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times when he must speak, when he will speak! - confound your arts, Ma'am,'
cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire, -
'when the provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent.'
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse's
coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
'And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe - old Joe, who has no other
merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty - to be your guest and guide at
Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I
don't know, Sir,' said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air,
'what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in such great
request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn't pretty tough,
and obstinate in his refusals, you'd kill him among you with your
invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.'
Mr Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he
received over those other distinguished members of society who were
clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short
by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that
they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, 'J. B., Dombey is the
man for you to choose as a friend.'
The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of
savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill and
kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching for the
departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they were to leave
town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and
buttoned him up until his face looked staring and gasping, over the top of
that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The Native then handed him
separately, and with a decent interval between each supply, his washleather
gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; which latter article the Major wore
with a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his
remarkable visage. The Native had previously packed, in all possible and
impossible parts of Mr Dombey's chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual
quantity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in
appearance than the Major himself: and having filled his own pockets with
Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and
newspapers, any or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any
instant of the journey, he announced that everything was ready. To complete
the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a
prince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by the side
of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the Major's cloaks and great-coats was hurled
upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavement with those
great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded, in a
living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act
of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite
handkerchief. Mr Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly - very
coldly even for him - and honouring her with the slightest possible
inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a very
discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was
all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and
he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed
Mephistopheles.
During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the
Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and
gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a
variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was
the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of
these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing
near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr
Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd, not at them; and the Major
was looking, at the time, into the core of one of his stories. At length,
however, this man stepped before them as they turned round, and pulling his
hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his head to Mr Dombey.
'Beg your pardon, Sir,' said the man, 'but I hope you're a doin' pretty
well, Sir.'
He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust and
oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashes all
over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could be fairly
called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short, he was Mr
Toodle, professionally clothed.
'I shall have the honour of stokin' of you down, Sir,' said Mr Toodle.
'Beg your pardon, Sir. - I hope you find yourself a coming round?'
Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a
man like that would make his very eyesight dirty.
''Scuse the liberty, Sir,' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly
remembered, 'but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family - '
A change in Mr Dombey's face, which seemed to express recollection of
him, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angry
sense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short.
'Your wife wants money, I suppose,' said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in
his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.
'No thank'ee, Sir,' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't.'
Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his
hand in his pocket.
'No, Sir,' said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; 'we're
a doin' pretty well, Sir; we haven't no cause to complain in the worldly
way, Sir. We've had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.'
Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing
he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was
arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly round and
round in the man's hand.
'We lost one babby,' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'.'
'Lately,' added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
'No, Sir, up'ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in
the matter o readin', Sir,' said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind Mr
Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago, 'them boys
o' mine, they learned me, among 'em, arter all. They've made a wery
tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.'
'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey.
'Beg your pardon, Sir,' resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and
deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: 'I wouldn't have
troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin' in the name of my
son Biler - christened Robin - him as you was so good as to make a
Charitable Grinder on.'
'Well, man,' said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. 'What about him?'
'Why, Sir,' returned Toodle, shaking his head with a face of great
anxiety and distress, 'I'm forced to say, Sir, that he's gone wrong.
'He has gone wrong, has he?' said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind of
satisfaction.
'He has fell into bad company, you see, genelmen,' pursued the father,
looking wistfully at both, and evidently taking the Major into the
conversation with the hope of having his sympathy. 'He has got into bad
ways. God send he may come to again, genelmen, but he's on the wrong track
now! You could hardly be off hearing of it somehow, Sir,' said Toodle, again
addressing Mr Dombey individually; 'and it's better I should out and say my
boy's gone rather wrong. Polly's dreadful down about it, genelmen,' said
Toodle with the same dejected look, and another appeal to the Major.
'A son of this man's whom I caused to be educated, Major,' said Mr
Dombey, giving him his arm. 'The usual return!'
'Take advice from plain old Joe, and never educate that sort of people,
Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, it never does! It always fails!'
The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, the
quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught, as
parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with as much
fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on quite a right
plan in some undiscovered respect, when Mr Dombey angrily repeating 'The
usual return!' led the Major away. And the Major being heavy to hoist into
Mr Dombey's carriage, elevated in mid-air, and having to stop and swear that
he would flay the Native alive, and break every bone in his skin, and visit
other physical torments upon him, every time he couldn't get his foot on the
step, and fell back on that dark exile, had barely time before they started
to repeat hoarsely that it would never do: that it always failed: and that
if he were to educate 'his own vagabond,' he would certainly be hanged.
Mr Dombey assented bitterly; but there was something more in his
bitterness, and in his moody way of falling back in the carriage, and
looking with knitted brows at the changing objects without, than the failure
of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders' Company. He
had seen upon the man's rough cap a piece of new crape, and he had assured
himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore it for his son.
So] from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his great
house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking before them,
everyone set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy, and was a
bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman had wept over his
pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, waking from his sleep, had
asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed and brightened when she
carne in!
To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going on
before there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he dared to enter,
even by a common show like that, into the trial and disappointrnent of a
proud gentleman's secret heart! To think that this lost child, who was to
have divided with him his riches, and his projects, and his power, and
allied with whom he was to have shut out all the world as with a double door
of gold, should have let in such a herd to insult him with their knowledge
of his defeated hopes, and their boasts of claiming community of feeling
with himself, so far removed: if not of having crept into the place wherein
he would have lorded it, alone!
He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by these
thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape, and
hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but a wilderness of
blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed at which the train was
whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young life that had been borne
away so steadily and so inexorably to its foredoomed end. The power that
forced itself upon its iron way - its own - defiant of all paths and roads,
piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures
of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant
monster, Death.
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowmg
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the
meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in
darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright and
wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields,
through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk,
through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close
at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a
deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him: like as in the track of
the remorseless monster, Death!
Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the
park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep are
feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating, where the
dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream is running,
where the village clusters, where the great cathedral rises, where the bleak
moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its inconstant will;
away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind
but dust and vapour: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and still
away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great
works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of shadow an
inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still away, onward
and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich
estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old roads and paths that
look deserted, small, and insignificant as they are left behind: and so they
do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in the track of the
indomitable monster, Death!
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging down into the
earth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance, that
amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, and to tend
furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the Wet wall shows its surface
flying past like a fierce stream, Away once more into the day, and through
the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rattling, tearing on,
spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute
where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute more are not; sometimes lapping
water greedily, and before the spout at which it drinks' has ceased to drip
upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance!
Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on
resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death, is
strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There are dark
pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below. There are
jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through the battered
roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'want and fever
hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables, and
distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and mortar penning up deformity
of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his
carriage window, it is never in his thoughts that the monster who has
brought him there has let the light of day in on these things: not made or
caused them. It was the journey's fitting end, and might have been the end
of everything; it was so ruinous and dreary.'
So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had the one relentless
monster still before him. All things looked black, and cold, and deadly upon
him, and he on them. He found a likeness to his misfortune everywhere. There
was a remorseless triumph going on about him, and it galled and stung him in
his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took: though most of all when it
divided with him the love and memory of his lost boy.
There was a face - he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it
on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears, and
hidden soon behind two quivering hands - that often had attended him in
fancy, on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last night,
timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was something of
doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he once more saw that
fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike, was like reproach. It
was a trouble to him to think of this face of Florence.
Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feeling
it awakened in him - of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older
times - was full-formed now, and spoke out plainly, moving him too much, and
threatening to grow too strong for his composure. Because the face was
abroad, in the expression of defeat and persecution that seemed to encircle
him like the air. Because it barbed the arrow of that cruel and remorseless
enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its grasp a double-handed
sword. Because he knew full well, in his own breast, as he stood there,
tinging the scene of transition before him with the morbid colours of his
own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful
change, and promise of better things, that life had quite as much to do with
his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was
the object of his hope removed instead of her?
The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to no
reflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; she was
an aggravation of his bitterness now. If his son had been his only child,
and the same blow had fallen on him, it would have been heavy to bear; but
infinitely lighter than now, when it might have fallen on her (whom he could
have lost, or he believed it, without a pang), and had not. Her loving and
innocent face rising before him, had no softening or winning influence. He
rejected the angel, and took up with the tormenting spirit crouching in his
bosom. Her patience, goodness, youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms
in the ashes upon which he set his heel. He saw her image in the blight and
blackness all around him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than
once upon this journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this
journey's end, tracing figures in the dust with his stick, the thought came
into his mind, what was there he could interpose between himself and it?
The Major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, like
another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to leer
at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited Miss Toxes
pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over the fields to
hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends by informing him
that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriage ready.
'Dombey,' said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, 'don't
be thoughtful. It's a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as tough as you
see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to
be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far above that kind of thing.'
The Major even in his friendly remonstrrnces, thus consulting the
dignity and honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their
importance, Mr Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to a gentleman
possessing so much good sense and such a well-regulated mind; acoordingly he
made an effort to listen to the Major's stories, as they trotted along the
turnpike road; and the Major, finding both the pace and the road a great
deal better adapted to his conversational powers than the mode of travelling
they had just relinquished, came out of his entertainment,
But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was, and as he so very often
said he was, administered some palatable catering to his companion's
appetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him, accidentally, and
as one might say, grudgingly and against his will, how there was great
curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of his friend Dombey. How he
was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old Joe Bagstock was a greater man
than ever, there, on the strength of Dombey. How they said, 'Bagstock, your
friend Dombey now, what is the view he takes of such and such a question?
Though, by the Rood, Sir,' said the Major, with a broad stare, 'how they
discovered that J. B. ever came to know you, is a mystery!'
In this flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usual
plethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by some
violent assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in his
dark-brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with an outlandish
impossibility of adjustment - being, of their own accord, and without any
reference to the tailor's art, long where they ought to be short, short
where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to be loose, and loose
where they ought to be tight - and to which he imparted a new grace,
whenever the Major attacked him, by shrinking into them like a shrivelled
nut, or a cold monkey - in this flow of spirits and conversation, the Major
continued all day: so that when evening came on, and found them trotting
through the green and leafy road near Leamington, the Major's voice, what
with talking and eating and chuckling and choking, appeared to be in the box
under the rumble, or in some neighbouring hay-stack. Nor did the Major
improve it at the Royal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been ordered, and
where he so oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when
he retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could
only make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him.
He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but
conducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing. At this meal they
arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the responsibility of
ordering evrything to eat and drink; and they were to have a late breakfast
together every morning, and a late dinner together every day. Mr Dombey
would prefer remaining in his own room, or walking in the country by
himself, on that first day of their sojourn at Leamington; but next morning
he would be happy to accompany the Major to the Pump-room, and about the
town. So they parted until dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his
wholesome thoughts in his own way. The Major, attended by the Native
carrying a camp-stool, a great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down
through all the public places: looking into subscription books to find out
who was there, looking up old ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting
J. B. tougher than ever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he
went. There never was a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than the
Major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself.
It was surprising how much new conversation the Major had to let off at
dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire his social
qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the latest
newspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion with them,
on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of such power and
might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. Mr Dombey, who had
been so long shut up within himself, and who had rarely, at any time,
overstepped the enchanted circle within which the operations of Dombey and
Son were conducted, began to think this an improvement on his solitary life;
and in place of excusing himself for another day, as he had thought of doing
when alone, walked out with the Major arm-in-arm.
New Faces
The MAJOR, more blue-faced and staring - more over-ripe, as it were,
than ever - and giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse's
coughs, not so much of necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of
importance, walked arm-in-arm with Mr Dombey up the sunny side of the way,
with his cheeks swelling over his tight stock, his legs majestically wide
apart, and his great head wagging from side to side, as if he were
remonstrating within himself for being such a captivating object. They had
not walked many yards, before the Major encountered somebody he knew, nor
many yards farther before the Major encountered somebody else he knew, but
he merely shook his fingers at them as he passed, and led Mr Dombey on:
pointing out the localities as they went, and enlivening the walk with any
current scandal suggested by them.
In this manner the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to
their own satisfaction, when they beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled
chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her carriage by a
kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by some unseen power in the
rear. Although the lady was not young, she was very blooming in the face -
quite rosy- and her dress and attitude were perfectly juvenile. Walking by
the side of the chair, and carrying her gossamer parasol with a proud and
weary air, as if so great an effort must be soon abandoned and the parasol
dropped, sauntered a much younger lady, very handsome, very haughty, very
wilful, who tossed her head and drooped her eyelids, as though, if there
were anything in all the world worth looking into, save a mirror, it
certainly was not the earth or sky.
'Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!' cried the Major, stopping as
this little cavalcade drew near.
'My dearest Edith!' drawled the lady in the chair, 'Major Bagstock!'
The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he relinquished Mr Dombey's
arm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the chair and pressed it
to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded both his gloves upon
his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the chair having
stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a flushed page
pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and in part out-pushed
his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, and wan, and thin, and
his plight appeared the more forlorn from his having injured the shape of
his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward, as is
sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries.
'Joe Bagstock,' said the Major to both ladies, 'is a proud and happy
man for the rest of his life.'
'You false creature! said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. 'Where
do you come from? I can't bear you.'
'Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, Ma'am,' said the Major,
promptly, 'as a reason for being tolerated. Mr Dombey, Mrs Skewton.' The
lady in the chair was gracious. 'Mr Dombey, Mrs Granger.' The lady with the
parasol was faintly conscious of Mr Dombey's taking off his hat, and bowing
low. 'I am delighted, Sir,' said the Major, 'to have this opportunity.'
The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leered
in his ugliest manner.
'Mrs Skewton, Dombey,' said the Major, 'makes havoc in the heart of old
Josh.'
Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it.
'You perfidious goblin,' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! How
long have you been here, bad man?'
'One day,' replied the Major.
'And can you be a day, or even a minute,' returned the lady, slightly
settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing her
false teeth, set off by her false complexion, 'in the garden of
what's-its-name
'Eden, I suppose, Mama,' interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
'My dear Edith,' said the other, 'I cannot help it. I never can
remember those frightful names - without having your whole Soul and Being
inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,' said Mrs Skewton, rustling
a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, 'of her artless
breath, you creature!'
The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton's fresh enthusiasm of words, and
forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between her
age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been youthful
for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she never varied)
was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before,
by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his published sketch the
name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery made by the critics of the
time, that it bore an exact resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on
board her galley. Mrs Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw
wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the
barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for
this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page:
there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from
walking.
'Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?' said Mrs Skewton, settling
her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of
some diamonds, and her family connexions.
'My friend Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'may be devoted to her
in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the universe -
'No one can be a stranger,' said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immense
influence.'
As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the
younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.
'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing her.
'No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough,
and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama
likes change.'
'Edith of course does not,' said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly archness.
'I have not found that there is any change in such places,' was the
answer, delivered with supreme indifference.
'They libel me. There is only one change, Mr Dombey,' observed Mrs
Skewton, with a mincing sigh, 'for which I really care, and that I fear I
shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But seclusion
and contemplation are my what-his-name - '
'If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself
intelligible,' said the younger lady.
'My dearest Edith,' returned Mrs Skewton, 'you know that I am wholly
dependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr Dombey, Nature
intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my
passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm,
and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.'
This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of the
celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received with
perfect gravity by Mr Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Nature was, no
doubt, a very respectable institution.
'What I want,' drawled Mrs Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, 'is
heart.' It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in which she
used the phrase. 'What I want, is frankness, confidence, less
conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully artificial.'
We were, indeed.
'In short,' said Mrs Skewton, 'I want Nature everywhere. It would be so
extremely charming.'
'Nature is inviting us away now, Mama, if you are ready,' said the
younger lady, curling her handsome lip. At this hint, the wan page, who had
been surveying the party over the top of the chair, vanished behind it, as
if the ground had swallowed him up.
'Stop a moment, Withers!' said Mrs Skewton, as the chair began to move;
calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called
in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk
stockings. 'Where are you staying, abomination?' The Major was staying at
the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey.
'You may come and see us any evening when you are good,' lisped Mrs
Skewton. 'If Mr Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers, go on!'
The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that
were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful carelessness,
after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elder lady honoured them
both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave of her hand; the younger
lady with the very slightest inclination of her head that common courtesy
allowed.
The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched
colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal than any
want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the daughter with
her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such an involuntary
disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look after them,
that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as
his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow
battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the
same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a
little in advance, expressed in all her elegant form, from head to foot, the
same supreme disregard of everything and everybody.
'I tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, as they resumed their walk
again. 'If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there's not a woman in the world
whom he'd prefer for Mrs Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!' said the
Major, 'she's superb!'
'Do you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey.
'Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,' said the Major, 'that he should mean the
mother?'
'You were complimentary to the mother,' returned Mr Dombey.
'An ancient flame, Sir,' chuckled Major Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. I
humour her.'
'She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,' said Mr Dombey.
'Genteel, Sir,' said the Major, stopping short, and staring in his
companion's face. 'The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir, is sister to the late
Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are not wealthy -
they're poor, indeed - and she lives upon a small jointure; but if you come
to blood, Sir!' The Major gave a flourish with his stick and walked on
again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, if you came to
that.
'You addressed the daughter, I observed,' said Mr Dombey, after a short
pause, 'as Mrs Granger.'
'Edith Skewton, Sir,' returned the Major, stopping short again, and
punching a mark in the ground with his cane, to represent her, 'married (at
eighteen) Granger of Ours;' whom the Major indicated by another punch.
'Granger, Sir,' said the Major, tapping the last ideal portrait, and rolling
his head emphatically, 'was Colonel of Ours; a de-vilish handsome fellow,
Sir, of forty-one. He died, Sir, in the second year of his marriage.' The
Major ran the representative of the deceased Granger through and through the
body with his walking-stick, and went on again, carrying his stick over his
shoulder.
'How long is this ago?' asked Mr Dombey, making another halt.
'Edith Granger, Sir,' replied the Major, shutting one eye, putting his
head on one side, passing his cane into his left hand, and smoothing his
shirt-frill with his right, 'is, at this present time, not quite thirty. And
damme, Sir,' said the Major, shouldering his stick once more, and walking on
again, 'she's a peerless woman!'
'Was there any family?' asked Mr Dombey presently.
'Yes, Sir,' said the Major. 'There was a boy.'
Mr Dombey's eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face.
'Who was drowned, Sir,' pursued the Major. 'When a child of four or
five years old.'
'Indeed?' said Mr Dombey, raising his head.
'By the upsetting of a boat in which his nurse had no business to have
put him,' said the Major. 'That's his history. Edith Granger is Edith
Granger still; but if tough old Joey B., Sir, were a little younger and a
little richer, the name of that immortal paragon should be Bagstock.'
The Major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more like
an over-fed Mephistopheles than ever, as he said the words.
'Provided the lady made no objection, I suppose?' said Mr Dombey
coldly.
'By Gad, Sir,' said the Major, 'the Bagstock breed are not accustomed
to that sort of obstacle. Though it's true enough that Edith might have
married twenty times, but for being proud, Sir, proud.'
Mr Dombey seemed, by his face, to think no worse of her for that.
'It's a great quality after all,' said the Major. 'By the Lord, it's a
high quality! Dombey! You are proud yourself, and your friend, Old Joe,
respects you for it, Sir.'
With this tribute to the character of his ally, which seemed to be
wrung from him by the force of circumstances and the irresistible tendency
of their conversation, the Major closed the subject, and glided into a
general exposition of the extent to which he had been beloved and doted on
by splendid women and brilliant creatures.
On the next day but one, Mr Dombey and the Major encountered the
Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter in the Pump-room; on the day after,
they met them again very near the place where they had met them first. After
meeting them thus, three or four times in all, it became a point of mere
civility to old acquaintances that the Major should go there one evening. Mr
Dombey had not originally intended to pay visits, but on the Major
announcing this intention, he said he would have the pleasure of
accompanying him. So the Major told the Native to go round before dinner,
and say, with his and Mr Dombey's compliments, that they would have the
honour of visiting the ladies that same evening, if the ladies were alone.
In answer to which message, the Native brought back a very small note with a
very large quantity of scent about it, indited by the Honourable Mrs Skewton
to Major Bagstock, and briefly saying, 'You are a shocking bear and I have a
great mind not to forgive you, but if you are very good indeed,' which was
underlined, 'you may come. Compliments (in which Edith unites) to Mr
Dombey.'
The Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Granger, resided,
while at Leamington, in lodgings that were fashionable enough and dear
enough, but rather limited in point of space and conveniences; so that the
Honourable Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her
head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid was quartered
in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid
developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and
out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out
of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and
the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the
night in a shed belonging to the same dairy, where new-laid eggs were
produced by the poultry connected with the establishment, who roosted on a
broken donkey-cart, persuaded, to all appearance, that it grew there, and
was a species of tree.
Mr Dombey and the Major found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among
the cushions of a sofa: very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling
Shakespeare's Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On their way upstairs
they had heard the sound of a harp, but it had ceased on their being
announced, and Edith now stood beside it handsomer and haughtier than ever.
It was a remarkable characteristic of this lady's beauty that it appeared to
vaunt and assert itself without her aid, and against her will. She knew that
she was beautiful: it was impossible that it could be otherwise: but she
seemed with her own pride to defy her very self.
Whether she held cheap attractions that could only call forth
admiration that was worthless to her, or whether she designed to render them
more precious to admirers by this usage of them, those to whom they were
precious seldom paused to consider.
'I hope, Mrs Granger,' said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her,
'we are not the cause of your ceasing to play?'
'You! oh no!'
'Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?' said Cleopatra.
'I left off as I began - of my own fancy.'
The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an
indifference quite removed from dulness or insensibility, for it was pointed
with proud purpose: was well set off by the carelessness with which she drew
her hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room.
'Do you know, Mr Dombey,' said her languishing mother, playing with a
hand-screen, 'that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually almost
differ - '
'Not quite, sometimes, Mama?' said Edith.
'Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,'
returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen,
which Edith made no movement to meet, ' - about these old conventionalities
of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural?
Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings
that we have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are
we not more natural?'
Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true.
'We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?' said Mrs Skewton.
Mr Dombey thought it possible.
'Devil a bit, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'We couldn't afford it. Unless
the world was peopled with J.B.'s - tough and blunt old Joes, Ma'am, plain
red herrings with hard roes, Sir - we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do.'
'You naughty Infidel,' said Mrs Skewton, 'be mute.'
'Cleopatra commands,' returned the Major, kissing his hand, 'and Antony
Bagstock obeys.'
'The man has no sensitiveness,' said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up
the hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. 'No sympathy. And what do we
live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that
gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,' said Mrs Skewton, arranging her
lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm,
looking upward from the wrist, 'how could we possibly bear it? In short,
obdurate man!' glancing at the Major, round the screen, 'I would have my
world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won't allow
you to disturb it, do you hear?'
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to
be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world;
which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to
her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more,
she would positively send him home.
Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey again
addressed himself to Edith.
'There is not much company here, it would seem?' said Mr Dombey, in his
own portentous gentlemanly way.
'I believe not. We see none.'
'Why really,' observed Mrs Skewton fom her couch, 'there are no people
here just now with whom we care to associate.'
'They have not enough heart,' said Edith, with a smile. The very
twilight of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended.
'My dearest Edith rallies me, you see!' said her mother, shaking her
head: which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy Bed now and
then in opposition to the diamonds. 'Wicked one!'
'You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?' said Mr Dombey.
Still to Edith.
'Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere.'
'A beautiful country!'
'I suppose it is. Everybody says so.'
'Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,' interposed her mother from
her couch.
The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her
eyebrows by a hair's-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal
world the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr Dombey.
'I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the
neighbourhood,' she said.
'You have almost reason to be, Madam,' he replied, glancing at a
variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised several as
representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewn abundantly
about the room, 'if these beautiful productions are from your hand.'
She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing.
'Have they that interest?' said Mr Dombey. 'Are they yours?'
'Yes.'
'And you play, I already know.'
'Yes.'
'And sing?'
'Yes.'
She answered all these questions with a strange reluctance; and with
that remarkable air of opposition to herself, already noticed as belonging
to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but wholly self-possessed.
Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed
her face, and - so far as she could - her manner also, to him; and continued
to do so, when he was silent.
'You have many resources against weariness at least,' said Mr Dombey.
cried the Major, again apostrophising his fair neighbour, with great ire, -
'when the provocation is too strong to admit of his remaining silent.'
The emotion of this outbreak threw the Major into a paroxysm of horse's
coughs, which held him for a long time. On recovering he added:
'And now, Dombey, as you have invited Joe - old Joe, who has no other
merit, Sir, but that he is tough and hearty - to be your guest and guide at
Leamington, command him in any way you please, and he is wholly yours. I
don't know, Sir,' said the Major, wagging his double chin with a jocose air,
'what it is you people see in Joe to make you hold him in such great
request, all of you; but this I know, Sir, that if he wasn't pretty tough,
and obstinate in his refusals, you'd kill him among you with your
invitations and so forth, in double-quick time.'
Mr Dombey, in a few words, expressed his sense of the preference he
received over those other distinguished members of society who were
clamouring for the possession of Major Bagstock. But the Major cut him short
by giving him to understand that he followed his own inclinations, and that
they had risen up in a body and said with one accord, 'J. B., Dombey is the
man for you to choose as a friend.'
The Major being by this time in a state of repletion, with essence of
savoury pie oozing out at the corners of his eyes, and devilled grill and
kidneys tightening his cravat: and the time moreover approaching for the
departure of the railway train to Birmingham, by which they were to leave
town: the Native got him into his great-coat with immense difficulty, and
buttoned him up until his face looked staring and gasping, over the top of
that garment, as if he were in a barrel. The Native then handed him
separately, and with a decent interval between each supply, his washleather
gloves, his thick stick, and his hat; which latter article the Major wore
with a rakish air on one side of his head, by way of toning down his
remarkable visage. The Native had previously packed, in all possible and
impossible parts of Mr Dombey's chariot, which was in waiting, an unusual
quantity of carpet-bags and small portmanteaus, no less apoplectic in
appearance than the Major himself: and having filled his own pockets with
Seltzer water, East India sherry, sandwiches, shawls, telescopes, maps, and
newspapers, any or all of which light baggage the Major might require at any
instant of the journey, he announced that everything was ready. To complete
the equipment of this unfortunate foreigner (currently believed to be a
prince in his own country), when he took his seat in the rumble by the side
of Mr Towlinson, a pile of the Major's cloaks and great-coats was hurled
upon him by the landlord, who aimed at him from the pavement with those
great missiles like a Titan, and so covered him up, that he proceeded, in a
living tomb, to the railroad station.
But before the carriage moved away, and while the Native was in the act
of sepulture, Miss Tox appearing at her window, waved a lilywhite
handkerchief. Mr Dombey received this parting salutation very coldly - very
coldly even for him - and honouring her with the slightest possible
inclination of his head, leaned back in the carriage with a very
discontented look. His marked behaviour seemed to afford the Major (who was
all politeness in his recognition of Miss Tox) unbounded satisfaction; and
he sat for a long time afterwards, leering, and choking, like an over-fed
Mephistopheles.
During the bustle of preparation at the railway, Mr Dombey and the
Major walked up and down the platform side by side; the former taciturn and
gloomy, and the latter entertaining him, or entertaining himself, with a
variety of anecdotes and reminiscences, in most of which Joe Bagstock was
the principal performer. Neither of the two observed that in the course of
these walks, they attracted the attention of a working man who was standing
near the engine, and who touched his hat every time they passed; for Mr
Dombey habitually looked over the vulgar herd, not at them; and the Major
was looking, at the time, into the core of one of his stories. At length,
however, this man stepped before them as they turned round, and pulling his
hat off, and keeping it off, ducked his head to Mr Dombey.
'Beg your pardon, Sir,' said the man, 'but I hope you're a doin' pretty
well, Sir.'
He was dressed in a canvas suit abundantly besmeared with coal-dust and
oil, and had cinders in his whiskers, and a smell of half-slaked ashes all
over him. He was not a bad-looking fellow, nor even what could be fairly
called a dirty-looking fellow, in spite of this; and, in short, he was Mr
Toodle, professionally clothed.
'I shall have the honour of stokin' of you down, Sir,' said Mr Toodle.
'Beg your pardon, Sir. - I hope you find yourself a coming round?'
Mr Dombey looked at him, in return for his tone of interest, as if a
man like that would make his very eyesight dirty.
''Scuse the liberty, Sir,' said Toodle, seeing he was not clearly
remembered, 'but my wife Polly, as was called Richards in your family - '
A change in Mr Dombey's face, which seemed to express recollection of
him, and so it did, but it expressed in a much stronger degree an angry
sense of humiliation, stopped Mr Toodle short.
'Your wife wants money, I suppose,' said Mr Dombey, putting his hand in
his pocket, and speaking (but that he always did) haughtily.
'No thank'ee, Sir,' returned Toodle, 'I can't say she does. I don't.'
Mr Dombey was stopped short now in his turn: and awkwardly: with his
hand in his pocket.
'No, Sir,' said Toodle, turning his oilskin cap round and round; 'we're
a doin' pretty well, Sir; we haven't no cause to complain in the worldly
way, Sir. We've had four more since then, Sir, but we rubs on.'
Mr Dombey would have rubbed on to his own carriage, though in so doing
he had rubbed the stoker underneath the wheels; but his attention was
arrested by something in connexion with the cap still going slowly round and
round in the man's hand.
'We lost one babby,' observed Toodle, 'there's no denyin'.'
'Lately,' added Mr Dombey, looking at the cap.
'No, Sir, up'ard of three years ago, but all the rest is hearty. And in
the matter o readin', Sir,' said Toodle, ducking again, as if to remind Mr
Dombey of what had passed between them on that subject long ago, 'them boys
o' mine, they learned me, among 'em, arter all. They've made a wery
tolerable scholar of me, Sir, them boys.'
'Come, Major!' said Mr Dombey.
'Beg your pardon, Sir,' resumed Toodle, taking a step before them and
deferentially stopping them again, still cap in hand: 'I wouldn't have
troubled you with such a pint except as a way of gettin' in the name of my
son Biler - christened Robin - him as you was so good as to make a
Charitable Grinder on.'
'Well, man,' said Mr Dombey in his severest manner. 'What about him?'
'Why, Sir,' returned Toodle, shaking his head with a face of great
anxiety and distress, 'I'm forced to say, Sir, that he's gone wrong.
'He has gone wrong, has he?' said Mr Dombey, with a hard kind of
satisfaction.
'He has fell into bad company, you see, genelmen,' pursued the father,
looking wistfully at both, and evidently taking the Major into the
conversation with the hope of having his sympathy. 'He has got into bad
ways. God send he may come to again, genelmen, but he's on the wrong track
now! You could hardly be off hearing of it somehow, Sir,' said Toodle, again
addressing Mr Dombey individually; 'and it's better I should out and say my
boy's gone rather wrong. Polly's dreadful down about it, genelmen,' said
Toodle with the same dejected look, and another appeal to the Major.
'A son of this man's whom I caused to be educated, Major,' said Mr
Dombey, giving him his arm. 'The usual return!'
'Take advice from plain old Joe, and never educate that sort of people,
Sir,' returned the Major. 'Damme, Sir, it never does! It always fails!'
The simple father was beginning to submit that he hoped his son, the
quondam Grinder, huffed and cuffed, and flogged and badged, and taught, as
parrots are, by a brute jobbed into his place of schoolmaster with as much
fitness for it as a hound, might not have been educated on quite a right
plan in some undiscovered respect, when Mr Dombey angrily repeating 'The
usual return!' led the Major away. And the Major being heavy to hoist into
Mr Dombey's carriage, elevated in mid-air, and having to stop and swear that
he would flay the Native alive, and break every bone in his skin, and visit
other physical torments upon him, every time he couldn't get his foot on the
step, and fell back on that dark exile, had barely time before they started
to repeat hoarsely that it would never do: that it always failed: and that
if he were to educate 'his own vagabond,' he would certainly be hanged.
Mr Dombey assented bitterly; but there was something more in his
bitterness, and in his moody way of falling back in the carriage, and
looking with knitted brows at the changing objects without, than the failure
of that noble educational system administered by the Grinders' Company. He
had seen upon the man's rough cap a piece of new crape, and he had assured
himself, from his manner and his answers, that he wore it for his son.
So] from high to low, at home or abroad, from Florence in his great
house to the coarse churl who was feeding the fire then smoking before them,
everyone set up some claim or other to a share in his dead boy, and was a
bidder against him! Could he ever forget how that woman had wept over his
pillow, and called him her own child! or how he, waking from his sleep, had
asked for her, and had raised himself in his bed and brightened when she
carne in!
To think of this presumptuous raker among coals and ashes going on
before there, with his sign of mourning! To think that he dared to enter,
even by a common show like that, into the trial and disappointrnent of a
proud gentleman's secret heart! To think that this lost child, who was to
have divided with him his riches, and his projects, and his power, and
allied with whom he was to have shut out all the world as with a double door
of gold, should have let in such a herd to insult him with their knowledge
of his defeated hopes, and their boasts of claiming community of feeling
with himself, so far removed: if not of having crept into the place wherein
he would have lorded it, alone!
He found no pleasure or relief in the journey. Tortured by these
thoughts he carried monotony with him, through the rushing landscape, and
hurried headlong, not through a rich and varied country, but a wilderness of
blighted plans and gnawing jealousies. The very speed at which the train was
whirled along, mocked the swift course of the young life that had been borne
away so steadily and so inexorably to its foredoomed end. The power that
forced itself upon its iron way - its own - defiant of all paths and roads,
piercing through the heart of every obstacle, and dragging living creatures
of all classes, ages, and degrees behind it, was a type of the triumphant
monster, Death.
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, from the town, burrowmg
among the dwellings of men and making the streets hum, flashing out into the
meadows for a moment, mining in through the damp earth, booming on in
darkness and heavy air, bursting out again into the sunny day so bright and
wide; away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, through the fields,
through the woods, through the corn, through the hay, through the chalk,
through the mould, through the clay, through the rock, among objects close
at hand and almost in the grasp, ever flying from the traveller, and a
deceitful distance ever moving slowly within him: like as in the track of
the remorseless monster, Death!
Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the
park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep are
feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating, where the
dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream is running,
where the village clusters, where the great cathedral rises, where the bleak
moor lies, and the wild breeze smooths or ruffles it at its inconstant will;
away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, and no trace to leave behind
but dust and vapour: like as in the track of the remorseless monster, Death!
Breasting the wind and light, the shower and sunshine, away, and still
away, it rolls and roars, fierce and rapid, smooth and certain, and great
works and massive bridges crossing up above, fall like a beam of shadow an
inch broad, upon the eye, and then are lost. Away, and still away, onward
and onward ever: glimpses of cottage-homes, of houses, mansions, rich
estates, of husbandry and handicraft, of people, of old roads and paths that
look deserted, small, and insignificant as they are left behind: and so they
do, and what else is there but such glimpses, in the track of the
indomitable monster, Death!
Away, with a shriek, and a roar, and a rattle, plunging down into the
earth again, and working on in such a storm of energy and perseverance, that
amidst the darkness and whirlwind the motion seems reversed, and to tend
furiously backward, until a ray of light upon the Wet wall shows its surface
flying past like a fierce stream, Away once more into the day, and through
the day, with a shrill yell of exultation, roaring, rattling, tearing on,
spurning everything with its dark breath, sometimes pausing for a minute
where a crowd of faces are, that in a minute more are not; sometimes lapping
water greedily, and before the spout at which it drinks' has ceased to drip
upon the ground, shrieking, roaring, rattling through the purple distance!
Louder and louder yet, it shrieks and cries as it comes tearing on
resistless to the goal: and now its way, still like the way of Death, is
strewn with ashes thickly. Everything around is blackened. There are dark
pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below. There are
jagged walls and falling houses close at hand, and through the battered
roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen, where 'want and fever
hide themselves in many wretched shapes, while smoke and crowded gables, and
distorted chimneys, and deformity of brick and mortar penning up deformity
of mind and body, choke the murky distance. As Mr Dombey looks out of his
carriage window, it is never in his thoughts that the monster who has
brought him there has let the light of day in on these things: not made or
caused them. It was the journey's fitting end, and might have been the end
of everything; it was so ruinous and dreary.'
So, pursuing the one course of thought, he had the one relentless
monster still before him. All things looked black, and cold, and deadly upon
him, and he on them. He found a likeness to his misfortune everywhere. There
was a remorseless triumph going on about him, and it galled and stung him in
his pride and jealousy, whatever form it took: though most of all when it
divided with him the love and memory of his lost boy.
There was a face - he had looked upon it, on the previous night, and it
on him with eyes that read his soul, though they were dim with tears, and
hidden soon behind two quivering hands - that often had attended him in
fancy, on this ride. He had seen it, with the expression of last night,
timidly pleading to him. It was not reproachful, but there was something of
doubt, almost of hopeful incredulity in it, which, as he once more saw that
fade away into a desolate certainty of his dislike, was like reproach. It
was a trouble to him to think of this face of Florence.
Because he felt any new compunction towards it? No. Because the feeling
it awakened in him - of which he had had some old foreshadowing in older
times - was full-formed now, and spoke out plainly, moving him too much, and
threatening to grow too strong for his composure. Because the face was
abroad, in the expression of defeat and persecution that seemed to encircle
him like the air. Because it barbed the arrow of that cruel and remorseless
enemy on which his thoughts so ran, and put into its grasp a double-handed
sword. Because he knew full well, in his own breast, as he stood there,
tinging the scene of transition before him with the morbid colours of his
own mind, and making it a ruin and a picture of decay, instead of hopeful
change, and promise of better things, that life had quite as much to do with
his complainings as death. One child was gone, and one child left. Why was
the object of his hope removed instead of her?
The sweet, calm, gentle presence in his fancy, moved him to no
reflection but that. She had been unwelcome to him from the first; she was
an aggravation of his bitterness now. If his son had been his only child,
and the same blow had fallen on him, it would have been heavy to bear; but
infinitely lighter than now, when it might have fallen on her (whom he could
have lost, or he believed it, without a pang), and had not. Her loving and
innocent face rising before him, had no softening or winning influence. He
rejected the angel, and took up with the tormenting spirit crouching in his
bosom. Her patience, goodness, youth, devotion, love, were as so many atoms
in the ashes upon which he set his heel. He saw her image in the blight and
blackness all around him, not irradiating but deepening the gloom. More than
once upon this journey, and now again as he stood pondering at this
journey's end, tracing figures in the dust with his stick, the thought came
into his mind, what was there he could interpose between himself and it?
The Major, who had been blowing and panting all the way down, like
another engine, and whose eye had often wandered from his newspaper to leer
at the prospect, as if there were a procession of discomfited Miss Toxes
pouring out in the smoke of the train, and flying away over the fields to
hide themselves in any place of refuge, aroused his friends by informing him
that the post-horses were harnessed and the carriage ready.
'Dombey,' said the Major, rapping him on the arm with his cane, 'don't
be thoughtful. It's a bad habit, Old Joe, Sir, wouldn't be as tough as you
see him, if he had ever encouraged it. You are too great a man, Dombey, to
be thoughtful. In your position, Sir, you're far above that kind of thing.'
The Major even in his friendly remonstrrnces, thus consulting the
dignity and honour of Mr Dombey, and showing a lively sense of their
importance, Mr Dombey felt more than ever disposed to defer to a gentleman
possessing so much good sense and such a well-regulated mind; acoordingly he
made an effort to listen to the Major's stories, as they trotted along the
turnpike road; and the Major, finding both the pace and the road a great
deal better adapted to his conversational powers than the mode of travelling
they had just relinquished, came out of his entertainment,
But still the Major, blunt and tough as he was, and as he so very often
said he was, administered some palatable catering to his companion's
appetite. He related, or rather suffered it to escape him, accidentally, and
as one might say, grudgingly and against his will, how there was great
curiosity and excitement at the club, in regard of his friend Dombey. How he
was suffocated with questions, Sir. How old Joe Bagstock was a greater man
than ever, there, on the strength of Dombey. How they said, 'Bagstock, your
friend Dombey now, what is the view he takes of such and such a question?
Though, by the Rood, Sir,' said the Major, with a broad stare, 'how they
discovered that J. B. ever came to know you, is a mystery!'
In this flow of spirits and conversation, only interrupted by his usual
plethoric symptoms, and by intervals of lunch, and from time to time by some
violent assault upon the Native, who wore a pair of ear-rings in his
dark-brown ears, and on whom his European clothes sat with an outlandish
impossibility of adjustment - being, of their own accord, and without any
reference to the tailor's art, long where they ought to be short, short
where they ought to be long, tight where they ought to be loose, and loose
where they ought to be tight - and to which he imparted a new grace,
whenever the Major attacked him, by shrinking into them like a shrivelled
nut, or a cold monkey - in this flow of spirits and conversation, the Major
continued all day: so that when evening came on, and found them trotting
through the green and leafy road near Leamington, the Major's voice, what
with talking and eating and chuckling and choking, appeared to be in the box
under the rumble, or in some neighbouring hay-stack. Nor did the Major
improve it at the Royal Hotel, where rooms and dinner had been ordered, and
where he so oppressed his organs of speech by eating and drinking, that when
he retired to bed he had no voice at all, except to cough with, and could
only make himself intelligible to the dark servant by gasping at him.
He not only rose next morning, however, like a giant refreshed, but
conducted himself, at breakfast like a giant refreshing. At this meal they
arranged their daily habits. The Major was to take the responsibility of
ordering evrything to eat and drink; and they were to have a late breakfast
together every morning, and a late dinner together every day. Mr Dombey
would prefer remaining in his own room, or walking in the country by
himself, on that first day of their sojourn at Leamington; but next morning
he would be happy to accompany the Major to the Pump-room, and about the
town. So they parted until dinner-time. Mr Dombey retired to nurse his
wholesome thoughts in his own way. The Major, attended by the Native
carrying a camp-stool, a great-coat, and an umbrella, swaggered up and down
through all the public places: looking into subscription books to find out
who was there, looking up old ladies by whom he was much admired, reporting
J. B. tougher than ever, and puffing his rich friend Dombey wherever he
went. There never was a man who stood by a friend more staunchly than the
Major, when in puffing him, he puffed himself.
It was surprising how much new conversation the Major had to let off at
dinner-time, and what occasion he gave Mr Dombey to admire his social
qualities. At breakfast next morning, he knew the contents of the latest
newspapers received; and mentioned several subjects in connexion with them,
on which his opinion had recently been sought by persons of such power and
might, that they were only to be obscurely hinted at. Mr Dombey, who had
been so long shut up within himself, and who had rarely, at any time,
overstepped the enchanted circle within which the operations of Dombey and
Son were conducted, began to think this an improvement on his solitary life;
and in place of excusing himself for another day, as he had thought of doing
when alone, walked out with the Major arm-in-arm.
New Faces
The MAJOR, more blue-faced and staring - more over-ripe, as it were,
than ever - and giving vent, every now and then, to one of the horse's
coughs, not so much of necessity as in a spontaneous explosion of
importance, walked arm-in-arm with Mr Dombey up the sunny side of the way,
with his cheeks swelling over his tight stock, his legs majestically wide
apart, and his great head wagging from side to side, as if he were
remonstrating within himself for being such a captivating object. They had
not walked many yards, before the Major encountered somebody he knew, nor
many yards farther before the Major encountered somebody else he knew, but
he merely shook his fingers at them as he passed, and led Mr Dombey on:
pointing out the localities as they went, and enlivening the walk with any
current scandal suggested by them.
In this manner the Major and Mr Dombey were walking arm-in-arm, much to
their own satisfaction, when they beheld advancing towards them, a wheeled
chair, in which a lady was seated, indolently steering her carriage by a
kind of rudder in front, while it was propelled by some unseen power in the
rear. Although the lady was not young, she was very blooming in the face -
quite rosy- and her dress and attitude were perfectly juvenile. Walking by
the side of the chair, and carrying her gossamer parasol with a proud and
weary air, as if so great an effort must be soon abandoned and the parasol
dropped, sauntered a much younger lady, very handsome, very haughty, very
wilful, who tossed her head and drooped her eyelids, as though, if there
were anything in all the world worth looking into, save a mirror, it
certainly was not the earth or sky.
'Why, what the devil have we here, Sir!' cried the Major, stopping as
this little cavalcade drew near.
'My dearest Edith!' drawled the lady in the chair, 'Major Bagstock!'
The Major no sooner heard the voice, than he relinquished Mr Dombey's
arm, darted forward, took the hand of the lady in the chair and pressed it
to his lips. With no less gallantry, the Major folded both his gloves upon
his heart, and bowed low to the other lady. And now, the chair having
stopped, the motive power became visible in the shape of a flushed page
pushing behind, who seemed to have in part outgrown and in part out-pushed
his strength, for when he stood upright he was tall, and wan, and thin, and
his plight appeared the more forlorn from his having injured the shape of
his hat, by butting at the carriage with his head to urge it forward, as is
sometimes done by elephants in Oriental countries.
'Joe Bagstock,' said the Major to both ladies, 'is a proud and happy
man for the rest of his life.'
'You false creature! said the old lady in the chair, insipidly. 'Where
do you come from? I can't bear you.'
'Then suffer old Joe to present a friend, Ma'am,' said the Major,
promptly, 'as a reason for being tolerated. Mr Dombey, Mrs Skewton.' The
lady in the chair was gracious. 'Mr Dombey, Mrs Granger.' The lady with the
parasol was faintly conscious of Mr Dombey's taking off his hat, and bowing
low. 'I am delighted, Sir,' said the Major, 'to have this opportunity.'
The Major seemed in earnest, for he looked at all the three, and leered
in his ugliest manner.
'Mrs Skewton, Dombey,' said the Major, 'makes havoc in the heart of old
Josh.'
Mr Dombey signified that he didn't wonder at it.
'You perfidious goblin,' said the lady in the chair, 'have done! How
long have you been here, bad man?'
'One day,' replied the Major.
'And can you be a day, or even a minute,' returned the lady, slightly
settling her false curls and false eyebrows with her fan, and showing her
false teeth, set off by her false complexion, 'in the garden of
what's-its-name
'Eden, I suppose, Mama,' interrupted the younger lady, scornfully.
'My dear Edith,' said the other, 'I cannot help it. I never can
remember those frightful names - without having your whole Soul and Being
inspired by the sight of Nature; by the perfume,' said Mrs Skewton, rustling
a handkerchief that was faint and sickly with essences, 'of her artless
breath, you creature!'
The discrepancy between Mrs Skewton's fresh enthusiasm of words, and
forlornly faded manner, was hardly less observable than that between her
age, which was about seventy, and her dress, which would have been youthful
for twenty-seven. Her attitude in the wheeled chair (which she never varied)
was one in which she had been taken in a barouche, some fifty years before,
by a then fashionable artist who had appended to his published sketch the
name of Cleopatra: in consequence of a discovery made by the critics of the
time, that it bore an exact resemblance to that Princess as she reclined on
board her galley. Mrs Skewton was a beauty then, and bucks threw
wine-glasses over their heads by dozens in her honour. The beauty and the
barouche had both passed away, but she still preserved the attitude, and for
this reason expressly, maintained the wheeled chair and the butting page:
there being nothing whatever, except the attitude, to prevent her from
walking.
'Mr Dombey is devoted to Nature, I trust?' said Mrs Skewton, settling
her diamond brooch. And by the way, she chiefly lived upon the reputation of
some diamonds, and her family connexions.
'My friend Dombey, Ma'am,' returned the Major, 'may be devoted to her
in secret, but a man who is paramount in the greatest city in the universe -
'No one can be a stranger,' said Mrs Skewton, 'to Mr Dombey's immense
influence.'
As Mr Dombey acknowledged the compliment with a bend of his head, the
younger lady glancing at him, met his eyes.
'You reside here, Madam?' said Mr Dombey, addressing her.
'No, we have been to a great many places. To Harrogate and Scarborough,
and into Devonshire. We have been visiting, and resting here and there. Mama
likes change.'
'Edith of course does not,' said Mrs Skewton, with a ghastly archness.
'I have not found that there is any change in such places,' was the
answer, delivered with supreme indifference.
'They libel me. There is only one change, Mr Dombey,' observed Mrs
Skewton, with a mincing sigh, 'for which I really care, and that I fear I
shall never be permitted to enjoy. People cannot spare one. But seclusion
and contemplation are my what-his-name - '
'If you mean Paradise, Mama, you had better say so, to render yourself
intelligible,' said the younger lady.
'My dearest Edith,' returned Mrs Skewton, 'you know that I am wholly
dependent upon you for those odious names. I assure you, Mr Dombey, Nature
intended me for an Arcadian. I am thrown away in society. Cows are my
passion. What I have ever sighed for, has been to retreat to a Swiss farm,
and live entirely surrounded by cows - and china.'
This curious association of objects, suggesting a remembrance of the
celebrated bull who got by mistake into a crockery shop, was received with
perfect gravity by Mr Dombey, who intimated his opinion that Nature was, no
doubt, a very respectable institution.
'What I want,' drawled Mrs Skewton, pinching her shrivelled throat, 'is
heart.' It was frightfully true in one sense, if not in that in which she
used the phrase. 'What I want, is frankness, confidence, less
conventionality, and freer play of soul. We are so dreadfully artificial.'
We were, indeed.
'In short,' said Mrs Skewton, 'I want Nature everywhere. It would be so
extremely charming.'
'Nature is inviting us away now, Mama, if you are ready,' said the
younger lady, curling her handsome lip. At this hint, the wan page, who had
been surveying the party over the top of the chair, vanished behind it, as
if the ground had swallowed him up.
'Stop a moment, Withers!' said Mrs Skewton, as the chair began to move;
calling to the page with all the languid dignity with which she had called
in days of yore to a coachman with a wig, cauliflower nosegay, and silk
stockings. 'Where are you staying, abomination?' The Major was staying at
the Royal Hotel, with his friend Dombey.
'You may come and see us any evening when you are good,' lisped Mrs
Skewton. 'If Mr Dombey will honour us, we shall be happy. Withers, go on!'
The Major again pressed to his blue lips the tips of the fingers that
were disposed on the ledge of the wheeled chair with careful carelessness,
after the Cleopatra model: and Mr Dombey bowed. The elder lady honoured them
both with a very gracious smile and a girlish wave of her hand; the younger
lady with the very slightest inclination of her head that common courtesy
allowed.
The last glimpse of the wrinkled face of the mother, with that patched
colour on it which the sun made infinitely more haggard and dismal than any
want of colour could have been, and of the proud beauty of the daughter with
her graceful figure and erect deportment, engendered such an involuntary
disposition on the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look after them,
that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as
his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow
battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the
same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a
little in advance, expressed in all her elegant form, from head to foot, the
same supreme disregard of everything and everybody.
'I tell you what, Sir,' said the Major, as they resumed their walk
again. 'If Joe Bagstock were a younger man, there's not a woman in the world
whom he'd prefer for Mrs Bagstock to that woman. By George, Sir!' said the
Major, 'she's superb!'
'Do you mean the daughter?' inquired Mr Dombey.
'Is Joey B. a turnip, Dombey,' said the Major, 'that he should mean the
mother?'
'You were complimentary to the mother,' returned Mr Dombey.
'An ancient flame, Sir,' chuckled Major Bagstock. 'Devilish ancient. I
humour her.'
'She impresses me as being perfectly genteel,' said Mr Dombey.
'Genteel, Sir,' said the Major, stopping short, and staring in his
companion's face. 'The Honourable Mrs Skewton, Sir, is sister to the late
Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present Lord. The family are not wealthy -
they're poor, indeed - and she lives upon a small jointure; but if you come
to blood, Sir!' The Major gave a flourish with his stick and walked on
again, in despair of being able to say what you came to, if you came to
that.
'You addressed the daughter, I observed,' said Mr Dombey, after a short
pause, 'as Mrs Granger.'
'Edith Skewton, Sir,' returned the Major, stopping short again, and
punching a mark in the ground with his cane, to represent her, 'married (at
eighteen) Granger of Ours;' whom the Major indicated by another punch.
'Granger, Sir,' said the Major, tapping the last ideal portrait, and rolling
his head emphatically, 'was Colonel of Ours; a de-vilish handsome fellow,
Sir, of forty-one. He died, Sir, in the second year of his marriage.' The
Major ran the representative of the deceased Granger through and through the
body with his walking-stick, and went on again, carrying his stick over his
shoulder.
'How long is this ago?' asked Mr Dombey, making another halt.
'Edith Granger, Sir,' replied the Major, shutting one eye, putting his
head on one side, passing his cane into his left hand, and smoothing his
shirt-frill with his right, 'is, at this present time, not quite thirty. And
damme, Sir,' said the Major, shouldering his stick once more, and walking on
again, 'she's a peerless woman!'
'Was there any family?' asked Mr Dombey presently.
'Yes, Sir,' said the Major. 'There was a boy.'
Mr Dombey's eyes sought the ground, and a shade came over his face.
'Who was drowned, Sir,' pursued the Major. 'When a child of four or
five years old.'
'Indeed?' said Mr Dombey, raising his head.
'By the upsetting of a boat in which his nurse had no business to have
put him,' said the Major. 'That's his history. Edith Granger is Edith
Granger still; but if tough old Joey B., Sir, were a little younger and a
little richer, the name of that immortal paragon should be Bagstock.'
The Major heaved his shoulders, and his cheeks, and laughed more like
an over-fed Mephistopheles than ever, as he said the words.
'Provided the lady made no objection, I suppose?' said Mr Dombey
coldly.
'By Gad, Sir,' said the Major, 'the Bagstock breed are not accustomed
to that sort of obstacle. Though it's true enough that Edith might have
married twenty times, but for being proud, Sir, proud.'
Mr Dombey seemed, by his face, to think no worse of her for that.
'It's a great quality after all,' said the Major. 'By the Lord, it's a
high quality! Dombey! You are proud yourself, and your friend, Old Joe,
respects you for it, Sir.'
With this tribute to the character of his ally, which seemed to be
wrung from him by the force of circumstances and the irresistible tendency
of their conversation, the Major closed the subject, and glided into a
general exposition of the extent to which he had been beloved and doted on
by splendid women and brilliant creatures.
On the next day but one, Mr Dombey and the Major encountered the
Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter in the Pump-room; on the day after,
they met them again very near the place where they had met them first. After
meeting them thus, three or four times in all, it became a point of mere
civility to old acquaintances that the Major should go there one evening. Mr
Dombey had not originally intended to pay visits, but on the Major
announcing this intention, he said he would have the pleasure of
accompanying him. So the Major told the Native to go round before dinner,
and say, with his and Mr Dombey's compliments, that they would have the
honour of visiting the ladies that same evening, if the ladies were alone.
In answer to which message, the Native brought back a very small note with a
very large quantity of scent about it, indited by the Honourable Mrs Skewton
to Major Bagstock, and briefly saying, 'You are a shocking bear and I have a
great mind not to forgive you, but if you are very good indeed,' which was
underlined, 'you may come. Compliments (in which Edith unites) to Mr
Dombey.'
The Honourable Mrs Skewton and her daughter, Mrs Granger, resided,
while at Leamington, in lodgings that were fashionable enough and dear
enough, but rather limited in point of space and conveniences; so that the
Honourable Mrs Skewton, being in bed, had her feet in the window and her
head in the fireplace, while the Honourable Mrs Skewton's maid was quartered
in a closet within the drawing-room, so extremely small, that, to avoid
developing the whole of its accommodations, she was obliged to writhe in and
out of the door like a beautiful serpent. Withers, the wan page, slept out
of the house immediately under the tiles at a neighbouring milk-shop; and
the wheeled chair, which was the stone of that young Sisyphus, passed the
night in a shed belonging to the same dairy, where new-laid eggs were
produced by the poultry connected with the establishment, who roosted on a
broken donkey-cart, persuaded, to all appearance, that it grew there, and
was a species of tree.
Mr Dombey and the Major found Mrs Skewton arranged, as Cleopatra, among
the cushions of a sofa: very airily dressed; and certainly not resembling
Shakespeare's Cleopatra, whom age could not wither. On their way upstairs
they had heard the sound of a harp, but it had ceased on their being
announced, and Edith now stood beside it handsomer and haughtier than ever.
It was a remarkable characteristic of this lady's beauty that it appeared to
vaunt and assert itself without her aid, and against her will. She knew that
she was beautiful: it was impossible that it could be otherwise: but she
seemed with her own pride to defy her very self.
Whether she held cheap attractions that could only call forth
admiration that was worthless to her, or whether she designed to render them
more precious to admirers by this usage of them, those to whom they were
precious seldom paused to consider.
'I hope, Mrs Granger,' said Mr Dombey, advancing a step towards her,
'we are not the cause of your ceasing to play?'
'You! oh no!'
'Why do you not go on then, my dearest Edith?' said Cleopatra.
'I left off as I began - of my own fancy.'
The exquisite indifference of her manner in saying this: an
indifference quite removed from dulness or insensibility, for it was pointed
with proud purpose: was well set off by the carelessness with which she drew
her hand across the strings, and came from that part of the room.
'Do you know, Mr Dombey,' said her languishing mother, playing with a
hand-screen, 'that occasionally my dearest Edith and myself actually almost
differ - '
'Not quite, sometimes, Mama?' said Edith.
'Oh never quite, my darling! Fie, fie, it would break my heart,'
returned her mother, making a faint attempt to pat her with the screen,
which Edith made no movement to meet, ' - about these old conventionalities
of manner that are observed in little things? Why are we not more natural?
Dear me! With all those yearnings, and gushings, and impulsive throbbings
that we have implanted in our souls, and which are so very charming, why are
we not more natural?'
Mr Dombey said it was very true, very true.
'We could be more natural I suppose if we tried?' said Mrs Skewton.
Mr Dombey thought it possible.
'Devil a bit, Ma'am,' said the Major. 'We couldn't afford it. Unless
the world was peopled with J.B.'s - tough and blunt old Joes, Ma'am, plain
red herrings with hard roes, Sir - we couldn't afford it. It wouldn't do.'
'You naughty Infidel,' said Mrs Skewton, 'be mute.'
'Cleopatra commands,' returned the Major, kissing his hand, 'and Antony
Bagstock obeys.'
'The man has no sensitiveness,' said Mrs Skewton, cruelly holding up
the hand-screen so as to shut the Major out. 'No sympathy. And what do we
live for but sympathy! What else is so extremely charming! Without that
gleam of sunshine on our cold cold earth,' said Mrs Skewton, arranging her
lace tucker, and complacently observing the effect of her bare lean arm,
looking upward from the wrist, 'how could we possibly bear it? In short,
obdurate man!' glancing at the Major, round the screen, 'I would have my
world all heart; and Faith is so excessively charming, that I won't allow
you to disturb it, do you hear?'
The Major replied that it was hard in Cleopatra to require the world to
be all heart, and yet to appropriate to herself the hearts of all the world;
which obliged Cleopatra to remind him that flattery was insupportable to
her, and that if he had the boldness to address her in that strain any more,
she would positively send him home.
Withers the Wan, at this period, handing round the tea, Mr Dombey again
addressed himself to Edith.
'There is not much company here, it would seem?' said Mr Dombey, in his
own portentous gentlemanly way.
'I believe not. We see none.'
'Why really,' observed Mrs Skewton fom her couch, 'there are no people
here just now with whom we care to associate.'
'They have not enough heart,' said Edith, with a smile. The very
twilight of a smile: so singularly were its light and darkness blended.
'My dearest Edith rallies me, you see!' said her mother, shaking her
head: which shook a little of itself sometimes, as if the palsy Bed now and
then in opposition to the diamonds. 'Wicked one!'
'You have been here before, if I am not mistaken?' said Mr Dombey.
Still to Edith.
'Oh, several times. I think we have been everywhere.'
'A beautiful country!'
'I suppose it is. Everybody says so.'
'Your cousin Feenix raves about it, Edith,' interposed her mother from
her couch.
The daughter slightly turned her graceful head, and raising her
eyebrows by a hair's-breadth, as if her cousin Feenix were of all the mortal
world the least to be regarded, turned her eyes again towards Mr Dombey.
'I hope, for the credit of my good taste, that I am tired of the
neighbourhood,' she said.
'You have almost reason to be, Madam,' he replied, glancing at a
variety of landscape drawings, of which he had already recognised several as
representing neighbouring points of view, and which were strewn abundantly
about the room, 'if these beautiful productions are from your hand.'
She gave him no reply, but sat in a disdainful beauty, quite amazing.
'Have they that interest?' said Mr Dombey. 'Are they yours?'
'Yes.'
'And you play, I already know.'
'Yes.'
'And sing?'
'Yes.'
She answered all these questions with a strange reluctance; and with
that remarkable air of opposition to herself, already noticed as belonging
to her beauty. Yet she was not embarrassed, but wholly self-possessed.
Neither did she seem to wish to avoid the conversation, for she addressed
her face, and - so far as she could - her manner also, to him; and continued
to do so, when he was silent.
'You have many resources against weariness at least,' said Mr Dombey.