have been happening at MrDombey'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 birdof prey, --and that she is not to be found, and has gone no one knowswhere?'

'May I ask how you heard this?' inquired Walter. 

'Lieutenant Walters, ' said Mr Toots, who had arrived at that appellationby a process peculiar to himself; probably by jumbling up his Christianname with the seafaring profession, and supposing some relationshipbetween him and the Captain, which would extend, as a matter of course, to their titles; 'Lieutenant Walters, I can have no objection to make astraightforward reply. The fact is, that feeling extremely interestedin everything that relates to Miss Dombey--not for any selfish reason, Lieutenant Walters, for I am well aware that the most able thing I coulddo for all parties would be to put an end to my existence, which canonly be regarded as an inconvenience--I have been in the habit ofbestowing a trifle now and then upon a footman; a most respectable youngman, of the name of Towlinson, who has lived in the family some time;and Towlinson informed me, yesterday evening, that this was the state ofthings. Since which, Captain Gills--and Lieutenant Walters--I have beenperfectly frantic, and have been lying down on the sofa all night, theRuin 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 withhim anew, 'the relief is so excessive, and unspeakable, that if you wereto 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 mindas yours, ' said Walter, not at all slow in returning his greeting, 'tofind that you can render service to Miss Dombey. Captain Cuttle, willyou have the kindness to take Mr Toots upstairs?'

The Captain beckoned to Mr Toots, who followed him with a bewilderedcountenance, and, ascending to the top of the house, was introduced, without a word of preparation from his conductor, into Florence's newretreat. 

Poor Mr Toots's amazement and pleasure at sight of her were such, thatthey 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 oneknee, shed tears, chuckled, and was quite regardless of his danger ofbeing pinned by Diogenes, who, inspired by the belief that there wassomething hostile to his mistress in these demonstrations, worked roundand round him, as if only undecided at what particular point to go infor 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 seeyou!'

'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 talkingabout, and sat down on a chair, staring at Florence with the liveliestcontention of delight and despair going on in his face that any facecould exhibit. 

'Captain Gills and Lieutenant Walters have mentioned, Miss Dombey, 'gasped Mr Toots, 'that I can do you some service. If I could by anymeans wash out the remembrance of that day at Brighton, when I conductedmyself--much more like a Parricide than a person of independentproperty, ' said Mr Toots, with severe self-accusation, 'I should sinkinto the silent tomb with a gleam of joy. '

'Pray, Mr Toots, ' said Florence, 'do not wish me to forget anything inour acquaintance. I never can, believe me. You have been far too kindand good to me always. '

'Miss Dombey, ' returned Mr Toots, 'your consideration for my feelings isa part of your angelic character. Thank you a thousand times. It's of noconsequence at all. '

'What we thought of asking you, ' said Florence, 'is, whether youremember where Susan, whom you were so kind as to accompany to thecoach-office when she left me, is to be found. '

'Why I do not certainly, Miss Dombey, ' said Mr Toots, after a littleconsideration, 'remember the exact name of the place that was on thecoach; 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 findher, and to have her here, myself and the Chicken will produce her withevery dispatch that devotion on my part, and great intelligence on theChicken's, can ensure. 

Mr Toots was so manifestly delighted and revived by the prospect ofbeing useful, and the disinterested sincerity of his devotion was sounquestionable, that it would have been cruel to refuse him. Florence, with an instinctive delicacy, forbore to urge the least obstacle, thoughshe did not forbear to overpower him with thanks; and Mr Toots proudlytook the commission upon himself for immediate execution. 

'Miss Dombey, ' said Mr Toots, touching her proffered hand, with a pangof hopeless love visibly shooting through him, and flashing out inhis face, 'Good-bye! Allow me to take the liberty of saying, that yourmisfortunes make me perfectly wretched, and that you may trust me, next to Captain Gills himself. I am quite aware, Miss Dombey, of my owndeficiencies--they're not of the least consequence, thank you--but I amentirely to be relied upon, I do assure you, Miss Dombey. '

With that Mr Toots came out of the room, again accompanied by theCaptain, who, standing at a little distance, holding his hat under hisarm and arranging his scattered locks with his hook, had been a notuninterested witness of what passed. And when the door closed behindthem, the light of Mr Toots's life was darkly clouded again. 

'Captain Gills, ' said that gentleman, stopping near the bottom of thestairs, and turning round, 'to tell you the truth, I am not in a frameof mind at the present moment, in which I could see Lieutenant Walterswith that entirely friendly feeling towards him that I should wish toharbour in my breast. We cannot always command our feelings, CaptainGills, and I should take it as a particular favour if you'd let me outat 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 goodopinion is a consolation to me. There is one thing, ' said Mr Toots, standing in the passage, behind the half-opened door, 'that I hopeyou'll bear in mind, Captain Gills, and that I should wish LieutenantWalters to be made acquainted with. I have quite come into my propertynow, you know, and--and I don't know what to do with it. If I couldbe at all useful in a pecuniary point of view, I should glide into thesilent tomb with ease and smoothness. '

Mr Toots said no more, but slipped out quietly and shut the door uponhimself, 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 andwarm-hearted, that to see him again and be assured of his truth to herin her distress, was a joy and comfort beyond all price; but for thatvery reason, it was so affecting to think that she caused him a moment'sunhappiness, 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 allsitting together in Florence's new room, Walter praised him in a mostimpassioned manner, and told Florence what he had said on leavingthe house, with every graceful setting-off in the way of comment andappreciation that his own honesty and sympathy could surround it with. 

Mr Toots did not return upon the next day, or the next, or for severaldays; and in the meanwhile Florence, without any new alarm, lived likea 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 thedays went on; and the expression that had been seen in the face of thedead child, was often turned to the sky from her high window, as if itsought his angel out, on the bright shore of which he had spoken: lyingon his little bed. 

Florence had been weak and delicate of late, and the agitation she hadundergone was not without its influences on her health. But it was nobodily illness that affected her now. She was distressed in mind; andthe cause of her distress was Walter. 

Interested in her, anxious for her, proud and glad to serve her, andshowing all this with the enthusiasm and ardour of his character, Florence saw that he avoided her. All the long day through, he seldomapproached her room. If she asked for him, he came, again for the momentas earnest and as bright as she remembered him when she was a lostchild in the staring streets; but he soon became constrained--her quickaffection was too watchful not to know it--and uneasy, and soon lefther. Unsought, he never came, all day, between the morning and thenight. When the evening closed in, he was always there, and that washer happiest time, for then she half believed that the old Walter of herchildhood was not changed. But, even then, some trivial word, look, or circumstance would show her that there was an indefinable divisionbetween them which could not be passed. 

And she could not but see that these revealings of a great alterationin Walter manifested themselves in despite of his utmost efforts to hidethem. In his consideration for her, she thought, and in the earnestnessof his desire to spare her any wound from his kind hand, he resortedto innumerable little artifices and disguises. So much the more didFlorence feel the greatness of the alteration in him; so much theoftener 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 andhopeful than he had been at first, and would steal looks at her andWalter, by turns, when they were all three together of an evening, withquite a sad face. 

Florence resolved, at last, to speak to Walter. She believed she knewnow what the cause of his estrangement was, and she thought it would bea relief to her full heart, and would set him more at ease, if shetold him she had found it out, and quite submitted to it, and did notreproach him. 

It was on a certain Sunday afternoon, that Florence took thisresolution. The faithful Captain, in an amazing shirt-collar, wassitting by her, reading with his spectacles on, and she asked him whereWalter 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 ifto 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 hemade 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, fora prodigious volume at a book-stall, five lines of which utterlyconfounded him at any time, insomuch that he had not yet ascertained ofwhat subject it treated--and withdrew. Walter soon appeared. 

'Captain Cuttle tells me, Miss Dombey, ' he eagerly began on comingin--but stopped when he saw her face. 

'You are not so well to-day. You look distressed. You have beenweeping. '

He spoke so kindly, and with such a fervent tremor in his voice, thatthe tears gushed into her eyes at the sound of his words. 

'Walter, ' said Florence, gently, 'I am not quite well, and I have beenweeping. 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! dearWalter, what I felt that night, and what I hoped!'--'

He put his trembling hand upon the table between them, and sat lookingat her. --'that I was changed. I was surprised to hear you say so, butI understand, now, that I am. Don't be angry with me, Walter. I was toomuch overjoyed to think of it, then. '

She seemed a child to him again. It was the ingenuous, confiding, lovingchild he saw and heard. Not the dear woman, at whose feet he would havelaid 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, itwould 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 hadintervened since she gave him the little token of remembrance. 

'I am glad of that. I shall be always glad to think so, Walter. Do yourecollect that a thought of this change seemed to come into our minds atthe 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 prospectseven then. I feared to think so, then, but I know it now. If you wereable, 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 yourdearest relation, quite to overlook the innocent cause of all the periland affliction that has befallen you. You cannot quite forget me in thatcharacter, and we can be brother and sister no longer. But, dearWalter, do not think that I complain of you in this. I might have knownit--ought to have known it--but forgot it in my joy. All I hope is thatyou may think of me less irksomely when this feeling is no more a secretone; and all I ask is, Walter, in the name of the poor child who wasyour sister once, that you will not struggle with yourself, and painyourself, for my sake, now that I know all!'

Walter had looked upon her while she said this, with a face so full ofwonder and amazement, that it had room for nothing else. Now he caughtup the hand that touched his, so entreatingly, and held it between hisown. 

'Oh, Miss Dombey, ' he said, 'is it possible that while I have beensuffering so much, in striving with my sense of what is due to you, andmust be rendered to you, I have made you suffer what your words discloseto me? Never, never, before Heaven, have I thought of you but as thesingle, bright, pure, blessed recollection of my boyhood and my youth. Never have I from the first, and never shall I to the last, regard yourpart in my life, but as something sacred, never to be lightly thoughtof, 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 whenwe parted, is happiness to me that there are no words to utter; and tobe loved and trusted as your brother, is the next gift I could receiveand prize!'

'Walter, ' said Florence, looking at him earnestly, but with a changingface, 'what is that which is due to me, and must be rendered to me, atthe sacrifice of all this?'

'Respect, ' said Walter, in a low tone. 'Reverence. 

The colour dawned in her face, and she timidly and thoughtfully withdrewher hand; still looking at him with unabated earnestness. 

'I have not a brother's right, ' said Walter. 'I have not a brother'sclaim. I left a child. I find a woman. '

The colour overspread her face. She made a gesture as if of entreatythat 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, 'evento tear myself from it, though I rend my own. How dare I say it is mysister's!'

She was weeping still. 

'If you had been happy; surrounded as you should be by loving andadmiring friends, and by all that makes the station you were born toenviable, ' said Walter; 'and if you had called me brother, then, in youraffectionate remembrance of the past, I could have answered to the namefrom my distant place, with no inward assurance that I wronged yourspotless 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 Ithought, 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 dayable to restore you to a station near your own; I would have told youthat there was one name you might bestow upon--me--a right above allothers, to protect and cherish you--that I was worthy of in nothing butthe 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 meto defend and guard you, which I dare accept and dare assert; but thatif I had that right, I would regard it as a trust so precious and sopriceless, that the undivided truth and fervour of my life would poorlyacknowledge its worth. '

The head was still bent down, the tears still falling, and the bosomswelling with its sobs. 

'Dear Florence! Dearest Florence! whom I called so in my thoughts beforeI could consider how presumptuous and wild it was. One last time let mecall you by your own dear name, and touch this gentle hand in token ofyour sisterly forgetfulness of what I have said. '

She raised her head, and spoke to him with such a solemn sweetness inher eyes; with such a calm, bright, placid smile shining on him throughher tears; with such a low, soft tremble in her frame and voice; thatthe innermost chords of his heart were touched, and his sight was dim ashe 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 thesea. 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 handin 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 endwithout 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 senseand 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 ofher dear lover. 

Blessed Sunday Bells, ringing so tranquilly in their entranced and happyears! Blessed Sunday peace and quiet, harmonising with the calmness intheir souls, and making holy air around them! Blessed twilight stealingon, and shading her so soothingly and gravely, as she falls asleep, likea hushed child, upon the bosom she has clung to!

Oh load of love and trustfulness that lies to lightly there! Ay, lookdown on the closed eyes, Walter, with a proudly tender gaze; for in allthe wide wide world they seek but thee now--only thee!

The Captain remained in the little parlour until it was quite dark. Hetook the chair on which Walter had been sitting, and looked up at theskylight, until the day, by little and little, faded away, and the starspeeped down. He lighted a candle, lighted a pipe, smoked it out, andwondered what on earth was going on upstairs, and why they didn't callhim 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 longspell 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 backhis chair, and himself with it, as far as they could go. 

'What! Heart's Delight!' cried the Captain, suddenly elated, 'Is itthat?'

'Yes!' said Florence, eagerly. 

'Wal'r! Husband! THAT?' roared the Captain, tossing up his glazed hatinto the skylight. 

'Yes!' cried Florence, laughing and crying together. 

The Captain immediately hugged her; and then, picking up the glazed hatand putting it on, drew her arm through his, and conducted her upstairsagain; 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 hisface 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 herepeated at least forty times during tea; polishing his radiant facewith the sleeve of his coat, and dabbing his head all over with hispocket-handkerchief, in the intervals. But he was not without a graversource of enjoyment to fall back upon, when so disposed, for he wasrepeatedly heard to say in an undertone, as he looked with ineffabledelight 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 ofhis daughter, or wonder where she is gone? Does he suppose she has comehome, and is leading her old life in the weary house? No one can answerfor him. He has never uttered her name, since. His household dread himtoo much to approach a subject on which he is resolutely dumb; and theonly person who dares question him, he silences immediately. 

'My dear Paul!' murmurs his sister, sidling into the room, on the dayof Florence's departure, 'your wife! that upstart woman! Is it possiblethat what I hear confusedly, is true, and that this is her return foryour unparalleled devotion to her; extending, I am sure, even to thesacrifice of your own relations, to her caprices and haughtiness? Mypoor brother!'

With this speech feelingly reminiscent of her not having been asked todinner on the day of the first party, Mrs Chick makes great use ofher pocket-handkerchief, and falls on Mr Dombey's neck. But Mr Dombeyfrigidly lifts her off, and hands her to a chair. 

'I thank you, Louisa, ' he says, 'for this mark of your affection; butdesire that our conversation may refer to any other subject. WhenI bewail my fate, Louisa, or express myself as being in want ofconsolation, 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 moreupon a theme so painful and revolting;' on the heads of which twoadjectives, Mrs Chick visits scathing indignation; 'but pray let meask you--though I dread to hear something that will shock and distressme--that unfortunate child Florence--

'Louisa!' says her brother, sternly, 'silence! Not another word ofthis!'

Mrs Chick can only shake her head, and use her handkerchief, and moanover degenerate Dombeys, who are no Dombeys. But whether Florence hasbeen inculpated in the flight of Edith, or has followed her, or has donetoo much, or too little, or anything, or nothing, she has not the leastidea. 

He goes on, without deviation, keeping his thoughts and feelings closewithin his own breast, and imparting them to no one. He makes no searchfor his daughter. He may think that she is with his sister, or that sheis under his own roof. He may think of her constantly, or he may neverthink 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 nosuspicion of the truth. He has lived too long shut up in his toweringsupremacy, 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 notyet humbled to the level earth. The root is broad and deep, and in thecourse of years its fibres have spread out and gathered nourishment fromeverything around it. The tree is struck, but not down. 

Though he hide the world within him from the world without--whichhe believes has but one purpose for the time, and that, to watch himeagerly 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 itsees 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 everywherewhere he is not. It comes out with him among his servants, and yethe leaves it whispering behind; he sees it pointing after him in thestreet; it is waiting for him in his counting-house; it leers overthe shoulders of rich men among the merchants; it goes beckoning andbabbling among the crowd; it always anticipates him, in every place; andis always busiest, he knows, when he has gone away. When he is shutup in his room at night, it is in his house, outside it, audible infootsteps on the pavement, visible in print upon the table, steaming toand fro on railroads and in ships; restless and busy everywhere, withnothing else but him. 

It is not a phantom of his imagination. It is as active in otherpeople's minds as in his. Witness Cousin Feenix, who comes fromBaden-Baden, purposely to talk to him. Witness Major Bagstock, whoaccompanies Cousin Feenix on that friendly mission. 

Mr Dombey receives them with his usual dignity, and stands erect, in hisold attitude, before the fire. He feels that the world is looking athim out of their eyes. That it is in the stare of the pictures. That MrPitt, upon the bookcase, represents it. That there are eyes in its ownmap, 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, 'JosephBagstock is a bad hand at a counterfeit. If you want to hold yourfriends off, Dombey, and to give them the cold shoulder, J. B. Is notthe 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 thehonour to say, deservedly or undeservedly--never mind that--"If there isa man in the service on whom I can depend for coming to the point, thatman is Joe--Joe Bagstock. "'

Mr Dombey intimates his acquiescence. 

'Now, Dombey, ' says the Major, 'I am a man of the world. Our friendFeenix--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 theworld. Dombey, you are a man of the world. Now, when three men of theworld meet together, and are friends--as I believe--' again appealing toCousin Feenix. 

'I am sure, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'most friendly. '

'--and are friends, ' resumes the Major, 'Old Joe's opinion is (I may bewrong), that the opinion of the world on any particular subject, is veryeasily got at. 

'Undoubtedly, ' says Cousin Feenix. 'In point of fact, it's quite aself-evident sort of thing. I am extremely anxious, Major, that myfriend Dombey should hear me express my very great astonishment andregret, that my lovely and accomplished relative, who was possessed ofevery qualification to make a man happy, should have so far forgottenwhat was due to--in point of fact, to the world--as to commit herselfin such a very extraordinary manner. I have been in a devilish state ofdepression ever since; and said indeed to Long Saxby last night--man ofsix foot ten, with whom my friend Dombey is probably acquainted--that ithad upset me in a confounded way, and made me bilious. It induces a manto reflect, this kind of fatal catastrophe, ' says Cousin Feenix, 'thatevents do occur in quite a providential manner; for if my Aunt had beenliving at the time, I think the effect upon a devilish lively woman likeherself, would have been prostration, and that she would have fallen, inpoint of fact, a victim. '

'Now, Dombey!--' says the Major, resuming his discourse with greatenergy. 

'I beg your pardon, ' interposes Cousin Feenix. 'Allow me another word. My friend Dombey will permit me to say, that if any circumstance couldhave added to the most infernal state of pain in which I find myselfon this occasion, it would be the natural amazement of the world at mylovely and accomplished relative (as I must still beg leave to callher) being supposed to have so committed herself with a person--man withwhite teeth, in point of fact--of very inferior station to her husband. But while I must, rather peremptorily, request my friend Dombey not tocriminate my lovely and accomplished relative until her criminality isperfectly established, I beg to assure my friend Dombey that the familyI represent, and which is now almost extinct (devilish sad reflectionfor a man), will interpose no obstacle in his way, and will be happyto assent to any honourable course of proceeding, with a view to thefuture, that he may point out. I trust my friend Dombey will give mecredit for the intentions by which I am animated in this very melancholyaffair, and--a--in point of fact, I am not aware that I need trouble myfriend 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 amountof eloquence that Old Joe B. Has never heard surpassed--no, by the Lord, Sir! never!'--says the Major, very blue, indeed, and grasping his canein the middle--'stated the case as regards the lady, I shall presumeupon 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 thingshas opinions, which must be satisfied. '

'I know it, ' rejoins Mr Dombey. 

'Of course you know it, Dombey, ' says the Major, 'Damme, Sir, I know youknow 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 speakout--prematurely, perhaps--because the Bagstock breed have alwaysspoke out. Little, Sir, have they ever got by doing it; but it's in theBagstock blood. A shot is to be taken at this man. You have J. B. Atyour elbow. He claims the name of friend. God bless you!'

'Major, ' returns Mr Dombey, 'I am obliged. I shall put myself in yourhands when the time comes. The time not being come, I have forborne tospeak to you. '

'Where is the fellow, Dombey?' inquires the Major, after gasping andlooking 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 congratulateyou. '

'You will excuse--even you, Major, ' replies Mr Dombey, 'my entering intoany further detail at present. The intelligence is of a singular kind, and singularly obtained. It may turn out to be valueless; it may turnout 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, theMajor receives it graciously, and is delighted to think that the worldhas such a fair prospect of soon receiving its due. Cousin Feenix isthen presented with his meed of acknowledgment by the husband of hislovely and accomplished relative, and Cousin Feenix and Major Bagstockretire, leaving that husband to the world again, and to ponder atleisure on their representation of its state of mind concerning hisaffairs, and on its just and reasonable expectations. 

But who sits in the housekeeper's room, shedding tears, and talking toMrs Pipchin in a low tone, with uplifted hands? It is a lady with herface concealed in a very close black bonnet, which appears not to belongto her. It is Miss Tox, who has borrowed this disguise from her servant, and comes from Princess's Place, thus secretly, to revive her oldacquaintance with Mrs Pipchin, in order to get certain information ofthe 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 asusual. '

'Externally, ' suggests Miss Tox 'But what he feels within!'

Mrs Pipchin's hard grey eye looks doubtful as she answers, in threedistinct jerks, 'Ah! Perhaps. I suppose so. '

'To tell you my mind, Lucretia, ' says Mrs Pipchin; she still calls MissTox Lucretia, on account of having made her first experiments in thechild-quelling line of business on that lady, when an unfortunate andweazen little girl of tender years; 'to tell you my mind, Lucretia, Ithink 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 MissTox. 'To leave him! Such a noble figure of a man!' And here Miss Tox isovercome. 

'I don't know about noble, I'm sure, ' observes Mrs Pipchin; irasciblyrubbing 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, inmy time! What a fuss there is! She's gone, and well got rid of. Nobodywants 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 forTowlinson to show her out, Mr Towlinson, not having seen Miss Tox forages, grins, and hopes she's well; observing that he didn't know her atfirst, in that bonnet. 

'Pretty well, Towlinson, I thank you, ' says Miss Tox. 'I beg you'llhave the goodness, when you happen to see me here, not to mention it. Myvisits 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 theToodle family, has acquired an admonitorial tone, and a habit ofimproving passing occasions, 'that what has happened here, will be awarning to you, Towlinson. '

'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure, ' says Towlinson. 

He appears to be falling into a consideration of the manner in whichthis warning ought to operate in his particular case, when the vinegaryMrs Pipchin, suddenly stirring him up with a 'What are you doing? Whydon't you show the lady to the door?' he ushers Miss Tox forth. As shepasses Mr Dombey's room, she shrinks into the inmost depths of the blackbonnet, and walks, on tip-toe; and there is not another atom in theworld which haunts him so, that feels such sorrow and solicitude abouthim, as Miss Tox takes out under the black bonnet into the street, andtries 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 everyevening at dusk; adding clogs and an umbrella to the bonnet on wetnights; and bears the grins of Towlinson, and the huffs and rebuffsof Mrs Pipchin, and all to ask how he does, and how he bears hismisfortune: but she has nothing to do with Mr Dombey's world. Exactingand harassing as ever, it goes on without her; and she, a by no meansbright or particular star, moves in her little orbit in the corner ofanother system, and knows it quite well, and comes, and cries, and goesaway, and is satisfied. Verily Miss Tox is easier of satisfaction thanthe world that troubles Mr Dombey so much!

At the Counting House, the clerks discuss the great disaster in all itslights and shades, but chiefly wonder who will get Mr Carker's place. They are generally of opinion that it will be shorn of some ofits emoluments, and made uncomfortable by newly-devised checks andrestrictions; and those who are beyond all hope of it are quite surethey would rather not have it, and don't at all envy the person for whomit may prove to be reserved. Nothing like the prevailing sensation hasexisted in the Counting House since Mr Dombey's little son died; but allsuch excitements there take a social, not to say a jovial turn, and leadto the cultivation of good fellowship. A reconciliation is establishedon this propitious occasion between the acknowledged wit of the CountingHouse and an aspiring rival, with whom he has been at deadly feud formonths; and a little dinner being proposed, in commemoration of theirhappily restored amity, takes place at a neighbouring tavern; the witin the chair; the rival acting as Vice-President. The orations followingthe 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 privatedissensions. Recent occurrences to which he need not more particularlyallude, but which have not been altogether without notice in some SundayPapers, ' and in a daily paper which he need not name (here every othermember of the company names it in an audible murmur), have caused himto reflect; and he feels that for him and Robinson to have any personaldifferences at such a moment, would be for ever to deny that goodfeeling in the general cause, for which he has reason to think and hopethat the gentlemen in Dombey's House have always been distinguished. Robinson replies to this like a man and a brother; and one gentleman whohas been in the office three years, under continual notice to quit onaccount of lapses in his arithmetic, appears in a perfectly new light, suddenly bursting out with a thrilling speech, in which he says, Maytheir respected chief never again know the desolation which has fallenon his hearth! and says a great variety of things, beginning with 'Mayhe never again, ' which are received with thunders of applause. In short, a most delightful evening is passed, only interrupted by a differencebetween two juniors, who, quarrelling about the probable amount of MrCarker's late receipts per annum, defy each other with decanters, andare taken out greatly excited. Soda water is in general request at theoffice 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 forlife. He finds himself again constantly in bars of public-houses, beingtreated and lying dreadfully. It appears that he met everybody concernedin the late transaction, everywhere, and said to them, 'Sir, ' or'Madam, ' as the case was, 'why do you look so pale?' at which eachshuddered from head to foot, and said, 'Oh, Perch!' and ran away. Eitherthe consciousness of these enormities, or the reaction consequent onliquor, reduces Mr Perch to an extreme state of low spirits at that hourof the evening when he usually seeks consolation in the society of MrsPerch at Balls Pond; and Mrs Perch frets a good deal, for she fears hisconfidence in woman is shaken now, and that he half expects on cominghome at night to find her gone off with some Viscount--'which, ' as sheobserves to an intimate female friend, 'is what these wretches in theform of woman have to answer for, Mrs P. It ain't the harm they dothemselves so much as what they reflect upon us, Ma'am; and I see it inPerch'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 isalways maudlin after half-past ten, and frequently begs to know whetherhe 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 agreethat if Mr Dombey don't know, Mrs Dombey does. This brings them to thelatter, 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 MrTowlinson's old flame, the housemaid (who is very virtuous), entreatsthat you will never talk to her any more about people who hold theirheads up, as if the ground wasn't good enough for 'em. 

Everything that is said and done about it, except by Mr Dombey, is donein chorus. Mr Dombey and the world are alone together. 

CHAPTER 52. Secret Intelligence

Good Mrs Brown and her daughter Alice kept silent company together, intheir 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 ofhis singular intelligence, singularly obtained, which might turn outto be valueless, and might turn out to be true; and the world was notsatisfied yet. 

The mother and daughter sat for a long time without interchanging aword: almost without motion. The old woman's face was shrewdly anxiousand expectant; that of her daughter was expectant too, but in aless sharp degree, and sometimes it darkened, as if with gatheringdisappointment and incredulity. The old woman, without heeding thesechanges 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 asin the days when only Good Mrs Brown inhabited it. Some few attempts atcleanliness and order were manifest, though made in a reckless, gipsyway, that might have connected them, at a glance, with the youngerwoman. The shades of evening thickened and deepened as the two keptsilence, until the blackened walls were nearly lost in the prevailinggloom. 

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 comehere. '

'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 wiserthan you take me for. He'll come. T'other day when I touched his coatin the street, he looked round as if I was a toad. But Lord, to see himwhen I said their names, and asked him if he'd like to find out wherethey 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 uglyadvantage, as she brought it to the table. 'I might as well call yourface only angry, when you think or talk about 'em. '

It was something different from that, truly, as she sat as still as acrouched tigress, with her kindling eyes. 

'Hark!' said the old woman, triumphantly. 'I hear a step coming. It'snot 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 youhear 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, theold woman complied; and peering out, and beckoning, gave admission to MrDombey, who stopped when he had set his foot within the door, and lookeddistrustfully around. 

'It's a poor place for a great gentleman like your worship, ' said theold woman, curtseying and chattering. 'I told you so, but there's noharm in it. '

'Who is that?' asked Mr Dombey, looking at her companion. 

'That's my handsome daughter, ' said the old woman. 'Your worship won'tmind her. She knows all about it. '

A shadow fell upon his face not less expressive than if he had groanedaloud, 'Who does not know all about it!' but he looked at her steadily, and she, without any acknowledgment of his presence, looked at him. Theshadow 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 hauntedby her bold eyes, and some remembrance they inspired. 

'Woman, ' said Mr Dombey to the old witch who was chuckling and leeringclose at his elbow, and who, when he turned to address her, pointedstealthily at her daughter, and rubbed her hands, and pointed again, 'Woman! I believe that I am weak and forgetful of my station in cominghere, but you know why I come, and what you offered when you stoppedme in the street the other day. What is it that you have to tell meconcerning what I want to know; and how does it happen that I can findvoluntary intelligence in a hovel like this, ' with a disdainful glanceabout 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 hadobserved her, sternly, 'that you are so audacious as to mean to triflewith 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 atrifling 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 worshipshall see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears; not withours--and if your worship's put upon their track, you won't mind payingsomething for it, will you, honourable deary?'

'Money, ' returned Mr Dombey, apparently relieved, and assured by thisinquiry, 'will bring about unlikely things, I know. It may turn evenmeans as unexpected and unpromising as these, to account. Yes. Forany reliable information I receive, I will pay. But I must have theinformation 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 Ijudge, ' 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 speakto you now, that you may understand us better, and rely more on us. Awoman's anger is pretty much the same here, as in your fine house. I amangry. I have been so, many years. I have as good cause for my anger asyou 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 seembetween us, it is so. How it is so, is no matter; that is my story, andI keep my story to myself. I would bring you and him together, becauseI have a rage against him. My mother there, is avaricious and poor; andshe would sell any tidings she could glean, or anything, or anybody, formoney. It is fair enough, perhaps, that you should pay her some, if shecan help you to what you want to know. But that is not my motive. I havetold you what mine is, and it would be as strong and all-sufficient withme if you haggled and bargained with her for a sixpence. I have done. Mysaucy tongue says no more, if you wait here till sunrise tomorrow. '

The old woman, who had shown great uneasiness during this speech, whichhad a tendency to depreciate her expected gains, pulled Mr Dombey softlyby the sleeve, and whispered to him not to mind her. He glared at themboth, by turns, with a haggard look, and said, in a deeper voice thanwas usual with him:

'Go on--what do you know?'

'Oh, not so fast, your worship! we must wait for someone, ' answered theold woman. 'It's to be got from someone else--wormed out--screwed andtwisted 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 fromme, ' said Good Mrs Brown, crooking her ten fingers, 'I'd tear it out ofhim!'

Mr Dombey followed her with his eyes as she hobbled to the door, andlooked out again: and then his glance sought her daughter; but sheremained impassive, silent, and regardless of him. 

'Do you tell me, woman, ' he said, when the bent figure of Mrs Brown cameback, shaking its head and chattering to itself, 'that there is anotherperson 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 tome?'

'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 beafraid of you, and wouldn't talk. You'll stand behind that door, andjudge him for yourself. We don't ask to be believed on trust What! Yourworship doubts the room behind the door? Oh the suspicion of you richgentlefolks! Look at it, then. '

Her sharp eye had detected an involuntary expression of this feelingon his part, which was not unreasonable under the circumstances. Insatisfaction of it she now took the candle to the door she spoke of. MrDombey looked in; assured himself that it was an empty, crazy room; andsigned 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 oddminutes?'

He made no answer; but began pacing the room with an irresolute air, asif he were undecided whether to remain or depart, and as if he had somequarrel with himself for being there at all. But soon his tread grewslower and heavier, and his face more sternly thoughtful; as the objectwith which he had come, fixed itself in his mind, and dilated thereagain. 

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 listeninganew. The monotony of his step, or the uncertainty of age, made her soslow of hearing, that a footfall without had sounded in her daughter'sears for some moments, and she had looked up hastily to warn her motherof its approach, before the old woman was roused by it. But then shestarted from her seat, and whispering 'Here he is!' hurried her visitorto 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 ofRob the Grinder on his appearance at the door. 

'And here's my bonny boy, ' cried Mrs Brown, 'at last!--oho, oho! You'relike my own son, Robby!'

'Oh! Misses Brown!' remonstrated the Grinder. 'Don't! Can't you be fondof a cove without squeedging and throttling of him? Take care of thebirdcage in my hand, will you?'

'Thinks of a birdcage, afore me!' cried the old woman, apostrophizingthe ceiling. 'Me that feels more than a mother for him!'

'Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you, Misses Brown, ' said theunfortunate youth, greatly aggravated; 'but you're so jealous of acove. I'm very fond of you myself, and all that, of course; but I don'tsmother you, do I, Misses Brown?'

He looked and spoke as if he would have been far from objecting to doso, however, on a favourable occasion. 

'And to talk about birdcages, too!' whimpered the Grinder. 'As If thatwas 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 hishair with both hands in the exasperation of his feelings, 'if she ain'tenough to make a cove run wild!'

'What! Do you snub me, thankless boy!' cried the old woman, with readyvehemence. 

'Good gracious, Misses Brown, no!' returned the Grinder, with tearsin his eyes. 'Was there ever such a--! Don't I dote upon you, MissesBrown?'

'Do you, sweet Rob? Do you truly, chickabiddy?' With that, Mrs Brownheld him in her fond embrace once more; and did not release him untilhe had made several violent and ineffectual struggles with his legs, andhis hair was standing on end all over his head. 

'Oh!' returned the Grinder, 'what a thing it is to be perfectly pitchedinto 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, contemplatinghim with a look of reproach. 

'Good gracious, Misses Brown, ' returned the Grinder, 'I said tonight's aweek, 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 sayingthings in my defence, and my very face is shiny with being hugged!' Herubbed it hard with his sleeve, as if to remove the tender polish inquestion. 

'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. Andlong may you--et ceterer. ' Which, to judge from the expression ofhis face, did not include any very choice blessings. 'And here's herhealth, ' said the Grinder, glancing at Alice, who sat with her eyesfixed, as it seemed to him, on the wall behind him, but in reality on MrDombey'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 rationalnow. You're a judge of birds, and up to their ways, as I know to mycost. '

'Cost!' repeated Mrs Brown. 

'Satisfaction, I mean, ' returned the Grinder. 'How you do take up acove, 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 thisparrot--certain things being sold, and a certain establishment brokeup--and as I don't want no notice took at present, I wish you'd attendto her for a week or so, and give her board and lodging, will you? IfI must come backwards and forwards, ' mused the Grinder with a dejectedface, '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 thatI want any inducement but yourself, Misses Brown, I'm sure. Don't beginagain, for goodness' sake. '

'He don't care for me! He don't care for me, as I care for him!' criedMrs Brown, lifting up her skinny hands. 'But I'll take care of hisbird. '

'Take good care of it too, you know, Mrs Brown, ' said Rob, shaking hishead. '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 talkedabout. '

Checking himself abruptly, and not without a fearful glance across theroom, Rob filled the glass again, and having slowly emptied it, shookhis head, and began to draw his fingers across and across the wires ofthe parrot's cage by way of a diversion from the dangerous theme thathad just been broached. 

The old woman eyed him slily, and hitching her chair nearer his, andlooking in at the parrot, who came down from the gilded dome at hercall, 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 toconsider his ears in danger, but it was his turn to look in at theparrot now, and however expressive his imagination may have made herangry scowl, it was unseen by his bodily eyes. 

'I wonder Master didn't take you with him, Rob, ' said the old woman, ina wheedling voice, but with increased malignity of aspect. 

Rob was so absorbed in contemplation of the parrot, and in trolling hisforefinger on the wires, that he made no answer. 

The old woman had her clutch within a hair's breadth of his shock ofhair as it stooped over the table; but she restrained her fingers, andsaid, 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 objectof her fond affection with such extraordinary fury, that his face beganto blacken in a moment. 

'Misses Brown!' exclaimed the Grinder, 'let go, will you? What are youdoing 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, afterstruggling with his assailant into a corner, Rob disengaged himself, and stood there panting and fenced in by his own elbows, while the oldwoman, panting too, and stamping with rage and eagerness, appeared to becollecting her energies for another swoop upon him. At this crisis Aliceinterposed 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 haveI been and done? What am I to be tore to pieces for, I should like toknow? 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 andafflicted 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 minuteago. '

'To cut me off with his short answers and his sulky words, ' said theold woman. 'Me! Because I happen to be curious to have a little bit ofgossip about Master and the lady, to dare to play at fast and loose withme! But I'll talk to you no more, my lad. Now go!'

'I'm sure, Misses Brown, ' returned the abject Grinder, 'I neverInsiniwated that I wished to go. Don't talk like that, Misses Brown, ifyou please. '

'I won't talk at all, ' said Mrs Brown, with an action of her crookedfingers that made him shrink into half his natural compass in thecorner. 'Not another word with him shall pass my lips. He's anungrateful hound. I cast him off. Now let him go! And I'll slip thoseafter him that shall talk too much; that won't be shook away; that'llhang 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'sbusiness, and keep Master's secrets, with such company always followinghim up and down. Ha, ha, ha! He'll find 'em a different sort from youand me, Ally; Close as he is with you and me. Now let him go, now lethim go!'

The old woman, to the unspeakable dismay of the Grinder, walked hertwisted 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'msure 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 hercircle. 'Now let him go, now let him go!'

'Misses Brown, ' urged the tormented Grinder, 'I didn't mean to--Oh, whata thing it is for a cove to get into such a line as this!--I was onlycareful of talking, Misses Brown, because I always am, on account of hisbeing up to everything; but I might have known it wouldn't have gone anyfurther. I'm sure I'm quite agreeable, ' with a wretched face, 'forany little bit of gossip, Misses Brown. Don't go on like this, ifyou please. Oh, couldn't you have the goodness to put in a word for amiserable cove, here?' said the Grinder, appealing in desperation to thedaughter. 

'Come, mother, you hear what he says, ' she interposed, in her sternvoice, 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 donewith him. '

Mrs Brown, moved as it seemed by this very tender exhortation, presentlybegan to howl; and softening by degrees, took the apologetic Grinder toher arms, who embraced her with a face of unutterable woe, and likea victim as he was, resumed his former seat, close by the side ofhis venerable friend, whom he suffered, not without much constrainedsweetness of countenance, combating very expressive physiognomicalrevelations of an opposite character to draw his arm through hers, andkeep it there. 

'And how's Master, deary dear?' said Mrs Brown, when, sitting in thisamicable 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 stillin pay, Misses Brown. '

'And nothing to do, Rob?'

'Nothing particular to do just now, Misses Brown, but to--keep my eyesopen, said the Grinder, rolling them in a forlorn way. 

'Master abroad, Rob?'

'Oh, for goodness' sake, Misses Brown, couldn't you gossip with a coveabout anything else?' cried the Grinder, in a burst of despair. 

The impetuous Mrs Brown rising directly, the tortured Grinder detainedher, stammering 'Ye-es, Misses Brown, I believe he's abroad. What'sshe staring at?' he added, in allusion to the daughter, whose eyes werefixed upon the face that now again looked out behind. 

'Don't mind her, lad, ' said the old woman, holding him closer to preventhis turning round. 'It's her way--her way. Tell me, Rob. Did you eversee the lady, deary?'

'Oh, Misses Brown, what lady?' cried the Grinder in a tone of piteoussupplication. 

'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 thatnight. '

'Well, if you know it was that night, you know, Misses Brown, ' repliedRob, '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 aboutit, ' cried the old hag, holding him closer yet, patting the hand thatwas drawn through his arm against her other hand, and searching everyline in his face with her bleared eyes. 'Come! Begin! I want to be toldall 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. Iwish I was the electric fluency, ' muttered the bewildered Grinder. 'I'dhave 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 herto make another clutch at his head and throat, but was restrained by acertain dogged mystery in his face. 

'That was the art of it, ' said the reluctant Grinder; 'that's the waynobody saw 'em go, or has been able to say how they did go. They wentdifferent 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 aswell have stayed at home, mightn't they, Brown?' returned the unwillingGrinder. 

'Well, Rob? Well?' said the old woman, drawing his arm yet tighterthrough her own, as if, in her eagerness, she were afraid of hisslipping away. 

'What, haven't we talked enough yet, Misses Brown?' returned theGrinder, who, between his sense of injury, his sense of liquor, and hissense of being on the rack, had become so lachrymose, that at almostevery answer he scooped his coats into one or other of his eyes, anduttered 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, Isee you will have it out of me, Misses Brown! But take your solemn oathnow, that you'll never tell anybody. '

This Mrs Brown very readily did: being naturally Jesuitical; and havingno other intention in the matter than that her concealed visitor shouldhear 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 safeaboard--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 outburstof 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 holdinghim 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 anythingabout 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, thatsooner than ever repeat a word of what we're saying now, you had bettertake and shoot yourself, or shut yourself up in this house, and set ita-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 safefrom him, I tell you. '

'Haven't I taken an oath, ' retorted the old woman, 'and won't I keepit?'

'Well, I'm sure I hope you will, Misses Brown, ' returned Rob, somewhatdoubtfully, and not without a latent threatening in his manner. 'Foryour own sake, quite as much as mine. '

He looked at her as he gave her this friendly caution, and emphasizedit with a nodding of his head; but finding it uncomfortable to encounterthe yellow face with its grotesque action, and the ferret eyes withtheir keen old wintry gaze, so close to his own, he looked down uneasilyand sat skulking in his chair, as if he were trying to bring hImselfto a sullen declaration that he would answer no more questions. The oldwoman, still holding him as before, took this opportunity of raising theforefinger of her right hand, in the air, as a stealthy signal to theconcealed observer to give particular attention to what was about tofollow. 

'Rob, ' she said, in her most coaxing tone. 

'Good gracious, Misses Brown, what's the matter now?' returned theexasperated Grinder. 

'Rob! where did the lady and Master appoint to meet?'

Rob shuffled more and more, and looked up and looked down, and bithis thumb, and dried it on his waistcoat, and finally said, eyeing histormentor 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 toknow' waited for his answer. Rob, after a discomfited pause, suddenlybroke out with, 'How can I pronounce the names of foreign places, MrsBrown? What an unreasonable woman you are!'

'But you have heard it said, Robby, ' she retorted firmly, 'and you knowwhat 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, andyou can spell it. '

Rob, with a petulant exclamation between laughing and crying--for hewas penetrated with some admiration of Mrs Brown's cunning, even throughthis persecution--after some reluctant fumbling in his waistcoat pocket, produced from it a little piece of chalk. The old woman's eyes sparkledwhen she saw it between his thumb and finger, and hastily clearing aspace on the deal table, that he might write the word there, she oncemore made her signal with a shaking hand. 

'Now I tell you beforehand what it is, Misses Brown, ' said Rob, 'it's nouse asking me anything else. I won't answer anything else; I can't. Howlong it was to be before they met, or whose plan it was that they was togo away alone, I don't know no more than you do. I don't know any moreabout it. If I was to tell you how I found out this word, you'd believethat. Shall I tell you, Misses Brown?'

'Yes, Rob. '

'Well then, Misses Brown. The way--now you won't ask any more, youknow?' said Rob, turning his eyes, which were now fast getting drowsyand stupid, upon her. 

'Not another word, ' said Mrs Brown. 

'Well then, the way was this. When a certain person left the lady withme, he put a piece of paper with a direction written on it in the lady'shand, saying it was in case she should forget. She wasn't afraid offorgetting, for she tore it up as soon as his back was turned, andwhen I put up the carriage steps, I shook out one of the pieces--shesprinkled the rest out of the window, I suppose, for there was nonethere afterwards, though I looked for 'em. There was only one word onit, and that was this, if you must and will know. But remember! You'reupon your oath, Misses Brown!'

Mrs Brown knew that, she said. Rob, having nothing more to say, began tochalk, 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 itwith his hand, and turning impatiently upon her. 'I won't have it readout. Be quiet, will you!'

'Then write large, Rob, ' she returned, repeating her secret signal; 'formy eyes are not good, even at print. '

Muttering to himself, and returning to his work with an ill will, Robwent on with the word. As he bent his head down, the person for whoseinformation he so unconsciously laboured, moved from the door behind himto within a short stride of his shoulder, and looked eagerly towards thecreeping track of his hand upon the table. At the same time, Alice, fromher opposite chair, watched it narrowly as it shaped the letters, andrepeated each one on her lips as he made it, without articulating italoud. At the end of every letter her eyes and Mr Dombey's met, as ifeach of them sought to be confirmed by the other; and thus they bothspelt D. I. J. O. N. 

'There!' said the Grinder, moistening the palm of his hand hastily, toobliterate the word; and not content with smearing it out, rubbing andplaning all trace of it away with his coat-sleeve, until the very colourof 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 hisback; and the Grinder, overcome with mortification, cross-examination, and liquor, folded his arms on the table, laid his head upon them, andfell 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, shehovered over Rob, ready to blind him with her hands, or strike his headdown, if he should raise it while the secret step was crossing to thedoor. But though her glance took sharp cognizance of the sleeper, it wassharp too for the waking man; and when he touched her hand with his, andin spite of all his caution, made a chinking, golden sound, it was asbright and greedy as a raven's. 

The daughter's dark gaze followed him to the door, and noted well howpale he was, and how his hurried tread indicated that the least delaywas an insupportable restraint upon him, and how he was burning to beactive and away. As he closed the door behind him, she looked round ather mother. The old woman trotted to her; opened her hand to show whatwas 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 wecan say, or he either. '

Her glance was brighter than her mother's, and the fire that shone in itwas 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 gloomof the feebly lighted room. Rob slept and snored. The disregarded parrotonly was in action. It twisted and pulled at the wires of its cage, withits crooked beak, and crawled up to the dome, and along its roof likea fly, and down again head foremost, and shook, and bit, and rattled atevery slender bar, as if it knew its master's danger, and was wild toforce 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 andsister--on whom the weight of his guilt rested almost more heavily, atthis time, than on the man whom he had so deeply injured. Prying andtormenting as the world was, it did Mr Dombey the service of nerving himto pursuit and revenge. It roused his passion, stung his pride, twistedthe one idea of his life into a new shape, and made some gratificationof his wrath, the object into which his whole intellectual existenceresolved itself. All the stubbornness and implacability of his nature, all its hard impenetrable quality, all its gloom and moroseness, all itsexaggerated sense of personal importance, all its jealous dispositionto resent the least flaw in the ample recognition of his importance byothers, set this way like many streams united into one, and bore him onupon their tide. The most impetuously passionate and violently impulsiveof mankind would have been a milder enemy to encounter than the sullenMr Dombey wrought to this. A wild beast would have been easier turnedor soothed than the grave gentleman without a wrinkle in his starchedcravat. 

But the very intensity of his purpose became almost a substitute foraction in it. While he was yet uninformed of the traitor's retreat, itserved to divert his mind from his own calamity, and to entertain itwith another prospect. The brother and sister of his false favourite hadno such relief; everything in their history, past and present, gave hisdelinquency a more afflicting meaning to them. 

The sister may have sometimes sadly thought that if she had remainedwith him, the companion and friend she had been once, he might haveescaped the crime into which he had fallen. If she ever thought so, itwas still without regret for what she had done, without the least doubtof her duty, without any pricing or enhancing of her self-devotion. But when this possibility presented itself to the erring and repentantbrother, 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 hiscruel brother came into his mind. New accusation of himself, freshinward lamentings over his own unworthiness, and the ruin in which itwas at once his consolation and his self-reproach that he did not standalone, were the sole kind of reflections to which the discovery gaverise in him. 

It was on the very same day whose evening set upon the last chapter, andwhen Mr Dombey's world was busiest with the elopement of his wife, thatthe window of the room in which the brother and sister sat at theirearly breakfast, was darkened by the unexpected shadow of a man comingto 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 towipe his shoes all round, which had no mud upon them, 'agreeable to myinstructions 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 agood hour and a half ago, ' said Mr Perch, meekly, 'but for the state ofhealth of Mrs P. , who I thought I should have lost in the night, I doassure you, five distinct times. '

'Is your wife so ill?' asked Harriet. 

'Why, you see, ' said Mr Perch, first turning round to shut the doorcarefully, 'she takes what has happened in our House so much to heart, Miss. Her nerves is so very delicate, you see, and soon unstrung. Notbut what the strongest nerves had good need to be shook, I'm sure. Youfeel 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 Ihadn't been called upon to undergo. It has almost the effect of drinkupon me. I literally feels every morning as if I had been taking morethan was good for me over-night. '

Mr Perch's appearance corroborated this recital of his symptoms. Therewas an air of feverish lassitude about it, that seemed referable todrams; and, which, in fact, might no doubt have been traced to thosenumerous discoveries of himself in the bars of public-houses, beingtreated and questioned, which he was in the daily habit of making. 

'Therefore I can judge, ' said Mr Perch, shaking his head and speakingin a silvery murmur, 'of the feelings of such as is at all peculiarlysitiwated 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 behindhis hat; and that leading to nothing, he put his hat on the ground andsought in his breast pocket for the letter. 

'If I rightly recollect, there was no answer, ' said Mr Perch, with anaffable 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 possessinghimself 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 steptoward the door, and hoping, I'm sure, that you'll not permit yourselfto be more reduced in mind than you can help, by the late painfulrewelation. The Papers, ' said Mr Perch, taking two steps back again, andcomprehensively addressing both the brother and sister in a whisperof increased mystery, 'is more eager for news of it than you'd supposepossible. 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 whatsuccess?--was dodging about our court last night as late as twentyminutes after eight o'clock. I see him myself, with his eye at thecounting-house keyhole, which being patent is impervious. Another one, 'said Mr Perch, 'with military frogs, is in the parlour of the King'sArms all the blessed day. I happened, last week, to let a littleobserwation fall there, and next morning, which was Sunday, I see itworked up in print, in a most surprising manner. '

Mr Perch resorted to his breast pocket, as if to produce the paragraphbut receiving no encouragement, pulled out his beaver gloves, picked uphis hat, and took his leave; and before it was high noon, Mr Perch hadrelated to several select audiences at the King's Arms and elsewhere, how Miss Carker, bursting into tears, had caught him by both hands, andsaid, 'Oh! dear dear Perch, the sight of you is all the comfort I haveleft!' and how Mr John Carker had said, in an awful voice, 'Perch, Idisown him. Never let me hear hIm mentioned as a brother more!'

'Dear John, ' said Harriet, when they were left alone, and had remainedsilent 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 wasthere. I had been able to avoid him before, but of course could nothope to do that long. I know how natural it was that he should regard mypresence 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 amoment, 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 wasdistressing news, for many reasons. 

'"I need not tell you, "' said John Carker, reading the letter, '"whyyour name would henceforth have an unnatural sound, in however remotea connexion with mine, or why the daily sight of anyone who bearsit, would be unendurable to me. I have to notify the cessation of allengagements between us, from this date, and to request that no renewalof any communication with me, or my establishment, be ever attempted byyou. "--Enclosed is an equivalent in money to a generously long notice, and this is my discharge. " Heaven knows, Harriet, it is a lenient andconsiderate one, when we remember all!'

'If it be lenient and considerate to punish you at all, John, for themisdeed of another, ' she replied gently, 'yes. '

'We have been an ill-omened race to him, ' said John Carker. 'He hasreason to shrink from the sound of our name, and to think that there issomething 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 yousay you have, and think you have--though I say, No!--to love me, spareme the hearing of such wild mad words!'

He covered his face with both his hands; but soon permitted her, comingnear him, to take one in her own. 

'After so many years, this parting is a melancholy thing, I know, ' saidhis sister, 'and the cause of it is dreadful to us both. We have tolive, too, and must look about us for the means. Well, well! We can doso, undismayed. It is our pride, not our trouble, to strive, John, andto strive together!'

A smile played on her lips, as she kissed his cheek, and entreated himto 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 drivenevery friend of yours away!'

'John!' she laid her hand hastily upon his lips, 'for my sake! Inremembrance of our long companionship!' He was silent 'Now, let me tellyou, dear, ' quietly sitting by his side, 'I have, as you have, expectedthis; and when I have been thinking of it, and fearing that it wouldhappen, and preparing myself for it, as well as I could, I have resolvedto tell you, if it should be so, that I have kept a secret from you, andthat 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 tome of his friendship and his wish to serve us: and to this day I believe'him. '

'Harriet!' exclaimed her wondering brother, 'where does this friendlive?'

'Neither do I know that, ' she returned. 'But he knows us both, and ourhistory--all our little history, John. That is the reason why, at hisown 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. " Butgenerous, and frank, and good, I am sure. '

'And only seen once, Harriet?'

'In this room only once, ' said his sister, with the slightest and mosttransient glow upon her cheek; 'but when here, he entreated me to sufferhim 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 heproffered us any service he could render--which was the object of hisvisit--that we needed nothing. '

'And once a week--'

'Once every week since then, and always on the same day, and at thesame hour, he his gone past; always on foot; always going in the samedirection--towards London; and never pausing longer than to bow to me, and wave his hand cheerfully, as a kind guardian might. He made thatpromise when he proposed these curious interviews, and has kept it sofaithfully and pleasantly, that if I ever felt any trifling uneasinessabout them in the beginning (which I don't think I did, John; his mannerwas so plain and true) It very soon vanished, and left me quite gladwhen the day was coming. Last Monday--the first since this terribleevent--he did not go by; and I have wondered whether his absence canhave 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 nottried to account for it. I feel sure he will return. When he does, dearJohn, let me tell him that I have at last spoken to you, and let mebring you together. He will certainly help us to a new livelihood. Hisentreaty was that he might do something to smooth my life and yours; andI gave him my promise that if we ever wanted a friend, I would rememberhim. '

'Then his name was to be no secret, 'Harriet, ' said her brother, who hadlistened with close attention, 'describe this gentleman to me. I surelyought to know one who knows me so well. '

His sister painted, as vividly as she could, the features, stature, anddress of her visitor; but John Carker, either from having no knowledgeof the original, or from some fault in her description, or from someabstraction of his thoughts as he walked to and fro, pondering, couldnot recognise the portrait she presented to him. 

However, it was agreed between them that he should see the original whenhe next appeared. This concluded, the sister applied herself, with aless anxious breast, to her domestic occupations; and the grey-hairedman, late Junior of Dombey's, devoted the first day of his unwontedliberty to working in the garden. 

It was quite late at night, and the brother was reading aloud while thesister plied her needle, when they were interrupted by a knocking at thedoor. In the atmosphere of vague anxiety and dread that lowered aboutthem in connexion with their fugitive brother, this sound, unusualthere, became almost alarming. The brother going to the door, the sistersat and listened timidly. Someone spoke to him, and he replied andseemed surprised; and after a few words, the two approached together. 

'Harriet, ' said her brother, lighting in their late visitor, andspeaking in a low voice, 'Mr Morfin--the gentleman so long in Dombey'sHouse with James. '

His sister started back, as if a ghost had entered. In the doorway stoodthe unknown friend, with the dark hair sprinkled with grey, the ruddyface, the broad clear brow, and hazel eyes, whose secret she had kept solong!

'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 hadstopped a moment in the doorway--'is greatly relieved to hear yousay that: he has been devising ways and means, all the way here, ofexplaining himself, and has been satisfied with none. Mr John, I am notquite a stranger here. You were stricken with astonishment when you sawme at your door just now. I observe you are more astonished at present. Well! That's reasonable enough under existing circumstances. If we werenot such creatures of habit as we are, we shouldn't have reason to beastonished half so often. '

By this time, he had greeted Harriet with that able mingling ofcordiality and respect which she recollected so well, and had sat downnear her, pulled off his gloves, and thrown them into his hat upon thetable. 

'There's nothing astonishing, ' he said, 'in my having conceived a desireto 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 mentionedto you), there is nothing extraordinary in that. They soon grew into ahabit; and we are creatures of habit--creatures of habit!'

Putting his hands into his pockets, and leaning back in his chair, helooked at the brother and sister as if it were interesting to him tosee them together; and went on to say, with a kind of irritablethoughtfulness:

'It's this same habit that confirms some of us, who are capable ofbetter things, in Lucifer's own pride and stubbornness--that confirmsand deepens others of us in villainy--more of us in indifference--thathardens us from day to day, according to the temper of our clay, likeimages, and leaves us as susceptible as images to new impressions andconvictions. You shall judge of its influence on me, John. For moreyears than I need name, I had my small, and exactly defined share, inthe management of Dombey's House, and saw your brother (who has provedhimself a scoundrel! Your sister will forgive my being obliged tomention it) extending and extending his influence, until the businessand its owner were his football; and saw you toiling at your obscuredesk every day; and was quite content to be as little troubled as Imight be, out of my own strip of duty, and to let everything about me goon, day by day, unquestioned, like a great machine--that was its habitand mine--and to take it all for granted, and consider it all right. My Wednesday nights came regularly round, our quartette parties cameregularly off, my violoncello was in good tune, and there was nothingwrong in my world--or if anything not much--or little or much, it was noaffair of mine. '

'I can answer for your being more respected and beloved during all thattime than anybody in the House, Sir, ' said John Carker. 

'Pooh! Good-natured and easy enough, I daresay, 'returned the other, 'ahabit I had. It suited the Manager; it suited the man he managed: itsuited me best of all. I did what was allotted to me to do, made nocourt to either of them, and was glad to occupy a station in which nonewas required. So I should have gone on till now, but that my room hada thin wall. You can tell your sister that it was divided from theManager's room by a wainscot partition. '

'They were adjoining rooms; had been one, Perhaps, originally; and wereseparated, as Mr Morfin says, ' said her brother, looking back to him forthe resumption of his explanation. 

'I have whistled, hummed tunes, gone accurately through the whole ofBeethoven'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 thatI was within hearing of anything of a private nature, certainly. Butwhen I was, and couldn't otherwise avoid knowing something of it, Iwalked out. I walked out once, John, during a conversation between twobrothers, to which, in the beginning, young Walter Gay was a party. But I overheard some of it before I left the room. You remember itsufficiently, 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--ofbelieving that all was right about me, because I was used to it, 'said their visitor; 'and induced me to recall the history of the twobrothers, and to ponder on it. I think it was almost the first time inmy life when I fell into this train of reflection--how will many thingsthat are familiar, and quite matters of course to us now, look, when wecome to see them from that new and distant point of view which we mustall take up, one day or other? I was something less good-natured, as thephrase goes, after that morning, less easy and complacent altogether. '

He sat for a minute or so, drumming with one hand on the table; andresumed 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 asecond conversation between the same two brothers, in which their sisterwas mentioned. I had no scruples of conscience in suffering all thewaifs and strays of that conversation to float to me as freely as theywould. I considered them mine by right. After that, I came here to seethe sister for myself. The first time I stopped at the garden gate, Imade a pretext of inquiring into the character of a poor neighbour; butI 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 Iwished to say. Your sister showed me reasons which I dared not dispute, for receiving no assistance from me then; but I established a means ofcommunication between us, which remained unbroken until within thesefew days, when I was prevented, by important matters that have latelydevolved upon me, from maintaining them. '

'How little I have suspected this, ' said John Carker, 'when I have seenyou every day, Sir! If Harriet could have guessed your name--'

'Why, to tell you the truth, John, ' interposed the visitor, 'I kept itto myself for two reasons. I don't know that the first might havebeen binding alone; but one has no business to take credit for goodintentions, and I made up my mind, at all events, not to disclose myselfuntil I should be able to do you some real service or other. Mysecond reason was, that I always hoped there might be some lingeringpossibility of your brother's relenting towards you both; and in thatcase, I felt that where there was the chance of a man of his suspicious, watchful character, discovering that you had been secretly befriendedby me, there was the chance of a new and fatal cause of division. Iresolved, to be sure, at the risk of turning his displeasure againstmyself--which would have been no matter--to watch my opportunity ofserving you with the head of the House; but the distractions of death, courtship, marriage, and domestic unhappiness, have left us no head butyour brother for this long, long time. And it would have been betterfor us, ' said the visitor, dropping his voice, 'to have been a lifelesstrunk. '

He seemed conscious that these latter words had escaped hIm againsthis will, and stretching out a hand to the brother, and a hand to thesister, continued: 'All I could desire to say, and more, I have nowsaid. All I mean goes beyond words, as I hope you understand andbelieve. The time has come, John--though most unfortunately andunhappily come--when I may help you without interfering with thatredeeming struggle, which has lasted through so many years; since youwere discharged from it today by no act of your own. It is late; I needsay no more to-night. You will guard the treasure you have here, withoutadvice or reminder from me. '

With these words he rose to go. 

'But go you first, John, ' he said goodhumouredly, 'with a light, withoutsaying what you want to say, whatever that maybe;' John Carker's heartwas full, and he would have relieved it in speech, ' if he could; 'andlet me have a word with your sister. We have talked alone before, and inthis room too; though it looks more natural with you here. '

Following him out with his eyes, he turned kindly to Harriet, and saidin a lower voice, and with an altered and graver manner:

'You wish to ask me something of the man whose sister it is yourmisfortune to be. '

'I dread to ask, ' said Harriet. 

'You have looked so earnestly at me more than once, ' rejoined thevisitor, '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 hehas oftener dealt and speculated to advantage for himself, than forthe House he represented; that he has led the House on, to prodigiousventures, often resulting in enormous losses; that he has alwayspampered the vanity and ambition of his employer, when it was his dutyto 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 Housefor vast resources, and to exhibit it in magnificent contrast to othermerchants' Houses, of which it requires a steady head to contemplatethe possibly--a few disastrous changes of affairs might render them theprobably--ruinous consequences. In the midst of the many transactions ofthe House, in most parts of the world: a great labyrinth of which onlyhe has held the clue: he has had the opportunity, and he seems to haveused it, of keeping the various results afloat, when ascertained, andsubstituting estimates and generalities for facts. But latterly--youfollow me, Miss Harriet?'

'Perfectly, perfectly, ' she answered, with her frightened face fixed onhis. 'Pray tell me all the worst at once. 

'Latterly, he appears to have devoted the greatest pains to making theseresults so plain and clear, that reference to the private books enablesone to grasp them, numerous and varying as they are, with extraordinaryease. As if he had resolved to show his employer at one broad view whathas been brought upon him by ministration to his ruling passion! That ithas been his constant practice to minister to that passion basely, andto flatter it corruptly, is indubitable. In that, his criminality, as itis connected with the affairs of the House, chiefly consists. '

'One other word before you leave me, dear Sir, ' said Harriet. 'There isno 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, ' saidMr 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 bedifficulty, greater or less difficulty, but no danger, unless--unless, indeed--the head of the House, unable to bring his mind to the reductionof its enterprises, and positively refusing to believe that it is, or can be, in any position but the position in which he has alwaysrepresented it to himself, should urge it beyond its strength. Then itwould 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 ofmind is haughty, rash, unreasonable, and ungovernable, now. But he isdisturbed and agitated now beyond all common bounds, and it maypass. You now know all, both worst and best. No more to-night, andgood-night!'

With that he kissed her hand, and, passing out to the door where herbrother stood awaiting his coming, put him cheerfully aside when heessayed to speak; told him that, as they would see each other soon andoften, he might speak at another time, if he would, but there was noleisure for it then; and went away at a round pace, in order that noword of gratitude might follow him. 

The brother and sister sat conversing by the fireside, until it wasalmost day; made sleepless by this glimpse of the new world that openedbefore them, and feeling like two people shipwrecked long ago, upon asolitary coast, to whom a ship had come at last, when they were old inresignation, and had lost all thought of any other home. But another anddifferent kind of disquietude kept them waking too. The darkness out ofwhich this light had broken on them gathered around; and the shadow oftheir 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. Nextmorning it was there; at noon; at night Darkest and most distinct atnight, as is now to be told. 

John Carker had gone out, in pursuance of a letter of appointment fromtheir friend, and Harriet was left in the house alone. She had beenalone some hours. A dull, grave evening, and a deepening twilight, werenot favourable to the removal of the oppression on her spirits. The ideaof this brother, long unseen and unknown, flitted about her in frightfulshapes He was dead, dying, calling to her, staring at her, frowning onher. The pictures in her mind were so obtrusive and exact that, as thetwilight deepened, she dreaded to raise her head and look at the darkcorners of the room, lest his wraith, the offspring of her excitedimagination, should be waiting there, to startle her. Once she had sucha fancy of his being in the next room, hiding--though she knew quitewell what a distempered fancy it was, and had no belief in it--that sheforced herself to go there, for her own conviction. But in vain. Theroom resumed its shadowy terrors, the moment she left it; and she had nomore power to divest herself of these vague impressions of dread, thanif they had been stone giants, rooted in the solid earth. 

It was almost dark, and she was sitting near the window, with her headupon her hand, looking down, when, sensible of a sudden increase in thegloom of the apartment, she raised her eyes, and uttered an involuntarycry. Close to the glass, a pale scared face gazed in; vacantly, for aninstant, 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 onthe glass. 

She recognised immediately the woman with the long dark hair, to whomshe had given warmth, food, and shelter, one wet night. Naturally afraidof her, remembering her violent behaviour, Harriet, retreating a littlefrom the window, stood undecided and alarmed. 

'Let me in! Let me speak to you! I am thankful--quiet--humble--anythingyou 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 certaindread 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 herhand. 

'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 temptednow to go away. There seem to be hands dragging me from the door. Let mecome in, if you can trust me for this once!'

Her energy again prevailed, and they passed into the firelight ofthe little kitchen, where she had before sat, and ate, and dried herclothes. 

'Sit there, ' said Alice, kneeling down beside her, 'and look at me. Youremember me?'

'I do. '

'You remember what I told you I had been, and where I came from, raggedand 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 thedirt, and you and your race. Now, see me here, upon my knees. Am I lessearnest 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 Iask 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 fireshining on her ruined beauty and her wild black hair, one long tressof which she pulled over her shoulder, and wound about her hand, andthoughtfully bit and tore while speaking, she went on:

'When I was young and pretty, and this, ' plucking contemptuously atthe hair she held, was only handled delicately, and couldn't be admiredenough, my mother, who had not been very mindful of me as a child, foundout my merits, and was fond of me, and proud of me. She was covetous andpoor, and thought to make a sort of property of me. No great lady everthought that of a daughter yet, I'm sure, or acted as if she did--it'snever done, we all know--and that shows that the only instances ofmothers bringing up their daughters wrong, and evil coming of it, areamong such miserable folks as us. '

Looking at the fire, as if she were forgetful, for the moment, of havingany auditor, she continued in a dreamy way, as she wound the long tressof hair tight round and round her hand. 

'What came of that, I needn't say. Wretched marriages don't come of suchthings, in our degree; only wretchedness and ruin. Wretchedness and ruincame on me--came on me. 

Raising her eyes swiftly from their moody gaze upon the fire, toHarriet's face, she said:

'I am wasting time, and there is none to spare; yet if I hadn't thoughtof all, I shouldn't be here now. Wretchedness and ruin came on me, Isay. I was made a short-lived toy, and flung aside more cruelly andcarelessly 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 usagemade a Devil of me. I sunk in wretchedness and ruin, lower andlower yet. I was concerned in a robbery--in every part of it but thegains--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 manypounds as I have fingers on this hand. Who was it, do you think, whosnapped his fingers at me in my misery, lying, as he believed, at hisfeet, and left me without even this poor sign of remembrance; wellsatisfied that I should be sent abroad, beyond the reach of farthertrouble to him, and should die, and rot there? Who was this, do youthink?'

'Why do you ask me?' repeated Harriet. 

'Why do you tremble?' said Alice, laying her hand upon her arm' andlooking in her face, 'but that the answer is on your lips! It was yourbrother James. 

Harriet trembled more and more, but did not avert her eyes from theeager 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 havetravelled, weary and lame, over the whole world, to stab him, if I couldhave found him in a lonely place with no one near. Do you believe that Iwas 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 samelook in her face, 'I have seen him! I have followed him with my eyes, Inthe broad day. If any spark of my resentment slumbered in my bosom, itsprung into a blaze when my eyes rested on him. You know he haswronged a proud man, and made him his deadly enemy. What if I had giveninformation of him to that man?'

'Information!' repeated Harriet. 

'What if I had found out one who knew your brother's secret; who knewthe manner of his flight, who knew where he and the companion of hisflight were gone? What if I had made him utter all his knowledge, wordby word, before his enemy, concealed to hear it? What if I had sat by atthe time, looking into this enemy's face, and seeing it change till itwas 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, andmust, in so many hours, come up with him?'

'Remove your hand!' said Harriet, recoiling. 'Go away! Your touch isdreadful to me!'

'I have done this, ' pursued the other, with her eager look, regardlessof the interruption. 'Do I speak and look as if I really had? Do youbelieve what I am saying?'

'I fear I must. Let my arm go!'

'Not yet. A moment more. You can think what my revengeful purpose musthave 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, kneelingquietly on the ground, with my touch upon your arm, with my eyes uponyour face, you may believe that there is no common earnestness in whatI say, and that no common struggle has been battling in my breast. Iam ashamed to speak the words, but I relent. I despise myself; I havefought with myself all day, and all last night; but I relent towards himwithout 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 andheadlong. If you had seen him as he went out last night, you would knowthe danger better. 

'How can it be prevented? What can I do?' cried Harriet. 

'All night long, ' pursued the other, hurriedly, 'I had dreams ofhim--and yet I didn't sleep--in his blood. All day, I have had him nearme. 

'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 loseno 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 hedoesn't know him if he makes light of his approach. Tell him that he ison the road--I know he is!--and hurrying on. Urge him to get away whilethere is time--if there is time--and not to meet him yet. A month orso will make years of difference. Let them not encounter, through me. Anywhere but there! Any time but now! Let his foe follow him, andfind him for himself, but not through me! There is enough upon my headwithout. '

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 placewhere 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, adining-room, a drawing-room, a bed-room, and an inner drawingroom, orboudoir, smaller and more retired than the rest. All these shut in byone large pair of doors on the main staircase, but each room providedwith two or three pairs of doors of its own, establishing several meansof communication with the remaining portion of the apartment, or withcertain small passages within the wall, leading, as is not unusual insuch houses, to some back stairs with an obscure outlet below. The wholesituated on the first floor of so large an Hotel, that it did not absorbone entire row of windows upon one side of the square court-yard in thecentre, upon which the whole four sides of the mansion looked. 

An air of splendour, sufficiently faded to be melancholy, andsufficiently dazzling to clog and embarrass the details of life with ashow of state, reigned in these rooms The walls and ceilings were gildedand painted; the floors were waxed and polished; crimson drapery hungin festoons from window, door, and mirror; and candelabra, gnarled andintertwisted like the branches of trees, or horns of animals, stuckout from the panels of the wall. But in the day-time, when thelattice-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 andhabitation, when such shows and toys of life seem sensitive like life, and waste as men shut up in prison do. Even night, and clusters ofburning candles, could not wholly efface them, though the generalglitter 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 oneroom--that smaller room within the rest, just now enumerated. Seen fromthe hall, where a lamp was feebly burning, through the dark perspectiveof open doors, it looked as shining and precious as a gem. In the heartof its radiance sat a beautiful woman--Edith. 

She was alone. The same defiant, scornful woman still. The cheek alittle worn, the eye a little larger in appearance, and more lustrous, but the haughty bearing just the same. No shame upon her brow; no laterepentance bending her disdainful neck. Imperious and stately yet, andyet regardless of herself and of all else, she sat with her dark eyescast 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 anypause, possessed her. With her lips pressed together, and quiveringif for a moment she released them from her control; with her nostrilinflated; her hands clasped in one another; and her purpose swelling inher breast; she sat, and waited. 

At the sound of a key in the outer door, and a footstep in the hall, shestarted up, and cried 'Who's that?' The answer was in French, and twomen 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 theapartment. Monsieur had said, when he stayed there for an hour, enroute, and left the letter for Madame--Madame had received it surely?'

'Yes. '

'A thousand pardons! The sudden apprehension that it might have beenforgotten had struck hIm;' a bald man, with a large beard from aneighbouring restaurant; 'with despair! Monsieur had said that supperwas to be ready at that hour: also that he had forewarned Madame of thecommands he had given, in his letter. Monsieur had done the Golden Headthe honour to request that the supper should be choice and delicate. Monsieur would find that his confidence in the Golden Head was notmisplaced. '

Edith said no more, but looked on thoughtfully while they prepared thetable for two persons, and set the wine upon it. She arose before theyhad finished, and taking a lamp, passed into the bed-chamber and intothe drawing-room, where she hurriedly but narrowly examined all thedoors; particularly one in the former room that opened on the passage inthe wall. From this she took the key, and put it on the outer side. Shethen 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 completedtheir preparation of the table, and were standing looking at it. Hewho had spoken before, inquired whether Madame thought it would be longbefore 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 thesame) had spoken with great emphasis of his punctuality. But the Englishnation had so grand a genius for punctuality. Ah! what noise! GreatHeaven, here was Monsieur. Behold him!'

In effect, Monsieur, admitted by the other of the two, came, with hisgleaming teeth, through the dark rooms, like a mouth; and arriving inthat sanctuary of light and colour, a figure at full length, embracedMadame, and addressed her in the French tongue as his charming wife. 

'My God! Madame is going to faint. Madame is overcome with joy!' Thebald man with the beard observed it, and cried out. 

Madame had only shrunk and shivered. Before the words were spoken, shewas standing with her hand upon the velvet back of a great chair; herfigure drawn up to its full height, and her face immoveable. 

'Francois has flown over to the Golden Head for supper. He flies onthese occasions like an angel or a bird. The baggage of Monsieur is inhis room. All is arranged. The supper will be here this moment. ' Thesefacts the bald man notified with bows and smiles, and presently thesupper came. 

The hot dishes were on a chafing-dish; the cold already set forth, withthe change of service on a sideboard. Monsieur was satisfied with thisarrangement. The supper table being small, it pleased him very well. Letthem set the chafing-dish upon the floor, and go. He would remove thedishes with his own hands. 

'Pardon!' said the bald man, politely. 'It was impossible!'

Monsieur was of another opinion. He required no further attendance thatnight. 

'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 wellused 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 itafter them for the night. The bald man turning round to bow, as he wentout, observed that Madame still stood with her hand upon the velvetback 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 theintermediate rooms, and seemed to come hushed and stilled into that lastdistant one, the sound of the Cathedral clock striking twelve mingledwith it, in Edith's ears She heard him pause, as if he heard it tooand listened; and then came back towards her, laying a long train offootsteps through the silence, and shutting all the doors behind him ashe came along. Her hand, for a moment, left the velvet chair to bring aknife within her reach upon the table; then she stood as she had stoodbefore. 

'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; herattitude so repellent; and her frown so black; that he stood, with thelamp 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 hismost courtly smile, 'how strange to come here alone! It was unnecessartycaution surely, and might have defeated itself. You were to have engagedan attendant at Havre or Rouen, and have had abundance of time for thepurpose, though you had been the most capricious and difficult (as youare the most beautiful, my love) of women. '

Her eyes gleamed strangely on him, but she stood with her hand restingon the chair, and said not a word. 

'I have never, ' resumed Carker, 'seen you look so handsome, as you doto-night. Even the picture I have carried in my mind during this cruelprobation, and which I have contemplated night and day, is exceeded bythe reality. '

Not a word. Not a look Her eyes completely hidden by their droopinglashes, but her head held up. 

'Hard, unrelenting terms they were!' said Carker, with a smile, 'butthey are all fulfilled and passed, and make the present more deliciousand more safe. Sicily shall be the Place of our retreat. In the idlestand easiest part of the world, my soul, we'll both seek compensation forold slavery. '

He was coming gaily towards her, when, in an instant, she caught theknife 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 abhorrencesparkling in her eyes and lighting up her brow, made him stop as if afire 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 hisface, but he controlled them, and said lightly, 'Come, come! Tush, we are alone, and out of everybody's sight andhearing. Do you think to frighten me with these tricks of virtue?'

'Do you think to frighten me, ' she answered fiercely, 'from any purposethat I have, and any course I am resolved upon, by reminding me of thesolitude of this place, and there being no help near? Me, who am herealone, designedly? If I feared you, should I not have avoided you? If Ifeared you, should I be here, in the dead of night, telling you to yourface what I am going to tell?'

'And what is that, ' he said, 'you handsome shrew? Handsomer so, than anyother woman in her best humour?'

'I tell you nothing, ' she returned, until you go back to thatchair--except this, once again--Don't come near me! Not a step nearer. Itell 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 nailnervously, and looking at her sideways, with bitter discomfiture, evenwhile he feigned to be amused by her caprice. 

She put the knife down upon the table, and touching her bosom wIth herhand, said:

'I have something lying here that is no love trinket, and sooner thanendure 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 creepingthing that lives. '

He affected to laugh jestingly, and entreated her to act her play outquickly, for the supper was growing cold. But the secret look with whichhe regarded her, was more sullen and lowering, and he struck his footonce upon the floor with a muttered oath. 

'How many times, ' said Edith, bending her darkest glance upon him' 'hasyour bold knavery assailed me with outrage and insult? How many timesin your smooth manner, and mocking words and looks, have I been twittedwith my courtship and my marriage? How many times have you laid bare mywound of love for that sweet, injured girl and lacerated it? How oftenhave you fanned the fire on which, for two years, I have writhed; andtempted 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 goodaccount, 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 otherreasons for despising him could have been blown away like feathers, his having you for his counsellor and favourite, would have almost beenenough 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 meettonight, and part tonight. For not one moment after I have ceased tospeak, will I stay here!'

He turned upon her with his ugliest look, and gripped the table with hishand; but neither rose, nor otherwise answered or threatened her. 

'I am a woman, ' she said, confronting him steadfastly, 'who from herchildhood has been shamed and steeled. I have been offered and rejected, put up and appraised, until my very soul has sickened. I have not hadan accomplishment or grace that might have been a resource to me, but ithas been paraded and vended to enhance my value, as if the common crierhad called it through the streets. My poor, proud friends, have lookedon and approved; and every tie between us has been deadened in mybreast. There is not one of them for whom I care, as I could care fora pet dog. I stand alone in the world, remembering well what a hollowworld it has been to me, and what a hollow part of it I have beenmyself. You know this, and you know that my fame with it is worthless tome. '

'Yes; I imagined that, ' he said. 

'And calculated on it, ' she rejoined, 'and so pursued me. Grown tooindifferent for any opposition but indifference, to the daily workingof the hands that had moulded me to this; and knowing that my marriagewould at least prevent their hawking of me up and down; I sufferedmyself to be sold, as infamously as any woman with a halter round herneck 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 suchsolicitation and pursuit (expressed as clearly as if it had been writtenin the coarsest words, and thrust into my hand at every turn) from onemean villain, that I felt as if I had never known humiliation tillthat 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, repeatedhundreds of times. And thus--forced by the two from every point ofrest I had--forced by the two to yield up the last retreat of loveand gentleness within me, or to be a new misfortune on its innocentobject--driven from each to each, and beset by one when I escaped theother--my anger rose almost to distraction against both I do not knowagainst which it rose higher--the master or the man!'

He watched her closely, as she stood before him in the very triumph ofher indignant beauty. She was resolute, he saw; undauntable; with nomore fear of him than of a worm. 

'What should I say of honour or of chastity to you!' she went on. 'Whatmeaning would it have to you; what meaning would it have from me! But ifI tell you that the lightest touch of your hand makes my blood cold withantipathy; that from the hour when I first saw and hated you, to now, when my instinctive repugnance is enhanced by every minute's knowledgeof you I have since had, you have been a loathsome creature to me whichhas 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, youdared 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 canrecall it. '

'I can, ' she said. 'Hear it! Proposing then, this flight--not thisflight, but the flight you thought it--you told me that in the havinggiven you that meeting, and leaving you to be discovered there, if youso thought fit; and in the having suffered you to be alone with me manytimes before, --and having made the opportunities, you said, --and in thehaving openly avowed to you that I had no feeling for my husband butaversion, and no care for myself--I was lost; I had given you the powerto traduce my name; and I lived, in virtuous reputation, at the pleasureof 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 hadwith something that was not respect for my good fame--that was I knownot what--perhaps the clinging to that last retreat--was ended. On thatnight, and then, I turned from everything but passion and resentment. I struck a blow that laid your lofty master in the dust, and set youthere, 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 herbosom, 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 heldme in his arms as he has done again to-night, ' said Edith, pointing athim; 'when I forget the taint of his kiss upon my cheek--the cheek thatFlorence would have laid her guiltless face against--when I forget mymeeting with her, while that taint was hot upon me, and in what a floodthe knowledge rushed upon me when I saw her, that in releasing herfrom the persecution I had caused by my love, I brought a shame anddegradation on her name through mine, and in all time to come should bethe solitary figure representing in her mind her first avoidance of aguilty creature--then, Husband, from whom I stand divorced henceforth, I will forget these last two years, and undo what I have done, andundeceive you!'

Her flashing eyes, uplifted for a moment, lighted again on Carker, andshe held some letters out in her left hand. 

'See these!' she said, contemptuously. 'You have addressed these to mein the false name you go by; one here, some elsewhere on my road. Theseals are unbroken. Take them back!'

She crunched them in her hand, and tossed them to his feet. And as shelooked upon him now, a smile was on her face. 

'We meet and part to-night, ' she said. 'You have fallen on Siciliandays and sensual rest, too soon. You might have cajoled, and fawned, and played your traitor's part, a little longer, and grown richer. Youpurchase your voluptuous retirement dear!'

'Edith!' he retorted, menacing her with his hand. 'Sit down! Have donewith this! What devil possesses you?'

'Their name is Legion, ' she replied, uprearing her proud form as ifshe would have crushed him; 'you and your master have raised them in afruitful house, and they shall tear you both. False to him, false to hisinnocent child, false every way and everywhere, go forth and boast ofme, and gnash your teeth, for once, to know that you are lying!'

He stood before her, muttering and menacing, and scowling round as iffor something that would help him to conquer her; but with the sameindomitable spirit she opposed him, without faltering. 

'In every vaunt you make, ' she said, 'I have my triumph I single out inyou 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, andrevenge me on him! You know how you came here to-night; you know how youstand cowering there; you see yourself in colours quite as despicable, if not as odious, as those in which I see you. Boast then, and revengeme on yourself. '

The foam was on his lips; the wet stood on his forehead. If she wouldhave 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 yougo 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 vauntson my part? What if I were to turn too? Come!' and his teeth fairlyshone again. 'We must make a treaty of this, or I may take someunexpected course. Sit down, sit down!'

'Too late!' she cried, with eyes that seemed to sparkle fire. 'I havethrown my fame and good name to the winds! I have resolved to bearthe shame that will attach to me--resolved to know that it attachesfalsely--that you know it too--and that he does not, never can, andnever shall. I'll die, and make no sign. For this, I am here alone withyou, at the dead of night. For this, I have met you here, in a falsename, as your wife. For this, I have been seen here by those men, andleft 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. Buthe could not look at her, and not be afraid of her. He saw a strengthwithin her that was resistless. He saw that she was desperate, and thather unquenchable hatred of him would stop at nothing. His eyes followedthe hand that was put with such rugged uncongenial purpose into herwhite bosom, and he thought that if it struck at hIm, and failed, itwould strike there, just as soon. 

He did not venture, therefore, to advance towards her; but the door bywhich 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 knownthat you are in this place, or were to be, or have been. If I live, Isaw 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 sheheld her hand up like an enchantress, at whose invocation the sound hadcome. 

'Hark! do you hear it?'

He set his back against the door; for he saw a change in her, andfancied she was coming on to pass him. But, in a moment, she was gonethrough the opposite doors communicating with the bed-chamber, and theyshut upon her. 

Once turned, once changed in her inflexible unyielding look, he feltthat he could cope with her. He thought a sudden terror, occasionedby this night-alarm, had subdued her; not the less readily, for heroverwrought condition. Throwing open the doors, he followed, almostinstantly. 

But the room was dark; and as she made no answer to his call, hewas fain to go back for the lamp. He held it up, and looked round, everywhere, expecting to see her crouching in some corner; but theroom 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 shewas not there. No, nor in the hall, which was so bare that he could seethat, at a glance. 

All this time, the ringing at the bell was constantly renewed, and thosewithout 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, andthere was great confusion, he knew one of these too well to doubt whosevoice 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 lightraised above his head. He was standing thus in the bed-chamber, when thedoor, leading to the little passage in the wall, caught his eye. He wentto it, and found it fastened on the other side; but she had dropped aveil in going through, and shut it in the door. 

All this time the people on the stairs were ringing at the bell, andknocking with their hands and feet. 

He was not a coward: but these sounds; what had gone before; thestrangeness of the place, which had confused him, even in his returnfrom the hall; the frustration of his schemes (for, strange to say, hewould have been much bolder, if they had succeeded); the unseasonabletime; the recollection of having no one near to whom he could appeal forany friendly office; above all, the sudden sense, which made even hisheart beat like lead, that the man whose confidence he had outraged, and whom he had so treacherously deceived, was there to recognise andchallenge him with his mask plucked off his face; struck a panic throughhim. He tried the door in which the veil was shut, but couldn't forceit. He opened one of the windows, and looked down through the lattice ofthe blind, into the court-yard; but it was a high leap, and the stoneswere pitiless. 

The ringing and knocking still continuing--his panic too--he went backto the door in the bed-chamber, and with some new efforts, each morestubborn than the last, wrenched it open. Seeing the little staircasenot far off, and feeling the night-air coming up, he stole back for hishat and coat, made the door as secure after hIm as he could, crept downlamp in hand, extinguished it on seeing the street, and having put it ina 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; nodoubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the janglinggate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off. 

In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic thathad seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a heightthat he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather thanmeet 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 bravedout this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have putas bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of hismine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihoodand self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked;turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he hadslowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the merecreature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox'shide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid. 

Some other terror came upon hIm quite removed from this of beingpursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping throughthe streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, asssociated with a trembling of the ground, --a rush and sweep ofsomething through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if tolet the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet whata startling horror it had left behind. 

He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, wherethe stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been whenhe first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he shoulddo. The dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the lawsmight not protect him--the novelty of the feeling that it was strangeand remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid theruins of his plans--his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy orin Sicily, where men might be hired to assissinate him, he thought, atany dark street corner-the waywardness of guilt and fear--perhaps somesympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemes--impelledhim 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, thanabroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at leastI shall not be alone, with out a soul to speak to, or advise with, orstand 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 muttereddreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, asif in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. Thepeople were a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man witha 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. Leavingword that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole awayagain, 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 somesuch suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where theslender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death camerushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothingbut a horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as itsremotest verge. 

There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of thenight; there was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here andthere, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire androof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonelydistance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly strikingtwo. 

He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; oftenstopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted hisanxious ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringingvery slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until witha 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 atthe 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 cantravel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we gothen! Quick!'

'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the blacklandscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray!

The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of thefugitive'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 andcottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shiftingimages that rose up in his mind and vanished as they showed themselves, a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villainy. Occasionally, asigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading along theplain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible, againcame sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill upon hisblood. 

The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled withthe shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousandindistinct shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiarpeople, stooping at their desks and books, in their rememberedattitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom he was flying from, orof Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling wheels, of wordsthat had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making last nighta month ago, a month ago last night--home now distant beyond hope, nowinstantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and confusionin his mind, and all around him. --Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop over theblack landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking horsessnorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon, away ina frantic triumph on the dark road--whither?

Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bellsring in his ears 'whither?' The wheels roar in his ears 'whither?' Allthe noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadowsdance 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 ofreflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, fora minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of avoluptuous compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of histreachery to one who had been true and generous to him, but whose leastproud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for years--forfalse and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the objectupon which they fawn and always resent the payment and receipt of homagethat they know to be worthless; these were the themes uppermost in hismind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so entrapped him andavenged herself was always there; crude and misshapen schemes ofretaliation upon her, floated in his brain; but nothing was distinct. Ahurry and contradiction pervaded all his thoughts. Even while he was sobusy 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 hisremembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealoushe had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at adistance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself shouldcross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, likea scared thief, from only the poor dupe?

He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was thevery shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To havehis confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow--to be withinhis own knowledge such a miserable tool--was like being paralysed. Withan impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hatedhimself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else. 

Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again andagain his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was sopersuaded of this, that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss ofground 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 thematter?'

'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 bitanother, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. 'There isnothing 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 thehorses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver, checked unnecessarilyin his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and puts a new lashto his whip. Then 'Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!' Away once more, savagely. 

And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in thecarriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he hadcome, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all theheavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shineon cornfields and vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from littletemporary huts by heaps of stones upon the road, were, here and there, at work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there werepeasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at thedoors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then therewas a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vastouthouses 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 tothe taper tips of the extinguishers upon the turrets. 

Gathered up moodily in a corner of the carriage, and only intent ongoing fast--except when he stood up, for a mile together, and lookedback; which he would do whenever there was a piece of open country--hewent on, still postponing thought indefinitely, and still alwaystormented with thinking to no purpose. 

Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constantapprehension of being overtaken, or met--for he was groundlesslyafraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he wasgoing--oppressed him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread thathad come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. Themonotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotonyof his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like avision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment. 

It was a vision of long roads, that stretched away to an horizon, alwaysreceding and never gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, wherefaces came to dark doors and ill-glazed windows, and where rows ofmudbespattered cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long narrowstreets, butting and lowing, and receiving blows on their blunt headsfrom bludgeons that might have beaten them in; of bridges, crosses, churches, postyards, new horses being put in against their wills, andthe horses of the last stage reeking, panting, and laying their droopingheads together dolefully at stable doors; of little cemeteries withblack crosses settled sideways in the graves, and withered wreaths uponthem 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; ofbattering and clattering over it, and looking up, among house-roofs, ata great church-tower; of getting out and eating hastily, and drinkingdraughts of wine that had no cheering influence; of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars--blind men with quivering eyelids, led byold women holding candles to their faces; idiot girls; the lame, theepileptic, and the palsied--of passing through the clamour, and lookingfrom his seat at the upturned countenances and outstretched hands, with a hurried dread of recognising some pursuer pressing forward--ofgalloping away again, upon the long, long road, gathered up, dull andstunned, in his corner, or rising to see where the moon shone faintly ona patch of the same endless road miles away, or looking back to see whofollowed. 

Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with unclosed eyes, andspringing up with a start, and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice. Ofcursing himself for being there, for having fled, for having let hergo, for not having confronted and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrelwith the whole world, but chiefly with himself. Of blighting everythingwith his black mood as he was carried on and away. 

It was a fevered vision of things past and present all confoundedtogether; of his life and journey blended into one. Of being madlyhurried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old scenes starting up amongthe novelties through which he travelled. Of musing and brooding overwhat was past and distant, and seeming to take no notice of the actualobjects he encountered, but with a wearisome exhausting consciousness ofbeing bewildered by them, and having their images all crowded in his hotbrain after they were gone. 

A vision of change upon change, and still the same monotony of bells andwheels, 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 ofbells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. A vision of tendingon at last, towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and sweepinground, by old cathedrals, and dashing through small towns and villages, less thinly scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting shrouded inhis corner, with his cloak up to his face, as people passing by lookedat him. 

Of rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked withthinking; of being unable to reckon up the hours he had been upon theroad, or to comprehend the points of time and place in his journey. Ofbeing 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 riverheld its swift course undisturbed, between two brawling streams of lifeand motion. 

A troubled vision, then, of bridges, quays, interminable streets; ofwine-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 thegradual subsidence of that noise as he passed out in another carriageby a different barrier from that by which he had entered. Of therestoration, as he travelled on towards the seacoast, of the monotony ofbells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. 

Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long roads again, and dead ofnight, and feeble lights in windows by the roadside; and still the oldmonotony 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 morninglight upon the edges of the distant waves. Of coming down into a harbourwhen the tide was at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float on, andglad women and children waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's clothesspread out to dry upon the shore; of busy sailors, and their voices highamong ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of thewater, and the universal sparkling. 

Of receding from the coast, and looking back upon it from the deck whenit was a haze upon the water, with here and there a little opening ofbright land where the Sun struck. Of the swell, and flash, and murmur ofthe calm sea. Of another grey line on the ocean, on the vessel'strack, fast growing clearer and higher. Of cliffs and buildings, anda windmill, and a church, becoming more and more visible upon it. Ofsteaming on at last into smooth water, and mooring to a pierwhence groups of people looked down, greeting friends on board. Ofdisembarking, passing among them quickly, shunning every one; and ofbeing at last again in England. 

He had thought, in his dream, of going down into a remote country-placehe knew, and lying quiet there, while he secretly informed himself ofwhat transpired, and determined how to act, Still in the same stunnedcondition, he remembered a certain station on the railway, where hewould have to branch off to his place of destination, and where therewas a quiet Inn. Here, he indistinctly resolved to tarry and rest. 

With this purpose he slunk into a railway carriage as quickly as hecould, 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. Hewas 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 alteredfor the purpose, stood there, surrounded by its neat garden; the smalltown that was nearest, was some miles away. Here he alighted then; andgoing straight into the tavern, unobserved by anyone, secured two roomsupstairs communicating with each other, and sufficiently retired. 

His object was to rest, and recover the command of himself, and thebalance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and rage--so that, as hewalked about his room, he ground his teeth--had complete possession ofhim. His thoughts, not to be stopped or directed, still wandered wherethey would, and dragged him after them. He was stupefied, and he waswearied 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 moreinfluence with them, in this regard, than if they had been anotherman's. It was not that they forced him to take note of present soundsand objects, but that they would not be diverted from the whole hurriedvision of his journey. It was constantly before him all at once. Shestood there, with her dark disdainful eyes again upon him; and he wasriding on nevertheless, through town and country, light and darkness, wet weather and dry, over road and pavement, hill and valley, heightand hollow, jaded and scared by the monotony of bells and wheels, andhorses' feet, and no rest. 

'What day is this?' he asked of the waiter, who was making preparationsfor 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 railmyself, Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so. '

'Do many gentlemen come here?

'Pretty well, Sir, in general. Nobody here at present. Rather slack justnow, Sir. Everything is slack, Sir. '

He made no answer; but had risen into a sitting posture on the sofawhere 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 aminute together. It rushed away where it would, but it never, for aninstant, lost itself in sleep. 

He drank a quantity of wine after dinner, in vain. No such artificialmeans would bring sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoherent, dragged him more unmercifully after them--as if a wretch, condemned tosuch expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion, andno rest. 

How long he sat, drinking and brooding, and being dragged in imaginationhither and thither, no one could have told less correctly than he. Buthe knew that he had been sitting a long time by candle-light, when hestarted 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 godarting by; and even when he had hurried to the window, and saw what itwas, he stood, shrinking from it, as if it were not safe to look. 

A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering along so smoothly, trackedthrough the distant valley by a glare of light and lurid smoke, andgone! He felt as if he had been plucked out of its path, and saved frombeing torn asunder. It made him shrink and shudder even now, when itsfaintest hum was hushed, and when the lines of iron road he could tracein the moonlight, running to a point, were as empty and as silent as adesert. 

Unable to rest, and irresistibly attracted--or he thought so--to thisroad, he went out, and lounged on the brink of it, marking the way thetrain had gone, by the yet smoking cinders that were lying in itstrack. After a lounge of some half hour in the direction by which it haddisappeared, he turned and walked the other way--still keeping to thebrink of the road--past the inn garden, and a long way down; lookingcuriously at the bridges, signals, lamps, and wondering when anotherDevil would come by. 

A trembling of the ground, and quick vibration in his ears; a distantshriek; a dull light advancing, quickly changed to two red eyes, anda fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an irresistible bearing on of agreat roaring and dilating mass; a high wind, and a rattle--another comeand gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save himself!

He waited for another, and for another. He walked back to his formerpoint, and back again to that, and still, through the wearisome visionof his journey, looked for these approaching monsters. He loitered aboutthe station, waiting until one should stay to call there; and when onedid, and was detached for water, he stood parallel with it, watching itsheavy wheels and brazen front, and thinking what a cruel power and mightit had. Ugh! To see the great wheels slowly turning, and to think ofbeing run down and crushed!

Disordered with wine and want of rest--that want which nothing, althoughhe was so weary, would appease--these ideas and objects assumed adiseased importance in his thoughts. When he went back to his room, which was not until near midnight, they still haunted him, and he satlistening for the coming of another. 

So in his bed, whither he repaired with no hope of sleep. He still laylistening; and when he felt the trembling and vibration, got up and wentto the window, to watch (as he could from its position) the dull lightchanging to the two red eyes, and the fierce fire dropping glowingcoals, and the rush of the giant as it fled past, and the track of glareand smoke along the valley. Then he would glance in the direction bywhich he intended to depart at sunrise, as there was no rest for himthere; and would lie down again, to be troubled by the vision of hisjourney, and the old monotony of bells and wheels and horses' feet, until another came. This lasted all night. So far from resuming themastery of himself, he seemed, if possible, to lose it more and more, asthe night crept on. When the dawn appeared, he was still tormented withthinking, still postponing thought until he should be in a better state;the past, present, and future all floated confusedly before him, and hehad 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, nowentering 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 gentlemenhere, Sir, but they're waiting for the train to London. '

'I thought you said there was nobody here, ' said Carker, turning uponhim 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 thatstops 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 asthe man left the room. The cold light of morning had succeeded to nightand 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 influencein it for him--hurriedly put on his clothes, paid what he owed, and wentout. 

The air struck chill and comfortless as it breathed upon him. There wasa heavy dew; and, hot as he was, it made him shiver. After a glanceat the place where he had walked last night, and at the signal-lightsburning in the morning, and bereft of their significance, he turned towhere the sun was rising, and beheld it, in its glory, as it broke uponthe scene. 

So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so divinely solemn. As he casthis faded eyes upon it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmovedby all the wrong and wickedness on which its beams had shone since thebeginning of the world, who shall say that some weak sense of virtueupon Earth, and its in Heaven, did not manifest itself, even to him?If ever he remembered sister or brother with a touch of tenderness andremorse, who shall say it was not then?

He needed some such touch then. Death was on him. He was marked off--theliving world, and going down into his grave. 

He paid the money for his journey to the country-place he had thoughtof; 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 athand in the other; when, turning in his walk, where it was bounded byone end of the wooden stage on which he paced up and down, he saw theman from whom he had fled, emerging from the door by which he himselfhad entered. 

And their eyes met. 

In the quick unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped onto the road below him. But recovering his feet immediately, he steppedback a pace or two upon that road, to interpose some wider space betweenthem, and looked at his pursuer, breathing short and quick. 

He heard a shout--another--saw the face change from its vindictivepassion to a faint sickness and terror--felt the earth tremble--knew ina moment that the rush was come--uttered a shriek--looked round--saw thered eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon him--was beatendown, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that spun himround and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his streamof life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in theair. 

When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, hesaw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy andstill, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove somedogs away that sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up, with atrain 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 MrToots and the Chicken had gone into the Parlour. 

'Oh my own pretty darling sweet Miss Floy!' cried the Nipper, runninginto Florence's room, 'to think that it should come to this and I shouldfind you here my own dear dove with nobody to wait upon you and no hometo call your own but never never will I go away again Miss Floy forthough I may not gather moss I'm not a rolling stone nor is my heart astone 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 herclose. 

'Oh love!' cried Susan, 'I know all that's past I know it all my tenderpet and I'm a choking give me air!'

'Susan, dear good Susan!' said Florence. 'Oh bless her! I that was herlittle maid when she was a little child! and is she really, really trulygoing 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 Susanhysterically. 'I knew he must be right my dear, because he took on so. He's the devotedest and innocentest infant! And is my darling, ' pursuedSusan, with another close embrace and burst of tears, 'really reallygoing to be married!'

The mixture of compassion, pleasure, tenderness, protection, and regretwith which the Nipper constantly recurred to this subject, and at everysuch once, raised her head to look in the young face and kiss it, andthen laid her head again upon her mistress's shoulder, caressing her andsobbing, was as womanly and good a thing, in its way, as ever was seenin the world. 

'There, there!' said the soothing voice of Florence presently. 'Nowyou'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 withone hand, and patting Diogenes with the other as he licked her face, confessed to being more composed, and laughed and cried a little more inproof of it. 

'I-I-I never did see such a creetur as that Toots, ' said Susan, 'in allmy born days never!'

'So kind, ' suggested Florence. 

'And so comic!' Susan sobbed. 'The way he's been going on inside with mewith that disrespectable Chicken on the box!'

'About what, Susan?' inquired Florence, timidly. 

'Oh about Lieutenant Walters, and Captain Gills, and you my dear MissFloy, and the silent tomb, ' said Susan. 

'The silent tomb!' repeated Florence. 

'He says, ' here Susan burst into a violent hysterical laugh, 'that he'llgo down into it now immediately and quite comfortable, but bless yourheart my dear Miss Floy he won't, he's a great deal too happy in seeingother people happy for that, he may not be a Solomon, ' pursued theNipper, with her usual volubility, 'nor do I say he is but this I dosay a less selfish human creature human nature never knew!' Miss Nipperbeing still hysterical, laughed immoderately after making this energeticdeclaration, and then informed Florence that he was waiting below to seeher; which would be a rich repayment for the trouble he had had in hislate expedition. 

Florence entreated Susan to beg of Mr Toots as a favour that she mighthave the pleasure of thanking him for his kindness; and Susan, in a fewmoments, produced that young gentleman, still very much dishevelled inappearance, and stammering exceedingly. 

'Miss Dombey, ' said Mr Toots. 'To be again permitted to--to--gaze--atleast, 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 herhands, with all her innocent gratitude beaming in her face, 'that I haveno words left, and don't know how to do it. '

'Miss Dombey, ' said Mr Toots, in an awful voice, 'if it was possiblethat you could, consistently with your angelic nature, Curse me, youwould--if I may be allowed to say so--floor me infinitely less, than bythese undeserved expressions of kindness Their effect upon me--is--but, 'said Mr Toots, abruptly, 'this is a digression, and of no consequence atall. '

As there seemed to be no means of replying to this, but by thanking himagain, 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 hadthe pleasure of--of returning with Susan at an earlier period; but, inthe first place, we didn't know the name of the relation to whose houseshe had gone, and, in the second, as she had left that relation's andgone to another at a distance, I think that scarcely anything short ofthe 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 Susanhas been, I assure you, Miss Dombey, a consolation and satisfactionto me, in my state of mind, more easily conceived than described. Thejourney has been its own reward. That, however, still, is not thepoint. Miss Dombey, I have before observed that I know I am not what isconsidered a quick person. I am perfectly aware of that. I don't thinkanybody could be better acquainted with his own--if it was not toostrong an expression, I should say with the thickness of his ownhead--than myself. But, Miss Dombey, I do, notwithstanding, perceive thestate of--of things--with Lieutenant Walters. Whatever agony that stateof things may have caused me (which is of no consequence at all), Iam bound to say, that Lieutenant Walters is a person who appears to beworthy of the blessing that has fallen on his--on his brow. May hewear it long, and appreciate it, as a very different, and very unworthyindividual, that it is of no consequence to name, would have done! That, however, still, is not the point. Miss Dombey, Captain Gills is a friendof mine; and during the interval that is now elapsing, I believe itwould afford Captain Gills pleasure to see me occasionally comingbackwards and forwards here. It would afford me pleasure so to come. ButI cannot forget that I once committed myself, fatally, at the corner ofthe 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 youthat I shall perfectly understand you. I shall not consider it at allunkind, and shall only be too delighted and happy to be honoured withyour confidence. '

'Mr Toots, ' returned Florence, 'if you, who are so old and true a friendof mine, were to stay away from this house now, you would make me veryunhappy. It can never, never, give me any feeling but pleasure to seeyou. 

'Miss Dombey, ' said Mr Toots, taking out his pocket-handkerchief, 'if Ished a tear, it is a tear of joy. It is of no consequence, and I am verymuch obliged to you. I may be allowed to remark, after what you haveso kindly said, that it is not my intention to neglect my person anylonger. '

Florence received this intimation with the prettiest expression ofperplexity possible. 

'I mean, ' said Mr Toots, 'that I shall consider it my duty as afellow-creature generally, until I am claimed by the silent tomb, tomake 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. Ithank you very much indeed. If I am not, in a general way, as sensibleas my friends could wish me to be, or as I could wish myself, Ireally am, upon my word and honour, particularly sensible of what isconsiderate and kind. I feel, ' said Mr Toots, in an impassioned tone, 'as if I could express my feelings, at the present moment, in a mostremarkable manner, if--if--I could only get a start. '

Appearing not to get it, after waiting a minute or two to see if itwould come, Mr Toots took a hasty leave, and went below to seek theCaptain, whom he found in the shop. 

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'what is now to take place betweenus, 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 ofacquiescence was greatly heightened by his entire ignorance of theCaptain's meaning. 'Miss Dombey, I believe, Captain Gills, is to beshortly united to Lieutenant Walters?'

'Why, ay, my lad. We're all shipmets here, --Wal'r and sweet--heart willbe jined together in the house of bondage, as soon as the askings isover, ' whispered Captain Cuttle, in his ear. 

'The askings, Captain Gills!' repeated Mr Toots. 

'In the church, down yonder, ' said the Captain, pointing his thumb overhis shoulder. 

'Oh! Yes!' returned Mr Toots. 

'And then, ' said the Captain, in his hoarse whisper, and tapping MrToots on the chest with the back of his hand, and falling from him witha look of infinite admiration, 'what follers? That there pretty creetur, as delicately brought up as a foreign bird, goes away upon the roaringmain 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 wreckedin the hurricane that had drove her clean out of her course, was aChina trader, and Wal'r made the woyage, and got into favour, aboardand ashore--being as smart and good a lad as ever stepped--and so, thesupercargo dying at Canton, he got made (having acted as clerk afore), and now he's supercargo aboard another ship, same owners. And so, yousee, ' repeated the Captain, thoughtfully, 'the pretty creetur goes awayupon the roaring main with Wal'r, on a woyage to China. '

Mr Toots and Captain Cuttle heaved a sigh in concert. 'What then?' saidthe Captain. 'She loves him true. He loves her true. Them as should haveloved and tended of her, treated of her like the beasts as perish. Whenshe, 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 choppedoff, afore I'd let her go. But I know it, and what then! Why, then, Isay, Heaven go with 'em both, and so it will! Amen!'

'Captain Gills, ' said Mr Toots, 'let me have the pleasure of shakinghands 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 tombshall yawn, Captain Gills, I shall be ready for burial; not before. Butnot being certain, just at present, of my power over myself, what I wishto say to you, and what I shall take it as a particular favour if youwill mention to Lieutenant Walters, is as follows. '

'Is as follers, ' echoed the Captain. 'Steady!'

'Miss Dombey being so inexpressably kind, ' continued Mr Toots withwatery eyes, 'as to say that my presence is the reverse of disagreeableto her, and you and everybody here being no less forbearing andtolerant towards one who--who certainly, ' said Mr Toots, with momentarydejection, 'would appear to have been born by mistake, I shall comebackwards and forwards of an evening, during the short time we can allbe together. But what I ask is this. If, at any moment, I find thatI cannot endure the contemplation of Lieutenant Walters's bliss, andshould rush out, I hope, Captain Gills, that you and he will bothconsider it as my misfortune and not my fault, or the want of inwardconflict. That you'll feel convinced I bear no malice to any livingcreature-least of all to Lieutenant Walters himself--and that you'llcasually remark that I have gone out for a walk, or probably to see whato'clock it is by the Royal Exchange. Captain Gills, if you could enterinto this arrangement, and could answer for Lieutenant Walters, it wouldbe a relief to my feelings that I should think cheap at the sacrifice ofa considerable portion of my property. '

'My lad, ' returned the Captain, 'say no more. There ain't a colour youcan 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 topreserve 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 exactlyas Burgess and Co. Wished to oblige a customer with a most extraordinarypair of trousers, and could not cut out what they had in their minds. '

With this apposite illustration, of which he seemed a little Proud, MrToots gave Captain Cuttle his blessing and departed. 

The honest Captain, with his Heart's Delight in the house, and Susantending her, was a beaming and a happy man. As the days flew by, hegrew more beaming and more happy, every day. After some conferences withSusan (for whose wisdom the Captain had a profound respect, and whosevaliant precipitation of herself on Mrs MacStinger he could neverforget), he proposed to Florence that the daughter of the elderly ladywho usually sat under the blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, should, for prudential reasons and considerations of privacy, be superseded inthe temporary discharge of the household duties, by someone who was notunknown to them, and in whom they could safely confide. Susan, beingpresent, then named, in furtherance of a suggestion she had previouslyoffered to the Captain, Mrs Richards. Florence brightened at the name. And Susan, setting off that very afternoon to the Toodle domicile, tosound Mrs Richards, returned in triumph the same evening, accompanied bythe identical rosy-cheeked apple-faced Polly, whose demonstrations, whenbrought into Florence's presence, were hardly less affectionate thanthose of Susan Nipper herself. 

This piece of generalship accomplished; from which the Captain deriveduncommon satisfaction, as he did, indeed, from everything else that wasdone, whatever it happened to be; Florence had next to prepare Susan fortheir approaching separation. This was a much more difficult task, asMiss Nipper was of a resolute disposition, and had fully made up hermind that she had come back never to be parted from her old mistress anymore. 

'As to wages dear Miss Floy, ' she said, 'you wouldn't hint and wrong meso as think of naming them, for I've put money by and wouldn't sell mylove and duty at a time like this even if the Savings' Banks and me weretotal strangers or the Banks were broke to pieces, but you've never beenwithout me darling from the time your poor dear Ma was took away, andthough I'm nothing to be boasted of you're used to me and oh my own dearmistress 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 ofvoyages ain't an object in my eyes, thank God!' said the impetuous SusanNipper. 

'But, Susan, I am going with Walter, and I would go with Walteranywhere--everywhere! Walter is poor, and I am very poor, and I mustlearn, now, both to help myself, and help him. '

'Dear Miss Floy!' cried Susan, bursting out afresh, and shaking her headviolently, 'it's nothing new to you to help yourself and others tooand be the patientest and truest of noble hearts, but let me talk to MrWalter Gay and settle it with him, for suffer you to go away across theworld alone I cannot, and I won't. '

'Alone, Susan?' returned Florence. 'Alone? and Walter taking me withhim!' Ah, what a bright, amazed, enraptured smile was on her face!--Heshould have seen it. 'I am sure you will not speak to Walter if I askyou 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 mywhole heart, and to live with him and die with him. He might think, ifyou said to him what you have said to me, that I am afraid of what isbefore 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, thatshe could only cling to her again, crying. Was her little mistressreally, really going to be married, and pitying, caressing, andprotecting her, as she had done before. But the Nipper, thoughsusceptible of womanly weaknesses, was almost as capable of puttingconstraint upon herself as of attacking the redoubtable MacStinger. Fromthat time, she never returned to the subject, but was always cheerful, active, bustling, and hopeful. She did, indeed, inform Mr Tootsprivately, that she was only 'keeping up' for the time, and that when itwas all over, and Miss Dombey was gone, she might be expected to becomea spectacle distressful; and Mr Toots did also express that it was hiscase too, and that they would mingle their tears together; but she neverotherwise indulged her private feelings in the presence of Florence orwithin the precincts of the Midshipman. 

Limited and plain as Florence's wardrobe was--what a contrast to thatprepared for the last marriage in which she had taken part!--there was agood deal to do in getting it ready, and Susan Nipper worked away ather side, all day, with the concentrated zeal of fifty sempstresses. Thewonderful contributions Captain Cuttle would have made to this branchof the outfit, if he had been permitted--as pink parasols, tintedsilk stockings, blue shoes, and other articles no less necessary onshipboard--would occupy some space in the recital. He was induced, however, by various fraudulent representations, to limit hiscontributions to a work-box and dressing case, of each of which hepurchased the very largest specimen that could be got for money. Forten days or a fortnight afterwards, he generally sat, during thegreater part of the day, gazing at these boxes; divided between extremeadmiration of them, and dejected misgivings that they were not gorgeousenough, and frequently diving out into the street to purchase somewild article that he deemed necessary to their completeness. But hismaster-stroke was, the bearing of them both off, suddenly, one morning, and getting the two words FLORENCE GAY engraved upon a brass heartinlaid over the lid of each. After this, he smoked four pipessuccessively in the little parlour by himself, and was discoveredchuckling, at the expiration of as many hours. 

Walter was busy and away all day, but came there every morning earlyto see Florence, and always passed the evening with her. Florence neverleft her high rooms but to steal downstairs to wait for him when it washis time to come, or, sheltered by his proud, encircling arm, to bearhim company to the door again, and sometimes peep into the street. Inthe twilight they were always together. Oh blessed time! Oh wanderingheart at rest! Oh deep, exhaustless, mighty well of love, in which somuch was sunk!

The cruel mark was on her bosom yet. It rose against her father with thebreath she drew, it lay between her and her lover when he pressed her tohis heart. But she forgot it. In the beating of that heart for her, andin the beating of her own for him, all harsher music was unheard, allstern unloving hearts forgotten. Fragile and delicate she was, but witha might of love within her that could, and did, create a world to flyto, and to rest in, out of his one image. 

How often did the great house, and the old days, come before her in thetwilight time, when she was sheltered by the arm, so proud, so fond, and, creeping closer to him, shrunk within it at the recollection! Howoften, from remembering the night when she went down to that room andmet the never-to-be forgotten look, did she raise her eyes to those thatwatched her with such loving earnestness, and weep with happiness insuch a refuge! The more she clung to it, the more the dear dead childwas 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 lefthim so, and never, in her fancy, passed that hour. 

'Walter, dear, ' said Florence, one evening, when it was almost dark. 'Doyou know what I have been thinking to-day?'

'Thinking how the time is flying on, and how soon we shall be upon thesea, sweet Florence?'

'I don't mean that, Walter, though I think of that too. I have beenthinking 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 thanmine. But I mean a cost. 

'A cost, my own?'

'In money, dear. All these preparations that Susan and I are so busywith--I have been able to purchase very little for myself. You were poorbefore. 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 littlepurse presented to me, dearest, which had money in it. '

'Ah!' returned Florence, laughing sorrowfully, 'very little! verylittle, Walter! But, you must not think, ' and here she laid her lighthand on his shoulder, and looked into his face, 'that I regret to bethis burden on you. No, dear love, I am glad of it. I am happy in it. Iwouldn'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 speakof you must say you married a poor disowned girl, who had taken shelterhere; who had no other home, no other friends; who had nothing--nothing!Oh, Walter, if I could have brought you millions, I never could havebeen 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 abouthis 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. Ihave nothing dear to me any more, that is not you. 

Oh! well might Mr Toots leave the little company that evening, and twicego out to correct his watch by the Royal Exchange, and once to keep anappointment with a banker which he suddenly remembered, and once to takea little turn to Aldgate Pump and back!

But before he went upon these expeditions, or indeed before he came, andbefore lights were brought, Walter said:

'Florence, love, the lading of our ship is nearly finished, and probablyon the very day of our marriage she will drop down the river. Shall wego away that morning, and stay in Kent until we go on board at Gravesendwithin 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, andthat nobody will distinguish us by our dress from other people. As weleave 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 lovedshould, and confirmed his ready promise with a kiss--with more than oneperhaps, or two or threes or five or six; and in the grave, peacefulevening, Florence was very happy. 

Then into the quiet room came Susan Nipper and the candles; shortlyafterwards, the tea, the Captain, and the excursive Mr Toots, who, asabove mentioned, was frequently on the move afterwards, and passed but arestless evening. This, however, was not his habit: for he generally goton very well, by dint of playing at cribbage with the Captain under theadvice and guidance of Miss Nipper, and distracting his mind withthe calculations incidental to the game; which he found to be a veryeffectual means of utterly confounding himself. 

The Captain's visage on these occasions presented one of the finestexamples of combination and succession of expression ever observed. Hisinstinctive delicacy and his chivalrous feeling towards Florence, taught him that it was not a time for any boisterous jollity, or violentdisplay of satisfaction; floating reminiscences of Lovely Peg, onthe other hand, were constantly struggling for a vent, and urging theCaptain to commit himself by some irreparable demonstration. Anon, hisadmiration of Florence and Walter--well-matched, truly, and full ofgrace and interest in their youth, and love, and good looks, as theysat apart--would take such complete possession of hIm, that he would laydown his cards, and beam upon them, dabbing his head all over with hispockethandkerchief; until warned, perhaps, by the sudden rushing forthof Mr Toots, that he had unconsciously been very instrumental, indeed, in making that gentleman miserable. This reflection would make theCaptain profoundly melancholy, until the return of Mr Toots; when hewould fall to his cards again, with many side winks and nods, and politewaves of his hook at Miss Nipper, importing that he wasn't going to doso any more. The state that ensued on this, was, perhaps, his best; forthen, endeavouring to discharge all expression from his face, he wouldsit staring round the room, with all these expressions conveyed intoit at once, and each wrestling with the other. Delighted admiration ofFlorence and Walter always overthrew the rest, and remained victoriousand undisguised, unless Mr Toots made another rush into the air, andthen the Captain would sit, like a remorseful culprit, until he cameback again, occasionally calling upon himself, in a low reproachfulvoice, to 'Stand by!' or growling some remonstrance to 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, ' on the want of caution observabl in his behaviour. 

One of Mr Toots's hardest trials, however, was of his own seeking. On the approach of the Sunday which was to witness the last of thoseaskings in church of which the Captain had spoken, Mr Toots thus statedhis feelings to Susan Nipper. 

'Susan, ' said Mr Toots, 'I am drawn towards the building. The wordswhich cut me off from Miss Dombey for ever, will strike upon my earslike a knell you know, but upon my word and honour, I feel that I musthear 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 anysatisfaction to Mr Toots, but besought him to abandon his idea of going. 

'Susan, ' returned Mr Toots, with much solemnity, 'before my whiskersbegan to be observed by anybody but myself, I adored Miss Dombey. Whileyet a victim to the thraldom of Blimber, I adored Miss Dombey. When Icould 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 whichconsign her to Lieutenant Walters, and me to--to Gloom, you know, ' saidMr Toots, after hesitating for a strong expression, 'may be dreadful, will be dreadful; but I feel that I should wish to hear them spoken. Ifeel that I should wish to know that the ground was certainly cut fromunder 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 didnext morning. 

The church Walter had chosen for the purpose, was a mouldy old churchin a yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets and courts, with alittle burying-ground round it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed by the neighbouring houses, and paved with echoing stones It wasa great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken pews, among which abouta score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while the clergyman'svoice drowsily resounded through the emptiness, and the organrumbled and rolled as if the church had got the colic, for want of acongregation to keep the wind and damp out. But so far was this citychurch from languishing for the company of other churches, that spireswere 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 somany. In almost every yard and blind-place near, there was a church. Theconfusion of bells when Susan and Mr Toots betook themselves towards iton the Sunday morning, was deafening. There were twenty churches closetogether, clamouring for people to come in. 

The two stray sheep in question were penned by a beadle in a commodiouspew, and, being early, sat for some time counting the congregation, listening to the disappointed bell high up in the tower, or looking ata shabby little old man in the porch behind the screen, who was ringingthe same, like the Bull in Cock Robin, ' with his foot in a stirrup. MrToots, after a lengthened survey of the large books on the reading-desk, whispered Miss Nipper that he wondered where the banns were kept, butthat young lady merely shook her head and frowned; repelling for thetime 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 portionof the service. As the time for reading them approached, the pooryoung gentleman manifested great anxiety and trepidation, which was notdiminished by the unexpected apparition of the Captain in the front rowof the gallery. When the clerk handed up a list to the clergyman, MrToots, being then seated, held on by the seat of the pew; but when thenames of Walter Gay and Florence Dombey were read aloud as being in thethird and last stage of that association, he was so entirley conqueredby his feelings as to rush from the church without his hat, followed bythe beadle and pew-opener, and two gentlemen of the medical profeesion, who happened to be present; of whom the first-named presently returnedfor that article, informing Miss Nipper in a whisper that she was notto make herself uneasy about the gentleman, as the gentleman said hisindisposition was of no consequence. 

Miss Nipper, feeling that the eyes of that integral portion of Europewhich lost itself weekly among the high-backed pews, were upon her, would have been sufficient embarrassed by this incident, though it hadterminated here; the more so, as the Captain in the front row of thegallery, was in a state of unmitigated consciousness which couldhardly fail to express to the congregation that he had some mysteriousconnection with it. But the extreme restlessness of Mr Toots painfullyincreased and protracted the delicacy of her situation. That younggentleman, incapable, in his state of mind, of remaining alone in thechurchyard, a prey to solitary meditation, and also desirous, nodoubt, of testifying his respect for the offices he had in somemeasure interrupted, suddenly returned--not coming back to the pew, but stationing himself on a free seat in the aisle, between two elderlyfemales who were in the habit of receiving their portion of aweekly dole of bread then set forth on a shelf in the porch. In thisconjunction Mr Toots remained, greatly disturbing the congregation, whofelt it impossible to avoid looking at him, until his feelings overcamehim again, when he departed silently and suddenly. Not venturing totrust himself in the church any more, and yet wishing to have somesocial participation in what was going on there, Mr Toots was, afterthis, seen from time to time, looking in, with a lorn aspect, at one orother of the windows; and as there were several windows accessible tohim from without, and as his restlessness was very great, it not onlybecame difficult to conceive at which window he would appear next, butlikewise became necessary, as it were, for the whole congregationto speculate upon the chances of the different windows, during thecomparative leisure afforded them by the sermon. Mr Toots's movements inthe churchyard were so eccentric, that he seemed generally to defeatall calculation, and to appear, like the conjuror's figure, where hewas least expected; and the effect of these mysterious presentationswas much increased by its being difficult to him to see in, and easy toeverybody 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, andvanished. 

These proceedings on the part of Mr Toots, and the strong individualconsciousness of them that was exhibited by the Captain, rendered MissNipper's position so responsible a one, that she was mightily relievedby the conclusion of the service; and was hardly so affable to Mr Tootsas usual, when he informed her and the Captain, on the way back, thatnow he was sure he had no hope, you know, he felt more comfortable--atleast not exactly more comfortable, but more comfortably and completelymiserable. 

Swiftly now, indeed, the time flew by until it was the evening beforethe day appointed for the marriage. They were all assembled in the upperroom at the Midshipman's, and had no fear of interruption; for therewere no lodgers in the house now, and the Midshipman had it all tohimself. They were grave and quiet in the prospect of to-morrow, butmoderately cheerful too. Florence, with Walter close beside her, wasfinishing a little piece of work intended as a parting gift to theCaptain. The Captain was playing cribbage with Mr Toots. Mr Toots wastaking counsel as to his hand, of Susan Nipper. Miss Nipper was givingit, with all due secrecy and circumspection. Diogenes was listening, and occasionally breaking out into a gruff half-smothered fragment ofa bark, of which he afterwards seemed half-ashamed, as if he doubtedhaving 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 immediatelyafterwards, and gave utterance to another fragment of a bark; for whichhe apologised to the Captain, by again wagging his tail. 

'It's my opinion, Di, ' said the Captain, looking thoughtfully at hiscards, and stroking his chin with his hook, 'as you have your doubts ofMrs Richards; but if you're the animal I take you to be, you'll thinkbetter o' that; for her looks is her commission. Now, Brother:' to MrToots: 'if so be as you're ready, heave ahead. '

The Captain spoke with all composure and attention to the game, butsuddenly his cards dropped out of his hand, his mouth and eyes openedwide, 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 uponthe company, and seeing that none of them observed him or the causeof his astonishment, the Captain recovered himself with a great gasp, struck the table a tremendous blow, cried in a stentorian roar, 'SolGills ahoy!' and tumbled into the arms of a weather-beaten pea-coat thathad come with Polly into the room. 

In another moment, Walter was in the arms of the weather-beatenpea-coat. In another moment, Florence was in the arms of theweather-beaten pea-coat. In another moment, Captain Cuttle had embracedMrs Richards and Miss Nipper, and was violently shaking hands with MrToots, exclaiming, as he waved his hook above his head, 'Hooroar, mylad, hooroar!' To which Mr Toots, wholly at a loss to account for theseproceedings, replied with great politeness, 'Certainly, Captain Gills, whatever you think proper!'

The weather-beaten pea-coat, and a no less weather-beaten cap andcomforter belonging to it, turned from the Captain and from Florenceback to Walter, and sounds came from the weather-beaten pea-coat, cap, and comforter, as of an old man sobbing underneath them; while theshaggy sleeves clasped Walter tight. During this pause, there wasan universal silence, and the Captain polished his nose with greatdiligence. But when the pea-coat, cap, and comforter lifted themselvesup again, Florence gently moved towards them; and she and Walter takingthem off, disclosed the old Instrument-maker, a little thinner and morecareworn than of old, in his old Welsh wig and his old coffee-colouredcoat and basket buttons, with his old infallible chronometer tickingaway in his pocket. 

'Chock full o' science, ' said the radiant Captain, 'as ever he was! SolGills, Sol Gills, what have you been up to, for this many a long day, myould boy?'

'I'm half blind, Ned, ' said the old man, 'and almost deaf and dumb withjoy. '

'His wery woice, ' said the Captain, looking round with an exultationto which even his face could hardly render justice--'his wery woice aschock full o' science as ever it was! Sol Gills, lay to, my lad, uponyour own wines and fig-trees like a taut ould patriark as you are, andoverhaul them there adwentures o' yourn, in your own formilior woice. 'Tis the woice, ' said the Captain, impressively, and announcing aquotation with his hook, 'of the sluggard, I heerd him complain, youhave woke me too soon, I must slumber again. Scatter his ene-mies, andmake 'em fall!'

The Captain sat down with the air of a man who had happily expressed thefeeling of everybody present, and immediately rose again to present MrToots, who was much disconcerted by the arrival of anybody, appearing toprefer a claim to the name of Gills. 

'Although, ' stammered Mr Toots, 'I had not the pleasure of youracquaintance, 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 thepleasure of your acquaintance, Mr--Mr Sols, ' said Toots, hitting on thatname in the inspiration of a bright idea, 'before that happened, I havethe greatest pleasure, I assure you, in--you know, in knowing you. Ihope, ' 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 andFlorence, and nodding at Polly, who was looking on, all smiles anddelight, answered the Captain thus:

'Ned Cuttle, my dear boy, although I have heard something of the changesof events here, from my pleasant friend there--what a pleasant face shehas to be sure, to welcome a wanderer home!' said the old man, breakingoff, and rubbing his hands in his old dreamy way. 

'Hear him!' cried the Captain gravely. ''Tis woman as seduces allmankind. For which, ' aside to Mr Toots, 'you'll overhaul your Adam andEve, 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 greatand unexpected, and I am so overpowered by the sight of my dear boy, andby the, '--glancing at the downcast eyes of Florence, and not attemptingto finish the sentence--'that I--I can't say much to-night. But my dearNed Cuttle, why didn't you write?'

The astonishment depicted in the Captain's features positivelyfrightened Mr Toots, whose eyes were quite fixed by it, so that he couldnot 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 notforgotten? Every time I wrote to you. '

The Captain took off his glazed hat, hung it on his hook, and smoothinghis 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 restfor a long time, without speaking, 'I'm gone about and adrift. Pay outa 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 mypacket, 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, andproceeding to quote it from memory. '"My dear Ned Cuttle, when I lefthome 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 relievedby getting hold of anything that was real and indisputable. 

'Well, Ned. Now attend a moment!' said the old man. 'When I wrotefirst--that was from Barbados--I said that though you would receive thatletter long before the year was out, I should be glad if you would openthe 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 wasfrom Jamaica--I said I was in just the same state, couldn't rest, andcouldn't come away from that part of the world, without knowing thatmy boy was lost or saved. When I wrote next--that, I think, was fromDemerara, wasn't it?'

'That he thinks was from Demerara, warn't it!' said the Captain, lookinghopelessly round. 

'I said, ' proceeded old Sol, 'that still there was no certaininformation got yet. That I found many captains and others, in that partof the world, who had known me for years, and who assisted me with apassage here and there, and for whom I was able, now and then, to do alittle in return, in my own craft. That everyone was sorry for me, andseemed to take a sort of interest in my wanderings; and that I beganto think it would be my fate to cruise about in search of tidings of myboy, until I died. '

'Began to think as how he was a scientific Flying Dutchman!' said theCaptain, as before, and with great seriousness. 

'But when the news come one day, Ned, --that was to Barbados, after I gotback there, --that a China trader home'ard bound had been spoke, that hadmy 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, staredall round the circle, beginning with Mr Toots, and ending with theInstrument-maker; then gravely said:

'Sol Gills! The observation as I'm a-going to make is calc'lated to blowevery stitch of sail as you can carry, clean out of the bolt-ropes, andbring you on your beam ends with a lurch. Not one of them letters wasever delivered to Ed'ard Cuttle. Not one o' them letters, ' repeated theCaptain, to make his declaration the more solemn and impressive, 'wasever delivered unto Ed'ard Cuttle, Mariner, of England, as lives at homeat ease, and doth improve each shining hour!'

'And posted by my own hand! And directed by my own hand, Number nineBrig Place!' exclaimed old Sol. 

The colour all went out of the Captain's face and all came back again ina 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--Ialways was, you recollect--and very much confused. Mrs--'

'Sol Gills!' said the Captain, as if he were putting the most improbablecase in the world, 'it ain't the name of MacStinger as you're a tryingto remember?'

'Of course it is!' exclaimed the Instrument-maker. 'To be sure Ned. MrsMacStinger!'

Captain Cuttle, whose eyes were now as wide open as they would be, andthe knobs upon whose face were perfectly luminous, gave a long shrillwhistle of a most melancholy sound, and stood gazing at everybody in astate of speechlessness. 

'Overhaul that there again, Sol Gills, will you be so kind?' he said atlast. 

'All these letters, ' returned Uncle Sol, beating time with theforefinger of his right hand upon the palm of his left, with asteadiness and distinctness that might have done honour, even to theinfallible chronometer in his pocket, 'I posted with my own hand, anddirected 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 ofdiscomfiture, 'I cut and run from there!'

'And no one knew where you were gone, Captain Cuttle?' cried Walterhastily. 

'Bless your heart, Wal'r, ' said the Captain, shaking his head, 'she'dnever 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 theCaptain, 'you've only seen her in a calm! But see her when her angrypassions 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 feebleadmiration. 'Well, my dear, it does you credit. But there ain't no wildanimal I wouldn't sooner face myself. I only got my chest away by meansof a friend as nobody's a match for. It was no good sending any letterthere. She wouldn't take in any letter, bless you, ' said the Captain, 'under them circumstances! Why, you could hardly make it worth a man'swhile to be the postman!'

'Then it's pretty clear, Captain Cuttle, that all of us, and you andUncle Sol especially, ' said Walter, 'may thank Mrs MacStinger for nosmall anxiety. '

The general obligation in this wise to the determined relict of the lateMr MacStinger, was so apparent, that the Captain did not contest thepoint; but being in some measure ashamed of his position, though nobodydwelt upon the subject, and Walter especially avoided it, rememberingthe last conversation he and the Captain had held together respectingit, he remained under a cloud for nearly five minutes--an extraordinaryperiod for him when that sun, his face, broke out once more, shining onall beholders with extraordinary brilliancy; and he fell into a fit ofshaking hands with everybody over and over again. 

At an early hour, but not before Uncle Sol and Walter had questionedeach 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 Florencewas a little sorrowful and heavy-hearted, and had gone to bed. Thoughthey could not have disturbed her with their voices down there, they allspoke in a whisper after this: and each, in his different way, feltvery lovingly and gently towards Walter's fair young bride: and along explanation there was of everything relating to her, for thesatisfaction of Uncle Sol; and very sensible Mr Toots was of thedelicacy with which Walter made his name and services important, and hispresence necessary to their little council. 

'Mr Toots, ' said Walter, on parting with him at the house door, 'weshall see each other to-morrow morning?'

'Lieutenant Walters, ' returned Mr Toots, grasping his hand fervently, 'Ishall certainly be present. 

'This is the last night we shall meet for a long time--the last night wemay ever meet, ' said Walter. 'Such a noble heart as yours, must feel, Ithink, when another heart is bound to it. I hope you know that I am verygrateful to you?'

'Walters, ' replied Mr Toots, quite touched, 'I should be glad to feelthat you had reason to be so. '

'Florence, ' said Walter, 'on this last night of her bearing her ownname, has made me promise--it was only just now, when you left ustogether--that I would tell you--with her dear love--'

Mr Toots laid his hand upon the doorpost, and his eyes upon hishand. --With her dear love, ' said Walter, 'that she can never have afriend whom she will value above you. That the recollection of your trueconsideration for her always, can never be forgotten by her. That sheremembers you in her prayers to-night, and hopes that you will think ofher when she is far away. Shall I say anything for you?'

'Say, Walter, ' replied Mr Toots indistinctly, 'that I shall think of herevery day, but never without feeling happy to know that she is marriedto the man she loves, and who loves her. Say, if you please, that Iam sure her husband deserves her--even her!--and that I am glad of herchoice. '

Mr Toots got more distinct as he came to these last words, and raisinghis eyes from the doorpost, said them stoutly. He then shook Walter'shand again with a fervour that Walter was not slow to return and startedhomeward. 

Mr Toots was accompanied by the Chicken, whom he had of late broughtwith him every evening, and left in the shop, with an idea thatunforeseen circumstances might arise from without, in which the prowessof that distinguished character would be of service to the Midshipman. The Chicken did not appear to be in a particularly good humour on thisoccasion. Either the gas-lamps were treacherous, or he cocked his eyein a hideous manner, and likewise distorted his nose, when Mr Toots, crossing the road, looked back over his shoulder at the room whereFlorence slept. On the road home, he was more demonstrative ofaggressive intentions against the other foot-passengers, than comportedwith a professor of the peaceful art of self-defence. Arrived at home, instead of leaving Mr Toots in his apartments when he had escorted himthither, he remained before him weighing his white hat in both hands bythe brim, and twitching his head and nose (both of which had been manytimes broken, and but indifferently repaired), with an air of decideddisrespect. 

His patron being much engaged with his own thoughts, did not observethis for some time, nor indeed until the Chicken, determined not to beoverlooked, had made divers clicking sounds with his tongue and teeth, to attract attention. 

'Now, Master, ' said the Chicken, doggedly, when he, at length, caught MrToots'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'ta cove to chuck a word away. Here's wot it is. Are any on 'em to bedoubled up?'

When the Chicken put this question he dropped his hat, made a dodge anda feint with his left hand, hit a supposed enemy a violent blow with hisright, 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 yourmeaning is obscure. '

'Why, then, I tell you what, Master, ' said the Chicken. 'This is whereit is. It's mean. '

'What is mean, Chicken?' asked Mr Toots. 

'It is, ' said the Chicken, with a frightful corrugation of his brokennose. 'There! Now, Master! Wot! When you could go and blow on this herematch to the stiff'un;' by which depreciatory appellation it has beensince supposed that the Game One intended to signify Mr Dombey; 'andwhen you could knock the winner and all the kit of 'em dead out o' windand time, are you going to give in? To give in? 'said the Chicken, withcontemptuous emphasis. 'Wy, it's mean!'

'Chicken, ' said Mr Toots, severely, 'you're a perfect Vulture! Yoursentiments are atrocious. '

'My sentiments is Game and Fancy, Master, ' returned the Chicken. 'That'swot 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'nero' 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 onus, then. Come! Here's a offer! You've spoke to me more than once'tor twice't about the public line. Never mind! Give me a fi'typunnoteto-morrow, and let me go. '

'Chicken, ' returned Mr Toots, 'after the odious sentiments you haveexpressed, I shall be glad to part on such terms. '

'Done then, ' said the Chicken. 'It's a bargain. This here conduct ofyourn won't suit my book, Master. Wy, it's mean, ' said the Chicken; whoseemed 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 ofmoral perception; and Mr Toots lying down to sleep, dreamed happily ofFlorence, who had thought of him as her friend upon the last night ofher 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 theirposts in the fine church where Mr Dombey was married. A yellow-faced oldgentleman from India, is going to take unto himself a young wife thismorning, and six carriages full of company are expected, and Mrs Miffhas been informed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pavethe road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them. The nuptialbenediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very reverend, adean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary present, bysomebody who comes express from the Horse Guards. 

Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than shegenerally is; and she his always strong opinions on that subject, for itis associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of politicaleconomy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; 'Baptistsor Wesleyans, or some o' them, ' she says), but she can never understandwhat business your common folks have to be married. 'Drat 'em, ' says MrsMiff 'you read the same things over 'em' and instead of sovereigns getsixpences!'

Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff--but then he is nota pew-opener. 'It must be done, Ma'am, ' he says. 'We must marry 'em. Wemust have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must haveour standing armies. We must marry 'em, Ma'am, ' says Mr Sownds, 'andkeep 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 ofMrs Miff is sharply turned towards them, for she espies in thisearly visit indications of a runaway match. But they don't want to bemarried--'Only, ' says the gentleman, 'to walk round the church. ' And ashe slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her vinegaryface relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip andcrackle. 

Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions--for theyellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees--but keepsher glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking roundthe church. 'Ahem, ' coughs Mrs Miff whose cough is drier than the hay inany hassock in her charge, 'you'll come to us one of these mornings, mydears, unless I'm much mistaken!'

They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the memory ofsomeone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs Miff, but Mrs Miff cansee with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head isbent 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 ofstock-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--thatyou should find as many individual sympathies in a chip. Mr Sownds, now, who is fleshy, and has scarlet in his coat, is of a differenttemperament. He says, as they stand upon the steps watching the youngcouple away, that she has a pretty figure, hasn't she, and as well ashe could see (for she held her head down coming out), an uncommon prettyface. 'Altogether, Mrs Miff, ' says Mr Sownds with a relish, 'she is whatyou may call a rose-bud. '

Mrs Miff assents with a spare nod of her mortified bonnet; but approvesof this so little, that she inwardly resolves she wouldn't be the wifeof 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 goout 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; andclasps her disengaged hand on that other modest little hand which claspshis arm. 

'It is very early, Walter, and the streets are almost empty yet. Let uswalk. '

'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, asinnocent and earnest-hearted--he, as frank, as hopeful, and more proudof her--Florence and Walter, on their bridal morning, walk through thestreets together. 

Not even in that childish walk of long ago, were they so far removedfrom 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 confidenceand love of children may be given many times, and will spring up in manyplaces; but the woman's heart of Florence, with its undivided treasure, can be yielded only once, and under slight or change, can only droop anddie. 

They take the streets that are the quietest, and do not go near that inwhich her old home stands. It is a fair, warm summer morning, andthe sun shines on them, as they walk towards the darkening mist thatoverspreads the City. Riches are uncovering in shops; jewels, gold, andsilver flash in the goldsmith's sunny windows; and great houses cast astately shade upon them as they pass. But through the light, and throughthe shade, they go on lovingly together, lost to everything around;thinking of no other riches, and no prouder home, than they have now inone another. 

Gradually they come into the darker, narrower streets, where the sun, now yellow, and now red, is seen through the mist, only at streetcorners, and in small open spaces where there is a tree, or one of theinnumerable churches, or a paved way and a flight of steps, or a curiouslittle patch of garden, or a burying-ground, where the few tombs andtombstones are almost black. Lovingly and trustfully, through all thenarrow yards and alleys and the shady streets, Florence goes, clingingto his arm, to be his wife. 

Her heart beats quicker now, for Walter tells her that their church isvery near. They pass a few great stacks of warehouses, with waggons atthe doors, and busy carmen stopping up the way--but Florence does notsee 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 acellar. 

The shabby little old man, ringer of the disappointed bell, is standingin the porch, and has put his hat in the font--for he is quite at homethere, being sexton. He ushers them into an old brown, panelled, dustyvestry, like a corner-cupboard with the shelves taken out; where thewormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff, which has set thetearful Nipper sneezing. 

Youthful, and how beautiful, the young bride looks, in this old dustyplace, with no kindred object near her but her husband. There is adusty old clerk, who keeps a sort of evaporated news shop underneath anarchway opposite, behind a perfect fortification of posts. There is adusty old pew-opener who only keeps herself, and finds that quite enoughto do. There is a dusty old beadle (these are Mr Toots's beadle andpew-opener of last Sunday), who has something to do with a WorshipfulCompany who have got a Hall in the next yard, with a stained-glasswindow in it that no mortal ever saw. There are dusty wooden ledges andcornices poked in and out over the altar, and over the screen and roundthe gallery, and over the inscription about what the Master andWardens of the Worshipful Company did in one thousand six hundred andninety-four. There are dusty old sounding-boards over the pulpit andreading-desk, looking like lids to be let down on the officiatingministers in case of their giving offence. There is every possibleprovision for the accommodation of dust, except in the churchyard, wherethe facilities in that respect are very limited. The Captain, Uncle Sol, and Mr Toots are come; the clergyman is putting on his surplice in thevestry, while the clerk walks round him, blowing the dust off it; andthe bride and bridegroom stand before the altar. There is no bridesmaid, unless Susan Nipper is one; and no better father than Captain Cuttle. Aman with a wooden leg, chewing a faint apple and carrying a blue bagin has hand, looks in to see what is going on; but finding it nothingentertaining, stumps off again, and pegs his way among the echoes out ofdoors. 

No gracious ray of light is seen to fall on Florence, kneeling at thealtar with her timid head bowed down. The morning luminary is builtout, and don't shine there. There is a meagre tree outside, wherethe sparrows are chirping a little; and there is a blackbird in aneyelet-hole of sun in a dyer's garret, over against the window, whowhistles loudly whilst the service is performing; and there is the manwith the wooden leg stumping away. The amens of the dusty clerk appear, like Macbeth's, to stick in his throat a little'; but Captain Cuttlehelps him out, and does it with so much goodwill that he interpolatesthree entirely new responses of that word, never introduced into theservice before. 

They are married, and have signed their names in one of the old sneezyregisters, and the clergyman's surplice is restored to the dust, and theclergymam is gone home. In a dark corner of the dark church, Florencehas turned to Susan Nipper, and is weeping in her arms. Mr Toots's eyesare red. The Captain lubricates his nose. Uncle Sol has pulled down hisspectacles from his forehead, and walked out to the door. 

'God bless you, Susan; dearest Susan! If you ever can bear witness tothe love I have for Walter, and the reason that I have to love him, doit for his sake. Good-bye! Good-bye!'

They have thought it better not to go back to the Midshipman, but topart so; a coach is waiting for them, near at hand. 

Miss Nipper cannot speak; she only sobs and chokes, and hugs hermistress. Mr Toots advances, urges her to cheer up, and takes chargeof her. Florence gives him her hand--gives him, in the fulness of herheart, her lips--kisses Uncle Sol, and Captain Cuttle, and is borne awayby her young husband. 

But Susan cannot bear that Florence should go away with a mournfulrecollection of her. She had meant to be so different, that shereproaches herself bitterly. Intent on making one last effort to redeemher character, she breaks from Mr Toots and runs away to find the coach, and show a parting smile. The Captain, divining her object, sets offafter 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, outsidethe church, to wait for them. 

The coach is gone, but the street is steep, and narrow, and blockedup, 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 hisglazed hat as a general signal, which may attract the right coach andwhich may not. 

Susan outstrips the Captain, and comes up with it. She looks in at thewindow, sees Walter, with the gentle face beside him, and claps herhands and screams:

'Miss Floy, my darling! look at me! We are all so happy now, dear! Onemore good-bye, my precious, one more!'

How Susan does it, she don't know, but she reaches to the window, kissesher, and has her arms about her neck, in a moment. 

We are all so happy now, my dear Miss Floy!' says Susan, with asuspicious 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 acountenance of strong emotion. 'Hooroar, Wal'r my lad. Hooroar!Hooroar!'

What with the young husband at one window, and the young wife at theother; the Captain hanging on at this door, and Susan Nipper holdingfast by that; the coach obliged to go on whether it will or no, and allthe other carts and coaches turbulent because it hesitates; therenever was so much confusion on four wheels. But Susan Nipper gallantlymaintains her point. She keeps a smiling face upon her mistress, smilingthrough her tears, until the last. Even when she is left behind, theCaptain continues to appear and disappear at the door, crying 'Hooroar, my lad! Hooroar, my Heart's Delight!' with his shirt-collar in a violentstate of agitation, until it is hopeless to attempt to keep up with thecoach any longer. Finally, when the coach is gone, Susan Nipper, beingrejoined by the Captain, falls into a state of insensibility, and istaken into a baker's shop to recover. 

Uncle Sol and Mr Toots wait patiently in the churchyard, sitting on thecoping-stone of the railings, until Captain Cuttle and Susan come back, Neither being at all desirous to speak, or to be spoken to, they areexcellent company, and quite satisfied. When they all arrive again atthe little Midshipman, and sit down to breakfast, nobody can touch amorsel. Captain Cuttle makes a feint of being voracious about toast, butgives it up as a swindle. Mr Toots says, after breakfast, he will comeback in the evening; and goes wandering about the town all day, with avague 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 theyhave been used to be together, and out of which so much is gone. Itaggravates, and yet it soothes, the sorrow of the separation. Mr Tootstells Susan Nipper when he comes at night, that he hasn't been sowretched 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 shegave him that candid opinion as to the probability of Miss Dombey'sever loving him. In the vein of confidence engendered by these commonrecollections, and their tears, Mr Toots proposes that they shall go outtogether, and buy something for supper. Miss Nipper assenting, they buya good many little things; and, with the aid of Mrs Richards, set thesupper out quite showily before the Captain and old Sol came home. 

The Captain and old Sol have been on board the ship, and haveestablished Di there, and have seen the chests put aboard. They havemuch to tell about the popularity of Walter, and the comforts he willhave about him, and the quiet way in which it seems he has been workingearly and late, to make his cabin what the Captain calls 'a picter, 'to surprise his little wife. 'A admiral's cabin, mind you, ' says theCaptain, '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 againhe murmurs to himself, 'Ed'ard Cuttle, my lad, you never shaped a bettercourse in your life than when you made that there little property overjintly. You see how the land bore, Ed'ard, ' says the Captain, 'and itdoes you credit, my lad. '

The old Instrument-maker is more distraught and misty than he used tobe, and takes the marriage and the parting very much to heart. But he isgreatly comforted by having his old ally, Ned Cuttle, at his side; andhe sits down to supper with a grateful and contented face. 

'My boy has been preserved and thrives, ' says old Sol Gills, rubbing hishands. '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 hasbeen fidgeting about for some time, and now stands hesitating in hisplace, looks doubtfully at Mr Gills, and says:

'Sol! There's the last bottle of the old Madeira down below. Would youwish 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 handinto the breast-pocket of his coffee-coloured coat, brings forth hispocket-book, and takes a letter out. 

'To Mr Dombey, ' says the old man. 'From Walter. To be sent in threeweeks' time. I'll read it. '

'"Sir. I am married to your daughter. She is gone with me upon a distantvoyage. To be devoted to her is to have no claim on her or you, but Godknows that I am. 

'"Why, loving her beyond all earthly things, I have yet, withoutremorse, united her to the uncertainties and dangers of my life, I willnot 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 nothingI expect less. But if an hour should come when it will comfort you tobelieve that Florence has someone ever near her, the great charge ofwhose life is to cancel her remembrance of past sorrow, I solemnlyassure you, you may, in that hour, rest in that belief. "'

Solomon puts back the letter carefully in his pocket-book, and puts backhis pocket-book in his coat. 

'We won't drink the last bottle of the old Madeira yet, Ned, ' says theold 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 allsit down to supper, and drink to the young husband and wife in somethingelse; and the last bottle of the old Madeira still remains among itsdust and cobwebs, undisturbed. 

A few days have elapsed, and a stately ship is out at sea, spreading itswhite wings to the favouring wind. 

Upon the deck, image to the roughest man on board of something thatis graceful, beautiful, and harmless--something that it is good andpleasant to have there, and that should make the voyage prosperous--isFlorence. It is night, and she and Walter sit alone, watching the solemnpath 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 aroundhis neck, saying, 'Oh Walter, dearest love, I am so happy!'

Her husband holds her to his heart, and they are very quiet, and thestately ship goes on serenely. 

'As I hear the sea, ' says Florence, 'and sit watching it, it brings somany 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 whisperingto Florence, in their ceaseless murmuring, of love--of love, eternal andillimitable, not bounded by the confines of this world, or by the endof time, but ranging still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to theinvisible country far away!

CHAPTER 58. After a Lapse

The sea had ebbed and flowed, through a whole year. Through a wholeyear, the winds and clouds had come and gone; the ceaseless work of Timehad been performed, in storm and sunshine. Through a whole year, thetides of human chance and change had set in their allotted courses. Through a whole year, the famous House of Dombey and Son had fought afight for life, against cross accidents, doubtful rumours, unsuccessfulventures, unpropitious times, and most of all, against the infatuationof 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 sohard against the storm, was weak, and could not bear it. The year wasout, and the great House was down. 

One summer afternoon; a year, wanting some odd days, after the marriagein the City church; there was a buzz and whisper upon 'Change of a greatfailure. A certain cold proud man, well known there, was not there, norwas he represented there. Next day it was noised abroad that Dombey andSon 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 aninnocently credulous and a much ill-used world. It was a world inwhich there was 'no other sort of bankruptcy whatever. There wereno conspicuous people in it, trading far and wide on rotten banksof religion, patriotism, virtue, honour. There was no amount worthmentioning of mere paper in circulation, on which anybody lived prettyhandsomely, promising to pay great sums of goodness with no effects. There were no shortcomings anywhere, in anything but money. The worldwas very angry indeed; and the people especially, who, in a worse world, might have been supposed to be apt traders themselves in shows andpretences, were observed to be mightily indignant. 

Here was a new inducement to dissipation, presented to that sport ofcircumstances, Mr Perch the Messenger! It was apparently the fate ofMr Perch to be always waking up, and finding himself famous. He hadbut yesterday, as one might say, subsided into private life from thecelebrity of the elopement and the events that followed it; and now hewas made a more important man than ever, by the bankruptcy. Gliding fromhis bracket in the outer office where he now sat, watching the strangefaces of accountants and others, who quickly superseded nearly all theold 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 ofquestions, almost certain to include that interesting question, whatwould he take to drink? Then would Mr Perch descant upon the hours ofacute uneasiness he and Mrs Perch had suffered out at Balls Pond, whenthey first suspected 'things was going wrong. ' Then would Mr Perchrelate to gaping listeners, in a low voice, as if the corpse of thedeceased House were lying unburied in the next room, how Mrs Perch hadfirst come to surmise that things was going wrong by hearing him (Perch)moaning in his sleep, 'twelve and ninepence in the pound, twelve andninepence in the pound!' Which act of somnambulism he supposed to haveoriginated in the impression made upon him by the change in Mr Dombey'sface. Then would he inform them how he had once said, 'Might I make sobold as ask, Sir, are you unhappy in your mind?' and how Mr Dombey hadreplied, 'My faithful Perch--but no, it cannot be!' and with that hadstruck his hand upon his forehead, and said, 'Leave me, Perch!' Then, in short, would Mr Perch, a victim to his position, tell all manner oflies; affecting himself to tears by those that were of a movingnature, and really believing that the inventions of yesterday had, onrepetition, a sort of truth about them to-day. 

Mr Perch always closed these conferences by meekly remarking, That, ofcourse, whatever his suspicions might have been (as if he had ever hadany!) it wasn't for him to betray his trust, was it? Which sentiment(there never being any creditors present) was received as doing greathonour to his feelings. Thus, he generally brought away a soothedconscience and left an agreeable impression behind him, when hereturned to his bracket: again to sit watching the strange faces of theaccountants and others, making so free with the great mysteries, theBooks; or now and then to go on tiptoe into Mr Dombey's empty room, andstir the fire; or to take an airing at the door, and have a little moredoleful chat with any straggler whom he knew; or to propitiate, withvarious small attentions, the head accountant: from whom Mr Perch hadexpectations of a messengership in a Fire Office, when the affairs ofthe House should be wound up. 

To Major Bagstock, the bankruptcy was quite a calamity. The Major wasnot a sympathetic character--his attention being wholly concentratedon J. B. --nor was he a man subject to lively emotions, except in thephysical regards of gasping and choking. But he had so paraded hisfriend Dombey at the club; had so flourished him at the heads of themembers in general, and so put them down by continual assertion of hisriches; that the club, being but human, was delighted to retort uponthe Major, by asking him, with a show of great concern, whether thistremendous smash had been at all expected, and how his friend Dombeybore it. To such questions, the Major, waxing very purple, would replythat 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 foretoldthis, Sir, to J. Bagstock, when he went abroad with Dombey and waschasing that vagabond up and down France, J. Bagstock would havepooh-pooh'd you--would have pooh--pooh'd you, Sir, by the Lord! That Joehad been deceived, Sir, taken in, hoodwinked, blindfolded, but was broadawake again and staring; insomuch, Sir, that if Joe's father were torise up from the grave to-morrow, he wouldn't trust the old blade with apenny piece, but would tell him that his son Josh was too old a soldierto be done again, Sir. That he was a suspicious, crabbed, cranky, used-up, J. B. Infidel, Sir; and that if it were consistent with thedignity of a rough and tough old Major, of the old school, who had hadthe honour of being personally known to, and commended by, their lateRoyal Highnesses the Dukes of Kent and York, to retire to a tub and livein it, by Gad! Sir, he'd have a tub in Pall Mall to-morrow, to show hiscontempt for mankind!'

Of all this, and many variations of the same tune, the Major woulddeliver himself with so many apoplectic symptoms, such rollings of hishead, and such violent growls of ill usage and resentment, that theyounger members of the club surmised he had invested money in his friendDombey's House, and lost it; though the older soldiers and deeper dogs, who knew Joe better, wouldn't hear of such a thing. The unfortunateNative, expressing no opinion, suffered dreadfully; not merely in hismoral feelings, which were regularly fusilladed by the Major every hourin the day, and riddled through and through, but in his sensitiveness tobodily knocks and bumps, which was kept continually on the stretch. Forsix entire weeks after the bankruptcy, this miserable foreigner lived ina rainy season of boot-jacks and brushes. 

Mrs Chick had three ideas upon the subject of the terrible reverse. Thefirst was that she could not understand it. The second, that her brotherhad not made an effort. The third, that if she had been invited todinner on the day of that first party, it never would have happened; andthat she had said so, at the time. 

Nobody's opinion stayed the misfortune, lightened it, or made itheavier. It was understood that the affairs of the House were tobe wound up as they best could be; that Mr Dombey freely resignedeverything he had, and asked for no favour from anyone. That anyresumption of the business was out of the question, as he would listento no friendly negotiation having that compromise in view; that he hadrelinquished every post of trust or distinction he had held, as a manrespected among merchants; that he was dying, according to some; that hewas going melancholy mad, according to others; that he was a broken man, according to all. 

The clerks dispersed after holding a little dinner of condolenceamong themselves, which was enlivened by comic singing, and went offadmirably. Some took places abroad, and some engaged in other Houses athome; some looked up relations in the country, for whom they suddenlyremembered they had a particular affection; and some advertised foremployment in the newspapers. Mr Perch alone remained of all the lateestablishment, sitting on his bracket looking at the accountants, orstarting off it, to propitiate the head accountant, who was to gethim into the Fire Office. The Counting House soon got to be dirty andneglected. The principal slipper and dogs' collar seller, at the cornerof the court, would have doubted the propriety of throwing up hisforefinger to the brim of his hat, any more, if Mr Dombey had appearedthere now; and the ticket porter, with his hands under his white apron, moralised good sound morality about ambition, which (he observed) wasnot, in his opinion, made to rhyme to perdition, for nothing. 

Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, with the hair and whiskers sprinkledwith grey, was perhaps the only person within the atmosphere of theHouse--its head, of course, excepted--who was heartily and deeplyaffected by the disaster that had befallen it. He had treated Mr Dombeywith due respect and deference through many years, but he had neverdisguised his natural character, or meanly truckled to him, or pamperedhis master passion for the advancement of his own purposes. He had, therefore, no self-disrespect to avenge; no long-tightened springsto release with a quick recoil. He worked early and late to unravelwhatever was complicated or difficult in the records of the transactionsof the House; was always in attendance to explain whatever requiredexplanation; sat in his old room sometimes very late at night, studyingpoints by his mastery of which he could spare Mr Dombey the pain ofbeing personally referred to; and then would go home to Islington, andcalm his mind by producing the most dismal and forlorn sounds out of hisvioloncello 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 scrapingconsolation out of its deepest notes, when his landlady (who wasfortunately deaf, and had no other consciousness of these performancesthan 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 thesofa with great tenderness and care, made a sign that the lady was tocome in. He followed directly, and met Harriet Carker on the stair. 

'Alone!' he said, 'and John here this morning! Is there anything thematter, my dear? But no, ' he added, 'your face tells quite anotherstory. '

'I am afraid it is a selfish revelation that you see there, then, ' sheanswered. 

'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; thevioloncello lying snugly on the sofa between them. 

'You will not be surprised at my coming alone, or at John's not havingtold you I was coming, ' said Harriet; 'and you will believe that, when Itell 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. Iwish 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 lipssilently repeated the word. He seemed to observe this with some littleinvoluntary surprise: and said again:

'Never. You remember what I told you. It has been, all along, impossibleto convince him; impossible to reason with him; sometimes, impossibleeven 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 joyfulin her look, seemed to surprise him more and more; to disappoint himtoo, and jar discordantly against his own emotions. He drummed with thefingers of one hand on the table, looking wistfully at her, and shakinghis head, said, after a pause:

'The extent of Mr Dombey's resources is not accurately within myknowledge; but though they are doubtless very large, his obligations areenormous. He is a gentleman of high honour and integrity. Any man inhis position could, and many a man in his position would, have savedhimself, by making terms which would have very slightly, almostinsensibly, 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 tothe 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, MissHarriet, it would do us no harm to remember oftener than we do, thatvices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess! His pride shows wellin this. '

She heard him with little or no change in her expression, and with adivided attention that showed her to be busy with something in her ownmind. 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 necessaryfor him to come out of his house, he comes out for the occasion, andagain goes home, and shuts himself up, and will sea no one. He haswritten me a letter, acknowledging our past connexion in higher termsthan it deserved, and parting from me. I am delicate of obtruding myselfupon him now, never having had much intercourse with him in bettertimes; 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 greaterconcern than she had yet shown; and spoke gravely and feelingly, as ifto impress her the more; but there was no change in her. 

'Well, well, Miss Harriet, ' he said, with a disappointed air, 'this isnot to the purpose. You have not come here to hear this. Some other andpleasanter theme is in your mind. Let it be in mine, too, and we shalltalk upon more equal terms. Come!'

'No, it is the same theme, ' returned Harriet, with frank and quicksurprise. 'Is it not likely that it should be? Is it not natural thatJohn and I should have been thinking and speaking very much of late ofthese great changes? Mr Dombey, whom he served so many years--you knowupon what terms--reduced, as you describe; and we quite rich!'

Good, true face, as that face of hers was, and pleasant as it had beento him, Mr Morfin, the hazel-eyed bachelor, since the first time he hadever looked upon it, it pleased him less at that moment, lighted with aray of exultation, than it had ever pleased him before. 

'I need not remind you, ' said Harriet, casting down her eyes upon herblack dress, 'through what means our circumstances changed. You have notforgotten 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 havespoken so truly. You know how few our wants are--John's and mine--andwhat little use we have for money, after the life we have led togetherfor so many years; and now that he is earning an income that is amplefor us, through your kindness. You are not unprepared to hear whatfavour 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 youunderstand me. Of my living brother I could say much; but what need Isay more, than that this act of duty, in which I have come to ask yourindispensable assistance, is his own, and that he cannot rest until itis performed!'

She raised her eyes again; and the light of exultation in her face beganto appear beautiful, in the observant eyes that watched her. 

'Dear Sir, ' she went on to say, 'it must be done very quietly andsecretly. Your experience and knowledge will point out a way of doingit. Mr Dombey may, perhaps, be led to believe that it is somethingsaved, unexpectedly, from the wreck of his fortunes; or that it is avoluntary tribute to his honourable and upright character, from some ofthose with whom he has had great dealings; or that it is some old lostdebt repaid. There must be many ways of doing it. I know you will choosethe best. The favour I have come to ask is, that you will do it forus in your own kind, generous, considerate manner. That you will neverspeak of it to John, whose chief happiness in this act of restitutionis to do it secretly, unknown, and unapproved of: that only a very smallpart of the inheritance may be reserved to us, until Mr Dombey shallhave 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 betweenyou and me, but may live in my thoughts only as a new reason forthankfulness to Heaven, and joy and pride in my brother. '

Such a look of exultation there may be on Angels' faces when the onerepentant sinner enters Heaven, among ninety-nine just men. It was notdimmed or tarnished by the joyful tears that filled her eyes, but wasthe brighter for them. 

'My dear Harriet, ' said Mr Morfin, after a silence, 'I was not preparedfor this. Do I understand you that you wish to make your own part in theinheritance available for your good purpose, as well as John's?'

'Oh, yes, ' she returned 'When we have shared everything together for solong a time, and have had no care, hope, or purpose apart, could I bearto be excluded from my share in this? May I not urge a claim to be mybrother'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 willinglybelieve myself, if I could not give you that assurance from my heart andsoul. You may, implicitly. Upon my honour, I will keep your secret. Andif 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 arejointly 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 worthof any sacrifice that you can make now--above all, of any sacrifice ofmere money--would be idle and presumptuous. To put before you any appealto 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 greathistory, by any obtrusion of my own weak self. I have every right tobend my head before what you confide to me, satisfied that it comesfrom a higher and better source of inspiration than my poor worldlyknowledge. I will say only this: I am your faithful steward; and I wouldrather be so, and your chosen friend, than I would be anybody in theworld, except yourself. '

She thanked him again, cordially, and wished him good-night. 'Are yougoing 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 thinkof this, and how we can best proceed. And perhaps I'll think of it, dearHarriet, 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 ifhis landlady had not been deaf, she would have heard him muttering ashe went back upstairs, when the coach had driven off, that we werecreatures 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, andslowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, thoughmonstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression hecommunicated to his own face, and bestowed upon the empty chair: whichwas so sincere, that he was obliged to have recourse to Captain Cuttle'sremedy more than once, and to rub his face with his sleeve. By degrees, however, the violoncello, in unison with his own frame of mind, glidedmelodiously into the Harmonious Blacksmith, which he played over andover again, until his ruddy and serene face gleamed like true metal onthe anvil of a veritable blacksmith. In fine, the violoncello andthe empty chair were the companions of his bachelorhood until nearlymidnight; and when he took his supper, the violoncello set up on end inthe sofa corner, big with the latent harmony of a whole foundry fullof harmonious blacksmiths, seemed to ogle the empty chair out of itscrooked eyes, with unutterable intelligence. 

When Harriet left the house, the driver of her hired coach, takinga course that was evidently no new one to him, went in and out bybye-ways, through that part of the suburbs, until he arrived at someopen ground, where there were a few quiet little old houses standingamong gardens. At the garden-gate of one of these he stopped, andHarriet alighted. 

Her gentle ringing at the bell was responded to by a dolorous-lookingwoman, of light complexion, with raised eyebrows, and head drooping onone side, who curtseyed at sight of her, and conducted her across thegarden 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 thereis the more reason for hope, Mrs Wickam. '

'Ah, Miss, hope is an excellent thing for such as has the spirits tobear it!' said Mrs Wickam, shaking her head. 'My own spirits is notequal to it, but I don't owe it any grudge. I envys them that is soblest!'

'You should try to be more cheerful, ' remarked Harriet. 

'Thank you, Miss, I'm sure, ' said Mrs Wickam grimly. 'If I was soinclined, the loneliness of this situation--you'll excuse my speakingso free--would put it out of my power, in four and twenty hours; but Iain't at all. I'd rather not. The little spirits that I ever had, I wasbereaved of at Brighton some few years ago, and I think I feel myselfthe better for it. '

In truth, this was the very Mrs Wickam who had superseded Mrs Richardsas the nurse of little Paul, and who considered herself to have gainedthe loss in question, under the roof of the amiable Pipchin. Theexcellent and thoughtful old system, hallowed by long prescription, which has usually picked out from the rest of mankind the most drearyand uncomfortable people that could possibly be laid hold of, to act asinstructors of youth, finger-posts to the virtues, matrons, monitors, attendants on sick beds, and the like, had established Mrs Wickam invery good business as a nurse, and had led to her serious qualitiesbeing 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 anotherchamber dimly lighted, where there was a bed. In the first room, an oldwoman sat mechanically staring out at the open window, on the darkness. In the second, stretched upon the bed, lay the shadow of a figure thathad spurned the wind and rain, one wintry night; hardly to be recognisednow, but by the long black hair that showed so very black against thecolourless face, and all the white things about it. 

Oh, the strong eyes, and the weak frame! The eyes that turned so eagerlyand brightly to the door when Harriet came in; the feeble head thatcould 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 thinhand lying there. 

'You are better?'

Mrs Wickam, standing at the foot of the bed, like a disconsolatespectre, most decidedly and forcibly shook her head to negative thisposition. 

'It matters very little!' said Alice, with a faint smile. 'Better orworse 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, asfeeling for the patient's feet and expecting to find them stony; wentclinking 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 mylife 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 hada little time to show you how grateful I could be! It is a weakness, andsoon passes. Better for you as it is. Better for me!'

How different her hold upon the hand, from what it had been when shetook 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 producedthe mixture. Mrs Wickam looked hard at her patient in the act ofdrinking, screwed her mouth up tight, her eyebrows also, and shook herhead, expressing that tortures shouldn't make her say it was a hopelesscase. 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 partakeof certain funeral baked meats downstairs. 

'How long is it, ' asked Alice, 'since I went to you and told you whatI had done, and when you were advised it was too late for anyone tofollow?'

'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'slooks and words, and angel's deeds!'

Harriet bending over her, composed and soothed her. By and bye, Alicelying as before, with the hand against her face, asked to have hermother called. 

Harriet called to her more than once, but the old woman was so absorbedlooking 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 lustrouseyes lovingly upon her visitor, while she merely addressed a motion ofher 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, orgrief, came creeping along the side of the bed, opposite to that onwhich Harriet sat; and kneeling down, so as to bring her withered faceupon a level with the coverlet, and stretching out her hand, so as totouch her daughter's arm, began:

'My handsome gal--'

Heaven, what a cry was that, with which she stopped there, gazing at thepoor form lying on the bed!

'Changed, long ago, mother! Withered, long ago, ' said Alice, withoutlooking 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 littlecloser, but said nothing. 

'Who'll soon get better, I say, ' repeated the old woman, menacing thevacant air with her shrivelled fist, 'and who'll shame 'em all with hergood looks--she will. I say she will! she shall!'--as if she were inpassionate contention with some unseen opponent at the bedside, whocontradicted 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 andyour wedding rings--they may make it, but they can't break it--andmy daughter's well related. Show me Mrs Dombey, and I'll show you myAlice's first cousin. '

Harriet glanced from the old woman to the lustrous eyes intent upon herface, and derived corroboration from them. 

'What!' cried the old woman, her nodding head bridling with a ghastlyvanity. 'Though I am old and ugly now, --much older by life and habitthan years though, --I was once as young as any. Ah! as pretty too, asmany! I was a fresh country wench in my time, darling, ' stretching outher arm to Harriet, across the bed, 'and looked it, too. Down in mycountry, Mrs Dombey's father and his brother were the gayest gentlemenand the best-liked that came a visiting from London--they have longbeen dead, though! Lord, Lord, this long while! The brother, who was myAlly's father, longest of the two. '

She raised her head a little, and peered at her daughter's face; as iffrom the remembrance of her own youth, she had flown to the remembranceof her child's. Then, suddenly, she laid her face down on the bed, andshut her head up in her hands and arms. 

'They were as like, ' said the old woman, without looking up, as youcould see two brothers, so near an age--there wasn't much more than ayear between them, as I recollect--and if you could have seen my gal, asI have seen her once, side by side with the other's daughter, you'd haveseen, for all the difference of dress and life, that they were like eachother. Oh! is the likeness gone, and is it my gal--only my gal--that'sto 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! Themother must have changed--she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkledthrough her paint--but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what haveI done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!' Withanother of those wild cries, she went running out into the room fromwhich 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 outwhen I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshirethere, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me, then. Theywouldn'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 myAlice; she'd a'most have killed me, if I had, I think She was as proudas t'other in her way, ' said the old woman, touching the face of herdaughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, 'for all she's so quietnow; 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 theburst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the dotingair with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at thedarkness. 

The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose handshe had never released. She said now:

'I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It mightexplain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I hadheard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took upwith the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seedwas sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies hadbad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that theirway was not so foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God forit. ' That is all past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quiteremember or understand. It has been more and more like a dream, everyday, 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 detainedit 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 notforget her?'

'Never, Alice!'

'A moment yet. Lay your head so, dear, that as you read I may see thewords in your kind face. '

Harriet complied and read--read the eternal book for all the weary, andthe heavy-laden; for all the wretched, fallen, and neglected of thisearth--read the blessed history, in which the blind lame palsied beggar, the criminal, the woman stained with shame, the shunned of all ourdainty clay, has each a portion, that no human pride, indifference, orsophistry, through all the ages that this world shall last, can takeaway, or by the thousandth atom of a grain reduce--read the ministry ofHim 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, andinterest in, its every scene and stage, its every suffering and sorrow. 

'I shall come, ' said Harriet, when she shut the book, 'very early in themorning. '

The lustrous eyes, yet fixed upon her face, closed for a moment, thenopened; and Alice kissed and blest her. 

The same eyes followed her to the door; and in their light, and on thetranquil face, there was a smile when it was closed. 

They never turned away. She laid her hand upon her breast, murmuring thesacred 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 whichthe rain had beaten, and the black hair that had fluttered in the wintrywind. 

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 greathouse still, proof against wind and weather, without breaches in theroof, or shattered windows, or dilapidated walls; but it is a ruin nonethe less, and the rats fly from it. 

Mr Towlinson and company are, at first, incredulous in respect of theshapeless rumours that they hear. Cook says our people's credit ain't soeasy shook as that comes to, thank God; and Mr Towlinson expects to hearit reported next, that the Bank of England's a-going to break, or thejewels in the Tower to be sold up. But, next come the Gazette, and MrPerch; and Mr Perch brings Mrs Perch to talk it over in the kitchen, andto spend a pleasant evening. 

As soon as there is no doubt about it, Mr Towlinson's main anxiety isthat the failure should be a good round one--not less than a hundredthousand pound. Mr Perch don't think himself that a hundred thousandpound will nearly cover it. The women, led by Mrs Perch and Cook, oftenrepeat 'a hun-dred thou-sand pound!' with awful satisfaction--as ifhandling the words were like handling the money; and the housemaid, whohas her eye on Mr Towlinson, wishes she had only a hundredth part of thesum to bestow on the man of her choice. Mr Towlinson, still mindful ofhis old wrong, opines that a foreigner would hardly know what to do withso much money, unless he spent it on his whiskers; which bitter sarcasmcauses the housemaid to withdraw in tears. 

But not to remain long absent; for Cook, who has the reputation of beingextremely good-hearted, says, whatever they do, let 'em stand by oneanother now, Towlinson, for there's no telling how soon they may bedivided. They have been in that house (says Cook) through a funeral, awedding, and a running-away; and let it not be said that they couldn'tagree among themselves at such a time as the present. Mrs Perch isimmensely affected by this moving address, and openly remarks that Cookis an angel. Mr Towlinson replies to Cook, far be it from him tostand in the way of that good feeling which he could wish to see; andadjourning in quest of the housemaid, and presently returning with thatyoung lady on his arm, informs the kitchen that foreigners is only hisfun, and that him and Anne have now resolved to take one anotherfor better for worse, and to settle in Oxford Market in the generalgreengrocery and herb and leech line, where your kind favours isparticular requested. This announcement is received with acclamation;and Mrs Perch, projecting her soul into futurity, says, 'girls, ' inCook'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 samehospitable purpose. Even Mrs Pipchin, agitated by the occasion, ringsher bell, and sends down word that she requests to have that little bitof sweetbread that was left, warmed up for her supper, and sent to heron a tray with about a quarter of a tumbler-full of mulled sherry; forshe feels poorly. 

There is a little talk about Mr Dombey, but very little. It is chieflyspeculation 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 thecase. Somebody wonders what he'll do, and whether he'll go out in anysituation. Mr Towlinson thinks not, and hints at a refuge in one of themgenteel almshouses of the better kind. 'Ah, where he'll have his littlegarden, you know, ' says Cook plaintively, 'and bring up sweet peasin the spring. ' 'Exactly so, ' says Mr Towlinson, 'and be one of theBrethren of something or another. ' 'We are all brethren, ' says MrsPerch, in a pause of her drink. 'Except the sisters, ' says Mr Perch. 'How are the mighty fallen!' remarks Cook. 'Pride shall have a fall, andit always was and will be so!' observes the housemaid. 

It is wonderful how good they feel, in making these reflections; andwhat a Christian unanimity they are sensible of, in bearing the commonshock with resignation. There is only one interruption to this excellentstate of mind, which is occasioned by a young kitchen-maid of inferiorrank--in black stockings--who, having sat with her mouth open for a longtime, unexpectedly discharges from it words to this effect, 'Suppose thewages shouldn't be paid!' The company sit for a moment speechless; butCook recovering first, turns upon the young woman, and requests toknow how she dares insult the family, whose bread she eats, by such adishonest supposition, and whether she thinks that anybody, with a scrapof honour left, could deprive poor servants of their pittance? 'Becauseif that is your religious feelings, Mary Daws, ' says Cook warmly, 'Idon'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 generalvoice, is covered with confusion, as with a garment. 

After a few days, strange people begin to call at the house, and tomake appointments with one another in the dining-room, as if they livedthere. Especially, there is a gentleman, of a Mosaic Arabian castof countenance, with a very massive watch-guard, who whistles in thedrawing-room, and, while he is waiting for the other gentleman, whoalways has pen and ink in his pocket, asks Mr Towlinson (by the easyname of 'Old Cock, ') if he happens to know what the figure of themcrimson and gold hangings might have been, when new bought. The callersand appointments in the dining-room become more numerous every day, andevery gentleman seems to have pen and ink in his pocket, and to havesome occasion to use it. At last it is said that there is going to bea Sale; and then more people arrive, with pen and ink in their pockets, commanding a detachment of men with carpet caps, who immediately beginto pull up the carpets, and knock the furniture about, and to print offthousands of impressions of their shoes upon the hall and staircase. 

The council downstairs are in full conclave all this time, and, havingnothing to do, perform perfect feats of eating. At length, they are oneday summoned in a body to Mrs Pipchin's room, and thus addressed by thefair Peruvian:

'Your master's in difficulties, ' says Mrs Pipchin, tartly. 'You knowthat, 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 MrsPipchin, 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. 'Thesooner the better; and I hope I shall never see your face again. '

With this the doughty Pipchin produces a canvas bag; and tells her wagesout 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; whenshe grudgingly lets it go. This form of proceeding Mrs Pipchin repeatswith 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, 'thatslut of a cook, who'll go immediately. '

'That, ' says Cook, 'she certainly will! I wish you good day, MrsPipchin, and sincerely wish I could compliment you on the sweetness ofyour appearance!'

'Get along with you, ' says Mrs Pipchin, stamping her foot. 

Cook sails off with an air of beneficent dignity, highly exasperatingto Mrs Pipchin, and is shortly joined below stairs by the rest of theconfederation. 

Mr Towlinson then says that, in the first place, he would beg to proposea little snack of something to eat; and over that snack would desire tooffer a suggestion which he thinks will meet the position in whichthey find themselves. The refreshment being produced, and very heartilypartaken of, Mr Towlinson's suggestion is, in effect, that Cook isgoing, and that if we are not true to ourselves, nobody will be trueto us. That they have lived in that house a long time, and exertedthemselves very much to be sociable together. (At this, Cook says, withemotion, 'Hear, hear!' and Mrs Perch, who is there again, and full tothe throat, sheds tears. ) And that he thinks, at the present time, thefeeling ought to be 'Go one, go all!' The housemaid is much affected bythis generous sentiment, and warmly seconds it. Cook says she feels it'sright, and only hopes it's not done as a compliment to her, but from asense of duty. Mr Towlinson replies, from a sense of duty; and that nowhe is driven to express his opinions, he will openly say, that he doesnot think it over-respectable to remain in a house where Sales andsuch-like are carrying forwards. The housemaid is sure of it; andrelates, in confirmation, that a strange man, in a carpet cap, offered, this very morning, to kiss her on the stairs. Hereupon, Mr Towlinson isstarting from his chair, to seek and 'smash' the offender; when he islaid hold on by the ladies, who beseech him to calm himself, andto reflect that it is easier and wiser to leave the scene of suchindecencies 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 goodwoman, 'must his feelings be, if he was to come upon any of the poorservants that he once deceived into thinking him immensely rich!' Cookis so struck by this moral consideration, that Mrs Perch improves itwith several pious axioms, original and selected. It becomes a clearcase that they must all go. Boxes are packed, cabs fetched, and at duskthat evening there is not one member of the party left. 

The house stands, large and weather-proof, in the long dull street; butit is a ruin, and the rats fly from it. 

The men in the carpet caps go on tumbling the furniture about; and thegentlemen with the pens and ink make out inventories of it, and sit uponpieces of furniture never made to be sat upon, and eat bread and cheesefrom the public-house on other pieces of furniture never made to beeaten on, and seem to have a delight in appropriating precious articlesto strange uses. Chaotic combinations of furniture also take place. Mattresses and bedding appear in the dining-room; the glass and chinaget into the conservatory; the great dinner service is set out in heapson the long divan in the large drawing-room; and the stair-wires, madeinto fasces, decorate the marble chimneypieces. Finally, a rug, witha printed bill upon it, is hung out from the balcony; and a similarappendage graces either side of the hall door. 

Then, all day long, there is a retinue of mouldy gigs and chaise-cartsin the street; and herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, over-runthe house, sounding the plate-glass minors with their knuckles, strikingdiscordant octaves on the Grand Piano, drawing wet forefingers over thepictures, breathing on the blades of the best dinner-knives, punchingthe squabs of chairs and sofas with their dirty fists, touzling thefeather beds, opening and shutting all the drawers, balancing the silverspoons and forks, looking into the very threads of the drapery andlinen, and disparaging everything. There is not a secret place in thewhole house. Fluffy and snuffy strangers stare into the kitchen-range ascuriously as into the attic clothes-press. Stout men with napless hatson, look out of the bedroom windows, and cut jokes with friends in thestreet. Quiet, calculating spirits withdraw into the dressing-rooms withcatalogues, and make marginal notes thereon, with stumps of pencils. Twobrokers invade the very fire-escape, and take a panoramic survey of theneighbourhood from the top of the house. The swarm and buzz, and goingup 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; andon the capital, french-polished, extending, telescopic range of Spanishmahogany dining-tables with turned legs, the pulpit of the Auctioneeris erected; and the herds of shabby vampires, Jew and Christian, thestrangers fluffy and snuffy, and the stout men with the napless hats, congregate about it and sit upon everything within reach, mantel-piecesincluded, and begin to bid. Hot, humming, and dusty are the rooms allday; 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 thecarpet caps get flustered and vicious with tumbling the Lots about, andstill the Lots are going, going, gone; still coming on. Sometimesthere is joking and a general roar. This lasts all day and three daysfollowing. The Capital Modern Household Furniture, &c. , is on sale. 

Then the mouldy gigs and chaise-carts reappear; and with them comespring-vans and waggons, and an army of porters with knots. All daylong, the men with carpet caps are screwing at screw-drivers andbed-winches, or staggering by the dozen together on the staircase underheavy burdens, or upheaving perfect rocks of Spanish mahogany, bestrose-wood, or plate-glass, into the gigs and chaise-carts, vans andwaggons. All sorts of vehicles of burden are in attendance, from atilted waggon to a wheelbarrow. Poor Paul's little bedstead is carriedoff in a donkey-tandem. For nearly a whole week, the Capital ModernHousehold Furniture, & c. , is in course of removal. 

At last it is all gone. Nothing is left about the house but scatteredleaves of catalogues, littered scraps of straw and hay, and a battery ofpewter pots behind the hall-door. The men with the carpet-caps gather uptheir screw-drivers and bed-winches into bags, shoulder them, and walkoff. One of the pen-and-ink gentlemen goes over the house as a lastattention; sticking up bills in the windows respecting the lease ofthis desirable family mansion, and shutting the shutters. At length hefollows the men with the carpet caps. None of the invaders remain. Thehouse is a ruin, and the rats fly from it. 

Mrs Pipchin's apartments, together with those locked rooms on theground-floor where the window-blinds are drawn down close, have beenspared the general devastation. Mrs Pipchin has remained austere andstony during the proceedings, in her own room; or has occasionallylooked in at the sale to see what the goods are fetching, and to bid forone particular easy chair. Mrs Pipchin has been the highest bidder forthe easy chair, and sits upon her property when Mrs Chick comes to seeher. 

'How is my brother, Mrs Pipchin?' says Mrs Chick. 

'I don't know any more than the deuce, ' says Mrs Pipchin. 'He never doesme the honour to speak to me. He has his meat and drink put in the nextroom to his own; and what he takes, he comes out and takes when there'snobody there. It's no use asking me. I know no more about him than theman 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 tolast! If my brother will not make an effort, Mrs Pipchin, what is tobecome of him? I am sure I should have thought he had seen enough of theconsequences of not making an effort, by this time, to be warned againstthat fatal error. '

'Hoity toity!' says Mrs Pipchin, rubbing her nose. 'There's a greatfuss, I think, about it. It ain't so wonderful a case. People have hadmisfortunes 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 strangea man. He is the most peculiar man I ever saw. Would anyone believe thatwhen he received news of the marriage and emigration of that unnaturalchild--it's a comfort to me, now, to remember that I always said therewas something extraordinary about that child: but nobody minds me--wouldanybody believe, I say, that he should then turn round upon me and sayhe 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 cannotunderstand how your affairs can have got into this state, " he shouldactually fly at me, and request that I will come to see him no moreuntil he asks me! Why, my goodness!'

'Ah'!' says Mrs Pipchin. 'It's a pity he hadn't a little more to do withmines. They'd have tried his temper for him. '

'And what, ' resumes Mrs Chick, quite regardless of Mrs Pipchin'sobservations, 'is it to end in? That's what I want to know. What does mybrother mean to do? He must do something. It's of no use remaining shutup 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 manof business all his life. Very good. Then why not go there?'

Mrs Chick, after forging this powerful chain of reasoning, remainssilent for a minute to admire it. 

'Besides, ' says the discreet lady, with an argumentative air, 'who everheard of such obstinacy as his staying shut up here through all thesedreadful disagreeables? It's not as if there was no place for him to goto. Of course he could have come to our house. He knows he is at homethere, I suppose? Mr Chick has perfectly bored about it, and I saidwith my own lips, "Why surely, Paul, you don't imagine that because youraffairs have got into this state, you are the less at home to such nearrelatives as ourselves? You don't imagine that we are like the rest ofthe world?" But no; here he stays all through, and here he is. Why, goodgracious me, suppose the house was to be let! What would he do then? Hecouldn't remain here then. If he attempted to do so, there would be anejectment, an action for Doe, and all sorts of things; and then he mustgo. Then why not go at first instead of at last? And that brings me backto what I said just now, and I naturally ask what is to be the end ofit?'

'I know what's to be the end of it, as far as I am concerned, ' repliesMrs Pipchin, 'and that's enough for me. I'm going to take myself off ina 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, withfrankness. 

'It would be pretty much the same to me, if you could, ' replies thesardonic Pipchin. 'At any rate I'm going. I can't stop here. I shouldbe dead in a week. I had to cook my own pork chop yesterday, and I'm notused to it. My constitution will be giving way next. Besides, I had avery fair connexion at Brighton when I came here--little Pankey's folksalone were worth a good eighty pounds a-year to me--and I can't affordto throw it away. I've written to my niece, and she expects me by thistime. '

'Have you spoken to my brother?' inquires Mrs Chick

'Oh, yes, it's very easy to say speak to him, ' retorts Mrs Pipchin. 'Howis it done? I called out to him yesterday, that I was no use here, andthat he had better let me send for Mrs Richards. He grunted somethingor other that meant yes, and I sent. Grunt indeed! If he had been MrPipchin, he'd have had some reason to grunt. Yah! I've no patience withit!'

Here this exemplary female, who has pumped up so much fortitude andvirtue from the depths of the Peruvian mines, rises from her cushionedproperty to see Mrs Chick to the door. Mrs Chick, deploring to thelast the peculiar character of her brother, noiselessly retires, muchoccupied with her own sagacity and clearness of head. 

In the dusk of the evening Mr Toodle, being off duty, arrives with Pollyand a box, and leaves them, with a sounding kiss, in the hall of theempty house, the retired character of which affects Mr Toodle's spiritsstrongly. 

'I tell you what, Polly, me dear, ' says Mr Toodle, 'being now aningine-driver, and well to do in the world, I shouldn't allow of yourcoming 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 inadversity, besides, your face is a cord'l. So let's have another kiss onit, my dear. You wish no better than to do a right act, I know; and myviews 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, blackbonnet, and shawl; and has her personal property packed up; and has herchair (late a favourite chair of Mr Dombey's and the dead bargain ofthe 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 stowedaway, Mrs Pipchin's chair is next handed in, and placed in a convenientcorner among certain trusses of hay; it being the intention of theamiable woman to occupy the chair during her journey. Mrs Pipchinherself is next handed in, and grimly takes her seat. There is a snakygleam in her hard grey eye, as of anticipated rounds of buttered toast, relays of hot chops, worryings and quellings of young children, sharpsnappings at poor Berry, and all the other delights of her Ogress'scastle. Mrs Pipchin almost laughs as the fly-van drives off, and shecomposes her black bombazeen skirts, and settles herself among thecushions of her easy chair. 

The house is such a ruin that the rats have fled, and there is not oneleft. 

But Polly, though alone in the deserted mansion--for there is nocompanionship in the shut-up rooms in which its late master hides hishead--is not alone long. It is night; and she is sitting at work in thehousekeeper's room, trying to forget what a lonely house it is, and whata history belongs to it; when there is a knock at the hall door, as loudsounding as any knock can be, striking into such an empty place. Openingit, she returns across the echoing hall, accompanied by a female figurein 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 lessonwith the children just now, I got the message that you left for me; andas soon as I could recover my spirits at all, I came on after you. Isthere 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. Hemust be very bad there, poor gentleman!'

Miss Tox's sympathy is such that she can scarcely speak. She is nochicken, but she has not grown tough with age and celibacy. Her heart isvery tender, her compassion very genuine, her homage very real. Beneaththe locket with the fishy eye in it, Miss Tox bears better qualitiesthan many a less whimsical outside; such qualities as will outlive, bymany courses of the sun, the best outsides and brightest husks that fallin the harvest of the great reaper. 

It is long before Miss Tox goes away, and before Polly, with a candleflaring on the blank stairs, looks after her, for company, down thestreet, and feels unwilling to go back into the dreary house, and jarits emptiness with the heavy fastenings of the door, and glide away tobed. But all this Polly does; and in the morning sets in one of thosedarkened rooms such matters as she has been advised to prepare, and thenretires and enters them no more until next morning at the same hour. There are bells there, but they never ring; and though she can sometimeshear a footfall going to and fro, it never comes out. 

Miss Tox returns early in the day. It then begins to be Miss Tox'soccupation to prepare little dainties--or what are such to her--to becarried into these rooms next morning. She derives so much satisfactionfrom the pursuit, that she enters on it regularly from that time; andbrings daily in her little basket, various choice condiments selectedfrom the scanty stores of the deceased owner of the powdered head andpigtail. She likewise brings, in sheets of curl-paper, morsels ofcold meats, tongues of sheep, halves of fowls, for her own dinner; andsharing these collations with Polly, passes the greater part of her timein the ruined house that the rats have fled from: hiding, in a frightat every sound, stealing in and out like a criminal; only desiring to betrue to the fallen object of her admiration, unknown to him, unknown toall the world but one poor simple woman. 

The Major knows it; but no one is the wiser for that, though the Majoris much the merrier. The Major, in a fit of curiosity, has chargedthe Native to watch the house sometimes, and find out what becomes ofDombey. The Native has reported Miss Tox's fidelity, and the Major hasnearly choked himself dead with laughter. He is permanently bluer fromthat hour, and constantly wheezes to himself, his lobster eyes startingout 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 thatfalls upon the roof, the wind that mourns outside the door, may haveforeknowledge in their melancholy sound. Let him remember it in thatroom, years to come!'

He did remember it. In the miserable night he thought of it; in thedreary 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 sawthe face. He saw it fall upon the trembling hands, and heard the oneprolonged low cry go upward. 

He was fallen, never to be raised up any more. For the night of hisworldly ruin there was no to-morrow's sun; for the stain of his domesticshame there was no purification; nothing, thank Heaven, could bring hisdead child back to life. But that which he might have made so differentin 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 sethimself so steadily for years to form into a curse: that was the sharpgrief of his soul. 

Oh! He did remember it! The rain that fell upon the roof, the wind thatmourned outside the door that night, had had foreknowledge in theirmelancholy sound. He knew, now, what he had done. He knew, now, thathe had called down that upon his head, which bowed it lower than theheaviest stroke of fortune. He knew, now, what it was to be rejected anddeserted; now, when every loving blossom he had withered in his innocentdaughter's heart was snowing down in ashes on him. 

He thought of her, as she had been that night when he and his bride camehome. He thought of her as she had been, in all the home-events of theabandoned house. He thought, now, that of all around him, she alone hadnever changed. His boy had faded into dust, his proud wife had sunk intoa polluted creature, his flatterer and friend had been transformed intothe worst of villains, his riches had melted away, the very walls thatsheltered him looked on him as a stranger; she alone had turned the samemild gentle look upon him always. Yes, to the latest and the last. Shehad never changed to him--nor had he ever changed to her--and she waslost. 

As, one by one, they fell away before his mind--his baby--hope, hiswife, his friend, his fortune--oh how the mist, through which he hadseen her, cleared, and showed him her true self! Oh, how much betterthan this that he had loved her as he had his boy, and lost her as hehad 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 asexpressing pity for him, or indifference to him, he shunned it alike. Itwas in the same degree to be avoided, in either aspect. He had no ideaof any one companion in his misery, but the one he had driven away. Whathe would have said to her, or what consolation submitted to receive fromher, he never pictured to himself. But he always knew she would havebeen true to him, if he had suffered her. He always knew she would haveloved him better now, than at any other time; he was as certain that itwas in her nature, as he was that there was a sky above him; and he satthinking so, in his loneliness, from hour to hour. Day after day utteredthis speech; night after night showed him this knowledge. 

It began, beyond all doubt (however slow it advanced for some time), inthe receipt of her young husband's letter, and the certainty that shewas gone. And yet--so proud he was in his ruin, or so reminiscent ofher only as something that might have been his, but was lost beyondredemption--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 notaddressed her, or relaxed it, though his heart should have broken soonafterwards. However turbulent his thoughts, or harsh his anger had been, at first, concerning her marriage, or her husband, that was all pastnow. He chiefly thought of what might have been, and what was not. Whatwas, was all summed up in this: that she was lost, and he bowed downwith 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 mustgo, not knowing whither--upon the evening of the day on which thisfeeling first struck root in his breast; but he resolved to stay anothernight, 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 witha candle in his hand went softly up the stairs. Of all the footmarksthere, making them as common as the common street, there was not one, hethought, but had seemed at the time to set itself upon his brain whilehe had kept close, listening. He looked at their number, and theirhurry, and contention--foot treading foot out, and upward track anddownward jostling one another--and thought, with absolute dread andwonder, how much he must have suffered during that trial, and whata 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 amoment 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 theskylight; and a figure, childish itself, but carrying a child, andsinging as it went, seemed to be there again. Anon, it was the samefigure, alone, stopping for an instant, with suspended breath; thebright hair clustering loosely round its tearful face; and looking backat him. 

He wandered through the rooms: lately so luxurious; now so bare anddismal and so changed, apparently, even in their shape and size. Thepress of footsteps was as thick here; and the same consideration of thesuffering he had had, perplexed and terrified him. He began to fearthat all this intricacy in his brain would drive him mad; and that histhoughts already lost coherence as the footprints did, and were piecedon to one another, with the same trackless involutions, and varieties ofindistinct shapes. 

He did not so much as know in which of these rooms she had lived, whenshe was alone. He was glad to leave them, and go wandering higher up. Abundance of associations were here, connected with his false wife, hisfalse friend and servant, his false grounds of pride; but he putthem all by now, and only recalled miserably, weakly, fondly, his twochildren. 

Everywhere, the footsteps! They had had no respect for the old room highup, where the little bed had been; he could hardly find a clear spacethere, to throw himself down, on the floor, against the wall, poorbroken man, and let his tears flow as they would. He had shed so manytears here, long ago, that he was less ashamed of his weakness in thisplace than in any other--perhaps, with that consciousness, had madeexcuses to himself for coming here. Here, with stooping shoulders, andhis chin dropped on his breast, he had come. Here, thrown upon the bareboards, 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 couldhave looked in, would have risen up, and turned away, and gone down tohis cell. 

When the day broke he was shut up in his rooms again. He had meant togo away to-day, but clung to this tie in the house as the last and onlything left to him. He would go to-morrow. To-morrow came. He would goto-morrow. Every night, within the knowledge of no human creature, hecame forth, and wandered through the despoiled house like a ghost. Manya morning when the day broke, his altered face, drooping behind theclosed 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. Hereunited them in his thoughts, and they were never asunder. Oh, that hecould have united them in his past love, and in death, and that one hadnot been so much worse than dead!

Strong mental agitation and disturbance was no novelty to him, evenbefore his late sufferings. It never is, to obstinate and sullennatures; for they struggle hard to be such. Ground, long undermined, will often fall down in a moment; what was undermined here in so manyways, weakened, and crumbled, little by little, more and more, as thehand moved on the dial. 

At last he began to think he need not go at all. He might yet give upwhat 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 ruinedhouse, by severing that other link--

It was then that his footfall was audible in the late housekeeper'sroom, as he walked to and fro; but not audible in its true meaning, orit would have had an appalling sound. 

The world was very busy and restless about him. He became aware of thatagain. It was whispering and babbling. It was never quiet. This, andthe intricacy and complication of the footsteps, harassed him to death. Objects began to take a bleared and russet colour in his eyes. Dombeyand 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 inthe glass, from time to time, this picture:

A spectral, haggard, wasted likeness of himself, brooded and broodedover the empty fireplace. Now it lifted up its head, examining the linesand hollows in its face; now hung it down again, and brooded afresh. Nowit rose and walked about; now passed into the next room, and cameback with something from the dressing-table in its breast. Now, it waslooking at the bottom of the door, and thinking. 

Hush! what? It was thinking that if blood were to trickle that way, andto leak out into the hall, it must be a long time going so far. It wouldmove so stealthily and slowly, creeping on, with here a lazy littlepool, and there a start, and then another little pool, that adesperately wounded man could only be discovered through its means, either dead or dying. When it had thought of this a long while, it gotup again, and walked to and fro with its hand in its breast. He glancedat it occasionally, very curious to watch its motions, and he marked howwicked 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 carryit about the house among those many prints of feet, or even out into thestreet. 

It sat down, with its eyes upon the empty fireplace, and as it lostitself in thought there shone into the room a gleam of light; a ray ofsun. It was quite unmindful, and sat thinking. Suddenly it rose, witha terrible face, and that guilty hand grasping what was in its breast. Then it was arrested by a cry--a wild, loud, piercing, loving, rapturouscry--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 askforgiveness on my knees. I never can be happy more, without it!'

Unchanged still. Of all the world, unchanged. Raising the same face tohis, as on that miserable night. Asking his forgiveness!

'Dear Papa, oh don't look strangely on me! I never meant to leave you. Inever thought of it, before or afterwards. I was frightened when I wentaway, and could not think. Papa, dear, I am changed. I am penitent. Iknow my fault. I know my duty better now. Papa, don't cast me off, or Ishall die!'

He tottered to his chair. He felt her draw his arms about her neck; hefelt her put her own round his; he felt her kisses on his face; he felther wet cheek laid against his own; he felt--oh, how deeply!--all thathe had done. 

Upon the breast that he had bruised, against the heart that he hadalmost 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 bythe name by which I call you. When it was born, and when I knew howmuch I loved it, I knew what I had done in leaving you. Forgive me, dearPapa! oh say God bless me, and my little child!'

He would have said it, if he could. He would have raised his hands andbesought her for pardon, but she caught them in her own, and put themdown, hurriedly. 

'My little child was born at sea, Papa I prayed to God (and so didWalter for me) to spare me, that I might come home. The moment I couldland, I came back to you. Never let us be parted any more, Papa. Neverlet us be parted any more!'

His head, now grey, was encircled by her arm; and he groaned to thinkthat never, never, had it rested so before. 

'You will come home with me, Papa, and see my baby. A boy, Papa. Hisname 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 havegiven him, for my sake, pardon Walter. He is so kind and tender to me. Iam so happy with him. It was not his fault that we were married. It wasmine. 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 loveand honour you as I will. We will teach our little child to love andhonour you; and we will tell him, when he can understand, that you hada son of that name once, and that he died, and you were very sorry; butthat he is gone to Heaven, where we all hope to see him when ourtime for resting comes. Kiss me, Papa, as a promise that you will bereconciled to Walter--to my dearest husband--to the father of the littlechild 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 onher lips, and, lifting up his eyes, said, 'Oh my God, forgive me, for Ineed 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; theyremaining clasped in one another's arms, in the glorious sunshine thathad crept in with Florence. 

He dressed himself for going out, with a docile submission to herentreaty; and walking with a feeble gait, and looking back, with atremble, at the room in which he had been so long shut up, and where hehad seen the picture in the glass, passed out with her into the hall. Florence, hardly glancing round her, lest she should remind him freshlyof their last parting--for their feet were on the very stones where hehad struck her in his madness--and keeping close to him, with her eyesupon his face, and his arm about her, led him out to a coach that waswaiting at the door, and carried him away. 

Then, Miss Tox and Polly came out of their concealment, and exultedtearfully. And then they packed his clothes, and books, and so forth, with great care; and consigned them in due course to certain personssent by Florence, in the evening, to fetch them. And then they took alast cup of tea in the lonely house. 

'And so Dombey and Son, as I observed upon a certain sad occasion, ' saidMiss 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, thatyou were always her friend when she was a little child. You were herfriend long before I was, Polly, ' said Miss Tox; 'and you're a goodcreature. Robin!'

Miss Tox addressed herself to a bullet-headed young man, who appeared tobe in but indifferent circumstances, and in depressed spirits, and whowas sitting in a remote corner. Rising, he disclosed to view the formand features of the Grinder. 

'Robin, ' said Miss Tox, 'I have just observed to your mother, as you mayhave 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 mydomestic, with a view to your restoration to respectability, I will takethis impressive occasion of remarking that I hope you will never forgetthat you have, and have always had, a good mother, and that you willendeavour so to conduct yourself as to be a comfort to her. '

'Upon my soul I will, Miss, ' returned the Grinder. 'I have come througha good deal, and my intentions is now as straightfor'ard, Miss, as acove'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 moreexpressive!'

'--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 youngco--indiwiddle. '

'Very good indeed, ' observed Miss Tox, approvingly. 

'--and if I hadn't been led away by birds, and then fallen into a badservice, ' said the Grinder, 'I hope I might have done better. But it'snever too late for a--'

'Indi--' suggested Miss Tox. 

'--widdle, ' said the Grinder, 'to mend; and I hope to mend, Miss, withyour kind trial; and wishing, Mother, my love to father, and brothersand sisters, and saying of it. '

'I am very glad indeed to hear it, ' observed Miss Tox. 'Will you take alittle bread and butter, and a cup of tea, before we go, Robin?'

'Thankee, Miss, ' returned the Grinder; who immediately began to use hisown personal grinders in a most remarkable manner, as if he had been onvery short allowance for a considerable period. 

Miss Tox, being, in good time, bonneted and shawled, and Polly too, Robhugged his mother, and followed his new mistress away; so much to thehopeful admiration of Polly, that something in her eyes made luminousrings round the gas-lamps as she looked after him. Polly then put outher light, locked the house-door, delivered the key at an agent's hardby, and went home as fast as she could go; rejoicing in the shrilldelight that her unexpected arrival would occasion there. The greathouse, dumb as to all that had been suffered in it, and the changes ithad witnessed, stood frowning like a dark mute on the street; baulkingany nearer inquiries with the staring announcement that the lease ofthis desirable Family Mansion was to be disposed of. 

CHAPTER 60. Chiefly Matrimonial

The grand half-yearly festival holden by Doctor and Mrs Blimber, onwhich occasion they requested the pleasure of the company of every younggentleman pursuing his studies in that genteel establishment, at anearly party, when the hour was half-past seven o'clock, and when theobject was quadrilles, had duly taken place, about this time; andthe young gentlemen, with no unbecoming demonstrations of levity, hadbetaken themselves, in a state of scholastic repletion, to theirown homes. Mr Skettles had repaired abroad, permanently to grace theestablishment of his father Sir Barnet Skettles, whose popular mannershad obtained him a diplomatic appointment, the honours of which weredischarged by himself and Lady Skettles, to the satisfaction even oftheir own countrymen and countrywomen: which was considered almostmiraculous. Mr Tozer, now a young man of lofty stature, in Wellingtonboots, was so extremely full of antiquity as to be nearly on a par witha genuine ancient Roman in his knowledge of English: a triumph thataffected his good parents with the tenderest emotions, and causedthe father and mother of Mr Briggs (whose learning, like ill-arrangedluggage, was so tightly packed that he couldn't get at anything hewanted) to hide their diminished heads. The fruit laboriously gatheredfrom the tree of knowledge by this latter young gentleman, in fact, had been subjected to so much pressure, that it had become a kind ofintellectual Norfolk Biffin, and had nothing of its original form orflavour remaining. Master Bitherstone now, on whom the forcing systemhad the happier and not uncommon effect of leaving no impressionwhatever, when the forcing apparatus ceased to work, was in a much morecomfortable plight; and being then on shipboard, bound for Bengal, foundhimself forgetting, with such admirable rapidity, that it was doubtfulwhether his declensions of noun-substantives would hold out to the endof the voyage. 

When Doctor Blimber, in pursuance of the usual course, would have saidto the young gentlemen, on the morning of the party, 'Gentlemen, we willresume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month, ' he departed fromthe usual course, and said, 'Gentlemen, when our friend Cincinnatusretired to his farm, he did not present to the senate any Roman who hesought to nominate as his successor. ' But there is a Roman here, ' saidDoctor Blimber, laying his hand on the shoulder of Mr Feeder, B. A. , adolescens imprimis gravis et doctus, gentlemen, whom I, a retiringCincinnatus, wish to present to my little senate, as their futureDictator. Gentlemen, we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth ofnext month, under the auspices of Mr Feeder, B. A. ' At this (whichDoctor Blimber had previously called upon all the parents, and urbanelyexplained), the young gentlemen cheered; and Mr Tozer, on behalf of therest, instantly presented the Doctor with a silver inkstand, in a speechcontaining very little of the mother-tongue, but fifteen quotationsfrom the Latin, and seven from the Greek, which moved the younger of theyoung gentlemen to discontent and envy: they remarking, 'Oh, ah. It wasall very well for old Tozer, but they didn't subscribe money for oldTozer to show off with, they supposed; did they? What business was itof old Tozer's more than anybody else's? It wasn't his inkstand. Why couldn't he leave the boys' property alone?' and murmuring otherexpressions of their dissatisfaction, which seemed to find a greaterrelief 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, ofanything like a contemplated marriage between Mr Feeder, B. A. , and thefair Cornelia Blimber. Doctor Blimber, especially, seemed to take painsto look as if nothing would surprise him more; but it was perfectly wellknown to all the young gentlemen nevertheless, and when they departedfor the society of their relations and friends, they took leave of MrFeeder with awe. 

Mr Feeder's most romantic visions were fulfilled. The Doctor haddetermined to paint the house outside, and put it in thorough repair;and to give up the business, and to give up Cornelia. The painting andrepairing began upon the very day of the young gentlemen's departure, and now behold! the wedding morning was come, and Cornelia, in a newpair of spectacles, was waiting to be led to the hymeneal altar. 

The Doctor with his learned legs, and Mrs Blimber in a lilac bonnet, andMr 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 wasto perform the ceremony, were all assembled in the drawing-room, andCornelia with her orange-flowers and bridesmaids had just come down, andlooked, 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, madethe following proclamation:

'MR AND MRS TOOTS!'

Upon which there entered Mr Toots, grown extremely stout, and on his arma lady very handsomely and becomingly dressed, with very bright blackeyes. 'Mrs Blimber, ' said Mr Toots, 'allow me to present my wife. '

Mrs Blimber was delighted to receive her. Mrs Blimber was a littlecondescending, but extremely kind. 

'And as you've known me for a long time, you know, ' said Mr Toots, 'letme assure you that she is one of the most remarkable women that everlived. '

'My dear!' remonstrated Mrs Toots. 

'Upon my word and honour she is, ' said Mr Toots. 'I--I assure you, MrsBlimber, she's a most extraordinary woman. '

Mrs Toots laughed merrily, and Mrs Blimber led her to Cornelia. Mr Tootshaving paid his respects in that direction and having saluted his oldpreceptor, who said, in allusion to his conjugal state, 'Well, Toots, well, Toots! So you are one of us, are you, Toots?'--retired with MrFeeder, B. A. , into a window. 

Mr Feeder, B. A. , being in great spirits, made a spar at Mr Toots, andtapped him skilfully with the back of his hand on the breastbone. 

'Well, old Buck!' said Mr Feeder with a laugh. 'Well! Here we are! Takenin and done for. Eh?'

'Feeder, ' returned Mr Toots. 'I give you joy. If you're as--as--asperfectly blissful in a matrimonial life, as I am myself, you'll havenothing to desire. '

'I don't forget my old friends, you see, ' said Mr Feeder. 'I ask em tomy wedding, Toots. '

'Feeder, ' replied Mr Toots gravely, 'the fact is, that there wereseveral circumstances which prevented me from communicating with youuntil after my marriage had been solemnised. In the first place, I hadmade 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, youwould naturally expect that it was with Miss Dombey, which involvedexplanations, that upon my word and honour, at that crisis, wouldhave knocked me completely over. In the second place, our wedding wasstrictly private; there being nobody present but one friend of myselfand 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 inwriting a statement of what had occurred before Mrs Toots and myselfwent abroad upon our foreign tour, I fully discharged the offices offriendship. '

'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 youthink 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 anextraordinary woman that is. '

Mr Feeder was willing to take it for granted. But Mr Toots shook hishead, and wouldn't hear of that being possible. 

'You see, ' said Mr Toots, 'what I wanted in a wife was--in short, wassense. 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 thatsense was There, ' said Mr Toots, stretching out his hand towards hiswife, 'in perfect heaps. I had no relation to object or be offended, onthe score of station; for I had no relation. I have never had anybodybelonging to me but my guardian, and him, Feeder, I have alwaysconsidered as a Pirate and a Corsair. Therefore, you know it was notlikely, ' 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 dayon which I did so! Feeder! Nobody but myself can tell what the capacityof that woman's mind is. If ever the Rights of Women, and all that kindof thing, are properly attended to, it will be through her powerfulintellect--Susan, my dear!' said Mr Toots, looking abruptly out of thewindows '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 reallymust be careful. Do not, my dear Susan, exert yourself. She's so easilyexcited, ' said Mr Toots, apart to Mrs Blimber, 'and then she forgets themedical man altogether. '

Mrs Blimber was impressing on Mrs Toots the necessity of caution, whenMr Feeder, B. A. , offered her his arm, and led her down to the carriagesthat were waiting to go to church. Doctor Blimber escorted Mrs Toots. MrToots escorted the fair bride, around whose lambent spectacles two gauzylittle bridesmaids fluttered like moths. Mr Feeder's brother, Mr AlfredFeeder, M. A. , had already gone on, in advance, to assume his officialfunctions. 

The ceremony was performed in an admirable manner. Cornelia, with hercrisp little curls, 'went in, ' as the Chicken might have said, withgreat composure; and Doctor Blimber gave her away, like a man who hadquite made up his mind to it. The gauzy little bridesmaids appearedto suffer most. Mrs Blimber was affected, but gently so; and told theReverend Mr Alfred Feeder, M. A. , on the way home, that if she could onlyhave seen Cicero in his retirement at Tusculum, she would not have had awish, 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 socommunicated themselves to Mrs Toots that Mr Toots was several timesheard to observe, across the table, 'My dear Susan, don't exertyourself!' The best of it was, that Mr Toots felt it incunbent on him tomake a speech; and in spite of a whole code of telegraphic dissuasionsfrom 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 tome in the way of--of any mental confusion sometimes--which is of noconsequence and I impute to nobody--I was always treated like one ofDoctor Blimber's family, and had a desk to myself for a considerableperiod--can--not--allow--my friend Feeder to be--'

Mrs Toots suggested 'married. '

'It may not be inappropriate to the occasion, or altogetheruninteresting, ' said Mr Toots with a delighted face, 'to observe that mywife is a most extraordinary woman, and would do this much better thanmyself--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 privatediscussion: "'whom God hath joined, " you know, "let no man"--don't youknow? I cannot allow my friend Feeder to be married--especially to MrsFeeder--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 flowerswe have this day strewed in their path, be the--the banishers of--ofgloom!'

Doctor Blimber, who had a taste for metaphor, was pleased with this, andsaid, 'Very good, Toots! Very well said, indeed, Toots!' and noddedhis head and patted his hands. Mr Feeder made in reply, a comic speechchequered with sentiment. Mr Alfred Feeder, M. A. , was afterwards veryhappy on Doctor and Mrs Blimber; Mr Feeder, B. A. , scarcely less so, onthe gauzy little bridesmaids. Doctor Blimber then, in a sonorous voice, delivered a few thoughts in the pastoral style, relative to the rushesamong 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 theDoctor's eyes were twinkling in a remarkable manner, and his son-in-lawhad already observed that time was made for slaves, and had inquiredwhether 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 therebefore in old times, under her maiden name of Nipper), and there founda letter, which it took Mr Toots such an enormous time to read, that MrsToots was frightened. 

'My dear Susan, ' said Mr Toots, 'fright is worse than exertion. Pray becalm!'

'Who is it from?' asked Mrs Toots. 

'Why, my love, ' said Mr Toots, 'it's from Captain Gills. Do not exciteyourself. Walters and Miss Dombey are expected home!'

'My dear, ' said Mrs Toots, raising herself quickly from the sofa, verypale, 'don't try to deceive me, for it's no use, they're come home--Isee it plainly in your face!'

'She's a most extraordinary woman!' exclaimed Mr Toots, in rapturousadmiration. 'You're perfectly right, my love, they have come home. MissDombey 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 themedical 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 herunfortunate father away from his old house, to one where she and Waltersare living; that he is lying very ill there--supposed to be dying; andthat 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 doendeavour to!'

His wife, with her old manner suddenly restored, so patheticallyentreated him to take her to her precious pet, her little mistress, herown darling, and the like, that Mr Toots, whose sympathy and admirationwere of the strongest kind, consented from his very heart of hearts; andthey agreed to depart immediately, and present themselves in answer tothe Captain's letter. 

Now some hidden sympathies of things, or some coincidences, had thatday brought the Captain himself (toward whom Mr and Mrs Toots were soonjourneying) into the flowery train of wedlock; not as a principal, butas an accessory. It happened accidentally, and thus:

The Captain, having seen Florence and her baby for a moment, to hisunbounded content, and having had a long talk with Walter, turned outfor a walk; feeling it necessary to have some solitary meditation on thechanges of human affairs, and to shake his glazed hat profoundly overthe fall of Mr Dombey, for whom the generosity and simplicity of hisnature were awakened in a lively manner. The Captain would have beenvery low, indeed, on the unhappy gentleman's account, but for therecollection of the baby; which afforded him such intense satisfactionwhenever 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 hisglazed hat and caught it again; much to the amazement of the spectators. The rapid alternations of light and shade to which these two conflictingsubjects of reflection exposed the Captain, were so very trying to hisspirits, that he felt a long walk necessary to his composure; and asthere is a great deal in the influence of harmonious associations, hechose, for the scene of this walk, his old neighbourhood, down amongthe mast, oar, and block makers, ship-biscuit bakers, coal-whippers, pitch-kettles, sailors, canals, docks, swing-bridges, and other soothingobjects. 

These peaceful scenes, and particularly the region of Limehouse Hole andthereabouts, were so influential in calming the Captain, that he walkedon with restored tranquillity, and was, in fact, regaling himself, underhis breath, with the ballad of Lovely Peg, when, on turning a corner, he was suddenly transfixed and rendered speechless by a triumphantprocession that he beheld advancing towards him. 

This awful demonstration was headed by that determined woman MrsMacStinger, who, preserving a countenance of inexorable resolution, andwearing conspicuously attached to her obdurate bosom a stupendous watchand appendages, which the Captain recognised at a glance as the propertyof Bunsby, conducted under her arm no other than that sagacious mariner;he, with the distraught and melancholy visage of a captive borne into aforeign land, meekly resigning himself to her will. Behind them appearedthe young MacStingers, in a body, exulting. Behind them, two ladiesof a terrible and steadfast aspect, leading between them a shortgentleman in a tall hat, who likewise exulted. In the wake, appearedBunsby's boy, bearing umbrellas. The whole were in good marching order;and a dreadful smartness that pervaded the party would have sufficientlyannounced, 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 appearedto be the first impulse of Bunsby, hopeless as its execution musthave proved. But a cry of recognition proceeding from the party, andAlexander MacStinger running up to the Captain with open arms, theCaptain struck. 

'Well, Cap'en Cuttle!' said Mrs MacStinger. 'This is indeed a meeting! Ibear no malice now, Cap'en Cuttle--you needn't fear that I'm a going tocast any reflections. I hope to go to the altar in another spirit. ' HereMrs MacStinger paused, and drawing herself up, and inflating her bosomwith a long breath, said, in allusion to the victim, 'My 'usband, Cap'enCuttle!'

The abject Bunsby looked neither to the right nor to the left, nor athis bride, nor at his friend, but straight before him at nothing. TheCaptain putting out his hand, Bunsby put out his; but, in answer to theCaptain's greeting, spake no word. 

'Cap'en Cuttle, ' said Mrs MacStinger, 'if you would wish to heal up pastanimosities, and to see the last of your friend, my 'usband, as a singleperson, we should be 'appy of your company to chapel. Here is a ladyhere, ' said Mrs MacStinger, turning round to the more intrepid ofthe two, 'my bridesmaid, that will be glad of your protection, Cap'enCuttle. '

The short gentleman in the tall hat, who it appeared was the husband ofthe other lady, and who evidently exulted at the reduction of a fellowcreature to his own condition, gave place at this, and resigned the ladyto Captain Cuttle. The lady immediately seized him, and, observing thatthere 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 someconcern for himself--for a shadowy terror that he might be married byviolence, possessed him, until his knowledge of the service came to hisrelief, and remembering the legal obligation of saying, 'I will, 'he felt himself personally safe so long as he resolved, if askedany question, distinctly to reply I won't'--threw him into a profuseperspiration; and rendered him, for a time, insensible to the movementsof the procession, of which he now formed a feature, and to theconversation of his fair companion. But as he became less agitated, helearnt from this lady that she was the widow of a Mr Bokum, who had heldan employment in the Custom House; that she was the dearest friend ofMrs MacStinger, whom she considered a pattern for her sex; that she hadoften heard of the Captain, and now hoped he had repented of his pastlife; that she trusted Mr Bunsby knew what a blessing he had gained, butthat she feared men seldom did know what such blessings were, until theyhad lost them; with more to the same purpose. 

All this time, the Captain could not but observe that Mrs Bokum kepther eyes steadily on the bridegroom, and that whenever they came near acourt or other narrow turning which appeared favourable for flight, shewas 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, wereplainly on guard, according to a preconcerted plan; and the wretched manwas so secured by Mrs MacStinger, that any effort at self-preservationby flight was rendered futile. This, indeed, was apparent to the merepopulace, who expressed their perception of the fact by jeers and cries;to all of which, the dread MacStinger was inflexibly indifferent, whileBunsby himself appeared in a state of unconsciousness. 

The Captain made many attempts to accost the philosopher, if only ina monosyllable or a signal; but always failed, in consequence of thevigilance of the guard, and the difficulty, at all times peculiar toBunsby's constitution, of having his attention aroused by any outwardand visible sign whatever. Thus they approached the chapel, a neatwhitewashed edifice, recently engaged by the Reverend MelchisedechHowler, who had consented, on very urgent solicitation, to give theworld another two years of existence, but had informed his followersthat, then, it must positively go. 

While the Reverend Melchisedech was offering up some extemporaryorisons, the Captain found an opportunity of growling in thebridegroom's ear:

'What cheer, my lad, what cheer?'

To which Bunsby replied, with a forgetfulness of the ReverendMelchisedech, which nothing but his desperate circumstances could haveexcused:

'D-----d bad, '

'Jack Bunsby, ' whispered the Captain, 'do you do this here, of your ownfree 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 amomentary 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 adoleful whisper:

'It all began in that there chest o' yourn. Why did I ever conwoy herinto port that night?'

'My lad, ' faltered the Captain, 'I thought as you had come over her; notas 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'sfor 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 immediatelyafterwards married him. 

One of the most frightful circumstances of the ceremony to the Captain, was the deadly interest exhibited therein by Juliana MacStinger; and thefatal concentration of her faculties, with which that promising child, already the image of her parent, observed the whole proceedings. TheCaptain saw in this a succession of man-traps stretching out infinitely;a series of ages of oppression and coercion, through which the seafaringline was doomed. It was a more memorable sight than the unflinchingsteadiness of Mrs Bokum and the other lady, the exultation of theshort gentleman in the tall hat, or even the fell inflexibility of MrsMacStinger. The Master MacStingers understood little of what was goingon, and cared less; being chiefly engaged, during the ceremony, intreading on one another's half-boots; but the contrast afforded bythose wretched infants only set off and adorned the precocious woman inJuliana. Another year or two, the Captain thought, and to lodge wherethat child was, would be destruction. 

The ceremony was concluded by a general spring of the young family on MrBunsby, whom they hailed by the endearing name of father, and fromwhom they solicited half-pence. These gushes of affection over, theprocession was about to issue forth again, when it was delayed forsome little time by an unexpected transport on the part of AlexanderMacStinger. That dear child, it seemed, connecting a chapel withtombstones, when it was entered for any purpose apart from the ordinaryreligious exercises, could not be persuaded but that his mother was nowto be decently interred, and lost to him for ever. In the anguish ofthis conviction, he screamed with astonishing force, and turned black inthe face. However touching these marks of a tender disposition wereto his mother, it was not in the character of that remarkable woman topermit 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 intothe air, and tried another method; which was manifested to the marriageparty by a quick succession of sharp sounds, resembling applause, andsubsequently, by their seeing Alexander in contact with the coolestpaving-stone in the court, greatly flushed, and loudly lamenting. 

The procession being then in a condition to form itself once more, andrepair to Brig Place, where a marriage feast was in readiness, returnedas it had come; not without the receipt, by Bunsby, of many humorouscongratulations from the populace on his recently-acquired happiness. The Captain accompanied it as far as the house-door, but, being madeuneasy by the gentler manner of Mrs Bokum, who, now that she wasrelieved from her engrossing duty--for the watchfulness and alacrityof the ladies sensibly diminished when the bridegroom was safelymarried--had greater leisure to show an interest in his behalf, thereleft it and the captive; faintly pleading an appointment, and promisingto return presently. The Captain had another cause for uneasiness, inremorsefully reflecting that he had been the first means of Bunsby'sentrapment, though certainly without intending it, and through hisunbounded faith in the resources of that philosopher. 

To go back to old Sol Gills at the wooden Midshipman's, and not first goround to ask how Mr Dombey was--albeit the house where he lay was out ofLondon, and away on the borders of a fresh heath--was quite out of theCaptain's course. So he got a lift when he was tired, and made out thejourney gaily. 

The blinds were pulled down, and the house so quiet, that the Captainwas almost afraid to knock; but listening at the door, he heard lowvoices within, very near it, and, knocking softly, was admitted by MrToots. Mr Toots and his wife had, in fact, just arrived there; havingbeen at the Midshipman's to seek him, and having there obtained theaddress. 

They were not so recently arrived, but that Mrs Toots had caught thebaby from somebody, taken it in her arms, and sat down on the stairs, hugging and fondling it. Florence was stooping down beside her; and noone could have said which Mrs Toots was hugging and fondling most, themother 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 oflove 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 mustnot 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 hadtouched 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! Shehas always said--she said before we were married, and has said to thisday--that whenever you came home, she'd come to you in no dress but thedress 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 yourmaid again, your nurse, all that she ever was, and more. There's nochange in her. But, Susan, my dear, ' said Mr Toots, who had spoken withgreat feeling and high admiration, 'all I ask is, that you'll rememberthe 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 madethe aid of her old friend invaluable. Death stood at his pillow. Ashade, already, of what he had been, shattered in mind, and perilouslysick in body, he laid his weary head down on the bed his daughter'shands prepared for him, and had never raised it since. 

She was always with him. He knew her, generally; though, in thewandering of his brain, he often confused the circumstances under whichhe spoke to her. Thus he would address her, sometimes, as if his boywere newly dead; and would tell her, that although he had said nothingof her ministering at the little bedside, yet he had seen it--he hadseen it; and then would hide his face and sob, and put out his wornhand. Sometimes he would ask her for herself. 'Where is Florence?' 'I amhere, Papa, I am here. ' 'I don't know her!' he would cry. 'We have beenparted so long, that I don't know her!' and then a staring dread wouldbe upon him, until she could soothe his perturbation; and recall thetears she tried so hard, at other times, to dry. 

He rambled through the scenes of his old pursuits--through many whereFlorence lost him as she listened--sometimes for hours. He would repeatthat childish question, 'What is money?' and ponder on it, and thinkabout it, and reason with himself, more or less connectedly, for a goodanswer; as if it had never been proposed to him until that moment. Hewould go on with a musing repetition of the title of his old firm twentythousand times, and at every one of them, would turn his head upon hispillow. He would count his children--one--two--stop, and go back, andbegin again in the same way. 

But this was when his mind was in its most distracted state. In all theother 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: hewould recall that night he had so recently remembered, the night onwhich she came down to his room, and would imagine that his heart smotehim, 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 hefollowed her. Here, of a sudden, was a bloody footstep going on amongthe others; and after it there began to be, at intervals, doors standingopen, through which certain terrible pictures were seen, in mirrors, of haggard men, concealing something in their breasts. Still, among themany footsteps and the bloody footsteps here and there, was the step ofFlorence. Still she was going on before. Still the restless mind went, following and counting, ever farther, ever higher, as to the summit of amighty tower that it took years to climb. 

One day he inquired if that were not Susan who had spoken a long whileago. 

Florence said 'Yes, dear Papa;' and asked him would he like to see her?

He said 'very much. ' And Susan, with no little trepidation, showedherself at his bedside. 

It seemed a great relief to him. He begged her not to go; to understandthat 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. Lether look at this! He meant his drawing the gentle head down to hispillow, and laying it beside him. 

He remained like this for days and weeks. At length, lying, the faintfeeble semblance of a man, upon his bed, and speaking in a voice so lowthat they could only hear him by listening very near to his lips, hebecame quiet. It was dimly pleasant to him now, to lie there, with thewindow open, looking out at the summer sky and the trees: and, in theevening, 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 oftentaxed his weakness to whisper to her, 'Go and walk, my dearest, in thesweet air. Go to your good husband!' One time when Walter was in hisroom, he beckoned him to come near, and to stoop down; and pressing hishand, whispered an assurance to him that he knew he could trust him withhis child when he was dead. 

It chanced one evening, towards sunset, when Florence and Walter weresitting 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 littlefellow, 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 todo so often of an evening: which she did. He listening, with his faceturned away. 

Florence was sitting on a certain time by his window, with herwork-basket between her and her old attendant, who was still herfaithful companion. He had fallen into a doze. It was a beautifulevening, with two hours of light to come yet; and the tranquillity andquiet made Florence very thoughtful. She was lost to everything for themoment, but the occasion when the so altered figure on the bed had firstpresented her to her beautiful Mama; when a touch from Walter leaning onthe back of her chair, made her start. 

'My dear, ' said Walter, 'there is someone downstairs who wishes to speakto 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, andspoken with him. Nothing has happened. Will you come?'

Florence put her arm through his; and confiding her father to theblack-eyed Mrs Toots, who sat as brisk and smart at her work asblack-eyed woman could, accompanied her husband downstairs. In thepleasant little parlour opening on the garden, sat a gentleman, who roseto advance towards her when she came in, but turned off, by reason ofsome peculiarity in his legs, and was only stopped by the table. 

Florence then remembered Cousin Feenix, whom she had not at firstrecognised in the shade of the leaves. Cousin Feenix took her hand, andcongratulated her upon her marriage. 

'I could have wished, I am sure, ' said Cousin Feenix, sitting downas Florence sat, to have had an earlier opportunity of offering mycongratulations; but, in point of fact, so many painful occurrences havehappened, treading, as a man may say, on one another's heels, that Ihave been in a devil of a state myself, and perfectly unfit for everydescription of society. The only description of society I have kept, hasbeen my own; and it certainly is anything but flattering to a man's goodopinion of his own sources, to know that, in point of fact, he has thecapacity of boring himself to a perfectly unlimited extent. '

Florence divined, from some indefinable constraint and anxiety in thisgentleman's manner--which was always a gentleman's, in spite of theharmless little eccentricities that attached to it--and from Walter'smanner no less, that something more immediately tending to some objectwas to follow this. 

'I have been mentioning to my friend Mr Gay, if I may be allowed to havethe honour of calling him so, ' said Cousin Feenix, 'that I am rejoicedto hear that my friend Dombey is very decidedly mending. I trust myfriend Dombey will not allow his mind to be too much preyed upon, by anymere loss of fortune. I cannot say that I have ever experienced any verygreat loss of fortune myself: never having had, in point of fact, anygreat amount of fortune to lose. But as much as I could lose, I havelost; and I don't find that I particularly care about it. I know myfriend Dombey to be a devilish honourable man; and it's calculated toconsole my friend Dombey very much, to know, that this is the universalsentiment. Even Tommy Screwzer, --a man of an extremely bilious habit, with whom my friend Gay is probably acquainted--cannot say a syllable indisputation of the fact. '

Florence felt, more than ever, that there was something to come; andlooked earnestly for it. So earnestly, that Cousin Feenix answered, asif she had spoken. 

'The fact is, ' said Cousin Feenix, 'that my friend Gay and myself havebeen 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 anexceedingly kind and open manner, for which I am very much indebted tohim--to solicit it. I am sensible that so amiable a lady as the lovelyand accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey will not require muchurging; but I am happy to know, that I am supported by my friend Gay'sinfluence and approval. As in my parliamentary time, when a man had amotion to make of any sort--which happened seldom in those days, for wewere kept very tight in hand, the leaders on both sides being regularMartinets, which was a devilish good thing for the rank and file, likemyself, and prevented our exposing ourselves continually, as a greatmany 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 privatepopgun, it was always considered a great point for him to say that hehad the happiness of believing that his sentiments were not withoutan echo in the breast of Mr Pitt; the pilot, in point of fact, who hadweathered the storm. Upon which, a devilish large number of fellowsimmediately cheered, and put him in spirits. Though the fact is, thatthese fellows, being under orders to cheer most excessively whenever MrPitt's name was mentioned, became so proficient that it always woke 'em. And they were so entirely innocent of what was going on, otherwise, thatit used to be commonly said by Conversation Brown--four-bottle man atthe Treasury Board, with whom the father of my friend Gay was probablyacquainted, for it was before my friend Gay's time--that if a man hadrisen in his place, and said that he regretted to inform the house thatthere was an Honourable Member in the last stage of convulsions in theLobby, and that the Honourable Member's name was Pitt, the approbationwould have been vociferous. '

This postponement of the point, put Florence in a flutter; and shelooked 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; 'andI am deeply distressed at being the means of causing you a moment'suneasiness. 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 soexceedingly singular, that I should be in the last degree obliged to myfriend 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 thatFlorence turned towards him, said:

'My dearest, it is no more than this. That you will ride to London withthis 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 pressfor an answer to that question, I would venture to take the liberty ofmaking the request. '

'Do you know, Walter?'

'Yes. '

'And think it right?'

'Yes. Only because I am sure that you would too. Though there may bereasons I very well understand, which make it better that nothing moreshould be said beforehand. '

'If Papa is still asleep, or can spare me if he is awake, I will goimmediately, ' said Florence. And rising quietly, and glancing at themwith a look that was a little alarmed but perfectly confiding, left theroom. 

When she came back, ready to bear them company, they were talkingtogether, gravely, at the window; and Florence could not but wonder whatthe 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 husbandbroke 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 everyreturning hour. And I hope my friend Dombey will do me the favour toconsider me a man who has a devilish warm admiration of his character, as, in point of fact, a British merchant and a devilish uprightgentleman. My place in the country is in a most confounded state ofdilapidation, but if my friend Dombey should require a change of air, and would take up his quarters there, he would find it a remarkablyhealthy spot--as it need be, for it's amazingly dull. If my friendDombey suffers from bodily weakness, and would allow me to recommendwhat has frequently done myself good, as a man who has been extremelyqueer at times, and who lived pretty freely in the days when men livedvery freely, I should say, let it be in point of fact the yolk of anegg, beat up with sugar and nutmeg, in a glass of sherry, and takenin the morning with a slice of dry toast. Jackson, who kept theboxing-rooms in Bond Street--man of very superior qualifications, withwhose reputation my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted--used to mentionthat in training for the ring they substituted rum for sherry. I shouldrecommend sherry in this case, on account of my friend Dombey being inan invalided condition; which might occasion rum to fly--in point offact to his head--and throw him into a devil of a state. '

Of all this, Cousin Feenix delivered himself with an obviously nervousand discomposed air. Then, giving his arm to Florence, and puttingthe strongest possible constraint upon his wilful legs, which seemeddetermined to go out into the garden, he led her to the door, and handedher 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 certaindull and stately streets, lying westward in London, it was growing dusk. Florence had, by this time, put her hand in Walter's; and was lookingvery earnestly, and with increasing agitation, into every new streetinto which they turned. 

When the carriage stopped, at last, before that house in Brook Street, where her father's unhappy marriage had been celebrated, Florencesaid, 'Walter, what is this? Who is here?' Walter cheering her, andnot replying, she glanced up at the house-front, and saw that all thewindows were shut, as if it were uninhabited. Cousin Feenix had by thistime alighted, and was offering his hand. 

'Are you not coming, Walter?'

'No, I will remain here. Don't tremble there is nothing to fear, dearestFlorence. '

'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 herout of the summer evening air into the close dull house. More sombre andbrown 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 herconductor, at the drawing-room door. He opened it, without speaking, and signed an entreaty to her to advance into the inner room, while heremained there. Florence, after hesitating an instant, complied. 

Sitting by the window at a table, where she seemed to have been writingor drawing, was a lady, whose head, turned away towards the dying light, was resting on her hand. Florence advancing, doubtfully, all at oncestood still, as if she had lost the power of motion. The lady turned herhead. 

'Great Heaven!' she said, 'what is this?'

'No, no!' cried Florence, shrinking back as she rose up and putting outher hands to keep her off. 'Mama!'

They stood looking at each other. Passion and pride had worn it, but itwas the face of Edith, and beautiful and stately yet. It was the faceof Florence, and through all the terrified avoidance it expressed, therewas pity in it, sorrow, a grateful tender memory. On each face, wonderand fear were painted vividly; each so still and silent, looking at theother over the black gulf of the irrevocable past. 

Florence was the first to change. Bursting into tears, she said from herfull heart, 'Oh, Mama, Mama! why do we meet like this? Why were you everkind 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 uponher face. 

'I dare not think of that, ' said Florence, 'I am come from Papa's sickbed. We are never asunder now; we never shall be' any more. If you wouldhave me ask his pardon, I will do it, Mama. I am almost sure he willgrant it now, if I ask him. May Heaven grant it to you, too, and comfortyou!'

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 himthat you are repentant; that you are changed, ' said Florence, lookingmournfully upon her; 'and he will speak to Papa with me, I know. Isthere anything but this that I can do?'

Edith, breaking her silence, without moving eye or limb, answeredslowly:

'The stain upon your name, upon your husband's, on your child's. Willthat 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 believemore certainly. You do not--you do not, ' faltered Florence, 'speak ofPapa; 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; andthen, perhaps, we may take leave of each other, more like what weused to be to one another. I have not, ' said Florence very gently, anddrawing nearer to her, 'I have not shrunk back from you, Mama, becauseI fear you, or because I dread to be disgraced by you. I only wish to domy duty to Papa. I am very dear to him, and he is very dear to me. ButI 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 forgiveyou all this sin and shame, and to forgive me if I cannot help doingthis (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, andcaught her round the neck. 

'Florence!' she cried. 'My better angel! Before I am mad again, beforemy stubbornness comes back and strikes me dumb, believe me, upon my soulI 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 blindand passionate resentment, of which I do not, cannot, will not, evennow, repent; but not guilty with that dead man. Before God!'

Upon her knees upon the ground, she held up both her hands, and sworeit. 

'Florence!' she said, 'purest and best of natures, --whom I love--whomight have changed me long ago, and did for a time work some change evenin the woman that I am, --believe me, I am innocent of that; and oncemore, on my desolate heart, let me lay this dear head, for the lasttime!'

She was moved and weeping. Had she been oftener thus in older days, shehad been happier now. 

'There is nothing else in all the world, ' she said, 'that would havewrung denial from me. No love, no hatred, no hope, no threat. I saidthat 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 accomplishedrelative will excuse my having, by a little stratagem, effected thismeeting. I cannot say that I was, at first, wholly incredulous as tothe possibility of my lovely and accomplished relative having, veryunfortunately, committed herself with the deceased person with whiteteeth; because in point of fact, one does see, in this world--which isremarkable for devilish strange arrangements, and for being decidedlythe most unintelligible thing within a man's experience--very oddconjunctions of that sort. But as I mentioned to my friend Dombey, Icould not admit the criminality of my lovely and accomplished relativeuntil it was perfectly established. And feeling, when the deceasedperson was, in point of fact, destroyed in a devilish horrible manner, that her position was a very painful one--and feeling besides that ourfamily 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 adevilish lively woman, had perhaps not been the very best of mothers--Itook the liberty of seeking her in France, and offering her suchprotection as a man very much out at elbows could offer. Upon whichoccasion, my lovely and accomplished relative did me the honour toexpress that she believed I was, in my way, a devilish good sort offellow; and that therefore she put herself under my protection. Which inpoint of fact I understood to be a kind thing on the part of my lovelyand accomplished relative, as I am getting extremely shaky, and havederived great comfort from her solicitude. '

Edith, who had taken Florence to a sofa, made a gesture with her hand asif she would have begged him to say no more. 

'My lovely and accomplished relative, ' resumed Cousin Feenix, stillambling about at the door, 'will excuse me, if, for her satisfaction, and my own, and that of my friend Dombey, whose lovely and accomplisheddaughter we so much admire, I complete the thread of my observations. She will remember that, from the first, she and I never alluded to thesubject of her elopement. My impression, certainly, has always been, that there was a mystery in the affair which she could explain if soinclined. But my lovely and accomplished relative being a devilishresolute woman, I knew that she was not, in point of fact, to be trifledwith, and therefore did not involve myself in any discussions. But, observing lately, that her accessible point did appear to be a verystrong description of tenderness for the daughter of my friend Dombey, it occurred to me that if I could bring about a meeting, unexpected onboth sides, it might lead to beneficial results. Therefore, we being inLondon, 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 longhomes, which is a devilish disagreeable reflection for a man, I appliedmyself to the discovery of the residence of my friend Gay--handsome manof an uncommonly frank disposition, who is probably known to my lovelyand accomplished relative--and had the happiness of bringing his amiablewife to the present place. And now, ' said Cousin Feenix, with a realand genuine earnestness shining through the levity of his manner and hisslipshod speech, 'I do conjure my relative, not to stop half way, but toset right, as far as she can, whatever she has done wrong--not forthe honour of her family, not for her own fame, not for any of thoseconsiderations which unfortunate circumstances have induced her toregard as hollow, and in point of fact, as approaching to humbug--butbecause it is wrong, and not right. '

Cousin Feenix's legs consented to take him away after this; and leavingthem alone together, he shut the door. 

Edith remained silent for some minutes, with Florence sitting closebeside her. Then she took from her bosom a sealed paper. 

'I debated with myself a long time, ' she said in a low voice, 'whetherto write this at all, in case of dying suddenly or by accident, andfeeling the want of it upon me. I have deliberated, ever since, when andhow 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 isobtained 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 thepoint of death; he may not recover, even now. Is there any word that Ishall 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--notyet--for if it were to do again to-morrow, I should do it. But if he isa changed man---'

She stopped. There was something in the silent touch of Florence's handthat stopped her. 

'But that being a changed man, he knows, now, it would never be. Tellhim I wish it never had been. '

'May I say, ' said Florence, 'that you grieved to hear of the afflictionshe has suffered?'

'Not, ' she replied, 'if they have taught him that his daughter is verydear to him. He will not grieve for them himself, one day, if they havebrought 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 somefuture time, to say so?'

Edith sat with her dark eyes gazing steadfastly before her, and did notreply until Florence had repeated her entreaty; when she drew her handwithin her arm, and said, with the same thoughtful gaze upon the nightoutside:

'Tell him that if, in his own present, he can find any reason tocompassionate my past, I sent word that I asked him to do so. Tell himthat if, in his own present, he can find a reason to think less bitterlyof me, I asked him to do so. Tell him, that, dead as we are to oneanother, never more to meet on this side of eternity, he knows there isone 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, andmine 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 mostrepentant of his own part in the dark vision of our married life. Atthat time, I will be repentant too--let him know it then--and think thatwhen 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 hewas. I will try, then, to forgive him his share of blame. Let him try toforgive me mine!'

'Oh Mama!' said Florence. 'How it lightens my heart, even in such astrange meeting and parting, to hear this!'

'Strange words in my own ears, ' said Edith, 'and foreign to the sound ofmy own voice! But even if I had been the wretched creature I havegiven 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, whenyou are dearest, ever feel that he is most forbearing in his thoughts ofme--that I am most forbearing in my thoughts of him! Those are the lastwords I send him! Now, goodbye, my life!'

She clasped her in her arms, and seemed to pour out all her woman's soulof love and tenderness at once. 

'This kiss for your child! These kisses for a blessing on your head! Myown dear Florence, my sweet girl, farewell!'

'To meet again!' cried Florence. 

'Never again! Never again! When you leave me in this dark room, thinkthat you have left me in the grave. Remember only that I was once, andthat I loved you!'

And Florence left her, seeing her face no more, but accompanied by herembraces and caresses to the last. 

Cousin Feenix met her at the door, and took her down to Walter in thedingy dining room, upon whose shoulder she laid her head weeping. 

'I am devilish sorry, ' said Cousin Feenix, lifting his wristbands to hiseyes in the simplest manner possible, and without the least concealment, 'that the lovely and accomplished daughter of my friend Dombey andamiable wife of my friend Gay, should have had her sensitive natureso very much distressed and cut up by the interview which is justconcluded. But I hope and trust I have acted for the best, and that myhonourable friend Dombey will find his mind relieved by the disclosureswhich have taken place. I exceedingly lament that my friend Dombeyshould have got himself, in point of fact, into the devil's own stateof conglomeration by an alliance with our family; but am strongly ofopinion that if it hadn't been for the infernal scoundrel Barker--manwith white teeth--everything would have gone on pretty smoothly. In regard to my relative who does me the honour to have formed anuncommonly good opinion of myself, I can assure the amiable wife of myfriend Gay, that she may rely on my being, in point of fact, a father toher. And in regard to the changes of human life, and the extraordinarymanner in which we are perpetually conducting ourselves, all I can sayis, with my friend Shakespeare--man who wasn't for an age but for alltime, and with whom my friend Gay is no doubt acquainted--that its likethe shadow of a dream. '

CHAPTER 62. Final

A bottle that has been long excluded from the light of day, and ishoary with dust and cobwebs, has been brought into the sunshine; and thegolden 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 rareand most delicious wine. '

The Captain, who is of the party, beams with joy. There is a very haloof 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 speechlessgratification. 

'--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 oldwhim, Sir, let us devote this first glass to Walter and his wife. '

'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Dombey. 'Florence, my child'--andturns to kiss her. 

'To Walter and his wife!' says Mr Toots. 

'To Wal'r and his wife!' exclaims the Captain. 'Hooroar!' and theCaptain exhibiting a strong desire to clink his glass against some otherglass, 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 marriagebells. 

Other buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did in its time; anddust and cobwebs thicken on the bottles. 

Mr Dombey is a white-haired gentleman, whose face bears heavy marks ofcare and suffering; but they are traces of a storm that has passed onfor ever, and left a clear evening in its track. 

Ambitious projects trouble him no more. His only pride is in hisdaughter and her husband. He has a silent, thoughtful, quiet manner, andis always with his daughter. Miss Tox is not infrequently of the familyparty, and is quite devoted to it, and a great favourite. Her admirationof her once stately patron is, and has been ever since the morning ofher 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 certainannual sum that comes he knows not how, with an earnest entreaty that hewill not seek to discover, and with the assurance that it is a debt, andan 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 arisesout of some forgotten transaction in the times of the old House. 

That hazel-eyed bachelor, a bachelor no more, is married now, and to thesister of the grey-haired Junior. He visits his old chief sometimes, butseldom. There is a reason in the greyhaired Junior's history, and yeta stronger reason in his name, why he should keep retired from hisold employer; and as he lives with his sister and her husband, theyparticipate in that retirement. Walter sees them sometimes--Florencetoo--and the pleasant house resounds with profound duets arranged forthe Piano-Forte and Violoncello, and with the labours of HarmoniousBlacksmiths. 

And how goes the wooden Midshipman in these changed days? Why, here hestill is, right leg foremost, hard at work upon the hackney coaches, andmore on the alert than ever, being newly painted from his cocked hat tohis buckled shoes; and up above him, in golden characters, these namesshine refulgent, GILLS AND CUTTLE. 

Not another stroke of business does the Midshipman achieve beyond hisusual easy trade. But they do say, in a circuit of some half-mile roundthe blue umbrella in Leadenhall Market, that some of Mr Gills's oldinvestments are coming out wonderfully well; and that instead of beingbehind 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 thedesign. 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 itis that, standing at his shop-door, in his coffee-coloured suit, withhis chronometer in his pocket, and his spectacles on his forehead, hedon't appear to break his heart at customers not coming, but looks veryjovial and contented, though full as misty as of yore. 

As to his partner, Captain Cuttle, there is a fiction of a business inthe Captain's mind which is better than any reality. The Captain is assatisfied of the Midshipman's importance to the commerce and navigationof the country, as he could possibly be, if no ship left the Port ofLondon without the Midshipman's assistance. His delight in his own nameover the door, is inexhaustible. He crosses the street, twenty times aday, 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 wouldha' 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 youthat 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 knewthat you'd be glad to hear, and so I came down myself. We're positivelygetting on, you know. There's Florence, and Susan, and now here'sanother little stranger. '

'A female stranger?' inquires the Captain. 

'Yes, Captain Gills, ' says Mr Toots, 'and I'm glad of it. The oftener wecan repeat that most extraordinary woman, my opinion is, the better!'

'Stand by!' says the Captain, turning to the old case-bottle with nothroat--for it is evening, and the Midshipman's usual moderate provisionof pipes and glasses is on the board. 'Here's to her, and may she haveever so many more!'

'Thank'ee, Captain Gills, ' says the delighted Mr Toots. 'I echo thesentiment. If you'll allow me, as my so doing cannot be unpleasant toanybody, under the circumstances, I think I'll take a pipe. '

Mr Toots begins to smoke, accordingly, and in the openness of his heartis very loquacious. 

'Of all the remarkable instances that that delightful woman has given ofher excellent sense, Captain Gills and Mr Sols, ' said Mr Toots, 'Ithink none is more remarkable than the perfection with which she hasunderstood my devotion to Miss Dombey. '

Both his auditors assent. 

'Because you know, ' says Mr Toots, 'I have never changed my sentimentstowards Miss Dombey. They are the same as ever. She is the samebright vision to me, at present, that she was before I made Walters'sacquaintance. When Mrs Toots and myself first began to talk of--inshort, of the tender passion, you know, Captain Gills. '

'Ay, ay, my lad, ' says the Captain, 'as makes us all slue round--forwhich you'll overhaul the book--'

'I shall certainly do so, Captain Gills, ' says Mr Toots, with greatearnestness; 'when we first began to mention such subjects, I explainedthat I was what you may call a Blighted Flower, you know. '

The Captain approves of this figure greatly; and murmurs that no floweras blows, is like the rose. 

'But Lord bless me, ' pursues Mr Toots, 'she was as entirely conscious ofthe state of my feelings as I was myself. There was nothing I could tellher. She was the only person who could have stood between me and thesilent Tomb, and she did it, in a manner to command my everlastingadmiration. She knows that there's nobody in the world I look up to, asI do to Miss Dombey. Knows that there's nothing on earth I wouldn'tdo for Miss Dombey. She knows that I consider Miss Dombey the mostbeautiful, the most amiable, the most angelic of her sex. What is herobservation 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! Whatremarks she makes! It was only last night, when we were sitting inthe enjoyment of connubial bliss--which, upon my word and honour, is afeeble term to express my feelings in the society of my wife--thatshe said how remarkable it was to consider the present position ofour friend Walters. "Here, " observes my wife, "he is, released fromsea-going, after that first long voyage with his young bride"--as youknow he was, Mr Sols. '

'Quite true, ' says the old Instrument-maker, rubbing his hands. 

"'Here he is, " says my wife, "released from that, immediately; appointedby the same establishment to a post of great trust and confidence athome; showing himself again worthy; mounting up the ladder with thegreatest expedition; beloved by everybody; assisted by his uncle at thevery best possible time of his fortunes"--which I think is the case, MrSols? My wife is always correct. '

'Why yes, yes--some of our lost ships, freighted with gold, have comehome, truly, ' returns old Sol, laughing. 'Small craft, Mr Toots, butserviceable to my boy!'

'Exactly so, ' says Mr Toots. 'You'll never find my wife wrong. "Here heis, " says that most remarkable woman, "so situated, --and what follows?What follows?" observed Mrs Toots. Now pray remark, Captain Gills, andMr Sols, the depth of my wife's penetration. "Why that, under the veryeye of Mr Dombey, there is a foundation going on, upon which a--anEdifice;" that was Mrs Toots's word, ' says Mr Toots exultingly, "'isgradually rising, perhaps to equal, perhaps excel, that of which he wasonce the head, and the small beginnings of which (a common fault, but abad one, Mrs Toots said) escaped his memory. Thus, " said my wife, "fromhis 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 todevote to oratorical purposes, as its proper use affects him with avery uncomfortable sensation--does such grand justice to this propheticsentence of his wife's, that the Captain, throwing away his glazed hatin a state of the greatest excitement, cries:

'Sol Gills, you man of science and my ould pardner, what did I tellWal'r to overhaul on that there night when he first took to business?Was it this here quotation, "Turn again Whittington, Lord Mayor ofLondon, and when you are old you will never depart from it. " Was it themwords, Sol Gills?'

'It certainly was, Ned, ' replied the old Instrument-maker. 'I rememberwell. '

'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 Pegright through; and stand by, both on you, for the chorus!'

Buried wine grows older, as the old Madeira did, in its time; and dustand cobwebs thicken on the bottles. 

Autumn days are shining, and on the sea-beach there are often a younglady, and a white-haired gentleman. With them, or near them, are twochildren: 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 theobject of his life. If he be thoughtful, the white-haired gentleman isthoughtful too; and sometimes when the child is sitting by his side, andlooks up in his face, asking him questions, he takes the tiny hand inhis, 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 gentlemanlikes best to see the child free and stirring; and as they go abouttogether, the story of the bond between them goes about, and followsthem. 

But no one, except Florence, knows the measure of the white-hairedgentleman's affection for the girl. That story never goes about. Thechild herself almost wonders at a certain secrecy he keeps in it. Hehoards 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. Itpleases him to have her come, and wake him in the morning. He is fondestof her and most loving to her, when there is no creature by. The childsays then, sometimes:

'Dear grandpapa, why do you cry when you kiss me?'

He only answers, 'Little Florence! little Florence!' and smooths awaythe curls that shade her earnest eyes. 

The voices in the waves speak low to him of Florence, day andnight--plainest when he, his blooming daughter, and her husband, besidethem 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 andtheir ceaseless murmuring to her of the love, eternal and illimitable, extending still, beyond the sea, beyond the sky, to the invisiblecountry far away. 

Never from the mighty sea may voices rise too late, to come between usand the unseen region on the other shore! Better, far better, thatthey whispered of that region in our childish ears, and the swift riverhurried us away!

PREFACE OF 1848

I cannot forego my usual opportunity of saying farewell to my readersin this greeting-place, though I have only to acknowledge the unboundedwarmth and earnestness of their sympathy in every stage of the journeywe have just concluded. 

If any of them have felt a sorrow in one of the principal incidents onwhich this fiction turns, I hope it may be a sorrow of that sort whichendears 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 Iwould 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) ofcorrectly observing the characters of men, is a rare one. I have noteven found, within my experience, that the faculty (or the habit) ofcorrectly observing so much as the faces of men, is a general one by anymeans. The two commonest mistakes in judgement that I suppose toarise from the former default, are, the confounding of shyness witharrogance--a very common mistake indeed--and the not understanding thatan obstinate nature exists in a perpetual struggle with itself. 

Mr Dombey undergoes no violent change, either in this book, or in reallife. A sense of his injustice is within him, all along. The more herepresses it, the more unjust he necessarily is. Internal shame andexternal circumstances may bring the contest to a close in a week, or aday; but, it has been a contest for years, and is only fought out aftera long balance of victory. 

I began this book by the Lake of Geneva, and went on with it for somemonths in France, before pursuing it in England. The association betweenthe 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 thelittle midshipman's house, and could swear to every pew in the churchin which Florence was married, or to every young gentleman's bedstead inDoctor Blimber's establishment, I yet confusedly imagine CaptainCuttle as secluding himself from Mrs MacStinger among the mountains ofSwitzerland. Similarly, when I am reminded by any chance of what it wasthat the waves were always saying, my remembrance wanders for a wholewinter night about the streets of Paris--as I restlessly did with aheavy heart, on the night when I had written the chapter in which mylittle friend and I parted company.